goods for the market and hardly counts among the lumbering states. Pennsylvania is in the same condition, hemlock being its main staple, although some white pine and hard woods still furnish the basis for its large sawmill capacity. WilliamsFort once was the great lumber market of the United States, but by the beginning of the seventies this prestige had been transferred to Chicago, which drew its supplies of white pine, the greatest staple of the American market, from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The great lumber industries which made Saginaw, Mich., famous all over the world reached their climax of production in 1882. Now the cut in Michigan has sunk from two and one half billion feet board measure in 1882 to less than one billion. Wisconsin reached its maximum cut in 1892 with over four billion feet, which has now come down to less than two and one half; while Minnesota's cut is still on the increase. These figures refer to white pine and show plainly that this our greatest staple is rapidly nearing the end of supplies. Then when this great source of wealth has ceased to flow, what remains of hard woods in these great lumbering states will perhaps be more carefully handled.

The great hardwood market to-day is, however, at St. Louis, to which are tributary the magnificent hardwood forests of the Mississippi bottom and its affluents. Here the white and red oaks are kings of the market, as the white pine in Chicago, ash and hickory, sycamore and cottonwood-for this last species too has become an important material for boxes, etc.-and the long despised, but lately highly appreciated red gum, or liquidambar, are supplying the furniture, carriage, cooperage, and other woodworking trades.

The southern pineries have not developed any one great center of distribution for their matchless ware of hard yellow pines, longleaf and Cuban, which both go under the name of Georgia pine, although they are found from North Carolina to Texas; shortleaf pine, which goes in the trade as North Carolina pine although it is as well developed in Missouri and Arkansas, and loblolly or Virginia pine, which accompanies the other two to Arkansas and Texas. Here, too, the bald cypress, most fine grained and durable of conifers, grows in the swamps, having its greatest development around New

Orleans, where the cypress association controls the market. In the south we must seek the supplies of building material for the next century, at least the first half, for even here supplies are not inexhaustible and the naval store industry, followed usually by forest fires, assists in decimating them. From the west we have so far not drawn much. The distance forbids shipment by rail of the bulky material except for special purposes. But when the Panama canal shall have established a short water connection the magnificent giants of redwood-if any shall be left by that time-of the soft sugar pine and the hard yellow pine, and, best of all construction timbers, the Douglas spruce, in the trade called yellow or red fir, will be welcome substitutes for the kinds which we shall then find becoming scarce on the eastern side of the continent. We shall then also appreciate some kinds which now we despise, the magnificent hemlock of the Pacific coast and the giant larch of the interior basin, which now are mostly only destroyed by forest fires. Before another generation shall have passed, however, we shall have learned that we can and must get along with less lumber, build of iron and stone those structures which are better built of those materials, and reserve wood for those uses for which it is indispensable, namely, where non conductivity of heat and electricity are essential.

THE COMMERCE AND INDUSTRIES OF THE

WEST.

BY LESLIE M. SHAW.

[Leslie M. Shaw, secretary of the treasury, United States; born, Morristown, Vt., November 2, 1848; graduate Cornell college, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, 1874; Iowa college of law, 1876; practiced law at Denison, Iowa, since 1876; president, Bank of Denison; also Bank of Manila, Ia.; gained prominence as a McKinley advocate, 1896; elected governor of Iowa for two terms, 1898-1902; appointed secretary of the treasury, United States, February 1, 1902.]

Where shall the line be stretched separating the east from the west? Mason and Dixon's line, at one time supposed to mark the boundary of a section of our country, has been so far obliterated, that to be mentioned except to rejoice at its disappearance is an offense to modern politics and alike to modern commerce.

Where shall the freight borne by the Mississippi river and the Illinois Central double tracked railway paralleling this great waterway on its eastern bank, be classed? The Southern Pacific conveys more than seven hundred cars per day, a quarter of a million per annum, of transcontinental freight. Is this eastern, western, or southern commerce? Because traffic originates on the Atlantic coast and is sent westward via the Golden Gate and the Pacific to the far east, is it therefore eastern commerce? Is not at least that portion which touches the gulf southern commerce? It all crosses the Rocky mountains, and hence, I make mention of it as western commerce.

Chicago sends eastward over trunk lines of railroad one hundred and fifty tons of provisions each hour of the calendar year; Minneapolis exports four million barrels of flour per annum; Duluth and Superior forward by way of the lakes, sixty five million bushels of grain; Duluth, West Superior, and Milwaukee receive from the east cargoes of coal aggregating three million tons per annum; Buffalo receives from the west, and by the same great waterway, one hundred and

fifty million bushels of grain; Escanaba, Duluth, and Two Harbors ship twelve million tons of iron ore; while Ashtabula, Cleveland, Conneaut, and Chicago unload an equal amount from more than seven thousand vessels that annually enter their harbors. The Detroit river floats four times as much tonnage as passes through the Suez canal, and one and a half times the aggregate of all vessels engaged in foreign trade that enter our ports on the Atlantic, the gulf, and the Pacific seaboard, an amount about equal to that of London, Liverpool, and New York combined.

We will classify all this western commerce. It will be observed, however, that for no other purpose may we wisely make class distinctions among our people, or sectional divisions of our country. Arbitrary though it be, I assume for the convenience of the hour, and for the hour only, that "the west" includes Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Indian territory, and all west of these and all north and west of Texas. Probably a majority of the people of the United States speak of Ohio as a western commonwealth, while those who live in states washed by the Mississippi river realize they must travel some miles toward the setting sun to reach the line that would bisect the great republic. The eleventh census credited these states with forty five per cent of the farm area, but gave them over seventy per cent of the cultivated land. The twelfth census shows a much larger proportion of tilled lands. These states produce more than two and one half billion bushels, more than seventy per cent of the nation's cereals, and seventy per cent of the nation's hay. They contain fifty per cent of the milch cows and sixty per cent of all other cattle, sixty five per cent of the swine, seventy five per cent of the sheep, and where, except in the west would you look for eighty per cent of the wool?

Permit a few observations, tending to show that an ever increasing proportion of the people within the territory I have described are giving well deserved attention to industries other than agriculture. Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa have increased their average annual cereal products less than nine per cent since 1890. During the preceding decade these same states made a fourfold larger increase, indicating very

clearly, I think, that the maximum capacity, under present methods of agriculture, has been nearly attained.

In 1889, forty per cent of the arable land of Iowa (the proportion actually cropped) produced one pound of cereals per day for every man, woman, and child in the United States -in round numbers eleven million tons. This would be quite enough to sustain life, and more than the average ration enjoyed by the people of the world. If all the arable land of Iowa were put in crop, and that portion not needed to support the teams necessary for its cultivation placed on the market, the people of the United States could not consume it though restricted to a cereal diet. The only way the yield of this unequaled fifty six thousand square miles of land can be consumed by eighty million people is to have large quantities of it first manufactured into beef and pork and dairy butter. Our increasing population renders it improbable, however, that this remarkable showing can be long continued, even by Iowa, though she may increase to some extent her cereal production.

The west not only grows food products, but her people have become no mean competitors in their preparation. Minneapolis alone manufactures 16,000,000 barrels of flour per annum, a carload (60,000 pounds) every ten minutes, day and night, 365 days in the year. A branch factory in a prairie town of Iowa of less than 4,000 population produces 6,000,000 cans of condensed milk per annum, while the parent plant in Wisconsin makes more than double this amount, a portion of which helps to feed the standing armies of Europe. The Elgin Butter company consumes the cream from 70,000,000 pounds of milk, manufactures 3,000,000 pounds of butter (1,500 tons), and exports its products to China, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, South American countries, and to Alaska. A single unincorporated firm in southwest Iowa handles in a year a quarter million pounds (125 tons) of butter, and 3,000,000 pounds (more than 100 carloads) of poultry. Another firm in the same state marketed, in a single year, 1,500,000 dozen eggs, sending them to the Atlantic, the gulf, and the Pacific coasts, while a third firm ships dressed poultry, not by carload only, but by trainload.