Our country's wealth and influence. Shown by tracing in historical form from year to year and decade to decade, from 1620 to 1880, the rapid increase of population, and progress in the development of our ... resources ...

Front matter

Class E-V?^ Book ,feS &>

GepyrigM

Mi

Preface

The subjects embraced in this volume are of the deepest interest to every American citizen, and to the students of history, political economy, and national progress, of every nation on the globe.

They furnish the materials for a more wonderful chapter in the world's history than has ever yet been written.

A people, in 1783, numbering less than three millions, of different nationalities, poor, oppressed by a heavy debt, just emerging from a ruinous war of seven years' duration, without national or much private capital, with no manufactures of importance, unskilled in agriculture, their commerce nearly ruined by the war, without mineral wealth, and with scanty means of education, with nothing, in short, but brave hearts, strong arms, ready wit, and an, indomitable love of liberty, have, in a hundred years, made greater progress in agriculture, manufactures, the arts, in commerce, mining, education, and material prosperity and luxury, than any other nation on the surface of the earth has ever made in a thousand years. To-day, in population, wealth, influence, intelligence, and social position, they are the peers of any nation on the globe, and the superiors of most. What Great Britain, France, and Germany have attained through the painful experiences and v-icissitudes of fifteen hundred years, they have easily equaled or surpassed in a single century, and as yet they have hardly passed the infantile stage of their development. What remains for them to accomplish in the next century, when their fifty millions shall have become four hundred millions; when the arable lands are all under plow, when every village of prairie or hillside or valley has its vast manufactories, and its commerce whitens every sea ; when at eventide the electric light glows from every portion of the horizon, and makes the light of one day as the light of seven clays ; and the beneficent effects of education and a pure literature are universal, — we can only conjecture.

In attempting to chronicle the grand results already accomplished, the publisher has sought the advice of many eminent scholars and publicists. It lias been a work of years to garner all these histories of our past national progress, and the most careful watchfulness and assiduous labor to bring the record as nearly as possible to the present moment. In this work he has employed many of the ablest writers of the country, and in its final collocation and revision has availed himself of the services of a cyclopa?dist who has been for twenty-six years engaged in these labors, and has attained the highest reputation for accuracy and carefulness in his researches. The subject of

VI PREFACE.

education has been committed to Hon. Henry Barnard, whose lifelong devotion to that cause and whose numerous writings on educational topics are known all over the world. Other subjects have been treated by eminent experts, and the whole brought up to 1881 or 1882 by the careful and critical labor of the editor. As it stands, the work will be invaluable to the farmer, the merchant, the banker, the scholar, the manufacturer, the mine owner, the professional man, the traveler, and the citizen of wealth and leisure, and not less so to the engineer, the machinist, the artisan, and the household which desires to know something of the land in which we dwell, — its rapid progress in the past, its glorious present, and its grand promise for the future.

If we are supposed to be a little enthusiastic on the subject, we are privileged to say that the solid merit of the work is endorsed by a large number of the best judges in the country.

A few words in relation to the expense of getting up this work. The public have no conception of the outlay on a work of this kind. Probably most people would think two or three thousand dollars an extravagant sum, and will be much surprised to learn that it required twenty thousand dollars, including the drawing and engraving of the illustrations, yet it will exceed rather than fall short of it. There are comparatively few farms or stocks of goods in country stores that involved so large an outlay as this book has required.

L. S.