ADDRESS,
GOVERNOR LESLIE M. SHAW.
PRESIDENT WATTLE'S WELCOME.
ADDRESS OF ROBERT C. COUSINS, M.C. AT OMAHA.
The celebration of Iowa Day had been advertised throughout the state of Iowa, and special trains came from all parts of that state loaded with enthusiastic visitors. Excursion rates had been made by all the railroads in Iowa and the effect of this was early seen in the large crowds which they brought to the Exposition gates. The program celebrating this day was one of unusual interest. It was held in the Auditorium at 2:30 P.M. The Auditorium was filled to overflowing when the exercises were commenced by an organ voluntary, introducing the following program: Introductory Address . Vice President Allan Dawson Overture, - "The Wizard of the West", - Ladies' Band of Eldora Invocation Violin Solo - Lucile Franchere - Earl Byers, Accompanist Address - His Excellency, Leslie M. Shaw, Governor of Iowa Solo - "Delight" - Nellie Mae Brewster Address, - Gurdon W. Wattles, President Exposition Vocal Solo, - "Star Spangled Banner" - Mary Theresa Louthan Oration - Hon. Robert G. Cousins Quickstep, - "Uncle Remus", Barnard. Iowa Agricultural College Cadet Band.ADDRESS, GOVERNOR LESLIE M. SHAW. Ladies and Gentlemen, Citizens and Friends of Iowa: "Not many generations ago, in the place where you now sit, encircled by all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the breeze, and the wild fox digged his hole unscared." So said Charles Sprague three-quarters of a century ago, and the utterance is as true when applied to the land of the Omahas as to the land of the Wampanoags. We meet this day as citizens of Iowa, on the soil of a sister state, for no idle purpose. The people of Iowa are not idlers, but the day will have been lost to us and to our children, unless what is here said, and done, and witnessed, and enjoyed shall bring greater thoughtfulness and increased earnestness. The half century and two years since the admission of Iowa added the twenty-ninth star to the flag which has now become the protector of the world have wrought great changes. Most of the improvements of earth, most of the progress in the arts and sciences, most of the advance in civilization, have been wrought within the period of our State history. Time would not permit, if the inclination were present, to recount the achievements in the political, industrial, financial, agricultural, mechanical, scientific, educational, religious or moral world. Suffice it to say that in all of these Iowa has rendered her full share of service, and has reaped her full measure of blessing. We can well afford to leave to others the study of the past. Let it be ours manfully to face the future, now more than ever big with possibilities, and with careful glance ahead improve the present. In all the grand exhibit of this remarkable Exposition there is not found that for which our State has greatest reason to rejoice. The product of the farm, of the orchard, of the garden, of the herd, of the dairy, of the factory, of the mine are here in great quantity and of superb quality. Truly Iowa is great in territory, great in resources, great in product, but she is greatest of all in her children. There is presented to my eye from the platform that which is infinitely more valuable than all herds and all harvests. I see scattered through this audience many of the youth of Iowa. They are from the city, from the town, from the hamlet, and from the Iowa farm. They are representatives of an aggregate of seven hundred thousand of school age, and of an equal number who have just passed from educational tuition to face the activities, the anxieties, and the achievements of manhood and womanhood. These all belong to a generation which will surely be heard from. Their fathers and mothers have been industrious, have been ambitious, have been hopeful, and have been successful. A generation thus circumstanced is always potential. Dr. Strong tells of a township in the western reserve which was settled with an energetic, liberty-loving, God-fearing, educationally-inclined people, and which in a limited period furnished many members of the State Legislature. From that community of only a few hundred inhabitants men went forth to college professorships east and west, to the supreme bench of the State, and to the United States Congress. Northhampton, Mass., has among its native and resident population over four hundred graduates form colleges and other educational institutions; it has furnished the world with one hundred and fourteen ministers, eighty-four ministers' wives, ten missionaries, twenty-five judges, one hundred and two lawyers, ninety-five physicians, seven college presidents, thirty professors, sixty-four other educators, twenty-four editors, six historians, twenty-four authors, two governors, and thirty other State officers, twenty-five members of the State General Court, as the Legislature is styled, two generals, six colonels, thirteen other army officers, thirty-eight officers of the United States, among them a Secretary of the Navy, two Foreign Ministers, a Treasurer of the United States, five Senators of the United States, eight Members of Congress and one President. If a territory six miles square, under favorable conditions can make such a record, what may we not hopefully expect from a territory containing fifty-five thousand square miles, all of it similarly peopled, and with conditions more favorable than Massachusetts ever enjoyed or Ohio ever possessed. "Know thyself", said the Greek philosopher. "Know thine opportunity" has become a companion and equally important maxim. When you go home tonight tell the children that the world is big and constantly expanding; that this day's experience has broadened your vision; that life has become more real and hope more ardent; and that both you and the world, and especially the States expect something of them. Wake the boy in the night, break in upon his dreams with stories of hopeful possibilities; watch the fire kindle in his eye; let him dream again of greater things, of broader expanses, of higher altitudes, of nobles achievements. Neglect neigher seed time nor harvest; match the growing and maturing crops; succor and protect both flocks and herd; zealously guard the interests of the shop and the store and the office; but above all, look well to the youth of Iowa, and to all things that shall conserve the generation whose footsteps crowd the threshold of the world's activities. PRESIDENT WATTLE'S WELCOME. When I received the invitation from the Iowa Commission to make an address on this occasion, I at once realized my inability within the limited time at my disposal to express in a fitting manner, even my own sentiments regarding a state among whose inhabitants twenty-five years of my life had been spent, of a state in whose public schools and colleges I received my education and to whose magnificent advantages and opportunities I am indebted for whatever business success I may have attained. With apologies for apparent disloyalty to my adopted state of Nebraska, I say without fear of successful contradiction that Iowa is the best agricultural state in the Union. There is a smaller percentage of untillable land in this state than is found any other equal body of land in the world. The state has less illiteracy, more school houses and churches and a less number of criminals in proportion to population than any other state in the Union. It has a better code of laws, a more industrious, frugal and prosperous population; its wealth is more evenly distributed among its inhabitants, its climate is more healthy and its people more contented and happy than the average state of this country or in any other state or territory of like extent in any other country in the world. These may seem extravagant statements, but they are subject to verification by facts and figures. The question may be asked, why should this be true. The answer is plain and in perfect accord with the philosophy and history of all past ages. Agriculture is the source of all wealth, it breeds contentment, virtue and happiness. "From the farms comes not only the bread but the virtue of this nation." The principal avocation of the inhabitants of Iowa is farming. There are no large metropolitan cities to corrupt the morals and excite the greed of its inhabitants, there are no mines of gold and silver to attract and disappoint its people. It is true that a large area of the state is underlaid with rich deposits of coal, but beyond this its mineral wealth is confined to small districts where lead and zinc are found. The state lies within that temperate belt of latitude along which the progress, intelligence, wealth and energy of the world are most abundantly found. Neither the long hot summers of the southern climes nor the cold rigorous winters of the northern states enervates its inhabitants. The soil is rich and productive, cereals and fruits mature alike in abundance. All of the elements that produce happiness, contentment and prosperity combine and conspire to make its inhabitants intelligent, prosperous and contented. But with all its natural advantages, a large majority of its inhabitants have earned for themselves from its rich resources the competency they now enjoy. It is truly said "There is no excellence without labor," and but for the labor, hardships and privations of the early settlers of this great commonwealth, I doubt if they or their descendants would to-day occupy the high places in the business world which they have attained. The early pioneers were all poor and but few of the later settlers had more than a few dollars with which to begin life. The privations of those who first entered the lands in the center of the state purchased of the Black Hawk Indians were sufficient to develop the energy and inspire that determined effort which always brings success. In the fifties when no railroad had penetrated the state when wheat was hauled two hundred miles by wagon and sold at forty cents per bushel,when farm produce for want of a market was worthless, when the fear of the Indian massacre and the ever present dread of sickness and want on the frontier far away from medical or neighborly aid, their trials were supreme. Surrounded with perplexities and almost over-come by obstacles which to the present generation would seem insurmountable, with no roads and no bridges, in this solitude and loneliness and amid the awful stillness which pervades a new land like this, these pioneers learned lessons of frugality, economy and self reliance which insured for them and their descendants success and prosperity, and an appreciation of the comforts and conveniences which came later with advanced civilization. Later immigrants who came into the state with such a flood during the '60's immediately after the great Rebellion suffered privations little less severe than those endured by the earlier pioneers. As a boy whose earlier years had been spent in populous communities, I well remember the solitude of those prairies extending as far as the eye could reach with no sign of life with their billows of grass rolling like the great waves of the sea. I can picture in memory the illumination of the heavens in autumn when great prairie fires swept with terrible conflagration the broad expanse of unoccupied lands and lighted the skies with firery tongues which seemed to portend destruction of the settlements they surround. In many instances in these early days these prairie fires swept with terrible velocity through fields of ripening corn and laid waste the crops and buildings and sometimes consumed the entire possessions of the hapless settler who was exposed to their grand and destructive holocaust. I can well remember when these prairies were thought to be worthless, when the only settlements were along the wooded steams and when it was said that man could not live through the rigorous storms that blew with such velocity with nothing to break their force, across these plains in winter, and when the first man ventured out from the shelter of the woods to make his home on the open prairie he was thought to be insane. How glad the hearts of those settlers to hear the first screech of the locomotive, and the sound of the approach of the first railway train. Each additional evidence of civilization was appreciated beyond the power of the imagination of those who have never known want of the present advantages at our doors. It was this school in these early days which reared within the state of Iowa a self reliant, industrious and frugal population, which has given caste to all subsequent settlement. These early settlers and their descendants own their homes to-day and are surrounded by many of the comforts and conveniences of life. They are happy in the comparison of their changed conditions. They have won for themselves by the individual efforts the reward which follows honest toil. I have known hundreds, yes, thousands of the present prosperous heads of families in Iowa who came to the state in poverty, and who today are free from debt and own their rich, well stocked and productive farms. Who can wonder that such a population surrounded as they are with all the conveniences of civilization should be intelligent, prosperous and happy. Ever ready to promote the interests of their state by advertising its resources, Iowa was the first through her legislature to approve of this Exposition, and the first state in the Union to make an appropriation for a state exhibit here. She stands among the first in the beauty and convenience of their building and the variety and extent of her exhibit. It is with pride and pleasure that I welcome her citizens here today. This Exposition is the crowning achievement of the people of the west, it marks an epoch in the history of their progress, it serves notice to all the world that the west is no longer lacking in population, wealth and enterprise, and it reveals a vision of future development which will eclipse its phenomenal past. When we consider the wonderful strides that have been made in all of the states and territories west of the Mississippi River during the short space of half a century, when we compute the wealth that has been accumulated, when we realize that 80,000 miles of railroad have been constructed, great cities built and a commerce double that of Spain and Portugal established, when we know and realize that in no other part of the world such opportunities for the investor and home seeker are offered as can be found within this territory, we can picture in our imagination its future greatness and power. When I think of the wonderful changes that have been wrought within the state of Iowa within the past thirty years, how the Red Men have been driven from their grounds to make room for the rich farms and cities which now support a population of more than 2,000,000 people, of how schools and colleges have been built, public institutions for the promotion of education, morality, Christianity and good government established, and how out of the chaos and the stillness of the wilderness such a commonwealth has grown within the memory of even the young men of this generation. I almost believe it must be the dawn of the millennium when happiness, prosperity and contentment such as the world has never known is to permeate the lives of all men. When I stand and view the magnificence and wealth of the west displayed at this Exposition, I almost feel like the rural farmer, who on entering these grounds a short time ago exclaimed, "If heaven is only as beautiful, I shall be satisfied." To all the beauties of these grounds and the pleasures to be found in viewing the wonderful resources displayed in these buildings, I invite the visitors from Iowa to participate. This Exposition is yours as well as ours, you are equal partners in the enterprise, and from its success, now happily insured, you may learn many lessons of value for the future. It not only illustrates the wealth and progress of a great people, but it points to future possibilities undreamed of before. To the homeless millions of less favored climes it is a messenger of promise, to the weary mariner whose fortunes have been wrecked on the seas of adversity it is a harbinger of hope, it opens new fields to the investor, inspires the ambition of the genius, incites the emulation of states and stands the crowning glory in the history of the west. ADDRESS OF ROBERT C. COUSINS, M.C. AT OMAHA. The State of Iowa accepts with fraternal gladness the hospitable hand of greeting extended by Nebraska and our other sister States in this great empire of the pioneers and salutes with reverent patriotism the deferral government of the United States. In the words of that original and poetic genius, "Ironquill," who has voiced so well the thought and feelings of our westland, and who has made the name of Kansas known forever in the world of letters: States are not great Except as man may make them. Men are not great except they do and dare. All merit comes from braving the unequal. All glory comes from daring to begin. I have asked five of the ablest and most noted Americans what they regard as the chief thing or leading feature of the Trans-Mississippi region and they have invariably answered, "Its men and women." The other day I met one of the oldest settlers of eastern Iowa - one of those original, rugged characters whose wit and wisdom has lightened the settlers' hearts and homes for many a toilsome year - one of those interesting characters who never bores you and whom one always likes to meet - a man whose head is silvered and whose countenance is kind - and I asked him what he regarded as the principal feature of our Trans-Mississippi country, and he replied: "Well, I'm no scholar, but I've been round here nigh onto sixty years and I recon 'bout the most important thing is the folks and the farms." While you rest here a little while in this splendid auditorium before going to view the wonders and the beauties of the Exposition (and incidentally the Midway) I shall speak briefly of the folks and farms of my native state of Iowa and of this empire of the pioneers. In doing so, I have some hesitation, realizing as I do that there are doubtless those in this vast audience who were contemporaries with my grandfathers in the early settlement of Iowa away back in the thirties, and who are far better qualified to tell the tale of toil and triumph which is the glory and the honor of our birthland. In such a discussion, I feel as though I was standing on the bank of a magnificent stream in the hearing of patriarchs and pilgrims who have traveled from its source. I can look at its swift flowing current and think of the scenes by which it has swept in its lonely way form the wilds where it started; I can remember with you the roaming red man who watched with jealous eye the coming of this Anglo-Saxon stream of civilization; I can marvel with you at the vastness of the products of its soil, watered with the tears of happiness and toil; I can realize with you the ruggedness and patience of its manhood and the strength and gentleness of its womanhood, but of its landscape farther up, its tributaries and its cabins, its haunts and huts and wonders, its picturesqueness of primeval life, the story is far better told by him whose tired feet have trudged along the way, whose hands have toiled and whose hair has turned to gray. Iowa became a separate territory, with the capitol at Burlington, in 1838, and was admitted into the Union in 1846, and has been in it ever since. It makes little difference whether it was first settled by the whites at Dubuque for mining purposes in 1788, or, for trading purposes, at Montrose, in 1799, or opposite Prairie duChien, in 1804 or 5, in Lee county at Sandusky in 1820, or on the lower rapids at what is known as Nashville, in 1829; or whether the first settlements for general purposes were made at Burlington and Davenport in 1832. The main facts is that it was well settled - not by dyspeptic tourists or by invalids who had come west out of curiosity and New Jersey, nor by climate seeking dilettante with two servants and one lung - but by the best bone and sinew of the Middle States, New England and the Old World. I do not know that there were any dukes or lords or marquises or duchesses, but there were Dutch and Irish and Scotch and Scotch-Irish and English and Americans and they had home rule right from the start - at least they had in the first school which I attended. The men and women who settled the Hawkeye State were not those who expected to go back "in the fall", or as soon as they could prove up their claims. They were stayers. They were not men to be discouraged by winter or by work. They were men who knew that nobody ever amounted to much unless he had to. Most of them began simply with the capital of honesty, good health and their inherent qualities of character. They built their cabins in the clearings and watching the smoke curl up in the great wide sky, felt just as patriotic for their humble rustic homes as e'er did princes for their castles or millionaires for mansions grand. To build a home is a great thing. It doesn't matter so much about the dimensions. "Kings have lived in cottages and pygmies dwelt in palaces," but the walls of a home always add something to inherent character. In the formation of character there are always two elements the inherent and the adventitious - that which we bring with us into the world and that which our surroundings give us. Somebody said "There is only a small portion of the earth that produces splendid people." Our pioneers got into a good place. They had left doubt sitting on a boulder in the east and packed their things and started for the west. Rivers had to be forded, trees to be felled; cabins had to be built - the rifle must be kept loaded - so much the better, there was self-reliance. Corn and coffee had to be ground, and on the same mill - so much the better, there was ingenuity. Teeth had to be filled, and there was no painless dentistry. Disease and injury must be dealt with, and the doctor fifty miles away. Life must be lightened, lonely hearts must be cheered, and the old friends and comrades far back in the states or may be away in the Fatherland, and the cheering letter tarrying with the belated stagecoach hold fast, thou sturdy denizen and gentle helpmate of the rich and wonderous empire, infinite goodness guards thee and the fertile fields are ready to reward. Ah, pampered people of the later generations, when you imagine modern hardships, think of the courage and the trials and the ingenuity of pioneers when there were no conveniences but the forest and the axe, the wide rolling prairie and the ox team, the great blue sky, the unsolved future and the annual ague. Complain of markets in these modern times and then think of your grandmother when she was a blooming bride, listening through the toilsome days and anxious nights for the wagon bringing home the husband from a distant market with calico and jeans purchased with dressed pork sold a dollar and a half a hundred, and maybe bringing home a little money, worth far less per yard than either calico or jeans. Maybe it was all for the best, human character was being formed for the development of a great and loyal and progressive State to shine forever among the stars of the Federal Union. Probably the purest time in the history of government and of man is when they are painfully intent upon the labor of their development and defense. Most all greatness and nearly every original idea has come out of some kind of trouble. Whoever gets to greatness or success without meeting opposition, goes in an air castle. Most of the flowers of genius have bloomed from bleeding hearts. There never was a strong and handsome face without some little line of care. And so every circumstance of those early, toilsome lives, every tedious trail, every tear, every home whose roof kept out the storm and whose walls contained their sorrows and their joys; all the gifts of a generous soil in return for careful cultivation; every irritating inconvenience which finally drove some questioned mind to ponder out improvements, all such experiences are as certain in their formation and development of character and mind as are inherent qualities that accompany the origin and mystery of life. Somewhere I have seen an etching of a face that was called Experience, and I have never forgotten it - one never does forget a face that has ideas in it. This one was the illustrated history of a life. There was Youth with all its hope, marked here and there with all the lines of strife and care and victory which middle life had placed upon it. And there was the mystic touch of later years, like autumn's pencil work in nature, all shaded with the mellow haze of time - a kind of soft and silvery veil with which deft nature covers up her glory - a picture penciled by an artist with an understanding mind, who knew his subject had thought as he had thought, felt as he had felt, dreamed as he had dreamed - a kind of picture that one sees so very very seldom, only as often as one finds genius - the divine - and I thought there is the typical picture of a pioneer and well named "Experience." Civil government in Iowa proceeded with its rapid settlement. The pioneer became a model citizen. He knew the necessity for the laws that were enacted. He did not feel oppressed by government. He had experienced the losses of robbery and larceny and knew something of the embarrassment and inconvenience of being scalped. There was no hysteria about trusts and combines because they had practiced combinations themselves for mutual protection. If any one would learn the true genius and exemplification and philosophy of self-government, government of and for and by the people, let him study the records of pioneer life, and institutional beginnings and the evolution of their laws. It would be worth our while on some suitable occasion when time permitted to talk over the interesting incidents attending the administration of justice in the early days of Iowa, and incidents of its territorial legislatures, the birth and growth of its Statehood and the characters of its officials. But the greatness of our State is not contained in any name. Its official history is the exponent of its industrial life and character. Its greatness is the sum total of its citizenship. In order to be just, John Jones, the average citizen, must be mentioned along with our most illustrious officials. Somebody said that the history of a nation is the history of its great men, but there is an unwritten history which that averment overlooks. The growth of a State is the progress of its average citizen. The credit of a commonwealth is the thrift of its John Jones and William Smith, and the character, prosperity and patriotism of the individual citizen is the history of Iowa. The population of 97,000 which she had when admitted into the Union had increased to 754,699 at the close of the Civil war. Of these about 70,000, almost one-tenth of the population, were in the war - a number equal to nearly one-half the voters of the State. Who made the history of Iowa during that great struggle of our nation's life? John Jones, the average citizen, whether he carried a musket helping to put the scattered stars of State back into the constellation of the Union,or whether he toiled from early dawn to lingering twilight in the fields or in the shop. The best civilization is that which maintains the highest standard of life for its average citizen. Since the Civil war the State of Iowa has increased in population to almost 2,225,000 of people, and most of the time had the least illiteracy of any State in the Union. Doubtless for that we are in debted to many of the older States, whose enterprising and courageous citizens constitute so large a portion of our population. With but half a century of statehood and with an area of but 55,475 square miles, the State of Iowa produces the greatest quantity of cereals of any State in the Union. As long ago as the last federal census, taken in 1890, it produced more corn, more oats, more beef, more pork than any State in the Union. Not long since I was introduced to a gentleman from New York City. he said: "Oh, from Iowa - ah - let me see, that's out - ah - you see, I'm not very well posted on the geography of the West." "Yes," I said, "it's out there just across the Mississippi river. You can leave New York about noon and get your supper in Iowa the next evening. It might be worth your while to look it up. It's the State which produces more of the things which people eat than any other State in the Union. It has more miles of railroad than your State of New York, more than Mexico, more than Brazil and more than all the New England States combined." The value of Iowa's agricultural products and live stock in round numbers for the year 1892 was $407,000,000, to say nothing of her other great and various industries and enterprises. She produced that year 160,000,000 lbs. of the best butter on earth of the value of $32,000,000. The Hawkeye butter ladle has achieved a cunning that challenges all Columbia. The Iowa cow has slowly and painfully yet gradually and grandly worked her way upward to a shining eminence in the eyes of the world. The State of Iowa has on her soil today, if nothing ill befalls it, ninety million dollars' worth of corn. The permanent value of land is estimated by its corn-producing qualities. Of all the products of the earth, corn is king and it reigns in Iowa. Industry and nature have made the State of Iowa a creditor. Her soil has always been solvent and her system of farming does not tend to pauperize it. She is a constant seller, and therefore wants the evidence of the transaction to be unimpeachable. She has more school teachers than any other State except the Empire State and only three and six- tenths per cent of her population are illiterate. The State of Iowa has yielded the grandest dividends on her educational investments. She has become illustrious on account of her enlightenment. She has progressed further from "primitive indifferent tissue" than the land even of Darwin himself, and in her escape from protoplasm and prejudice she is practically out of danger. Marked out in the beginning by the hand of God, bounded on the east and west by the two great rivers of the continent, purified and stimulated by the snows of winter, blessed with copious rainfall in the growing season, with generous soil and stately forests interspersed, no wonder that the dusky aborigines exclaimed when they crossed the Father of Waters, "Iowa; this is the place." Not only did the red man give our State its beautiful and poetic name, but Indian nomenclature runs like a romance throughout the counties and communities. What infinite meaning, what tokens of joy and sadness, of triumph and of tears, of valor and of vanquishment, of life and love and song there may be in these weird, strange words that name today so many of our towns and streams and counties; Allamakee, Chickasaw, Dakota City, Sioux, Pocahontas, Winneshiek, Keosauqua, Sac, Winnebago, Tama, Nodawa, Compeine, Chariton, Commanche, Cherokee, Waukon, Muchakinock, Washta, Monona, Waupeton, Onawa, Keota, Waudina, Ioka, Ottumwa, Oneska, Waucoma, Nishnabotna, Keokuk, Decorah, Wapello, Muscatine, Maquoketa, Mahaska, Ocheyedan, Mississippi, Appanoose, Missouri, Quasqueton, Anamosa, Poweshiek, Pottawattamie, Osceola, Oskaloosa, Wapsipinicon. Ere long some westland genius,moved by the mystic inspiration of the rich and wondrous heritage of Iowa nativity, may sing the song of our legends and traditions, may voice in verse the wondrous story of his illustrious State. Maybe some where among the humble homes where blood and bone and brain grow pure and strong; where simple food with frugal ways feeds wondering minds and drives them craving into nature's secrets and her songs - somewhere along the settler's pathway or by the Indian trail where now the country churchyards grown with uncut grasses hide the forms of sturdy ancestors sleeping all in peaceful ignorance of wayward sons or wondrous progeny - somewhere where rising sun beholds the peasantry at early toil and leaves them in the mystic twilight ere their tasks are done, where odors of the corn and new mown hay and vine-clad hedges by the shadowy roadside linger long into the night-time, as a sweet and sacred balm for tired hearts - somewhere sometime the song of Iowa shall rise and live, and it will not omit the thought of that gifted son who said: "Iowa, the affections of her people, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an inseparable union." And now, my fellow citizens, a word about out great Trans-Mississippi region, the empire of the pioneers and of our country and its future. We have on this side of the Mississippi river an area of 2,143,155 square miles of land, two and a quarter times the area east of the Mississippi. You could put England, Ireland, Scotland, the German Empire, France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain and all of the United States east of the Mississippi into this Trans-Mississippi territory without touching California or Hawaii, and Admiral Dewey would still have the Pacific Ocean and Manila, with rope enough to lasso and hang the last enemy of the United States and civilization. The population east of the Mississippi in 1890 was 45,979,754 having increased eighteen per cent in the ten preceding years. The population west of the Mississippi in 1890 was 16,642,496, an increase of ninety-three per cent in the preceding decade. The wealth per capita east of the Mississippi increased twenty-two and three quarters per cent from 1880 to 1890 and increased sixty-nine and one-half per cent west of the Mississippi in the same decade. The State of Minnesota alone produces nearly one-eighth of the flour of the United States and Texas furnishes one-fifth of the cotton, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri produce nearly half of the entire corn product of the country, over one-fourth of the beef and more than one-third of the pork. No other territory in the world of equal area produces so much of the substantial food of life. Being a perpetual creditor, on account of its vast productions, the western region and all its States have a common interest in the largest possible employment of people in other avocations than producing food, because employment not only creates appetite, but likewise the financial ability to satisfy it. The western region and its many States also have a common interest in honesty. Having given their labor for a large increase in wealth per capita - the largest of any section of the country they are naturally interested in maintaining it. No one has a greater interest in the vested value of a dollar that he who has exchanged his labor and his products for it, or who has a constant surplus to be sold and registers as accumulated wealth. You labor today and accumulate thereby. You may want to rest tomorrow. Your accumulation should be secure. You have been selling all these years. You may wish to buy or build tomorrow. The credit registered by your toil, frugality and prudence should be forever sacred. The West should look to the future and think not only of its gains in one decade, but of the balance that will be to its credit in a hundred years from now. Do not forget that the world must eat and that mankind is multiplying by the millions, and that the Creator is not making any more land on this planet. Hold fast to the heritage which God and the pioneers have left you and to the standard of integrity and value by which it was earned. Let the future buy from you according to that same standard by which you have bought and by which your toil is measured in the present. No one can foretell a limit of the possibilities of this great, producing, half-developed region for the future, with the United States forging to the front in the commerce of the world, claiming its harbors and its coaling stations along the lines of trade in the uttermost parts of the earth and realizing more than ever before that it is a joint proprietor with the older nations of the earth in the great high seas. Doubtless some people are overreckless for expansion and some are so conservative that their intellectual estates seem almost in probate. Douglas Jerrold used to say, "There are some people so conservative that they can never appreciate the new moon out of regard for that venerable institution, the old one," and Wendell Phillips added, "Some people are afraid to sweep off the cobwebs for fear the roof will come down." But there is one thing reasonably certain: America will have a place to land and coal her ships in every quarter of the globe. There has been the age of marble and the age of bronze; ours if the age of commerce and of iron. Commerce will not stop, it undermines the mountains, lays its cables underneath the billows of the sea and scorns the fury of its crests. Commerce is a greedy, moiling, tireless spider catching all the world in a web of iron, and it will weave its wires wherever there is life. It has found the orient and the occident and will never rest until it ties its cables to the poles. America will build a greater navy and will build the Nicaraqua canal and her merchant ships will take her commerce into all the harbors of the world and our battleships shall protect our commerce in its legitimate and rightful course. The American flag shall be visible and revered away from home as it is beloved and venerated here, and under it a free people shall thrive and multiply in peace. If one were to write a prophetic history of the next century and insist upon it with any degree of obstinancy, he would doubtless be deemed insane. If Washington, when he retired from public life, had uttered one-half the truth of events that have since transpired, even Americans would have said that the pressure of official responsibility had rendered the Father of his Country a victim of dementia, and the world would have doubtless pronounced him crazy. If some optimist of New England had said a hundred years ago, as has transpired and been declared since, then, that in the nineteenth century science would pierce through mountains that ancient poetry could never scale, whisper across the ocean, tame the lightning, annihilate space, explode superstition, create light, bottle up sound, he might have been arrested for witchcraft. If at the time when a hundred and eighty crimes were punishable with death, some judge or jurist had recognized the sunrise of civilization and has declared that the time would soon come when the greatest nation of the earth would inflict the death penalty for only two offenses, he might have been deposed for his opinion. If any one were to remind you now of one-half that is gone and foretell one-half the century to come he would be regarded as a dangerous man and rickety, and it would be used against him in the next campaign, no matter on what ticket he should run. The fact is that not many realize the rate at which the world is traveling. Time is so noiseless that it awakens very few. The Rip Van Winkles are as numerous as the Smiths and Browns and Joneses. While we are yet shaking hands with the events of yesterday genius taps us on the shoulder and introduces a stranger and we exclaim, "What impostor is this?" An impossibility, an event of the future. What shall be the events of the coming century? Probably with whatever degree of certainty we are able to comprehend the past and to understand the present, with that degree can we foretell the future. Yesterday and today are the premises of a syllogism whose conclusion is tomorrow. I believe there is a good reason for everything that happens in the universe. The indications are that the great events of the near future shall be in the line of commerce, as I have already indicated, of jurisprudence, of social economy, of science and of art. The tendency of the times is to get rid of long-established humbugs. The wisdom of the past shall be retained, but the wings of progress shall not burdened by its evils and stupidity. So long as toil shall bend the back of man his brain shall question science for its mysteries and so long as mystery remains to form the boundary line of knowledge the scientists will strive and climb and climb and reach beyond those bounds. They will make the electric current turn the wheels of all the world. And in our coming century there will be tumults, strife and riot, but there shall be no ruin. America shall be ruled by law. She will not forget the lessons that her patriots have taught. She will abide by the pilgrim covenant - the legally expressed will of the majority. And in the future, striving and contending with all its ceaseless, tireless energies, in that stately and majestic march of time and toil there will be success and failure, thrift and slothfulness, charity and meanness, hope and doubt, happiness and misery. And some time it will lift up its voice and America shall hear great music - such as she has never known before - and there shall be great artists. Some one has said that America is too busy to make verses, too serious to sing songs; that all her ideas are marshal'ed up in battle array to solve the vital questions of self-government and that all her jewels are wrought into diadems to crown the kings of commerce and the lords of science, whilst poetry is swept away by the tide of activity that swells through every artery and vein of Columbia's land. And all that has been very true. But it shall not always be so. We shall not always take our melodies from old operas nor our designs from ancient frescoes. We shall not always dig our architecture from the ruins of the past nor get our fiction from the brains of dead men. The same conditions that bred the genius of dead empires shall find the muses and the artists for Columbia and a greater glory shall await them, for they shall all be born in freedom. By and by some millionaire, tired of killing pigs and packing pork, will see something beautiful or maybe something sad, and he will endow an institution where poverty can come and dream and mark its pain and thought upon the canvas and the marble. And then some other hoarder of the millions shall grow weary cornering kerosene and corn, and he will hear some voice or see some fair young face with just a little line of care upon its arched and thoughtful brow, and he will add his charity to the goodness and the greatness of America and he will say to genius, "Come, these walls shall keep the winds form shriveling up your tender wings on which you now may rise and soar and out of all your misery that is past make harmonies that will soften all the sorrows of mankind, revive the melodies that have been dying through all the centuries of time with the pain of silence and out of the inspiration that may come to you write rhapsodies that will lift and glorify the thoughts and minds of men and find the very throne of God." Emerson declared a little while before he died: "We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are kept only at tom cock crowing and the morning star." The future will verify Emerson. The greatest alliance ever projected in history will be the alliance of American efforts and American interests. Into the opening gateway of the twentieth century, hand in hand, shall spring our king of commerce and the queen of industry, the Sphinx-eyed scientist and his bride of art, the sturdy son of agriculture and the dreaming child of song, and their thought and toil and song shall honor and inspire the human ace and make our country great - essentially, exquisitely, magnificently great. ___________________________ The formal exercises were concluded by a dress parade on the plaza by the Cadet Battalion of the Iowa Agricultural College, and a reception at the Iowa State Building. [SR]
