OCR Text |
Show j j THE SITES OF GREAT CITIES. i ; St. Louis has grown great because of her ii location at the meeting of the great waters and (, the wealth of the vast country behind her. Chicago has grown great because of her place I at the head of navigation on Lake Michigan, and $ because the multitude of railroads centering there f have made her the clearing house for an empire north, east and south of her. Fifty years ago Cincinnati was much the larger place of the 1 f three. She would have maintained her superiority I could the course of the Ohio been reversed and made to flow to Delaware or Chesapeake bay. As it was she was practically fifteen hundred miles . from the seashore, and this was too far away; jj the railroads made a short cut to the Atlantic and i not only practically left Cincinnati a way station, but drew from her a vast ratio of the trade that i i at first was naturally hers. The great war, too, brought a depression to her trade that she could never recover. But her manufactures have kept I her a great and growing city, and by and by I I through the roads centering there she wiil recover b much of her old prestige. I f From the above exampless it is easy to see ' how much location has to do with the growth of ., cities. The world has no other such a site for a f ' city as Constantinople. Imagine both shores of ' the Hellespont in the possession and under the control of Americans. What a pake it would be in fifty years. No wonder ancient nations fought Li for its possession. And that was long before the ! ; age of steam and electricity. Suppose a live gov-iy gov-iy ernment in charge there and railroads ramifying from that center to Western Asia and Eastern f Europe. ,t San Francisco is another spot marked out by t t nature for a great city. The Golden State, the ' ct.'.tinent behind the city, the Orient and all those islands of the Pacific out beyond her Golden Gate, , her incomparable bay. nothing can prevent her V . from being one of the world's great cities. W Well, great mines make more commerce than rich agricultural fields. The farmer generally has one crop which he relies upon for his profits, the rest is consumed by his domestic animals. But j everything that a mine produces has to be car-' car-' ried away, everything it needs has to be carried t to it. All its receipts and disbursements prac-' prac-' tically have to be reduced' to cash, and in doing & this a vast amount of freight is involved, a vast I. r 1 V amount of merchandise used. The point that is the clearing house for a great mining region is necessarily one that all eyes are gazing at from all directions, that a great trade centers in. Well, if location made St. Louis and Chicago great, location loca-tion and the natural drift of trade, what must Salt Lake be, the only natural center of trade for a 'rich mining country 1,000 miles in diameter? Can anything long hold this city back? But there is not only the location, but the surroundings. If in the center of the Black Forest in Germany there should suddenly gush forth a cluster of springs like the Beck springs, in three years there would a city spring up around them. Suppose out west of St. Louis, twenty minutes' ride from the city, there was a Salt Lake like o'ur great lake, would it not within a year be surrounded sur-rounded by cottages, and would not every hotel in the city advertise hot and cold salt water baths? Suppose behind Chicago there was a snow-capped range, the crest of which could be reached in three or four hours' ride from the city, would there be any other summer resort to compare with Chicago? Then there are the air and the soft climate here which no eastern city possesses. What is going to prevent Salt Lake City from being great just from natural causes? And the time is ripe for a swift beginning. Some roads are here, others are heading this way; the mines are crowding their developments, the building of the reduction works is being rushed. More lands, conveniently near, are soon to be brought under cultivation; we have the schools, the hospitals, a beautiful library; churches to accommodate all worshipers, and dawns and sunsets that would make American tourists crazy could they but find them in Italy. The procession is surely on the way; the men of Salt Lake should right now be preparing to receive re-ceive it. |