Morning Appeal

TUESDAY, JULY 7

McEWEN ON NEVADA.

The following is an extract from Arthur McEwen's letter on Nevada:

Nevada has played in very hard luck. California has sucked the life-blood out of her ever since the first ounce of silver was produced on the Comstock. The nearness of San Francisco has drawn away her rich men with their fortunes. The almost exclusive attention paid to her minerals has diverted notice from her other resources.

The rails of the Central Pacific from Reno to the eastern State line run through a forbidding desert which repels the traveler. This misleading advertisement has done the State no end of harm, for this desert in large part is composed of rich land that needs but water (which the government or private capital could supply) to make it as productive as any land in the world. What do you think of 60 bushels of wheat to the acre—wheat that took the first prize at the New Orleans fair? The wheat was on irrigated sagebrush land at Lovelock. Nevada potatoes are the best in the country. No apples like hers are produced elsewhere on the coast. Strawberries, peaches, cherries and other fruits: all excellent, are grown. The irrigating waters, flowing over a singular variety of minerals, each yielding plant food, when turned upon the deep, virgin soil, impart a surpassing vigor to vegetable life. The distinct alteration of firmness of fiber to everything that grows.

Everybody who knows anything about Nevada, aside from her mines, is aware that she has a splendid future. It may not, and in all likelihood will not, even begin to be realized during the lifetime of the present generation, but it is sure to be achieved sometime. Great valleys, now barren, will be watered, and there is scarcely a thing suited to the temperate and semi-tropical zones, that cannot be grown in some portion of the State. Good tobacco has already been raised. Cotton has been found in the prehistoric graves of Lincoln county. Experts have said that vast coffee plantations will one day stretch upon the southern plains. Flax of the best grade has been produced. As for minerals, nearly every one of them have been found, from salt to diamonds.

A State with such possibilities has indeed been playing in hard luck when it is known to the world chiefly as a reservation for murderous miners, ruthless desperadoes and conscienceless politicians. This reminds me of Nevada's ill fame as the rotten borough.

I went through a number of campaigns here some years ago and was so circumstanced as to be able to see things from the inside. I have had a similar experience in California. Lots of pretty rough work has been done in Nevada, but the boodling never in the worst days approached in open audacity and atrocity that performed under my eyes in San Francisco at the last election.

That Senatorships have been bought and sold here is undeniable of course; but the State of which the same shameful thing cannot be affirmed holds an almost unique position in the Union. Already the next Senatorial election is under discussion. Stewart is a candidate for re-election, of course, and will, because of his energetic work in behalf of silver, have more popular strength than he had before. But whether he can command the support of all the interests which backed him before is doubtful.

Should James G. Fair choose to re-enter the field on the Democratic side, he would not again be opposed by John W. Mackay. The latter is himself mentioned as a candidate, but I am confident that he has no such ambition, since he has repeatedly told me he has not the smallest hankering for the Senatorship or any other office. Frank G. Newland has given notice that he will forego the honor this time and consent to accept a seat in the House of Representatives, which is kind of him.