FACILITIES FOR MANUFACTURING.

203 The industrious, well-behaved, and honest day-laborer can nowhere have a better chance of bettering his position than in the Great West. Not a few of the great bonanza capitalists and mine-owners have, with commendable enterprise and industry, worked their way up from this very class. One of these men said to a friend, a few months ago, “Tom, I read the papers now-a-days what I can, though I make rather slow work of it, for you know my early eddication was neglected, all along of my having to carry a hod so much when I was a boy; but I find some things in the papers that bother me. I thought I knew all the wild varmint about here pretty well, for I have shot enough of 'em, but the papers are telling about a new one, which they say is very plenty, but I don't seem ever to have heerd of it before."

"What do they call it?" asked his friend. "A lynix," was the answer, "and that's what bothers me; I don't seem to remember no lynixes round here." "How do they spell it?" asked the other. "L-y-n-x-lynix," said the capitalist. "Why that spells lynx; you certainly know what lynxes are?" "Lynx, is it? To be sure I do; I've killed hundreds of 'em; but who ever thought of spelling lynx that a way; I supposed it was spelt l-i-n-k-s. What a fool I was, to be sure."

As to manufacturing, it is believed that no part of the world offers greater facilities for it than this Western Empire. Wherever water-power is desirable, there is no lack of the most magnificent water-falls on the globe. In the whole northern tier of States and Territories, Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, there is water-power, yet unutilized, sufficient to put in motion all the machinery on the globe. In the middle tier-Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California-there is an abundance; though in some of these States, as, for instance, in Kansas and Nebraska, the fall is not as great; while in the southern tierArkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico the water-power is sufficient, and more than sufficient, for all practical purposes, present and prospective.

If it should be contended that, under favorable circumstances,

steam-power is more economical than water-power, though we might be inclined to doubt it, where the water-supply was constant and from a sufficient head or height, still we can point the advocates of steam to the immense coal-beds already described, which traverse nearly or quite every State and Territory, and furnish a fuel which is very cheap, abundant and admirably adapted to its purpose. Within the next ten years wool will become one of the largest products of this region, and the woolgrowers of the vast grazing districts will not consent to send their wool to the East, and have it manufactured there, to be returned to them, with its value enhanced, five or ten fold, or as in the finer goods, twenty or thirty fold. They will prefer to have it manufactured in their own vicinity, and thus not only the cost of a double transportation saved, but a considerable portion of the manufacturer's profit also.

Already the woollen goods of California and Oregon have a much higher reputation, in certain lines, than those produced elsewhere in Europe or America; and commanding the finest and most perfect machinery and workmen of the highest skill, with their wool at a lower price than it can be obtained elsewhere, there seems to be no good reason why any goods made wholly or in part of wool, should not be produced there, in the greatest perfection, and at the lowest price. The mohair goods made in part from the hair and fleece of the Angora goat, and in part from the long combing wool of the Cotswold or Leicester sheep, and, in the cheaper grades, a filling of cotton, can be made equally well here. The material is all at hand for making these goods of better quality, and at lower prices than they have ever yet brought.

In the southern tier of States and Territories, the manufacture of cotton goods can find its finest development. By a process discovered a few years since, the cotton can be spun into yarns of all degrees of fineness, just as it comes from the field, unginned, and with its beautiful and glossy fibres unbroken and unbruised by the teeth of the gin, while the cotton seed can be pressed for its valuable oil, and its oil-cake sold to the farmers and stock-raisers for their cattle. The cloths made from this

MANUFACTURes of textILES, IRON AND WOOD.

205

unginned cotton will far surpass in beauty and durability any cotton goods made elsewhere; while the cost of manufacture will be greatly reduced, and there will be no waste.

Other textiles, the growth of this region-flax, hemp, jute, ramie, agave and other fibres, the cactus fibre and the tulé rush, bunch grass, straw, etc.-can be manufactured very largely into cloths and into paper pulp, the uses of which are every day increasing, till already everything, from the driving-wheel of a locomotive, to a petroleum barrel, or a linen handkerchief, a house, a wash-pail, a lamp, or a pill-box, is made from it.

But it is not simply in the department of textiles that the Great West offers the best field for manufactures. Iron and steel can be smelted and manufactured more cheaply than anywhere else, and the telegraph wires which span the world, the rails which stretch across the continent, the steel plates for our new navy, the huge steel guns which will constitute its offensive armament, the locomotive and stationary engines, and the vast and complicated machinery used in the reduction or smelting of gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, lead, or zinc, as well as the agricultural machines which now cannot be manufactured fast enough to supply the demand, and the infinitude of iron and steel castings, will all be manufactured in this western land, not simply on its borders, as now, but in the very heart of the country.

The manufactures of wood in all their numberless varieties of wooden ware, furniture, machinery, carriages, wagons, carts and drays, doors, sashes, blinds, and even houses all complete, with inner walls of a compound of paper and gypsum, are already largely produced in many parts of this Great West, and are destined to an infinitely larger production, as the demand for them goes on increasing. There is then abundant room and employment for every honest, industrious man who will come, but no room for the idler, sluggard, or drone.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FUTURE, THE GLORIOUS FUTURE OF THIS GRAND EMPIRE OF THE WESTTHE CAUSES WHICH HAVE LED TO ITS GROWTH-BISHOP BERKELEY'S PREDICTION-THE "EMPIRE HE SAW THE GERM OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC-WHAT THE EMPIRE IS, AND WHAT IT IS TO BE-ITS GROWTH AND FUTURE CAPACITY-THE FUTURE CLIMATE-THE FUTURE SOIL AND PRODUCTIVENESS INFLUENCE OF RAILROADS IN DEVELOPING THIS REGIÓN -THE GOLD AND SILVER MINES AS AIDing in the Development of the COUNTRY-THE FUTURE OF THE MINES OF THE PRECIOUS METALS-THE WESTERN SLOPES OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS FULL OF GOLD AND SILVERRESULTS OF INCREASED PRODUCTION OF GOLD AND SILVER-EFFECT OF INCREASED PRODUCTION OF OTHER METALS-NO METAL BUT TIN TO BE IMPORTED MINERAL EARTHS AND ELEMENTS TO BE DEVELOPED COALPETROLEUM-METALLIC AND MINERAL PRODUCTS OF THE FAR WEST IN 1880 -THE PRODUCTION OF A. D. 1900-VEGETABLE PRODUCTS-WHEAT-INDIAN CORN-CORN Crop of 1879-Sorghum-Sorghum Sugar-OaTS-BARLEYRYE-BUCKWHEAT-EGYPTIAN RICE CORN-SUMMIng up of CerEAL PRODUCTS ROOT CROPS - POTATOES -SWEET-POTATOES · OTHER ROOT CROPSORCHARD PRODUCTS-TEXTILES-COTTON-THE FUTURE DEMAND FOR COTTON -WOOL-WOOL CLIP IN A. D. 1900-OTHER TEXTILES-THE HAY CROP— DAIRY PRODUCTS-TOBACCO-Sugar, not from Sorghum-Hops-SUMMARY of Vegetable PRODUCTS, EXCLUSIVE OF Cereals-Fisheries OF THE PACIFIC and the Gulf, of the Lakes and Rivers of the Interior-Fish-Culture, PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE-LIVE-STOCK IN 1880 AND 1900-FOREST PRODUCTS-VARIOUS WAYS IN WHICH WOOD IS USED AND DESTROYED— PROBABLE VALUE OF FOREST PRODUCTS IN 1900-Manufactures—Future OF MANUFACTtures-CommeRCE-INTERNAL AND INTERSTATE COMMERCEGENERAL SUMMARY-CHARACTER OF FUTURE POPULATIon-Little Danger OF WAR-INDIANS-PROBABLE EARLY EXTINCTION OF INDIAN TRIBES-THE COLORED RACE-THE MEXICANS, CHINESE AND JAPANESE-PROBABILITY OF A LARGE INFLUX OF CHINESE ON THE PACIFIC COAST IN THE NEAR FUTUREEUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS-EMIGRANTS FROM THE EASTERN UNITED STATES -THE CHARacter of its Citizens the best GuarantY OF ITS FUTURE.

"WESTWARD the course of empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;

Time's noblest offspring is the last."

So wrote Bishop Berkeley more than a hundred and fifty years ago, when this Great Western Empire, which we have