| OCR Text |
Show I ' ESte Legislators Have No Conception of the Resources of the State, i RICH COUNTY PEOPLE KNOW NOTHING OF SOUTH Neither Does Dixie Land About What Cache Valley Produces; Pro-duces; Why? In the room used as a courtroom, next to the quarters In the city and county building where the house of representatives representa-tives meet every two years, u number of men were In discussion, during the last session of the Utah legislature, A few of them wore members of the house, but the majority were men who had gathered from various parts of the state for the purpose, at least In mosl cases avowed, to work for the special Interest of their section of the great state of l.'tnh One man commenced to praise tho section of the atcto from which he came. H did not exaggerate In the least, but he Insisted time und again that he was talking fpr the statu at large. Ono of I the other men present asked him what ho lenew about Rich county and Its resources. re-sources. The man admitted that he thought that Randolph was tho county sent, but did not know tho nanu of another an-other town in Rich county, nor what the Indusrles of that county wore. Did Not Know. "I confess my Ignorance." said the man from tho south part of the state, "but will you please tell me something about Washington. Grand. Wayne. Gurllcld or , Snn Juan counties?" Tho man from the north part of the state admitted that he could not mimi; tho county seats of each of these, much less the other towns In these counties. He did not know of tho natural wonders In San Juan county, coun-ty, of the mountains of rich ore in fiOfithern Utah: of the great forests which . government officials have declared have over four billion feet of timber ready to ' be out and hauled to tho market If there were but a railroad. fi Ignorant of Utah. This man did not know thnt there Is Iron ore enough In one county In Utah to relay every foot of railroad track there Is in the United Status and then enough to furnish steel for more than as many " skyscrapers as there has been so far erected In tho United States; that there Is coal enough In the state of Utah to supply the entire western country for a generation at least, and that the deposit has hardly heen scratched; that thorc Is ! gold and Bllver. copper and lead In a thousand mountains In the stato of Utah I that only awaits development. i What State Needs. Some of these men did not seem to know that there were thousands and tens of thousands df fertile acres In Utah 1 that only awaited tho right kind of peo ple to make them productive. But the whole situation was summed up In n fow words from the man from the north part of the state when ho said to the representative repre-sentative from southern Utah: "I re-' grct to say that I have never visited your part of the state. I have been told that It Is a hard trip. You have no railroads down there and I do not care to make a ride of u hundred miles or more by stage or team to see a part of the state In which I live." Snld a member of the legislature, ono who has been born and reared In Utah and who perhnps has seen as much of the state as most men In It: "And, you never will Fee this state, Rnd neither you nor I nor any ono else will ever have an Idea of the possibilities of this state until un-til every county Is tapped by a railroad f not only tapped, but grldlroned by rail roads. "When that day comes you will see that Utah Is the richest state In tho union In more ways than one, and when that day comes you will And that health-seekers health-seekers will not go to Florida or California; Cali-fornia; that men of money will not seek Investments In other states, but will bo ready nnd willing to put their money In Investments In Utah. But this time will never come until Utah has more railroads than It hns today." With the knowledge which ho had of what the state needed there Is little wonder that this man voted against the proposed bill for a railroad commission In Utah at the last session of the Utah legislature. |
