elopment are to be
settled. It has more in common with all parts of the nation than has any
other region. It understands the East, as the East does not understand
the West. The White City which recently rose on the shores of Lake
Michigan fitly typified its growing culture as well as its capacity for
great achievement. Its complex and representative industrial
organization and business ties, its determination to hold fast to what
is original and good in its Western experience, and its readiness to
learn and receive the results of the experience of other sections and
nations, make it an open-minded and safe arbiter of the American
destiny.

In the long run the "Center of the Republic" may be trusted to strike a
wise balance between the contending ideals. But she does not deceive
herself; she knows that the problem of the West means nothing less than
the problem of working out original social ideals and social adjustments
for the American nation.

FOOTNOTES:

[205:1] _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1896. Reprinted by permission.

[208:1] Charles Eliot Norton.

[218:1] The present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin.

[220:1] [Written in the year of Mr. Bryan's first presidential
campaign.]

VIII

DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE[222:1]

The Old Northwest is a name which tells of the vestiges which the march
of settlement across the American continent has left behind it. The New
Northwest fronts the watery labyrinth of Puget Sound and awaits its
destiny upon the Pacific. The Old Northwest, the historic Northwest
Territory, is now the new Middle Region of the United States. A century
ago it was a wilderness, broken only by a few French settlements and the
straggling American hamlets along the Ohio and its tributaries, while,
on the shore of Lake Erie, Moses Cleaveland had just led a handful of
men to the Connecticut Reserve. To-day it is the keystone of the
American Commonwealth. Since 1860 the center of population of the United
States has rested within its limits, and the center of manufacturing in
the nation lies eight miles from President McKinley's Ohio home. Of the
seven men who have been elected to the presidency of the United States
since 1860, six have come from the Old Northwest, and the seventh came
from the kindred region of western New York. The congressional
Representatives from these five States of the Old Northwest already
outnumber those from the old Middle States,