The Push for a Western Migration

Evidently, the present is a fitting time for energetic and decisive efforts to draw hither an influx of settlers and capitalists. These are coming quite as fast as we can expect, but the incoming wave never will become a something great until some systematic plan is adopted to direct it toward us. The situation in the older States is one of exhaustion—not only of the supply of new land, but of the soil itself. The resources of this Territory must be put into requisition: its timber, fish, coal, and grazing grounds.

There is an unequal distribution of property. It is the law for accumulated capital to draw wealth in upon itself, as a snowball grows larger as it rolls. But there is a limit to this. The wealthy State becomes congested from too much concentration, and there must be redistribution and circulation, or death. While New York reports four million people and seven thousand millions of property, Washington Territory with seventy thousand square miles of land can report only fifty thousand people and fifteen millions of property. It is certain that the returns of each succeeding year will show a different proportion.