"My country, 'tis of thee!": Or, the United States of America; past, present and future. A philosophic view of American history and of our present status, to be seen in the Columbian exhibition.Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
"My country, 'tis of thee!": Or, the United States of America; past, present and future. A philosophic view of American history and of our present status, to be seen in the Columbian exhibition.
Johnson, Willis Fletcher
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- History
Why, even in the State of New York, with its five or six million
inhabitants, there are large counties, and not in the Adirondack region
either, of which not more than half the good land is under cultivation
to-day. The land is not bad, the distance from rail communication and
from markets is not great. Everything is more favorable to the settler
than in some portions of the Western States that are filling up rapidly,
and yet the immigrant passes all these localities and goes further away,
and he who already is there is often dissatisfied and anxious to sell
out and go somewhere apparently for no other purpose except to get a new
start. The hill countries of all the older States still contain immense
quantities of valuable ground which might be made to yield more
profitable crops per acre than anybody’s wheat-land in the most favored
sections of the United States. The ground that the State of Tennessee
some years ago placed upon the market at six cents an acre so as to have
it in personal instead of public possession, and with the hope of
getting a little something out of it in the way of taxes, is as good as
many of the more valuable portions of the Eastern States. The entire
table-land of the mountain range that separates the Eastern States from
the West is but sparsely inhabited. Not much of it can be utilized for
large planting of staple crops, but all of it is valuable for something
that might be turned to profit. It is better ground than the Switzers
live well on in their native country and far better naturally than that
of some of the more prosperous provinces of France. On the basis of the
population of the State of New York, which State certainly is not
overcrowded in its agricultural districts, this nation has room for all
people who will be born in it or who by any possibility can immigrate to
it for two or three centuries to come.
We need no place of overflow for any of our population that is not
criminal, and this class can be trusted to find its own outlets and
places of refuge without any assistance from the government or the
people.
[Illustration: ELECTRICAL BUILDING.]
CHAPTER XV.
THE INDIAN.
It was not very long ago that the Indian was the object of a great deal
of discussion and alarm in the United States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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