The Way to the West / and the Lives of Three Early Americans: Boone-Crockett-Carson

ent, able to shift for itself, wholly distinct from that population that it had for a generation left behind at the old start

poch-making event that was to change all the methods of America, that was to mak

effect produced by the sudden growth of California, coming as it did hard on the time of the annexation of Texas and the widening of our national territory in the

The high-geared life of to-day is part of the corollary of washing a year's income out of the ground in an hour's work, of crossing the continent in a week instead of a season, of tearing down mountains by machinery instead of building up homesteads deliberately. Stimulation

untain passes, the old grazing and watering places, but neither would these serve. No time now for hoof or wheel, or for the way of the ship upon the sea! No time now for the wayside ranches along the Platte, for the old posts of Laramie and Bridger and Hall! The golden country clamored all too strongly. Therefore, with a leap, the ol

ll written to-day on the face of every country of the globe. We have built our own railroads, and to-day we build and sell railroads and equipment for the Himalayas and the Sudan. We shall build the railroads t

o exploit all those ranges of the Rockies whose wealth the trappers had not suspected. Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada-all these might be called a part of the scheme of California. N

nation; so that thus one more bar was broken between the East and the West. Home-building, farm-making man came close on the heels of trapper and trader and nomad cattle driver. The hordes of the land seekers held their lotteries even in the desert once dreaded by the travelers of the old Santa Fé tr

egion whose resources appealed to a population. Then we came rapidly to the time of too many railroads; of attempts to adjust an unprofitable competition; of combinations, of arrangements, agreements, mergers; and of popular and governmental action upon such mergers. To-day all America is districted and divided among a

e-quarters of a century. And yet to-day we have more than two hundred thousand miles of railway, and as each day rolls by, we build from ten to twenty-five miles more. Railroading is a profession perfected in the hard evolution of American necessity. Our first railways were but attempts, guesses, desires, hopes, purely local propositions and not always well conceived as such. Yet they grew and multiplied, and presently, before we had time to think, they had multiplied over much. Then came

is bootless to mention them specifically. The building of these thousands of miles of railway and the assembling of them together under industrial truce has been the product of a giant game in commerce, a c

sibility that we shall in time see a continuous railway transportation from the Atlantic to the far-off straits that separate this country from Asia. Scientists tell us that over these straits there perhaps came once the ancestors of the aboriginal population of this continent. This population we have destroyed. There will also be destroyed

to supply the markets of the world. The nineteenth century has frequently been referred to as the Age of Transportation. Distribution is the handmaid of production. Bacon said: 'There are three things that make a country great: fertile fields, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.' The evolution that has taken place in the transportation of this country during the nineteenth century has been remark

uch sacrifice were their American securities. They dumped them on the American market; and, notwithstanding the financial strain and the depression from which we were suffering, our American financiers mustered pluck, courage and money enough to buy them. They were bought at bargain prices. The advance in them

cheapest system of land transportation in the world. In England the average amount paid by the shipper for moving a ton of freight one hundred miles is two dollars and thirty-five cents; in France, two dollars and ten cents; in Austria, a dollar and ninety cents; in Germany, where most of the railroads are owned and operated by the government, a

o note. He says: "For the first time in the history of this country thousands of our farmers are seeking homes in the Canadian Northwest, owing to the cheap lands offered in that country, and to the difficulty of securing such lands in the United Slates." Earlier in the same address there is this epigrammatic statement: "La

ne aloft upon a great wave of commercial prosperity, the American people is at the present time taking itself with entire seriousness as the greatest nation of the world. Its rapid industrial expansion has indeed been cause for marvel in the mind of all the world. There is a certain national comfort in these reflections, without doubt, and solace in the a

the daily press bearing upon the greater cost of living in Western states. It is seven per cent. greater, says one dealer in statistics. It is twenty-five per cent. greater than it ever was, says another. The housewives of America, the best of all statisticians, say that in 1902 it cost thirty-three per cent. more to live than it did in 1899. These prices of bare commodities in these days of super-excellent transportati

en hundred millions of dollars. "Figures up to March twenty-first (1902), just finished," says a careful report, "a

economic problem for large families with small incomes." The same paper goes on to say: "The greatest sufferers from the high price of potatoes are the small wage-earners. They have learned to depend upon potatoes almost as much as upon bread. Yet, at a dollar and seventy-five cents a bushel, this staple food is out of the reach of many. The best thing they can do is to fall back on rice, which is an excellent substitute for potatoes and is still reasonable in price. Unfortunately, large numbers of wage-earners are in

backing for his deeds! Meat and corn are the diet that built America. Good leaders of America, insist not over-much on this rice fare, as you do at present in these bubble days. Let weediness and i

gered, he was free to enter the door of any little cabin he found here or there in the mountains, and to eat freely of whatever food he found, though the owner of the abode himself might be absent and might forever remain unknown; where the thought of price did not enter into the mi

s little comfort as we gaze on the glittering picture of to-day. As a nation we are building for ourselves higher and higher a false castle of prosperity, blowing for ourselves wider and wider a bubble fragile at heart as any that ever met collapse in an

inary, and intends showing others how things should be done. In the society of flatterers, speculators and gamblers, he soon parts with his ready money and bank stock. He then sells the timber off his land. After that is spent he sells his live stock. Having thus de

uals. Only in the days of the early empire and late republic of Rome was it possible for a few individuals in a few years to amass such enormous fortunes as they do. Having exploited the wealth of the great middle class, we are now drifting into the second stage. Small investments no lon

ons is preparing the minds of our people for socialism. I am not in favor of socialism, but men like these so-called captains of industry, who are opposed to socialism, are prepa

lishment of an expensive university may serve as emendative of an unpopular personal career. It has taught us, or some of us, obsequiously to worship that form of wealth that soothes its conscience by the building of pub

ys of those revolutions that put down kings, worse than some parts of oppressed America to-day. It is not too late for revolution in America. There is not justice in the belief that America can to-day be called the lan

ple of castes and grades and classes. The whole theory of America was that here there was hope for the individual; that here he might grow, might prevail. It is degradation to abandon that theory. It is degradation for the American man to say of his own volition: "I am but one cog of a wheel, and my neighbor another. I can not change; I can n

Let those that like call this a national prosperity. It is national fate, but there may be those that do not care to call it by the name of prosperity. Times are good when all the people are busy. Most of the people in the South were busy before the war; we called that slavery. It was as nothing compared to the industrial slavery impending

hold the captains of transportation alone responsible for the deplorable changes that are taking place in America and the American character; yet only an equal folly could deny that too little fearless statesmanship, combined with too much politics and t

han the Monroe doctrine-the doctrine of common sense. We throw open the gates of America and invite the sodden hordes of worthless peasantry to flock hither and pillage this country, the choicest of the continent, without let or hindrance, without requiring of them

ere is where, indeed, we are being colonized by the European peoples. For those that come here to work, to study, to learn and to grow there may be room yet in this great America. For those that come here to exist as parasites there should be no longer any room. All this is to some extent the act

, has perforce satisfied himself with an America not much better and not much different from Europe. Assuredly, the time will come, and perhaps presently, when there must be considered with all seriousness this question of a mis-

ons of dollars to stretch the shrunken acreage of the once boundless West. Once we had enough for all, but now we no longer have enough for all. Once we could keep open house, but we can now no

we in her stead become the great almshouse of the world? It is suggested by a foreign-born philanthropist, for instance, that America should forthwith throw open her doors to the five millions of persecuted Russian Jews. English authorities cheerfully believe that America could easily assimilate this great mass of new population. There are many

a wife and children. Once there was room in America for that man. Once there was hope and a chance ultimately to be called his own. It is this man, this simple, common, plain American citizen who is to-day most vitally

ty and the flowering of her growth, have root in her splendid heritage, the heritage of a virile character born of a magnificent env

hether or not there exists or threatens to exist in America a commercial despotism; whether or not there exists any American people; whether or not we have, in the foregoing pages, found any causes for the changes and tendencies toward change that are to-day unmistakable phenomena-changes so rapid and elemental that any true Ameri

e Revolutionary War four-fifths of the American population could claim English as their native tongue

wo hundred and twenty-one. Prior to 1820 the government did not take account of immigration, but the generally accepted estimate of the total imm

ing the last decade the Germans supplied only thirteen and seven-tenths per cent. of our foreign immigration. During the period first named, 1821 to 1850, Great Britain furnished fifteen per cent. of the immigrants, and in the next decade sixteen and three-tenths per cent. Then came a large increase from Great Britain between 1861 and 1870, the percentage being twenty-six and two-tenths; from 1871 to 1880 it was nineteen and five-tenths, while for the last decade it was but seven and four-tenths. From 1821 to 1850 Ireland furnish

stituted seventy-four and three-tenths per cent. of the whole number of immigrants during the entire period under discussion, they furnished between 1821 and 1850 eighty-four and four-tenths per cent. of the to

60 Austria-Hungary sent no immigrants to this country, or not enough to make any impression upon the statistics, but between 1861 and 1870 the immigration from that country was four-te

per cent. between 1871 and 1880, and to nearly six per cent. during the next decade, while durin

slightly until between 1881 and 1890, when they contributed five per cent., and during the last decade sixteen and three-tenths per cent. These three sections-Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia and Poland-taken together, contri

census, by its classification of population into native and foreign born, answers the question, and we find that of the total number of immigrants fifty-four and seven-tenths per cent. w

are showing higher percentage of illiteracy. Nearly one-half of our steerage immigration now presents an illiteracy of from forty to over fifty per cent. Of the thr

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talian 86,

25,46

23,34

17,23

19,30

Italian 1

vian 12,

answer lies in the future, yet perhaps no very distant future. There are not lacking those, and they constantly increase in numbers, who believe that the answer must be the putting up of the bars against all future immigration except of a closely selected sort, and preferably that bred upon this continent. America has eaten overmuch; she may yet assimilate, but she must gor

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following editorial comment appeared

month (April, 1903) the new-comers numbered 126,200, being 30,000 more than for April of 1902. The total

ers and railroad managers, who wish to be kept supplied with cheap labor, and who do not care particularly whence it comes or whether it wi

in Europe soliciting that kind of business. The greater the number of men and women that can be induced to come to this country and to buy tickets

sion that for that very reason unrestricted immigration must be harmful to their interests, because it will lead inevitably to a re

ng to the American Federation of Labor asked the last Congress to bar out illiterate immigrants. The object was to keep down the undesirable cheap labor immigration. The steamship companies, which make money off their steerage passengers and drum up business throughout eastern Europe, and some western railroads which are extending their lines, p