OCR Text |
Show THE VANISHED WEST I TransTCinttnentaJ. Railroads Banish a Historic Designation. Mr Haniman'H statement that this Is to be "an era of competitive railway building' Is quickly followed by the announcement an-nouncement that the St Paul will build an extension to the Pacific. This will be a great and Important work of rall-roael rall-roael construction, but It Is not by any means the only work of that magnitude which Is projected. The St. Paul extension will be one of I four new lines of arllway reaching to the Pacific ocean. The other three are the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Northern North-ern and the Western Pacific. At a very eonser atli e estimate these four lines will cost at least J250.000.WO to construct. They will compete with seven existing systems, and when completed thee- j will be eleven railroad systems ln Canada Can-ada and the United States connecting; the East with the Pacific ocean. But this is not the only great work of construction ln this field. The United States ha.s enteicd upon th undertaking underta-king of building the Panama canal, nrhloh will unite tho waters of the Atlantic At-lantic and the Pacific There could be no more striking proof of the fact that the commercial as well as the political history of the future Is to be made ln the Pacific. That ocean Is now the "frontier" of the United "Where Is the West? It Is no longer Chicago, or the Mississippi, Mis-sissippi, or Denver. It Is not even Salt Lake City or San Francisco As Dr. Murray S Williams of "ntral college. Missouri, says In his recent book on "Money Inflation": ' The frontier, ln so far as It forms an Important element ln American society. Is gone The 'West' has passed into history. his-tory. Tho country has become relatively rela-tively homogeneous " Only the construction of great lines of transcontinental railroad could havo made this possible Wall Street Journal |