Texas, with 64,000 square miles, leads the Union in wooded area. Oregon is second, with 54,300 square miles, and Minnesota third, with 52,200 square miles. Arkansas, California, Missouri, Montana, and Washington each have over 40,000 square miles of wooded area. Oregon, Washington, and California have at least one third of the standing timber of the country, but they cut less than ten per cent of the total lumber product. The redwood forest of California is, perhaps, the densest forest, measured by the amount of lumber per acre, in the world. In quantity of standing timber, Oregon leads the Union with 225 billion feet; California second with 200 billion feet, and Washington third with nearly 196 billion feet. Minnesota, with a product of $43,600,000 leads the West and Washington is second, with $30,300,000. The total value of the lumber product of the West in 1900 was $184,135,988, against $109,201,667 in 1890 and $6,075,896 in 1850. The lumber cut was 10,925,736 M feet, board measure, or a little less than one third of the output of the Union. Among Western states, Minnesota led with 2,342,388 M feet, Arkansas second with 1,623,987 M feet, and Washington third with 1,429,032 M feet. Oregon cut 734,528 M feet. RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION. The transcontinental railroads have brought the West up to its present state of development, for they have opened it to settlement, and provided reasonable rates for the transport of its products to the Eastern markets, even if at the same time they have exposed its infant manufacturing industries to the competition of the large capitalization of the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio Valley. In 1850 the West had 79½ miles of railroad, all in Louisiana. All the rest of the westward stretch of the nation to the Pacific was without so much as a single rail. What Louisiana could so proudly boast of in 1850 was less than the mileage operated by the Boston and Maine and its branches in Massachusetts that same year. By 1900 the total had swelled to 87,406.13 miles out of the 193,345.78 miles in the United States and the percentage from .25 to 45.2. On the basis of miles of railroad per 100 square miles of territory Iowa leads with 16.56 and Nevada is lowest with .83. In miles of line per ten thousand inhabitants Nevada is first with 214.98, and Louisiana last with 20.44. In view of the enormous railroad construction in the West in the past thirty years it is worth while to recall President Buchanan's telegram to John Butterfield, the pioneer of Western overland transportation, when the first direct overland mail arrived by stage at Saint Louis from San Francisco October 9, 1858: I cordially congratulate you upon the result. It is a glorious triumph for civilization and the Union. Settlements will soon follow the course of the road, and the East and the West will be bound together by a chain of living Americans which can never be broken. FINANCE.