rowsing
sheep were broken up into small plots. The cowboy and ranchman vanished.
In their place rose the prosperous community--a community unlike the
township of Iowa or the industrial center of the East. Its intensive
tillage left little room for hired labor. Its small holdings drew
families together in village life rather than dispersing them on the
lonely plain. Often the development of water power in connection with
irrigation afforded electricity for labor-saving devices and lifted many
a burden that in other days fell heavily upon the shoulders of the
farmer and his family.

MINING AND MANUFACTURING IN THE WEST

=Mineral Resources.=--In another important particular the Far West
differed from the Mississippi Valley states. That was in the
predominance of mining over agriculture throughout a vast section.
Indeed it was the minerals rather than the land that attracted the
pioneers who first opened the country. The discovery of gold in
California in 1848 was the signal for the great rush of prospectors,
miners, and promoters who explored the valleys, climbed the hills,
washed the sands, and dug up the soil in their feverish search for gold,
silver, copper, coal, and other minerals. In Nevada and Montana the
development of mineral resources went on all during the Civil War. Alder
Gulch became Virginia City in 1863; Last Chance Gulch was named Helena
in 1864; and Confederate Gulch was christened Diamond City in 1865. At
Butte the miners began operations in 1864 and within five years had
washed out eight million dollars' worth of gold. Under the gold they
found silver; under silver they found copper.

Even at the end of the nineteenth century, after agriculture was well
advanced and stock and sheep raising introduced on a large scale,
minerals continued to be the chief source of wealth in a number of
states. This was revealed by the figures for 1910. The gold, silver,
iron, and copper of Colorado were worth more than the wheat, corn, and
oats combined; the copper of Montana sold for more than all the cereals
and four times the price of the wheat. The interest of Nevada was also
mainly mining, the receipts from the mineral output being $43,000,000 or
more than one-half the national debt of Hamilton's day. The yield of the
mines of Utah was worth four or five times the wheat crop; the coal of
Wyoming brought twice as much as the great wool clip; the minerals of
Arizona were totaled at $43,000,000 as against a wool cli