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, la.; 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.

The product of packing houses west of the Missouri river sells on the market for an amount in excess of the postal receipts of the United States, while a single institution, engaged in the preparation of animal products, whose parent plant is in Chicago, produced in one year more than 10,000 carloads, 900 tons per day, of manufactured products, in addition to its meats. The packing houses represented in Chicago yield a larger gross income than all the customs houses and internal revenue collectors of the United States, while the live animals sold on a square mile of ground within the limits of that city is only 15 per cent less than the gross earnings of all the railroads that enter it. Either of two packers within this territory pays more for live animals to the enrichment of the ranchman and the farmer than is paid in dividends and officers' salaries by all the railroads in the United States, operating more than 200,000 miles, transporting more than 500 million passengers, and moving a half billion tons of freight, and capitalized at five and a half billions.

California is known as a gold producing state, and she well deserves her most enviable reputation, for her mines have yielded in excess of $1,250,000,000, but her orchards and vineyards are now a close second. California produces annually 250 million pounds of cured fruits, and 7,000,000 cases of lemons and oranges. Her farms responded with 32,000,000 bushels of wheat, 25,000,000 pounds of butter, 5,000,000 pounds of cheese, and 11,000,000 pounds of hops. She manufactured 65,000,000 pounds of sugar, and sent through the Golden Gate more than 1,000,000 barrels of flour, and exported 15,000,000 dollars worth of other agricultural products, while her forests yielded 500,000,000 feet of lumber.

Washington has a fame world wide for her fisheries; and her forests cut 1,000,000,000 feet of lumber, and 3,000,000,000 shingles. The fisheries of Oregon yield $3,000,000, her mines $4,000,000, and her farms and orchards $50,000,000. Her manufactures, including lumber, are worth $60,000,000. California, Oregon, and Washington estimate more than 400,000,000,000 feet of lumber yet standing in their forests, 100,000,000,000 more than government experts estimate in all the