en. Moreover it helped to expand far into the
Mississippi Valley the industrial area once confined to the Northern
seaboard states and to transform the region of the Great Lakes into an
industrial empire. Herein lies the explanation of the growth of
mid-western cities after 1865. Chicago, with its thirty-five railways,
tapped every locality of the West and South. To the railways were added
the water routes of the Lakes, thus creating a strategic center for
industries. Long foresight carried the McCormick reaper works to
Chicago before 1860. From Troy, New York, went a large stove plant. That
was followed by a shoe factory from Massachusetts. The packing industry
rose as a matter of course at a point so advantageous for cattle raisers
and shippers and so well connected with Eastern markets.

To the opening of the Far West also the Lake region was indebted for a
large part of that water-borne traffic which made it "the Mediterranean
basin of North America." The produce of the West and the manufactures of
the East poured through it in an endless stream. The swift growth of
shipbuilding on the Great Lakes helped to compensate for the decline of
the American marine on the high seas. In response to this stimulus
Detroit could boast that her shipwrights were able to turn out a ten
thousand ton Leviathan for ore or grain about "as quickly as carpenters
could put up an eight-room house." Thus in relation to the Far West the
old Northwest territory--the wilderness of Jefferson's time--had taken
the position formerly occupied by New England alone. It was supplying
capital and manufactures for a vast agricultural empire West and South.

=America on the Pacific.=--It has been said that the Mediterranean Sea
was the center of ancient civilization; that modern civilization has
developed on the shores of the Atlantic; and that the future belongs to
the Pacific. At any rate, the sweep of the United States to the shores
of the Pacific quickly exercised a powerful influence on world affairs
and it undoubtedly has a still greater significance for the future.

Very early regular traffic sprang up between the Pacific ports and the
Hawaiian Islands, China, and Japan. Two years before the adjustment of
the Oregon controversy with England, namely in 1844, the United States
had established official and trading relations with China. Ten years
later, four years after the admission of California to the union, the
barred door of Japan was forced op