The average Easterner feels, and_probably with justice, that he is being hardly treated by all this silver agitation, and that his condition waxes more straitened from year to year. From a pinnacle of business activity, the cities of the West have been thrust down into the valley of all but hopeless stagnation. The leading centres, San Francisco and Salt Lake City, may be excepted. They are feeling probably no more than their share of the hard times. But other and smaller places, less independent of outside fluctuations are simply prostrate, and the mass what lien behind the hardship that
inextinguishable free silver movement, and behind all the growing sectional mutterings of the West against the East. The reaction from local ins," the depreciation of silver, and the general scarcity of money, have combined to effect the financial ruin of a majority of the formerly well-to-do real-estate owners in these Western cities.
In places like Seattle and Tacoma, where four years ago there was on the streets the rush and bustle of life like that in New York, whole blocks are now vacant. Banks which employed at one time twenty clerks are now over-sup-lied with five, and are said to be earning not enough to pay their rents. Nor is this only true in the North-West. In the extreme south of California, the erstwhile famous land of flowers and orange groves, the same condition of things prevails. In the suburbs of San Diego you may wander about in an undisturbed wild-ernes of cactus and sage-brush, with scarcely house in sight, and stumble across stakes marking the house-lots that ten years ago were bought and sold with feverish rapidity, and that now are worthless. The superb land-locked harbour of San Diego, with its long-reaching piers where a dozen steamers might discharge at once, is generally absolutely empty, and it is a rare event for more than two craft of any kind to be within the bay together. It should not be forgotten that there is pathos and ly behind all this, and that no country can long stand such overwhelm reverses of fortune without serious disturbance following. Much the same conditions maintain among the farmers and fruit ranchers, even in the paradise of Southern California. To one who rides through the country on the railway, and sees the well-kept ranches with their rose-covered cottages, the orchards laden with oranges, - or the vines in season half hidden with clustered grapes, it would seem as though the fruit-grower's lot must bea pleasant one. He would be a bold man, however, who while till living in the State would dare proclaim the truth to outsiders, who are always viewed as possible investors. The writer was visiting not long ago one of the most beautiful of the fruit ranches in a valley foremost in the region for its wealth and productiveness. On congratulating the owner on the extraordinary yield of the wide-stretching aeres of vineyards, he smiled grimly and said: "Yes this is a wonderful valley for grapes. But it costs me to prepare the Taisins for the market three cents a pound. How much do you suppose I have received for them a pot ind, for the last two years One and a half cents."
Itis not surprising that many of the farmers in that section have ruthlessly plowed up their vines, as, indeed, they have plowed up citrus orchards in other sections, and planted hay (alfalfa), only to see it wither in turn from lack of sufficient irrigation. Just where improvement is to come from, none can tell you. They hint a feebly at good times in store when McKinley is President; but how so roseate a future is to rise from so commonplace a change, few are bold enough to suggest.
Meantime, new conditions are transporting the time-honoured Western boom to some districts in the effete East. The accounts of town-making there, from time to time, recall the palmiest days of Western growth. Here, for example is the way they are taking to create a new industrial city at Niagara. It is to be called Model City, and is to be called into being by a syndicate of capitalists controlling some of the new:
utilised water power of the great cataract, The tract of land owned by the company covers some forty-six square miles in the Niagara district. The originator of the scheme, Pres. Love, declares that they propose to create the greatest manufacturing city in the world, and to do it quickly by giving away hundreds of acres of ground free for factory sites, and free power for forty years to every factory employing one man for each horse-power donated." We "propose also to furnish immediate employment to one thousand labourers who are heads of families, on condition that they locate here and establish homes for themselves." Tales like this do not allay the discontent of the Western farmer, working sixteen hours a day for the smallest wages a man can receive and live.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.