It  would  have  opposed  every  work  of  material  conquest  on  which
the  nation  has  entered  from  the  beginning.     It  sees  its  country


TWENTIETH  CENTURY  WEST  653

througfh  the  wrong^  end  of  the  telescope.  The  truth  is  that,
speaking  broadly,  every  part  of  the  United  States  has  reaped
benefits  from  every  enlargement  of  the  national  life.  Here  and
there  an  individual,  or  even  a  community,  may  have  suffered
some  temporary  loss  by  the  changing  of  conditions.  But  on
the  whole  all  the  material  interests  of  New  York  and  New  Eng-
land have  been  benefited  by  the  expansion  of  population  over
new  areas  in  the  West.  And  so  it  will  be  hereafter.  The  de-
velopment of  the  vast  interior  made  Chicago  and  St.  Louis,
Kansas  City  and  Omaha,  St.  Paul,  Minneapolis  and  other  great
cities.  But  New  York,  Philadelphia  and  Boston  are  neither
smaller  nor  poorer  than  they  were  when  the  vast  interior  was  a
wilderness.  The  truth  is  that  the  Eastern  people  have  more  to
gain  from  the  opening  of  our  new  Empire  between  the  Missouri
and  Pacific  than  have  we  of  the  West.  We  are  all  right  anyhow
— a  little  lonesome,  but  flourishing — while  our  Eastern  friends
have  got  to  have  an  outlet  for  their  surplus  people,  products  and
capital,  or  suffer  an  inevitable  collapse  sooner  or  later.  We  live
from  the  soil  and  are  self-supporting.  But  they  must  have  cus-
tomers or  their  industries  will  languish.
It  is  pleasant  to  find  that  the  New  York  journal,  which  has
been  quoted,  by  no  means  represents  all  the  people  of  the  East.
