to be groundless so far as any detrimental effect upon our country is concerned. Our general development is based upon the attraction of our institutions, the freedom of industry, the cheapness and fertility of our lands, hospitable climate, and above all, to the long enjoyment of the guarantee of peace. No other country in the world can offer the same inducements to progress and no country in the world can compete with us on our own terms.
Viewing the future of the West from the point of its ability to support a large population, the measure must be the record of the half-century just past. It has done more than its most sanguine friend dared foretell of it a century ago and it is not half developed. Excluding Alaska, it has an area of 2,138,488 square miles and a population of 20,971,062, with a density of 9.8. The population density of the Union is 25.6 to the square mile. The West is capable of reaching this mark and on this basis its population would be, approximately 55,000,000, a little more than the states east of the Mississippi had in 1900. Every foot of the West is useful for some purpose, the purpose depending in some degree upon the success of irrigation. The high lands of Nevada are no more to be ignored in the general scheme of economy than the irregular and broken surface of Vermont, where intensive cultivation of the soil now obtains as a result of Western competition in agriculture. When one contemplates the rugged mountains of Idaho, eastern Montana, northern California, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, he should reflect that some where in this broad land cattle must have range if the price of meat is to be kept within bounds. Conditions for horticulture and agriculture in Louisiana are as favorable as in any other State in the Union. The Columbia-river basin in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho is an empire in
