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Show Where OurTireatest Wealth Is. In the region beyond the ninoty-eighth meridian went of Greenwich, the initial point being St. Paul and its final one North Platte, Neb., while on the south it extends eastward to Fort Worth, Tex., eighteen states and territorit were visited and traversed. The contrasts offered by it to the solitude of iSC5 were almost amazing. West of the meridian named there are now at leaat 22,000 miles of railroad, and of telegraph wires not less than 150,-000 150,-000 miles. Of telephone and electrio light cables, in proportion to population, there are more miles in use than eltie-where eltie-where within the United States. There is today more property owned per capita than anywhere else on the continent. Two-fifths of the national domain is found west of the line given, and certainly cer-tainly threo-fifths of the remaining public lands of the United States must be sought for in the same region; and that, too, without considering Alaska. Yet how few persons are cognizant of the fact that east and west the geographical geograph-ical center of this Union is somewhere in the Bay of San Francisco; fxr with the Aleutian islanders flying our flag within fifty miles of the Siberian coast cf Asia, our domain extends, on a northwestern north-western and southeastern line, somt 3,000 miles beyond the Golden Gate. Richard J. Hinton in Fornm. |