akes
were revolutionized after 1886, to supply the needs of commerce between
the East and the newly developed lands of the Middle West; the tonnage
doubled; wooden ships gave way to steel; sailing vessels yielded to
steam; and huge docks, derricks, and elevators, triumphs of mechanical
skill, were constructed. A competent investigator has lately declared
that "there is probably in the world to-day no place at tide water where
ship plates can be laid down for a less price than they can be
manufactured or purchased at the lake ports."

This rapid rise of the merchant marine of our inland seas has led to the
demand for deep water canals to connect them with the ocean road to
Europe. When the fleets of the Great Lakes plow the Atlantic, and when
Duluth and Chicago become seaports, the water transportation of the
Middle West will have completed its evolution. The significance of the
development of the railway systems is not inferior to that of the great
water way. Chicago has become the greatest railroad center of the world,
nor is there another area of like size which equals this in its railroad
facilities; all the forces of the nation intersect here. Improved
terminals, steel rails, better rolling stock, and consolidation of
railway systems have accompanied the advance of the people of the Middle
West.

This unparalleled development of transportation facilities measures the
magnitude of the material development of the province. Its wheat and
corn surplus supplies the deficit of the rest of the United States and
much of that of Europe. Such is the agricultural condition of the
province of which Monroe wrote to Jefferson, in 1786, in these words: "A
great part of the territory is miserably poor, especially that near
Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that upon the Mississippi and the Illinois
consists of extensive plains which have not had, from appearances, and
will not have, a single bush on them for ages. The districts, therefore,
within which these fall will never contain a sufficient number of
inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy."

Minneapolis and Duluth receive the spring wheat of the northern
prairies, and after manufacturing great portions of it into flour,
transmit it to Buffalo, the eastern cities, and to Europe. Chicago is
still the great city of the corn belt, but its power as a milling and
wheat center has been passing to the cities that receive tribute from
the northern prairies. It lies i