We have crushed the rocks and sifted the sand that yielded silver and gold, and the soil is ours that is richer than gold mines, whether we offer in evidence South Carolina, whose Sea-Island cotton surpasses the long staple of Egypt; or the Dakotas, matchless for wheat; or the lands of the cornstalk in the Mississippi Valley, that could feed all the tribes of Asia; or Nebraska, whose beets are sweeter with sugar than those that were the gift of Napoleon to Germany. We have found the springs that yield immortal youth, not in bubbling waters in a flowery wilderness, but in the harvests of the fields and the stored energies of inexhaustible mines, not for the passing person who perishes when his work is done, but for the imperishable race. All this in our country, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," but with the clothing of life on the ribs, and new in the evolution of conditions by the works of man that make the nations of the earth a family--achievements wonderful in scope, splendid in promise, marvellous in the renown that is of peace; in the fame of the genius that is labor, the spell-binder that gathers and builds, creates and glorifies. Within the historic record of this Chamber of Commerce of New York, the waters of Lake Erie have been carried through our canals and rivers to the Atlantic, making the Hudson River what Henry Hudson thought it was when he sailed through the beautiful gate of the incomparable continent--the road from the east to the west around the world; and the statue of Thomas Benton points westward from the great cross of the rivers in the heart of the continent--the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi--and the inscription reads: "There is the road to India."