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Show "not decreased; and the high cost of "cttli, UP the country forbids de- 1 d transportation costs. There n enormous economic waste in shipping ship-ping our raw materials East and shipping ship-ping back the manufactured products L Western use. It is Just as reason able to ship our live stock to the n sippi River and have the meat dipped back, as it is to enterchange our- other raw materials for manu-factured manu-factured goods. The economic waste is still greater great-er when we realize that raw woo carries about 40 percent of grease ol no commercial value. Hides and pelts contain about 10 per cent salt to preserve pre-serve for long distance shipping. If handled directly from the point of "take off" to tannery, this expesse would be obviated. The favorable climatic and living conditions of the Pacific Coast have attracted the greatest population influx in-flux in history-so that we now have the labor supply, the consumer demand, de-mand, the raw product and every essential for the building up of ohr manufacturing centers. Undoubtedly the proper economic setup is to do our manufacturing of raw materials from' the interior on the Pacific Coast and our friends in the interior should keep before them the idea that whenever the Coast gets a new industry it is bound to reflect something of value to the interior. Of course, the mere shifting of the population from one section of the country to another except, to relieve the surplus here and there, means but little to the country as a whole, but when we remember that the West is capable of supplying much more than will ever be consumed locally and that we are several thousand miles nearer than the East Coast to two-thirds two-thirds of the world's population, it is not difficult to see the tremendous advantage of "Western development to meet the demands of foreign trade. o U rrM AtllcLC IOIXj; the Pacific Coast. Our cotton crops are shipped back to the east to be fabricated, despite the fact that great tire industries and consumer- demand for cotton goods is several times greater than our cotton production. Modern transportation has cut down the time between East and West but costs of transportation have The East is moving West! When the country east of the Mississippi River had already become an intensely intense-ly cultivated agricultural area, with great centers of population and industrial in-dustrial activity, the far west was a land of unfenced ranges, forbidding deserts and primeval forests. It took many months to travel from the Mississippi Valley to the West. Those who did make the trip were hardy pioneers who tilled the soil, mined for precious metals or engaged in hunting and trapping. The other day, I was shown an old contract made by a California cattleman in which he sold his herd of cattle, regardless of numbers, sex or condition, at $4.00 a head, with calves thrown in. The value of the cattle was mainly in the hides for there were comparatively : few people to he fed nearby, and there was no practical means of shipping ship-ping the meat nor the cattle to the more thickly populated sections of the East. How the picture has changed! With the uniting of the Pacific and Atlantic Atlan-tic and intermediate territory by transcontinental railroads, eastern people began moving West where land was cheaper, soil was richer and opportunity seemed greater. The curtain goes up again and we see practical trips by airplane and railroad rail-road from one side of the continent to the other in thirty-six hours! The West Coast is now a great center of population. California alone is credited with 6,000,000 souls one county rightfully claiming a population popula-tion of 2,000,000. Rich valleys are producing enormous amounts of foods and grains. The range land is fenced and big numbers of high grade cattle, hogs and sheep are raised in the country coun-try that was once composed mostly of desert and wilderness. Because of the great productive ability of the soils and range, it was natural that our production of foodstuffs food-stuffs and meat animals made far greater progress than our growth in population. The result was that the amount of foods needed in the far West was a small part of the production, produc-tion, and the final result was that the West naturally looked to the East for a market for live stock, hides, pelts and foodstuffs. We are now consuming a very large share of the grain, fruits and vegetables, cattle and sheep produced in the West and we import the greater percentage of the pork needed need-ed on the Coast. Great meat slaughtering slaught-ering and distributing centers have grown up in the West, but we are still sending our hides and pelts hack East, where the wool is fabricated and much of it made into clothing, to be shipped to the Atlantic seaboard to be tanned and converted into shoes and leather goods. Certainly a very large portion of this Western wool and leather is sold to consumers on |