It was favorably reported from the Committee on Territories in the House during this Congress. and I am not sure asto what its present statusis. It would be exceedingly unfair in the case of any one of these Western Territories. and especially in the case of Dakota. to judge her population by a census taken five years ago. All of the conditions of emigration have changed. The emigrant who is seeking a home in the West does not now use as his vehicle a packtrain. a Conestoga wagon. or even abroadhorn. The great bulk of the people who have gone into Dakota have gone upon the steamear. many of them within sight of the home which they were to take up under the homestead laws of the United States. The steamcar. and even the palace Pullman car. is now the medium for transporting our enterprising people to their homes in the West. whereas in the case of the State of Indiana it was thirty years after the admission of that State into the Union before a single mile of railroad was built in its territory. The Ohio River and some of its tributary streams were the channels of emigration. Travel was slow. toilsome. perilous. But now the emigrant reaches his home in Dakota or in Montana surrounded by all those appliances of luxury in traveling which we enjoy here in passing from the capital to the great commercial metropolis. Therefore it is. as we shall see. that the ratio of emigration and settlemient in these new States outstrips almost beyond description the settlements of the earlier States in the West. Looking at some of the statistics upon this question. I find by the Railroad Manual of 1883 that Dakota had eleven railroads and nearly 2.500 miles of completed railway.
Keywords matched
emigrant emigration