The Great Southwest
By CHARLES M. HARVEY.
The Marvelous Development, Agricultural, Industrial, and Commercial, That Is Now in Progress in the States of Texas and Arkansas and the Adjoining Territories.
Revised from Munsey’s Magazine and brought up to date by the author for The Scrap Book.
Editor’s Note.—In the growth of interest in the great States west of the Mississippi River the Southwest has until lately been commonly neglected. Gold sent men rushing first to the mountain States. Then grain led them to the prairie States. With the more fertile wheat lands fully occupied, there has of late been a tendency to the Canadian Northwest. But at the same time a remarkable development, commercial and industrial, as well as agricultural, has been going on in the Southwest. The progress made in Texas during the last few years is simply astounding.
Unknown to the great mass of the people of the United States, a new empire is being planted in the Southwest. Much is written about the thousands who are crossing the Canadian frontier and settling in Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Alberta; but very little is heard about the tens of thousands from the Northwest and the Middle West, from the East and Europe, who are moving into Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
The officials of the railways running into this latter region could tell a little of this story if they wished to. Last year, from April to November, something like a million dollars was paid into the treasuries of the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fé, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, the Iron Mountain, the Missouri Pacific, the St. Louis and San Francisco, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railways, for fares by seekers of homes in the Southwest. About one-third of these prospectors become permanent settlers. The money put into farms, into manufacturing industries, and into business of various sorts in that region, according to the estimates of railway officials and of immigration agents, has amounted during the past twelve months to fully two hundred million dollars.