Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/402

 382 erences are thrown out to former glories of a dazzling sort which it is sometimes difficult to credit, though a railroad naturally effects great innovations in trade. To the ordinary observer it would appear that the introduction of a splendidly equipped railway, even if it distribute its blessings a little unequally at first, and its tariff be high, must be a great and permanent advantage to everything remote as well as near. For the first time an adequate means has been afforded for the transport of immigrants and supplies through the whole length of the State.

The Southern Pacific Railway has completed connections which give it a transcontinental route from San Francisco, across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, to New Orleans. Immigrants are to be brought in by steamer from Liverpool to New Orleans, and thence by rail at a rate not to exceed that to the central West. The fares to California heretofore have been almost prohibitive, which is one of the reasons why so rich a country contains as yet less than a million of people. The languid movement hither of the valuable class of immigration which pours into the West, though ascribed by some alarmists to the presence of the Chinese, is due to the cost of travel and the lack of cheap lands for settlement. The Chinese are certainly not rivals in the matter of land, since they acquire little or none of it.

The new opportunities opened to transportation, the depression of the mining interest, and rapid increase of the Chinese, have awakened of late an exceptional interest in white immigration. A committee of some of the most prominent persons in the State has opened an inquiry into the most effectual means of promoting it. It will no doubt set forth more clearly than has ever been done before an account of such territory as is open to set-