South Carolina, or Maryland. If New
Mexico and Arizona should be united, they will have about half a million
inhabitants. In area they will form the second State in the Union,
inferior only to Texas.

The Growth of the Gulf Ports.

Through the growing popularity of the Gulf ports as outlets for the
country's merchandise, the Southwest is bound to be a great gainer. As
compared with 1904, there was a larger gain in the exports by the ports of
the Gulf of Mexico in 1905 than the Atlantic ports showed.

This gain is due to several causes. More and more the great railways are
establishing terminals at the Gulf outlets. From the chief productive
centers of the Mississippi Valley the distances to these points are
shorter than to the Atlantic, and the grades are easier. In population,
productivity, and general industrial and commercial importance, the
southern end of the vast Mississippi Valley is growing with
disproportionate rapidity. The Southwest's pull on the population center
of the United States is shown by the fact that during the decade ending
with 1900 that point moved fourteen miles westward and three miles
southward.

The center of the country's production of wheat and of oats, and the
center of the total area in the country's farms, are now west of the
Mississippi. The center of the production of cotton, now on the western
verge of the State of Mississippi, and the center of the production of
corn, now in the western part of Illinois, will cross the big river before
1910. More than sixty-five per cent of the country's exports already
originate west of the Mississippi.

Galveston and the Panama Canal.

For all the region between the Mississippi and the continental divide of
the Rockies, the Texas ports, chiefly Galveston, will be the natural
outlets to the sea. In aggregate value of merchandise exports Galveston
has left Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston far behind. In
the last calendar year she stood third among American ports in the value
of her merchandise shipments, New York and New Orleans being the only two
ahead of her. She has gained so rapidly on New Orleans in recent years,
and the Crescent City led her by so slight a margin in 1905, that for the
twelve months ending with next December it seems safe to predict that the
Texas seaport will take second place.

Much has been said of the benefits which the Panama Canal will bring to
the United States by giving us a short cut to the Pa