soil, fine climate, easy communication, and possibilities for
manufacturing and commerce. Iron from that outlier of the
Laurentian highland which forms the peninsula of northern
Michigan can easily be brought by water almost to the center of
the prairie region. Coal in vast quantities lies directly under
the surface of this region, for the rock of the ancient coastal
plain belongs to the same Pennsylvanian series which yields most
of the world's coal. Here man is, indeed, blessed with resources
and opportunities scarcely equaled in any other part of the
world, and finds the only drawbacks to be the extremes of
temperature in both winter and summer and the remoteness of the
region from the sea. Because of the richness of their heritage
and because they live safely protected from threats of foreign
aggression, the people who live in this part of the world are in
danger of being slow to feel the currents of great world
movements.

The western half of the plains of North America consists of two
parts unlike either the Atlantic coastal plain or the prairies.
From South Dakota and Nebraska northward far into Canada and
westward to the Rocky Mountains there extends an ancient
peneplain worn down to gentle relief by the erosion of millions
of years. It is not so level as the plains farther east nor so
low. Its western margin reaches heights of four or five thousand
feet. Here and there, especially on the western side, it rises to
the crest of a rugged escarpment where some resistant layer of
rocks still holds itself up against the forces of erosion.
Elsewhere its smooth surfaces are broken by lava-capped mesas or
by ridges where some ancient volcanic dike is so hard that it has
not yet been worn away. The soil, though excellent, is thinner