Cleveland went over the edge of it, when a
young man, to Buffalo and left it only to become governor and President;
Arthur, who succeeded to the presidency through the death of President
Garfield, and President Roosevelt, who also came first to the presidency
through the death of a President and was afterward elected, were both
residents of New York, though the latter had a ranch in the far west and
seems rather to belong to that region than the place of his birth. Thus of
the elected Presidents there was not one who had not a middle-western
origin, experience, or association. The Chief Justices since the war have
been without exception western men, and so with few exceptions have been
the Speakers of the House. And practically all these Presidents, Chief
Justices, Speakers, were pioneers or sons of pioneers in that "Valley of
the New Democracy" or, at any rate, were nurtured of its natural
fellowships, its one-man-as-good-as-another institutions, and its
unhampered ambitions.
It is not mere geographical and numerical majorities that are connoted.
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