ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ON THE EVENING OF JANUARY IS, 1906.

BY HON. NORRIS BROWN. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF NEBRASKA.

BY E. L. LOMAX.

   Throughout the state there is already one mile of railroad to every fourteen square miles.
   Vast regions of fertile country have thus been opened up to settlers, and great areas of land brought by rail into contact with metropolitan centers. Prosperous cities have sprung up in every section traversed by this line.
   The state in thirty-nine years has grown from 122,000 to 1,068,901 inhabitants, with a proportionate increase in material and other property. Take the following as an example of the surprising growth of Nebraska:

   The assessed valuation of the State is over $170,000,000; there were 120,000 farms under cultivation.
   It has now nearly 5,600 miles of railways, which is greater than those of Siberia and Japan combined. It is first in intelligence of its citizenship; second in health; third in corn growing and sugar beets; fourth in oats; fifth in wheat; and sixth in hay.
   Its cattle products in 1900 were 2,206,792; sheep 322,057; hogs about 1,500,000.
   In 1900 its smelting work products were $28,000,000; beet sugar, $520,301.

   The estimated value of South Omaha products alone in 1901 is $14,000,000 greater than that of the whole state in 1890. Its true wealth is estimated in 1900 at $1,282,246,800, as against $385,000,000 in 1880, an increase of 233 per cent.
   Its surplus products in 1900 are valued at $225,555,160.89.
   The beginning of all this, the phenomenal growth, dates from the commencement of the Union Pacific R. R.
   In a brief outline of this character it would be impossible as well as unnecessary to describe the early history of this great railroad. It is now a part of the history of the United States, and everybody knows something of it, but in order to appreciate what the Union Pacific has done, it is well to remember that the expanse of territory now called Nebraska was in what our forefathers called "The Great American Desert," which spread its arid, lifeless mantle of land over thousands of square miles of the. great western basin of the Mississippi. In latitude north and south, and in longitude east and west, the awful barrenness extended without limit. Civilization had hardly approached it on any side. The idea of ever crossing this expanse was regarded as well-nigh impossible. In the midst of this seeming hopeless sterility, Nebraska has sprung up - a state of magnificent extent, seventy-seven thousand square miles, or 49,000,000 acres in area!
   It could be spread over all New England, and yet have 11,000 square miles to spare.
   In this stupendous transformation, the Union Pacific has been a mighty factor. Let me cite merely a few of the things this great railroad has done for Nebraska. Take, for instance, the economic importance of irrigation. The distribution of water by artificial methods, better known as irrigation, has received such an impetus during the past few years that it has at last resolved itself into a national proposition. All western and some of the southern States have established state departments of irrigation, Nebraska along with the others. Not that this state could not produce crops without resorting to artificial methods, for the volume of rainfall has increased and continues to increase of late years, but the soil

of Nebraska is suitable for irrigation, and farmers have found that it has multiplied the productive capacity of soils.
   The Mormons seem to have started irrigation in the West when they conveyed the waters from the mountain streams of Utah and distributed them over the valleys and tablelands.
   For years after this there was no progress made in the matter of irrigation. In fact, the matter was hardly thought of by residents east of the Rocky Mountains until a few years ago, when the Union Pacific look the matter up and urged it upon the settlers of the western portion of the state. For a time it was slow work, but by being persistent and advocating it in the press and in pamphlets, it soon took root, and as a result today more than 1,500,000 acres of land lying along "the Overland Route," beyond Columbus can be flooded by the waters of the Platte that are tributary.
   The first place where irrigation was tried in Nebraska was along the valley of the Platte. The water was diverted from the natural channel and conducted over the fields. The result was marvelous. That year, while, generally speaking there was an average supply of moisture - as much as in many of the other western states- - the crop yield on the irrigated land was nearly two-fold of that upon land where nature only supplied the moisture. The result of this experiment induced the passenger department of the Union Pacific to urge upon farmers the necessity of constructing irrigation ditches. Not only did the Union Pacific urge this. It assisted in bringing settlers at reduced rates and in many other ways. At this time about fifty irrigation companies are operating in Nebraska near the main line of the Union Pacific.
   Taking Dawson county is example, it will be found one of the most prosperous counties in the state. The main line of the Union Pacific traverses this county.
   The following figures show what Dawson county has done in the way of irrigation:

regularly. This money has amounted to millions of dollars during the past thirty years, and has been spent chiefly in Nebraska, it large portion of it going to the merchants and the tradesmen and others along its line. When you consider that the Union Pacific has been doing business since 1865, that the vast sums of money referred to have been paid out year after year, you may then get some idea of what it has done and is doing toward the support of the people of Nebraska.
   It is not too much to state that for more than thirty years the Union Pacific expenditure in Nebraska has been far greater than any other corporation doing business in the state.
   Let me answer the question, "What has the Union Pacific done for Nebraska?" by pointing to some of the coming cities of the commonwealth, Fremont with a population of 8,000; Lincoln, 40,000; Columbus, 3,600; Grand Island, 7,500; Norfolk, 4,000; Kearney, 6,000; North Platte, 4,000; not omitting South Omaha with a population of 26,000, the third largest packing center in the United States, and hundreds of other thriving cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, which, by the magic hand of the Union Pacific alone, sprang into existence. But for the Union Pacific, the pioneer railroad company, these towns would not exist. But for the Union Pacific, we might be crossing the plains and climbing the mountains to the Pacific Coast in covered wagons or slow trains of less ambitious roads, instead of in the palatial cars of "The Overland Route."
   The Union Pacific has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in advertising the state of Nebraska, not only in the United States, but all over the world. Not only in our new possessions but in the cities, towns, and villages of Europe has the Union Pacific placed Nebraska before the emigrant or traveler, as a desirable spot, by maps and pamphlets, by magazines, newspapers, and sundry other ways.
   The following extract from a report of the Senate committee on Pacific Railroads, dated February 19, 1869, shows that the

Union Pacific has been instrumental in building up the state of Nebraska since its earliest days.
   "It can be shown by official records," says the report before mentioned, "that the Kansas Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Central Pacific have been instrumental in adding hundreds of thousands to the population of the states of Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, California, and Nevada. Minnesota owes to the rapidity and cheapness of transportation by rail her best immigrants - over 100,000 Germans, Norwegians, and Swedes. Every foreign laborer landing on our shores is economically valued at $1,500. He rarely comes empty-handed. The superintendent of the Castle Garden (New York) Immigration Depot has stated that careful inquiry gave an average of $100, almost entirely in coin, as the money property of each man, woman, and child, landed in New York. From 1830, the commencement of our railway building, to 1860 the number of foreign emigrants was 4,787,924. At that ratio of coin wealth possessed by each, the total addition to the stock of money in the United States made by the increase to population was $478,792,400. Well might Dr. Engel, the Prussian statistician, say: Estimated in money, the Prussian state lost during the sixteen years by emigrants a sum of more than 180,000,000 thalers. It must be added that those who are resolved to try their strength abroad are by no means our weakest elements; their continuous stream may he compared to a well-equipped army, which, leaving the country annually, is lost to it forever. A ship loaded with emigrants is often looked upon as an object of compassion; it is nevertheless in a political-economical point of view generally more valuable than the richest cargo of gold dust.
   The words of Sidney Dillon uttered many years ago are not inappropriate now. He said: "The growth of the United States west of the Alleghenies during the past fifty years is due not so much to free institutions or climate or the fertility of the soil as to railways. If the institutions and climate and soil had not been favorable to the development of commonwealths railways would not have been constructed, but if rail

ways had not been invented the freedom and natural advantages of our western states would have beckoned to human immigration and industry in vain. But increased facilities for travel are among the smaller benefits conferred by the railways. The most beneficent function of the railway is that of a carrier of freight. What would it cost for a man to carry a ton of wheat one mile? What would it cost for a horse to do the same? The railway does it at a cost of less than a cent. This brings Nebraska Colorado, Dakota, and Minnesota into direct relation with hungry and opulent Liverpool, and makes subsistence easier and cheaper throughout the civilized world. The world should, therefore, thank the railway for the opportunity to buy wheat, but none the less should the West thank the railway for the opportunity to sell wheat.
   No fact among all the great politico-economical facts that have illustrated the world's history since history began to be written is so full of human interest or deals with such masses of mankind since the railway opened to the seaboard these immense solitudes.
   Within fifty years over 30,000,000 people have been transplanted to or produced upon vast regions of hitherto uninhabited and comparatively unknown territory, where they are now living in comfort and affluence and enjoying a degree of civilization second to none in the world, and greatly superior to any that is known in Europe outside of the capitals. This could not have happened had it not been for the railways, and is a helper in developing this great area the Union Pacific has been a very potent factor.

   When the vanguard of the whole occupation are the pioneers first planted foot in Nebraska, a majority of them had come from the timber lands of their ancestral states. When they looked out upon vast oceans of treeless prairie lands, it was hard for them to understand how it was possible for them to be permanently occupied and subdued to the home-making uses of agriculture. They never thought of planting trees except for ornament and shade, where they might grow by proper nursing for their rude little huts. How could trees grow on a "desert"? How could people wait for trees to be planted and grown, even if they could be made to grow at all?
   As was quite natural, they were moved by instinct to dream and dig, for coal. Holes in the hills on the Nebraska side of the Missouri river were bored in plenty from north to south, within the state boundaries, and there were more coal discoveries in those early days of blind hopes and doubting expectation than could be easily counted for numbers. Nor have we done making these coal discoveries yet. Large sums of money have been sunk in these vain quests for coal deposits of sufficient depth of vein and quantity to be made available for use. Veins of coal would, it is true, be frequently found, which would give good ground for confidence that they would supply enough of the black diamonds, for commercial use. But they were only surface veins, and not the real coal measures. These surface veins would be 2 1/2 to 3 feet in thickness, counting the shale, and would yield fine coal, rich in carbon and heating power. These coal discoveries have only led to a large harvest of disappointed hopes and a large loss of money. The late J. Sterling Morton was an early and conspicuous victim of these illusive coal discoveries in the territorial period, one of which was made on the Nebraska City farm. Dr. F. V. Hayden, the famous geologist who made the U. S. survey of the territory, was called in to examine the coal mine. Anxious

as he was on all accounts to make a favorable report, and especially on Mr. Morton's account, he told Mr. Morton the sad scientific truth about it, which more than forty years of time have confirmed. I doubt whether Mr. Morton lived quite long enough to forgive Hayden for telling him the truth. Professor Hayden always held, with Meek, that the coal beds which appear in Iowa dip down very deep in Nebraska, perhaps 3,000 feet. The nearest we ever came to getting a real substantial bed of coal was when Mr. P. E. Iler put down a boring for anything that might be found, oil, gas, coal, or what not, at his old distillery in Omaha. A vein of coal was struck at a depth of several hundred feet which was, in fact, highly promising. Pennsylvania experts were brought out who said so. I was interested in a small way, but I did not forget the warning of Hayden. There were high hopes and much excitement. All Mr. Iler got was a supply of artesian water, which was very valuable to the distillery of which he was then the owner. But Peter's coal mine, like all the rest of them, "petered out."
   When, in 1855, 1 went with the army to Ft. Pierre, dreams of coal and of cedar and pine timber were excited by vague reports of these products on the upper Missouri, and I was asked to look out for them. My point of observation from the decks of a steamboat did not enable me to see anything but the color of coal, where slate and shale had been exposed by the wash of the river. We had heard of islands rich with cedar. I did not see them. As to pine timber, ditto. Reports were circulated of vast deposits of coal through Indians and traders, although I saw none or it. These reports were founded on fact, and if is there in unlimited quantity, to the great advantage of South Dakota. It is the lignite formation. A proposition was made a few years ago to some Omaha capitalists to bring this coal to the Nebraska markets by barging it down the river, but it was ascertained that the coal deteriorated by exposure. It is said to contain more carbon than the Wyoming product which Hayden discovered during the Union Pacific construction. It was in 1867, 1 think,

Hayden brought down the first specimens of Wyoming coal to Omaha, in a gunny sack, and dumped them on the floor of the editorial apartment of the Omaha Daily Herald, which then called itself "a strictly religious journal, price $10 a year, invariably in advance."
   This, in brief, is a mere outline of the brave efforts and uniform failures that were made in the past, and which still continue at longer or shorter intervals, to uncover coal measures on Nebraska soil. Behind these efforts and giving them energy have been the strong motives of individual gain, alluring visions of sudden and large wealth, and also, be it said, a higher, if not a more effective force of public spirit, striving for the advancement of the general welfare of the "young commonwealth." Nothing could be more commendable in motive on the part of ambitious citizens, however misdirected may have been their labors and sacrifices. As the editor of the Omaha Daily Herald, in the cream of my manhood life for many years, I used to share with others a keen regret that Nebraska could not boast the advantage of mineral wealth in any form to reinforce its prodigious capacity for agriculture. It was I who first said in the columns of that somewhat busy little newspaper, "Nebraska's an agricultural state, or it is nothing.", Time and events have confirmed that judgment, and its implied forecast of its sole dependence for development, population, and power, and I may now repeat the retrain with variations, so to say, that enable me to declare that Nebraska's an agricultural state, and wouldn't be a mineral state if it could, even if coal measures were within 500 feet of the surface soil in a general distribution over the state. In other words, when all of our people were deploring the want of coal, they did not appreciate then, and may not now, that it would be a losing trade to swap our fertile and inexhaustible corn, winter wheat, and other cereal-producing lands, for coal lands, or any other mineral lands. Corn beats coal. Coal can be had for the asking from contiguous states by payment of prices for it that are little more than they would be if the state abounded in coal. But what more?

   I am writing this paper at a time when a mighty movement for the improvement of our great rivers, the Missouri, greatest of all, by federal appropriations which will make our great Nebraska boundary line on the east as freely and safely navigable by boat and barge of great capacity as the lower Mississippi, to whose broad waters it is the most generous contributor. Then will come the day and hour when the lignite of the Dakotas will be safely housed and swiftly brought to out, eager wharves at slight cost over mining, in endless supply for all uses, in easy competition with Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri, and other coals.
   I have another vision imparting more than shadowy forms to dreams of the future greatness of the Missouri valley, the Nile of the United States, and two times as rich as the historic river of Egypt, which are not all dreams. Major Chittenden of the U. S. A. says that this Missouri river kingdom of ours is capable of supporting a population of 25,000,000 people. Not pretending to know the half that this accomplished officer does of the great valley, I am bound to agree with him. But to ever realize such results, or any great results from dense populations in this valley, one condition precedent must be deemed vital, namely, the broad acres of this vast natural garden of agricultural wealth must be defended and protected from destructive invasions and overflow from the mad waters of the river. Its improvement for navigation means the certainty of this protection as an almost necessary incident of the work of deepening and widening the channel for boats and barges; at any rate, the people of the West, whose geographical heart Nebraska is, will not fail to redeem and secure, at the hands of the nation, that which is most certain to increase its population, wealth, and power beyond the wildest dreams of men.

© 2000, 2001 Pam Rietsch, T&C Miller