Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1907 — OKLAHOMA, FORTY-SIXTH STATE, ENTERS UNION. [ARTICLE]

OKLAHOMA, FORTY-SIXTH STATE, ENTERS UNION.

Is the Richest, Most Populous and Most Promising of All Her Predecessors. With the proclamation of President Roosevelt—Saturday.— notifying theworld that a new State had been born, Oklahoma took her place in the sisterhood of Uncle Sam. Tbe new State is tbe richest and most promising ever admitted to the American Union. She has half as many people as all the thirteen original States combined when they achieved their independence. By actual count of noses she has six times the population of any other State ever received St the time of admission into the Union. She .lias fifty times the amount of wealth that could be claimed by any of her predecessors at the beginning of their State life, and what not one of them could show, all the arts and sciences, the impm-pmonfa and progress that go to make a highly civilized commonwealth, from wireless telegraphy to the skyscraper,' from the telephone to chemical farming. More than a million and a half persons claim the new State as theirs, and it will not be long after the census is taken in--1910 before the 2,000,000-mark will be passed. All the old States have «ont their best blood into Oklahoma to give it cosmopolitan life, and, no matter where you are from, if you travel within its borders you will find your own people. The farmer from New England is there raising cotton side by side with his ,northern crops; the Louisiana planter has taken a homestead and is growing alfalfa and wheat, and the Pennsylvanian and Ohioan are digging coal or boring for oil, while the Californian' and Texan are gaining wealth from mills or railroads or electric plants. There are thrift and push and energy everywhere. If Oklahoma has any lazy residents, they manage to conceal themselves, for the whole population seems on the • move continually. Spots that were grassy prairies are bustliug towns to-day; yesterday’s towns are cities now; the hotels cannot build additions fast enough to accommodate the traveling public, and the railroads, strive as they may to add tracks and rolling stock to their equipment, are simply unable to keep up with the constantly growing volume of freight and passenger traffic. Up-to-dateness seems to be tbe watchword of Oklahoma’s people in the rural districts as well as iu the populous cities. Every farmer has his windmill, gasolene engine or mechanical water power for supplying his house and outbuildings, and many own automobiles. Telephones bring them into close communication with the towns, and the rural free delivery bears daily mail to their doors. Oklahoma can raise anything which grows between the Canadian border and Florida and Texas. The cotton yield to the acre is greater than that iu any other State or Territory Tn the Union. After' the proclamation declaring Oklahoma a full-fledged State the only thing remaining to be done to signify its being made a complete member of the Union will be the setting of its star iu the flag. Under the law' this can not be accomplished until the Fourth - of July, 1908. Only three of the territories now r remain, Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico. The probability is that one or both of these last-named will soon be admitted to the United States, and then every section of the country except Alaska, Porto Rico. Hawaii and the Philippines will be represented in tbe Senate.