ADDRESS 
 
 DR. H. LATHAM, 
 
 OP LARAMIE CITY, W. T. 
 
 DELIVERED .A.T THE 
 
 STATE FAIR OF NEBRASKA, 
 
 IN LINCOLN. SEPTEMBER, 1872. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE OF NEBRASKA. 
 
 OMAHA, NEBRASKA : 
 
 HERALD STEAM BOOK AND JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 1872 . 
 

 
Compliments of 
 
 D. H. WHEELER, 
 
 SECRETARY OE 
 
 Nebraska State Board of Agriculture, 
 
 Plattsmoutli, Nebraska. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 -OF- 
 
 DR. H. LATHAM, 
 
 OF LARAMIE CITY, W. T. 
 
 DELIVEEED AT THE 
 
 STATE FAIR OF NEBRASKA, 
 
 IN LINCOLN, SEPTEMBER, 1872. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE OF NEBRASKA. 
 
 OMAHA, NEBRASKA: 
 
 HERALD STEAM BOOK AND JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 1872 . 
 
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 https://archive.org/details/addressofdrhlathOOIath 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Nebraska State Agricultural Society: 
 
 It is an omen of great good to the future of Nebraska, and a 
 matter for congratulation, that in this period of heated political feel¬ 
 ing and excitement, when you are called upon to canvass and choose 
 between platforms and parties; when rival aspirants for national 
 state, and county honors are clamoring for your support; when your 
 party papers are filled with appeals to your principles, passions and 
 prejudices; when many branches of industry are at a stand-still; and 
 commerce and manufactures especially sympathetic with the feverish 
 political pulse; that your people exhibit such a steadfast devotion to 
 your agricultural interests. If any proof of that devotion had been 
 wanting, it is to be had in the attendance of so many thousands of 
 your farmers, from distant portions of the State, at this gathering in 
 the interest of that industry. There is a better and more convincing 
 proof of that devotion in the exuberant crop which clothes the earth 
 in every direction, and in the unexampled progress which your State 
 is making in every branch of human industry.* You occupy the 
 key-stone place in that gigantic trans-Missouri arch of agriculture 
 extending from the Rio Grande to the British line, and from your 
 river to the base of the Rocky Mountains. All our infant settle¬ 
 ments springing into life west of you, are looking with absorbing 
 
 ^Nebraska added, by immigration, 45,000 to her population in 1871, and will add 75.000 in 
 18<2. In those two years a million acres have been brought under tillage. Since 1865. 
 1,200 miles of railway have been built in the State. 
 
4 
 
 Interest to your example, and your progress, as illustrating tlie possi¬ 
 bilities of that newer West. This work of planting agricultural 
 civilization in the great desert in which you are the pioneers, is one 
 of gigantic magnitude. In the whole history of the migrations of 
 the human race, there is nothing that equals this great tidal wave of 
 our people to the frontiers, in respect to the numbers moving, or in 
 respect to the results which flow from it. As much as has been 
 accomplished since the first settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth 
 Pock, there remains much more to be done. Not one-half of our 
 area is yet redeemed from the wilderness. The plow has been a 
 mighty conqueror through all ages, but its greatest conquest remains 
 to be achieved. As we are enlisted in this great work, which, in 
 spite of the giant strides it annually makes, seems to involve so 
 much of toil and labor, it may be well for encouragement, before pro¬ 
 ceeding to the consideration of that particular topic which I have 
 selected for discussion to-day, to allude to the progress which the 
 world of agriculture has made within the past thre e or four decades. 
 Much has been done in every branch of farming. But that pro¬ 
 gress which has done more for agriculture, and for every one con¬ 
 nected with it, directly or remotely, must be ascribed to the inven¬ 
 tions of labor-saving machinery. 
 
 Buckle, the great historian of civilization (and perhaps the only 
 one worthy of the name), declares that “wealth alone gives leisure 
 for study, culture, and true education;” “that great wealth is a con¬ 
 dition precedent to high civilization and culture” (page 31, vol. 1, 
 History of Civilization). This may have been true of European 
 and Oriental civilizations, and it is true that wealth does afford such 
 leisure; but in our own on this new continent the adaptation of every 
 description of power to agricultural and household implements whereby 
 human labor and toil is saved, as truly gives the required leisure that 
 insures rest and recreation, that leads to culture. We are wont to 
 look to this saving of labor exclusively as the means of multiplying 
 and cheapening its products, and ignoring that greater and more 
 important fact of the time it saves to every son and daughter of toil. 
 To convey more forcibly my meaning by an illustration which com¬ 
 mon observation makes familiar, it is in the memory of many of us, 
 before the adaptation of power to mowing machinery, that it was a 
 
o 
 
 day’s labor of ten hours to cut an acre of grass; to-day, through the 
 triumphs of inventive genius, the same man can accomplish ten times 
 that amount of labor in a day, whereby ninety hours of toil are gained, 
 a portion of which, it is true, goes to the increasing and cheapening 
 the product; but the greater gain is for leisure, to be devoted to 
 moral and intellectual improvement. This is true of every imple¬ 
 ment in use in human industry. It is this adaptation of other than 
 the power of the human muscle to farm improvements that has ele¬ 
 vated, by rest and education, more people than all other agencies of 
 modern times. It is this that will, in its progress, make agriculture 
 a profession rather than a mere occupation. We have been taught to 
 think that the grand uprising of our people in 1861, which resulted 
 in emancipating four millions of people and raising them to the dig¬ 
 nity and blessings of freemen, was the great event of the nineteenth 
 century]; and it certainly was glory enough for a single decade. But 
 that genius which gave to the field and the fireside, labor-saving 
 implements, emancipated thirty million laborers, men, women and 
 children, in this country alone, from the bondage of incessant toil. 
 There are a million sewing machines in a million homes in the United 
 States, capable of doing the labor of fifteen million needle women. 
 Richard Garand, of Frankford, Pa., manufactures in every day of ten 
 hours, thirty-three thousand miles of cotton thread. Supposing it 
 possible for such quality of thread to be made by hand, it would re¬ 
 quire seventy thousand women during the same time to accomplish 
 this work. That genius gives you wealth to found institutions of 
 learning, and your sons and daughters their whole youth to profit by 
 them. It gives wealth for ten thousand periodicals of agriculture, of 
 art and science, and gives you time to read them. It creates public 
 and private libraries, and gives you leisure to study them. A half a 
 century ago the tilling of the soil was the merest manual labor; to-day 
 it is a question of skill, art, and intelligence. Then the measure of 
 the producing power of any region was the number of those who dug 
 and delved. Now it is from the number and character of farm im¬ 
 plements, and the skill and intelligence of those who use them. 
 Then the farming population represented mere muscle; the employer 
 alone represented the brain. Now an agricultural population repre¬ 
 sents the brain; the implements the muscle. Your agricultural pop- 
 
6 
 
 illation represents a great producing power, but your labor-saving 
 machinery represents a vastly greater. Since 1860 Nebraska has in¬ 
 creased her producing power nearly three-fold in the increase of her 
 population. By the multiplying of farm implements, she has 
 increased that power twenty-fold. Then the total value of your 
 farm machinery was told by a few thousands; now it is two millions 
 of dollars. The number of field laborers in Nebraska is about fifty 
 thousand. Your man power in machinery is fully equal to half a 
 million of laborers. Such is the progress which a retrospect of two 
 score of years gives us, and which encourages us to go forward in the 
 work of planting civilization in this boundless new West. From 
 this pleasing diversion I turn to the topic which I have chosen for 
 consideration to-day. For an intelligent discussion of the require¬ 
 ments of agriculture, in this trans-Missouri region, it will be essential 
 to take a general survey of the capacity which exists here, for the 
 development of wealth, for the support of population, and the con¬ 
 sequent building up of a high order of civilization. 
 
 The data for an accurate conclusion are to be found upon every page 
 of the history of agriculture. That most comprehensive historian, 
 Henry Thomas Buckle, traces the wealth and civilization of all 
 nations, both ancient and modern, to one of two sourcess, viz: soil or 
 climate. [Vol. 1, p. 33, 34 and 35, History of Civilization .] There 
 have been two orders of powerful and wealthy nations, with enormous 
 wealth and dense population. The one order had extremely fertile 
 soils from which great wealth could be produced with little labor. 
 The other had a climate whose invigorating and tonic influences pro¬ 
 duced races of people that from less fertile and generous soils com¬ 
 pelled equal returns. If Ave could visit the great valleys of the Indus, 
 the Ganges, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, in Asia, or the Nile in 
 Africa, or if we could recall the splendor and wealth of Mexico and 
 Peru, on this, continent, we should have the best examples of Avhat 
 soil alone does to build up empires—empires Avhose Avealth Avas fabu¬ 
 lous, Avhose population Avas denser and more numerous than modern 
 times can parallel, Avhose toAvns and cities covered the Avliole land. 
 An ancient historian, Herodotus, avIio traveled in Egypt four hun¬ 
 dred years before the Christian era, estimated the number of inhabited 
 cities in the valley of the Nile at tAventy thousand. [Vol. I, p. 64, 
 
7 
 
 History of Civilization .] So great was the power of a fertile soil to 
 
 produce and support a dense population. 
 
 Europe furnishes us examples of the other order of nations which 
 climate has developed, through its influence upon their people. 
 The Grecian, Roman, Gallic, German, and Anglo-Saxon empires, are 
 instances of the power of climate in producing hardy, active, vigorous 
 races, who develope wealth, and advance a high order of civilization. 
 In both classes of illustrations we find only one of these producing 
 causes operating. Here in this portion of the New World, bordering 
 the Missouri River, and extending west to the shadow of the great 
 mountains, we find a soil as rich, as fertile, as inexhaustible, as capa¬ 
 ble of supporting population, as existed in Hindostan, in the valley 
 of the Nile, in Mexico or Peru, while we have a climate as invig¬ 
 orating and toning as gave vigor to the strong arms of the Grecian 
 phalanx or the Roman legion, the ancient or modern Gaul, the 
 German or the Anglo-Saxon. We have a perfect and harmonious 
 union of these two great producing and developing causes. If either 
 one, operating alone, has done so much to develope wealth, to increase 
 population, and to build up civilization, what may we not expect of 
 them both, when they go hand in hand, in our own present and near 
 future? Concede to the valley of the Missouri favorable climatic 
 influence and a soil as prolific as any under the sun, and we have 
 only one step further to go in this investigation, as to your require¬ 
 ments to grasp the highest possibilities to which civilization has ever 
 attained. If this great valley is to have its teeming millions, with 
 active bodies and minds, drawing vast supplies from the rich soil of 
 broad prairies and wide valleys, you will need only a market for 
 your varied products to insure a prosperity heretofore unknown 
 even in this remarkable and progressive age. From your river to the 
 base of the mountains, and from the Rio Grande to the British 
 Possessions, there is an area with soil and climate for twelve grain¬ 
 growing States the size of New York, with a productive capacity more 
 than twelve times that State, capable of sustaining a highly civilized 
 population of thirty millions of people. Who can foresee and fore¬ 
 tell the aggregate annual production of corn, cereals, roots and fruit of 
 this great belt of country? Who in imagination can picture the 
 extent of the forests of corn which in twenty years shall be growing 
 
8 
 
 in that southern zone from the Rio Grande to the Kansas rivers, and 
 the forests of corn and fields of cereals that shall cover the middle 
 zone from the Kansas to the Niobrara rivers, or the cereals that shall 
 wave in the prairie winds in the great northern wheat zone? In view 
 of such an extent and capacity for production, in view of your past 
 and present experience and of that fundamental law of all products, 
 viz: “ the man who goes to market must pay the price of getting 
 there/’ I invite your attention to this question of your true markets. 
 From the earliest settlements west of the belt bordering the Atlantic 
 seaboard, the producer upon the frontier, being farther removed from 
 markets, has had to pay greater cost of transportation as compared to- 
 his more eastern competitor. As the settlements have receded from 
 the seaboard to the interior, this tax put upon the product has multi¬ 
 plied to such an extent as in a great measure to counterbalance the 
 advantages of cheap lands and rich soils which he enjoys. This fact 
 has weighed heavily against all new countries in the competition for 
 immigration. Thousands of eastern farmers are annually prevented 
 from removing and settling in new countries, and the foreign emigrant 
 is compelled to locate as near the seaboard as his circumstances will 
 admit. In a competition with foreign producers in foreign markets 
 the disadvantage is still greater, as from the far interior, the competing 
 products are subject to long lines of expensive raihvay carrying, 
 in addition to much longer water carriage than his foreign competitor 
 has to encounter. There is in this contest also the element of exces¬ 
 sively cheap labor to increase the disadvantages of our producer. In 
 the shipments of farm products to the Liverpool market, from the 
 Missouri river, there is one thousand four hundred miles of railway 
 and three thousand miles of water transportation, while the producer 
 on the Baltic or Black sea has less than a thousand miles of w r ater 
 carriage, and the French farmer is at the very door of the consumer. 
 
 The annual product of cereals, maize, roots and hay in the one 
 State of Illinois in 1871, was in round numbers one hundred and 
 thirty million dollars. It would take at least fifty per cent, of that 
 to carry it to an European market. In ten years the loss to the 
 farmers of that State from transporting their products to such distant 
 markets would be six hundred and fifty millions of dollars. Thus 
 far, however, in your history, every effort of the capital of the country. 
 
 
9 
 
 every 1 effort of your own public men and of your State, county and 
 municipal authorities has been to increase your communication with 
 these far-off markets in which you must always compete at this great 
 cost and disadvantage. I submit that the true policy would be, next 
 to developing home markets, to seek markets vastly nearer to your 
 fields and farms than the eastern and European markets are. 
 
 The fundamental requirement of all trade and commerce between 
 countries or communities is based upon a diversity of production. 
 There can be no. exchange between people who produce like com¬ 
 modities. You of Nebraska being purely an agricultural people, 
 cannot exchange corn or wheat or cattle with your neighbors of Iowa 
 or Kansas, who are as exclusively agricultural. You must seek 
 interchange with sections of country contiguous to you, whose pro¬ 
 ductions are unlike yours. 
 
 Both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, comprising nearly one-half 
 of the area of our whole country, are essentially mining and grazing 
 regions. From their altitude, physical conformation, and temper¬ 
 ature, they must remain comparatively non-grain-growing. In 
 some favorable localities the cereals can be grown to advantage, but 
 in no portion of this vast region can corn be cheaply and profitably 
 grown. California even, with greater adaptability than any other 
 portion, does not grow any considerable per cent, of corn. Nevada, 
 with twelve years 7 growth, and an active population and great min¬ 
 eral production, grew in 1870 only 314 acres of cereals. Utah i.s 
 the best illustration in point. Agriculture there had a quarter of a 
 century the start of mining, yet in two years of mineral develop¬ 
 ment the mining demand is double the agricultural supply. More 
 farm products are being carried to the mining camps of Utah by the 
 Pacific railways than are furnished them by Utah.* So is it with 
 every mining camp in this region. 
 
 *The Union Pacific Railway carried, for the twelve months ending June 31st, 1872, to 
 Utah, from the Missouri valley, 20,848,398 pounds of corn and oats. The whole shipment 
 west to the mountain regions, of grain, for the same time, was 36,443,040 pounds: of flour 
 it carried 4,665,800 pounds ; of live hogs, the immediate product of corn, 6,611 head ; of 
 other live stock, 34,072 head ; of general merchandise, 70,189,832 pounds. The Willow 
 Springs Distillery, at Omaha, used 100,000 bushels of corn in the manufacture of highwines 
 in 1871, which were shipped exclusively to the mountain markets. Other parties must ^ 
 consumed nearly as large amounts of grain in the manufacture of malt beer, ale and porter, 
 which was also shipped to the mountains, and which does not appear in the above figures. 
 Colorado is more favorably situated for agriculture than any section in the mountains ; but 
 she is no exception, as her miners and graziers receive as many farm products from abroad 
 as from her own soil. During the first six months of 1872, the Kansas Pacific Railway 
 carried to that Territory 9.476,139 pounds of corn and oats, 2,585,932 pounds of flour and 
 meal, 1,000,000 pounds live cattle, 801,450 pounds sheep and hogs, 1,772,000 pounds horses. 
 
10 
 
 From their great natural mineral and grazing wealth, from the 
 rapidity with which new settlements are established, by means of 
 steam and electricity, railways and telegraphs,—these mountain 
 regions must increase in wealth and population with unexampled 
 strides. I confidently predict that in five years all your surplus 
 products will be diverted from their eastern course, and be consumed 
 in the growing mountain markets. 
 
 Every mining district, and every grazing plain and valley, from 
 the western border of this grain-raising belt of the Missouri River 
 Valley, west to the Pacific, and from the Mexican to the British 
 boundary, will draw upon your granaries for supplies. Lest you 
 should think that I am overestimating the future wealth of this 
 great mountain country, and its consequent capacity for consuming 
 your products, I invite your attention to the past history and results 
 of mining in America, as it has a bearing upon this question of your 
 
 future markets. 
 
 Upon the discovery of America there were only $170,000,000 
 worth of precious metals among all the civilized nations of the world. 
 Immediately upon the Spanish occupation of this continent, sys¬ 
 tematic and organized efforts at gold and silver mining were institu¬ 
 ted. So plentiful were deposits found that, in 1519, four years after 
 Cortez landed in Mexico, he sent to Charles V. over $3,000,000 
 worth of silver bullion.* * From that time on through the reign of 
 Spanish extortion and tyranny, through the Mexican revolution for 
 independence, through infinite disorders and civil wars, mining 
 district upon district was discovered and developed, and yielded 
 their silvered treasure to the effeminate Spaniard and indolent native. 
 In 1545 the Potosi mine was opened, yielding $7,500,000 annually. 
 In 1548 the mines of Zacetecas were developed ; in 1555, those of 
 Sombrete. And so on. District after district was discovered and 
 developed, till, at the beginning of the present century, the contin¬ 
 uation of this same chain of mountains west of you, that lie almost 
 in your sight, yielded untold sums of treasure. Professor Dalghren 
 
 1 978,996 pounds beef and pork, 
 all the products of your farms 
 
 1,820,000 pounds salt, 2,500,000 pounds wines and liquors— 
 The total of the shipments to this one Territory alone, by 
 s^nrip^raiiwav. was 96,310,549 pounds of freight, Cheyenne and Colorado received by the 
 Union Pacific Railroad, in 1871, 1,000,000 pounds of fruit from the far-off orchards and 
 vineyards of Southern California. Your growing fruits are 1,090 miles nearer to these 
 markets than are those of the Pacific slope. 
 
 * “ Mineral Resources of the United States.” 1868. By J. Ross Browne. 
 
11 
 
 estimates that Mexico, up to 1868, had yielded $5,200,000,000 of 
 bullion, * enough to buy more than one-half of all the farms and 
 farm houses, barns, orchards, and fences in the United States. 
 
 After visiting these mining regions, Humboldt says: “I am 
 tempted to believe Europeans have scarcely begun to profit by the 
 inexhaustible fund of wealth contained in the New World. Europe 
 would be inundated with the precious metals if the deposits of ore 
 in the mining regions of Mexico, that enjoyed an ancient and just 
 celebrity, were assailed at one and the same time, with all the means 
 offered by the perfection to which the art of the miner has attained.” 
 Peru in this time yielded $2,800,000,000 of bullion, enough to pay 
 our national debt. 
 
 This grand result, which revolutionized the commerce and political 
 power of the world, which gave to Spain the commercial and naval 
 supremacy of the ocean, which carried her fleets of discovery into 
 every sea, and her explorations to every land, which enabled her 
 arms to overrun the fairest portions of Europa, and assert and 
 maintain almost universal empire for two hundred years ; was 
 attained without railways or steam in any form, without wagon 
 transportation or roads, or mining art and science, but by the rudest 
 means, such as were used thousands of years before in the early ages 
 of man. Professor Whitney reports that the coinage of the Mexican 
 Government from 1821 to 1856, was $2,600,000,000.f Up to the 
 commencement of the present decade, from all mining regions, there 
 had been added to the silver and gold of the world ten thousand 
 eight hundred and twenty-seven millions of dollars.J A quantity 
 of precious metals that would buy all the realty in twelve such 
 countries as the United States. To whatever else historians and 
 political economists may ascribe the progress of the sixteenth, 
 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries—a progress greater than in 
 all previous historic time—the true cause was this mineral production, 
 which did more toward it, than all other agencies together. Losing 
 sight of these great facts and figures, the commercial world is skept¬ 
 ical of mineral wealth, but fortunately for us all, history can not be 
 lost or forgotten in this nineteenth century; and if it could, and 
 
 ^•“Mineral Resources of the United States,” p. 760. 1870. By R. Raymond. 
 
 tRoss Browne’s Mineral Resources of the United States, 1868. 
 
 tRoss Browne’s Mineral Resources of the United States, 1868, p. 615. 
 
12 
 
 the glory, wealth, and example of the silver era of the Spanish 
 occupation of America should be beyond recall, our mining regions 
 on the slopes of the Rocky' Mountains have a living present, and 
 also a past of such grand results, within the memory of so many 
 here present. 
 
 Let us recur to that immediate past: In the twenty years pro¬ 
 ceeding 1870, California yielded $900,000,000 in gold and silver.* 
 In ten years Nevada produced $150,000,000. In seven years 
 Montana and Idaho $98,000,000, and Colorado, New Mexico, and 
 Arizona, $82,000,000. In geology there is a period which has been 
 named “the beginning of the dawn.” So in our mining, this great 
 production may be truly said to be only “the beginning of the 
 dawn.” The construction of the Union and Central Pacific rail¬ 
 ways was the first of a series of improvements, which was to open 
 to the capital and labor of the world a grand mineral region, larger 
 than all the settled states east of the Missouri river, and ten times 
 the area of the mineral regions which aggrandized Spain in the past. 
 Already a net-work of railways is being constructed, intersecting 
 this great east and west line, running into every valley, along all the 
 mountain gorges, up each narrow canon, stretching out these giant 
 iron arms of capital and skill to grasp the hidden treasures which 
 these old mountains have held locked up so securely for so many 
 silent centuries, for your times and your uses. The rapid building 
 of the Northern and Texas Pacific railways will open and deliver to 
 settlement and development immense tracts of grazing and mineral 
 territory now practically lost to the commerce of the world. From 
 these great arteries of future trade will radiate the same system to 
 which the middle line has given birth, and capital and labor will 
 flow in, and a production of wealth will result as much greater than 
 the silver age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the 
 Rocky Mountain region is greater than the Cordilleras, as much 
 more rapid as steam is than pack-trains, as much more substantial 
 and beneficent to commerce and civilization as the American of the 
 nineteenth century is superior in skill and enterprise and industry 
 to the indolent Spaniard of the middle ages, who unearthed the 
 treasure of the Spanish possessions. Under the stimulus which these 
 
 * “ Mineral Resources of the United States.” By R. Raymond, p. 760. 
 
13 
 
 railways gave, Nevada, in 1871, produced and shipped $27,000,000 
 worth of bullion.* Utah, from being unknown, took a front rank 
 among the mineral regions of the world, and Colorado received an 
 impetus which will place her by the side of Nevada, Montana, 
 Idaho, Oregon, and Washington Territories on the north; and 
 Arizona and New Mexico on the south, only await railways and 
 telegraphs to show the same progress. 
 
 Thus far I have only considered the production, and the effects 
 that will follow the production, of the royal metals—gold and silver. 
 In their relations to your future, and in their importance to the 
 industrial arts of our trans-Missouri country—and to you especially 
 —the great deposits of coal and iron which underlie so much of the 
 mountain regions, are second to no other of our future sources of 
 wealth. Gold and silver are only the representatives of wealth—the 
 bases upon which the operations of commerce are founded—the stim¬ 
 uli which incite enterprise, industry, and art. Coal and iron are not 
 only wealth in themselves, in their natural state, but every time art 
 and science handles them, they multiply and develop new wealth and 
 new values, indefinitely. They have an almost limitless creative 
 capacity. The latent power which exists in a deposit of coal is 
 almost incredible. One ton of coal in an improved Corlies engine 
 does for industry the labor which requires three hundred and sixty- 
 five days of incessant toil of a strong man; applied to the carrying 
 of your farm products, five tons of coal and six men on your rails of 
 iron, perform the work of 450 horses and 125 men for a day. Its 
 power applied to the various manufactures is still greater. It is said 
 by statisticians, that the power developed by coal imported into the 
 State of Massachusetts accomplished more for industry than could be 
 done if all of the forty millions of men, women and children in the 
 United States should devote themselves to manual labor. In Great 
 Britain, machinery moved by coal equals the man-power of all the 
 inhabitants of the globe. 
 
 An able writer f says: u If you would see what coal can do for a 
 people who turn it to full account, look at Pittsburgh, a city, with its 
 environs, of 300,000 inhabitants, built up by its mines of coal. 
 
 * Report of Mr. Valentine, Superintendent Wells & Fargo’s Express for 1871. 
 t Daddow on Coal,” p. 19. 
 
14 
 
 There are no drones in its liive—heads and hands are busy. It lost 
 $30,000,000 by the rebellion without shaking its credit. No city 
 on this continent contains more solid wealth according to its popula¬ 
 tion. Possessing in its coal the creative power, it stretches out its 
 mighty arms and gathers the wealth of half a continent into its lap. 
 It brings to its furnaces and forges the iron and copper of Lake 
 Superior, glass sand from New England, Missouri and Illinois, lead 
 from Wisconsin and Missouri, zinc, brass and tin from beyond the 
 seas. You pass through its gigantic establishments, and are amazed 
 at the variety and extent of their perfected productions. Yet all 
 these, from the most delicate fabric of glass to the ponderous cannon 
 and steam engine, are in the coal which underlies the smoky hills of 
 Pittsburgh.” What is said of Pittsburgh is applicable to all the 
 manufacturing cities of the country, and especially to Cleveland, 
 Chicago, St. Louis and Terre Haute. These deposits of latent and 
 creative power in Great Britain comprise 12,000 square miles ; in 
 France, 4,000 square miles ; in the United States, east of the Mis¬ 
 souri river, 200,000 square miles. In the Pocky Mountains, along 
 whose borders your farms are, coal fields underlie an area of 400,000 
 square miles, or one hundred times the area of those of France, 
 thirty-three times those of Great Britain, and twice that of the 
 United States east of the Missouri river. The varieties of coal in 
 these vast deposits are found eminently adapted to all the wants of 
 varied art and manufacture—to the forge, the furnace, and the 
 engine. 
 
 Side by side with these deposits lie masses of iron ores of all kinds 
 required for the uses of mechanism. So far as the mountains, 
 valleys, gorges and canons have been explored, these ores of iron 
 have been found in inexhaustible quantities. At this time of an iron 
 famine, when the means of supply are far short of the demands of 
 art, and the prices have advanced within twelve months 100 per 
 cent., the question of the variety, extent, and availability of these 
 iron ores is exceedingly pertinent; as all the circumstances, the price, 
 and quantity produced, seem to not only encourage, but imperatively 
 demand, a vastly increased supply. And where so well and cheaply 
 can all the country west of the Missouri river obtain its supply, as 
 from these sources in the Pocky Mountains ? 
 
15 
 
 To illustrate the growth of mechanical industry in regions of coal 
 and iron, I will only mention Pennsylvania. In 1850 that State 
 produced from her mines, mills and furnaces, $155,000,000 worth of 
 wares. In 1870, her mills alone, excluding the mines and furnaces, 
 produced $725,000,000. 
 
 We built in the United States, in 1871, 7,000 miles of new rail¬ 
 ways, consuming 700,000 tons rails ; we used as much more in 
 repairing the 50,000 miles already built. 
 
 In all the branches of mechanism there has been not only an 
 enormous increase of consumption of iron, but an increase relatively 
 as to other material used in the construction of machinery, houses, 
 bridges, and shipping. So it is in the demand for lead, copper, zinc, 
 and all the useful metals found in our great mineral belt. In what¬ 
 ever direction we look, everything—supply, demand, and price— 
 points to an immediate development of these resources, which build 
 towns, cities and railways, and support great populations. Such is 
 the bow of promise of the present, which gives us assurance of our 
 future. 
 
 In addition to this mining demand, all the grazing regions west 
 of you will look to this trans-Missouri grain belt for supplies. In 
 this region which I have indicated there is now a million of mining 
 and grazing population, nine out of every ten of whom are dependent 
 upon other regions for food. The one million of this decade will be 
 ten millions in the next, and so on, increasing at a progressive rate 
 that will tax all the energies of your future millions, and the capacity 
 of your rapidly increasing area of production, to keep pace with. In 
 order to properly estimate the value of this demand, you must bear 
 in mind another important principle of trade, which is, “that all 
 consumption is in proportion to the value of the labor of the con¬ 
 suming classes.” The average wages of the miner in the Rocky 
 Mountains are $24 per week, while the same laborer in Great Britain, 
 Germany, or Russia, receives less than one-sixth that sum. The 
 miner that you ought to strive to supply will consume as much as 
 six foreign miners. The trade of one million graziers and miners in 
 our own mountains is worth more than that of six millions of miners, 
 operatives and artisans in Europe, for which the agriculture of all 
 our States is competing, at such ruinous disadvantages, You are 
 
16 
 
 situated at the very gateway of these mountain regions, and to you, 
 in this fertile belt of the Missouri valley, must their present and 
 future population first come for your varied products, pouring into 
 your lap in return their gold and silver millions. The distance you 
 are from the eastern seaboard, which has been your great disadvan¬ 
 tage heretofore, will be your advantage now. The farm lands west 
 of the Missouri, which are now low-priced, should be the highest in 
 value of any in the United States. The farm lands in Ohio, Indiana 
 and Illinois are worth from $60 to $100 per acre. From your near¬ 
 ness to this new and better market, I believe that your products 
 will sell for higher prices than theirs, and consequently I cannot see 
 why your lands should not be equally as valuable as theirs. 
 
 Your aim and effort, then, should be to study the wants of this 
 new market, and to labor to produce what their wants demand. 
 Instead of striving for lines of communication to the east, your 
 efforts should be to give every prairie and valley railway communi¬ 
 cation to the mountains, whereby all this new empire springing into 
 existence under the shadow of the great mountains of the continent 
 will pay tribute to your great industry. With half a dozen railways 
 piercing the mountain passes from every portion of your State, seek¬ 
 ing each new mining district; carrying your farm products from your 
 corn and wheat fields, from your orchards and vineyards, and bring¬ 
 ing the precious metals, and those creative and cumulative elements 
 of wealth—coal, iron, copper, lead and zinc, for your smelting and 
 reduction works, your factories and furnaces; then will your career 
 of true greatness be just begun. The civilization which you will build 
 in these beautiful valleys and on these fertile prairies will surpass all 
 that is known of the splendors of the past, or the utilities of the 
 present. Your fields and farms shall vie in beauty and fertility with 
 the poetic Rhine and the fertile Saone and Loire. Your towns and 
 cities shall be not only the home of wealth, but the seat of art, 
 science, learning and culture.