"The snail-like progress hitherto made in the settlement of a large share of the State, is an enigma to those not versed in our early history. While occupying the position of a dependent of the central power at Washington, we were so unfortunate in some instances as to have men placed over us with whom personal interests were paramount to the great interests of the territory, which, at the critical period when the seeds of prosperity should have been planted, was fatal to our advancement. Next came the era of Utopian projects of internal improvement, by which our people were saddled with an onerous load of debt. In the mean time immigrants were misled by false reports concerning the character of the soil in the interior of the State, and there were no roads by means of which they could satisfy themselves of the true character of the country. They therefore passed on to find homes upon what then seemed the most attractive prairies of the far West. But there is at last a great change in the tide of affairs. The value of our timber is justly regarded as greatly overbalancing the doubtful advantage of settling upon prairie land, and the active demand that has recently sprung up for it must constantly make a still greater difference in our favor. Lands long held in the iron grasp of speculators are rapidly coming into the possession of actual settlers. Our State is being intersected by a system of roads, which will ere long demonstrate the necessity of an extension of the system. Our course is indeed onward and upward.
"Having seen a statement, given upon the authority of some gazeteer, to the effect that about six million dollars were invested in this State in manufacturing, which we felt assured was a libel upon the State, we have taken steps to procure statistics of the more important industrial establishments throughout the entire State. We find that in the manufacture of pine lumber alone, there are about seven million dollars invested, exclusive of the standing timber of proprietors, which perhaps might properly be included as part of the capital."
Such indications of thrift, enterprise, and prosperity in a region that twenty-four years ago was a howling wilderness, it may be safely said, is without a parallel. The other counties, we are tolerably safe in estimating, will swell the amount to $10,000,000, making, with the lumber manufactories, and the $2,148,500, invested in the iron manufacture, more than twenty million dollars!