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Show Greatest Real Estate Transfer in History j The ratification of the proposed charter amendments rat the election in St. Louis last Tuesday insured the success of the great Louisiana Purchase Pur-chase exposition in 1003. This will fit- I tingly celebrate the most tremendous real estate transaction in history. Napoleon was a man of miraculous mental grasp, but it is doubtful whether even he realized all that the Louisiana purchase was to mean in the coming century. There was nothing noth-ing in all the preceding annals of the ft'orld to gauge it bv. With a single y- ! ception there has been nothing since. A hundred years ago the huge territory, ter-ritory, nearly a million square miles in extent, then called Louisiana, was practically an uninhabited wilderness. A little group of settlements about New Orleans, and a smaller one at St. Louis, represented all the foothold that civilization had within it. Today it contains over fourteen million people, living in fourteen great states and ter-1 ter-1 ritories. With the single exception mentioned, there is nothing in all the history of colonization to compare with that record. rec-ord. The one parallel case is the growth of the states between the Al-leghenies Al-leghenies and the Mississippi. It took the colonies on the Atlantic seaboard over a hundred years to gain a million people. Australia started substantially even with Louisiana a century ago; she has less than four million inhabitants today. to-day. Canada was far ahead of Louisiana in 1803; she has little more than a third of the" population of the Louisiana Louis-iana purchase now. It took England nearly fifteen' hundred hun-dred years, from the landing of Hen-gist Hen-gist and Horsa to the year 1841, to make the progress that Louisiana has made in a single century. Had the Louisiana purchase become an independent nation, it would have ranked today in all respects as a first-class first-class power. Its population would have been less than that of the great powers of Europe, but its Wealth, energy, enterprise, en-terprise, - industry - and intelligence would have placed It fully abreast of them. It would have been able to take care of itself in any company. The Louisiana purchase has eight cities of over a hundred thousand people peo-ple each, of which one has over half a million and another over a quarter of a million. It contains the fifth state In the Union in population. It has more miles of railroad than any country in the world outside of the United States. It has the greatest extent of productive produc-tive farm land in the world. It has a greater system of navigable waterways than any other "region of equal extent outside of Brazil. I It has some of the world's richest I mines of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron ! and coal. It is developing a mighty system of manufactures. ! It has produced in placqp what some consider the finest school system in existence. Europe has stood in arms for thirty thir-ty years because France and Germany cannot agree about the ownership of I Alsace and Lorraine. Money enough has been spent to plate the provinces I iwun goici. ine Louisiana purchase would make a hundred and seventy Alsace-Uorraines. In the region that Jefferson bought for $13,000,000 three hundred million people can find homes in comfort. At $10 an acre, its land would be worth six times our present national debt. The mere exposition with which one of its cities is to celebrate its purchase pur-chase will cost more than we paid for the entire domain. Our first attempt at expansion has been the most brilliantly successful In history. It is well that it should be fittingly celebrated, and with it the memory of the great men who brought I it about, and who. by that act, secured to their country the place of the first f power on earth. That the Louisiana i purchase has transformed the United f States from an Atlantic coast power I into a continental power is the best I " monument of Thomas Jefferson. San f Francisco Examiner. |