official care. In 1865 a ship from Honolulu carried sugar, molasses, and fruits from Hawaii to the Oregon port of Astoria. The next year a vessel from Hongkong brought rice, mats, and tea from China. An era of lucrative trade was opened. The annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the addition of the Philippines at the same time, and the participation of American troops in the suppression of the Boxer rebellion in Peking in 1900, were but signs and symbols of American power on the Pacific. Conservation and the Land Problem. The disappearance of the frontier also brought new and serious problems to the governments of the states and the nation. The people of the whole United States suddenly were forced to realize that there was a limit to the rich, new land to exploit and to the forests and minerals awaiting the ax and the pick. Then arose in America the questions which had long perplexed the countries of the Old World — the scientific use of the soils and conservation of natural resources. Hitherto the government had followed the easy path of giving away arable land and selling forest and mineral lands at low prices. Now it had to face far more difficult and complex problems. It also had to consider questions of land tenure again, especially if the ideal of a nation of home-owning farmers was to be maintained. While there was plenty of land for every man or woman who wanted a home on the soil, it made little difference if single landlords or companies got possession of millions of acres, if a hundred men in one western river valley owned 17,000,000 acres; but when the good land for small homesteads was all gone, then was raised the real issue. At the opening of the twentieth century the nation, which a hundred years before had land and natural resources apparently without limit, was compelled to enact law after law conserving its forests and minerals. Then it was that the great state of California, on the very border of the continent, felt constrained to enact a land settlement measure providing government assistance in an effort to break up large holdings into small lots and to make it easy for actual settlers to acquire small farms. America was passing into a new epoch. References Henry Inman, The Old Santa Fé Trail. R. I. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West (1877). C. H. Shinn, The Story of the Mine. Cy Warman, The Story of the Railroad. Emerson Hough, The Story of the Cowboy. H. H. Bancroft is the author of many works on the West but his writings will be found only in the larger libraries. Joseph Schafer, History of the Pacific Northwest (ed. 1918). Questions 1. Name the states west of the Mississippi in 1865. 2. In what manner was the rest of the western region governed? 3. How far had settlement been carried? 4. What were the striking physical features of the West? 5. How was settlement promoted after 1865? 6. Why was admission to the union so eagerly sought? 7. Explain how politics became involved in the creation of new states. 8. Did the West rapidly become like the older sections of the country? 9. What economic peculiarities did it retain or develop? 10. How did the federal government aid in western agriculture? 11. How did the development of the West affect the East? The South? 12. What relation did the opening of the great grain areas of the West bear to the growth of America's commercial and financial power? 13. State some of the new problems of the West. 14. Discuss the significance of American expansion to the Pacific Ocean. Research Topics The Passing of the Wild West. Own Times, pp. 100-124. - Haworth, The United States in Our The Indian Question. — Sparks, National Development (American Nation Series), pp. 265-281. The Chinese Question. Sparks, National Development, pp. 229–250; Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. VIII, pp. 180–196. The Railway Age. - Schafer, History of the Pacific Northwest, pp. 230245; E. V. Smalley, The Northern Pacific Railroad; Paxson, The New Nation (Riverside Series), pp. 20-26, especially the map on p. 23, and pp. 142-148. Agriculture and Business. Schafer, Pacific Northwest, pp. 246-289. W. E. Smythe, The Conquest of Arid Studies of Individual Western States. Consult any good encyclopedia. CHAPTER XIX DOMESTIC ISSUES BEFORE THE COUNTRY (1865–1897) FOR thirty years after the Civil War the leading political parties, although they engaged in heated presidential campaigns, were not sharply and clearly opposed on many matters of vital significance. During none of that time was there a clash of opinion over specific issues such as rent the country in 1800 when Jefferson rode a popular wave to victory, or again in 1828 when Jackson's western hordes came sweeping into power. The Democrats, who before 1860 definitely opposed protective tariffs, federal banking, internal improvements, and heavy taxes, now spoke cautiously on all these points. The Republicans, conscious of the fact that they had been a minority of the voters in 1860 and warned by the early loss of the House of Representatives in 1874, also moved with considerable prudence among the perplexing problems of the day. Again and again the votes in Congress showed that no clear line separated all the Democrats from all the Republicans. There were Republicans who favored tariff reductions and "cheap money." There were Democrats who looked with partiality upon high protection or with indulgence upon the contraction of the currency. Only on matters relating to the coercion of the South was the division between the parties fairly definite; this could be readily accounted for on practical as well as sentimental grounds. After all, the vague criticisms and proposals that found their way into the political platforms did but reflect the confusion of mind prevailing in the country. The fact that, out of the eighteen years between 1875 and 1893, the Democrats held the House of Representatives for fourteen years while the Republicans had every President but one showed that the voters, like the politicians, were in a state of indecision. Hayes had a Democratic House during his entire term and a Democratic Senate for two years of the four. Cleveland was confronted by a belligerent Republican majority in the Senate during his first administration; and at the same time was supported by a Democratic majority in the House. Harrison was sustained by continuous Republican successes in Senatorial elections; but in the House he had the barest majority from 1889 to 1891 and lost that altogether at the election held in the middle of his term. The opinion of the country was evidently unsettled and fluctuating. It was still distracted by memories of the dead past and uncertain as to the trend of the future. THE CURRENCY QUESTION Nevertheless these years of muddled politics and nebulous issues proved to be a period in which social forces were gathering for the great campaign of 1896. Except for three new features the railways, the trusts, and the trade unions the subjects of debate among the people were the same as those that had engaged their attention since the foundation of the republic: the currency, the national debt, banking, the tariff, and taxation. Debtors and the Fall in Prices. For many reasons the currency question occupied the center of interest. As of old, the farmers and planters of the West and South were heavily in debt to the East for borrowed money secured by farm mortgages; and they counted upon the sale of cotton, corn, wheat, and hogs to meet interest and principal when due. During the war, the Western farmers had been able to dispose of their produce at high prices and thus discharge their debts with comparative ease; but after the war prices declined. Wheat that sold at two dollars a bushel in 1865 brought sixtyfour cents twenty years later. The meaning of this for the farmers in debt and nearly three-fourths of them were in |