Excerpt from The West the Best and California the Best of the West: A Story of Some of the Prinicipal Features in the Business Life of the Golden State That the western half of the land area of the United States is the best half is a proposition that needs little argument to establish, if one is willing to eliminate from the consideration wealth, population and political powers. In these three factors and a few of minor importance the advantage lies with the eastern half of the country, be cause, as a rule, longer settled. A plumb line north to south from the east boundary line of North Dakota fairly divides the territory of the United States between what may be termed the eastern and west ern halves of the country. East of that imaginary line are 31 States, while west of it there are 17 States and the Territory of Alaska. The land area of the 48 States comprises square miles, according to the Bureau of Statistics. The 31 States on the east of the above dividing line have been given square miles of this area, while the 17 States on the west of that line possess square miles of land area. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.