erranean of
our hemisphere.

We have crushed the rocks and sifted the sand that yielded silver and
gold, and the soil is ours that is richer than gold mines, whether we
offer in evidence South Carolina, whose Sea-Island cotton surpasses the
long staple of Egypt; or the Dakotas, matchless for wheat; or the lands
of the cornstalk in the Mississippi Valley, that could feed all the
tribes of Asia; or Nebraska, whose beets are sweeter with sugar than
those that were the gift of Napoleon to Germany.

We have found the springs that yield immortal youth, not in bubbling
waters in a flowery wilderness, but in the harvests of the fields and
the stored energies of inexhaustible mines, not for the passing person
who perishes when his work is done, but for the imperishable race.

All this in our country, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," but with
the clothing of life on the ribs, and new in the evolution of
conditions by the works of man that make the nations of the earth a
family--achievements wonderful in scope, splendid in promise, marvellous
in the renown that is of peace; in the fame of the genius that is labor,
the spell-binder that gathers and builds, creates and glorifies.

Within the historic record of this Chamber of Commerce of New York, the
waters of Lake Erie have been carried through our canals and rivers to
the Atlantic, making the Hudson River what Henry Hudson thought it was
when he sailed through the beautiful gate of the incomparable
continent--the road from the east to the west around the world; and the
statue of Thomas Benton points westward from the great cross of the
rivers in the heart of the continent--the Ohio, Missouri and
Mississippi--and the inscription reads: "There is the road to India."

How familiar is the construction of the Pacific railroad; of the
telegraph lines across the continent and through the oceans; the record
of steamers of ten thousand tons, five hundred knots a day; the
miraculous telephone; the trolley, that is with us to stay and to
conquer, introducing all the villages to the magic of rapid transit,
promoting, with the incessant application of a new force, the American
homogeneity of our vast and various population--blending them for one
destiny. One is not venturing upon disputed ground--there is no
prohibited politics in it to say that slavery is gone--for all classes
and sections of our common country will agree it is well. The earth has
grown both small and great for us.