The Minute Man on the FrontierPuddefoot, William George
History
The Minute Man on the Frontier
Puddefoot, William George
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); Missions -- West (U.S.)
The opening up of a new frontier is world-wide in its operations.
Minnesota entered the Union as a State in 1858. The putting to
practical use the Falls of St. Anthony was felt all over Europe.
Thousands of little country mills, nestling amid the trees, and adding
to the beauty of the English pastoral scenery, to-day stand idle, the
great wheels covered with green moss; and Tennyson's "Miller" becomes
a reminiscence. Iowa became a State in 1846, and now leads the world
in the production of corn; and although it is a thousand miles from
the seaboard, yet through its immense production, and with the
cheapening of transportation, we find over seventy thousand Italians
emmigrating to this country, as, in spite of low wages, they cannot
compete on the plains of Lombardy. (See Wells's "Economic
Changes.")--We find that the man at the front can ship from Chicago to
Liverpool the product of five acres of grain for less money than the
cost of manuring one acre of land in England. (_Ibid._)
Every time a new frontier in America is opened, it means both
prosperity and disaster. So large are the opportunities, so rich the
results, that at first all calculations are upset. Natural gas in the
Middle States changes the price of coal in Europe. The finding of a
tin-mine is felt in Cornwall and Wales the next day. The opening of
the iron-mines in Michigan makes Cornish towns spring up in the upper
peninsula, while the finding of ore in desolate places has caused
communities to spring up with all the conditions of a cosmopolitan
civilization, and we have to-day men living twenty-five miles from
trees or grass. But such is the energy of the frontier type, that
grass-plats have been carried and planted on the solid rocks, as in
Duluth, where hundreds of thousands of dollars are expended in the
grading of streets, and the opening of the sewers, all having to be
blasted to do the work.
North Dakota was a wilderness of 150,000 square miles, and had not
produced a single bushel of wheat for sale, in 1881. In 1886 it
produced nearly 35,000,000 bushels; in 1887, 62,553,000. (See Wells's
"Recent Economic Changes.") The opening up of these immense
territories starts railways from California to Siberia; for, with the
Great West competing, Russia is stirred to greater effort. India, with
her great commerce with Great Britain, needs a shorter route; and the
Suez canal is made. Australia must compete with the Western plains;
and great steamers, filled with refrigerators, are constructed for
carrying fresh beef. The South American republics respond in return.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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