AMERICA—ITS MATERIAL PROGRESS.
THERE are some themes of a grandeur so surpassing that the simple announcement of the topic carries with it to every cultivated mind a force and impressiveness which no prolixity of elaboration can augment, and no minuteness of detail can increase. The material progress of America is a topic of this striking and emphatic nature. The course of human history exhibits no parallel to the circumstances which attended the discovery of this modern world, and none to the motives which prompted its occupancy and settlement. The intimate blending of religious fervor, daring adventure, personal cupidity, and commercial enterprise, which heralded and accompanied the entire movement, lends to the era and to its leading actors an interest at once absorbing and perennial. The most striking antitheses are exhibited in the insignificance of the agents and the importance of their actions, in the feebleness of the initial stages and the mighty energy of the resultant forces, in the poverty of the means employed and the opulency of the ends attained. Although some feeble motions toward foreign discovery were made in England as early as the era of Henry VII., it was not until the age of Elizabeth that any adequate attempt at colonization was undertaken. The height of grandeur and power to which that great queen raised the British empire; the vigor of her internal administration; the wisdom of her foreign policy; the growth of national sentiment; the rapid expansion of maritime power; the brilliant outburst of literary spirit,—all signalized her reign as an auspicious season for inaugurating a series of discoveries which should place England in the van of civilization and progress. Yet it is amusing to read the Charter which the Virgin Queen conferred on Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Nothing could show in stronger colors the vague and indefinite views of even the wisest sovereign of her age, nothing could more plainly prove how little the leading minds of that age grasped the possibilities of the new world, or how little they even imagined of the future growth and wondrous development of these yet unknown regions. Elizabeth authorizes Gilbert to discover and to take possession of all remote and barbarous lands unoccupied by any Christian prince. She confers on him and his heirs the full rights of property in the soil of those countries; she vests in him the complete jurisdiction and royalties within the lands and seas thereunto adjoining, with full power to convict, pardon, punish, govern, and rule, according to their own good discretion, all persons who may from time to time settle within said territories. Could power more absolute, despotic, or irresponsible be imagined than is here conferred upon the projectors of American colonization? Fortunately for human progress, events have never been found, under such circumstances, to shape themselves in accordance with the predetermined theories of popes and potentates. The early efforts of Gilbert came to grief. Long years were to elapse, numerous attempts were to fail, hundreds of lives were to be sacrificed, untold misery and suffering were to be endured, before the first successful lodgment was made upon the soil of America. Viewed from the standpoint of human probabilities, could any beginnings have seemed more hopeless of ultimate success than the feeble enterprises planted upon the shores of Virginia in 1607, and upon the inhospitable soil of Massachusetts in 1620? Judging by all past experience for more than a century, they must fail. Judging by the vastness of the unbroken wilderness, by the rudeness of primeval nature, by the severities of a northern or the relaxations of a southern climate, by the fatal neighborhood of fierce wild beasts, and the more deadly proximity of hostile savages, by the remoteness of human succor, and the slenderness of the ties which stretched in invisible lines across the weary waste of Atlantic waters,—by all these fearful odds they seemed hopelessly foredoomed. Yet the tenacity of Anglo-Saxon purpose overcame these multiplied obstacles. The little colony of Virginia flourished apace, met famine and disaster, put to sea in despair, returned in hope, flickered between life and death, revived, increased, and finally triumphed in a steady and199 healthful growth. The feeble band on Plymouth Rock faced winter, wild beasts, savage warfare, wasting sickness, cruel disappointment, threatened extinction; yet, like the storm-tossed mountain-pine, struck root at length even in the stony soil of bleak New England, and laid deep and firm the foundations of a great and glorious commonwealth. Soon the whole seacoast, from the balmy latitude of Florida to the icy rigors of Labrador, was dotted with detached settlements. Confined at first to the shores of the ocean, the network of colonization gradually interwove its growing fibres up and down the Atlantic seaboard, until a hardy family of nascent States grew and prospered in friendly neighborhood and in amicable intercommunication. Still some extraneous force was needed to consolidate the interests and to unify the activities of the scattered colonies. This the Revolution supplied, and under the pressure of eight years’ incessant struggle with the greatest military power of the world, the American settlements were compressed into a confederation so stable as to endure the strain of a century of unparalleled growth, and so flexible as to admit of an expansion of life, ideas, and progress of which history offers no previous example. From the meager roll of thirteen sparsely peopled colonies, we have now grown to the mighty proportions of an empire comprising thirty-eight States and eleven Territories. From the 3,000,000 of freemen to whom Patrick Henry made his fiery appeals, our population has now risen to the enormous aggregate of quite 50,000,000 of thrifty, restless, energetic, and progressive people. Instead of two or three towns of 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, as at the outbreak of the Revolution, we now boast within our domain about twenty cities of over 100,000, of which number ten are over 200,000, seven over 300,000, and at least three of them have over 500,000 population, while our great metropolis, New York, is fast taking rank as one of the largest cities on the globe. Our narrow belt of territorial possession has widened back from our Atlantic front into a measureless sweep of valley, prairie, and mountain, until at once both oceans beat in alternate rhythm of calm and storm upon our eastern and our western shore. The tourist, traversing the States, is whirled along for one hundred and forty-four hours of consecutive railroad travel, with the highest speed of the modern locomotive, without once seeing a foot of alien soil, or catching a glimpse of another flag than that which bears the stars and stripes. He must be a constant student of Geography who keeps pace with the perpetual flow of population toward our far western Territories; and the exigencies of our postal service demand an incessant revision of the lists of offices as they spread far and wide over our newly settled possessions. Our textile fabrics have grown from seventy-five bags of cotton, received in Liverpool with incredulity, as being too great a production for the American colonies, to an overwhelming average crop of fully 5,000,000 bales, enough to set the looms of the world in a whirl of frantic industry. Instead of the scarcity of food which threatened with destruction our early colonies, America is now fast becoming to the world what Africa was to ancient Rome, its granary and its storehouse. The wheat crop of the United States for 1879 will exceed 400,000,000 bushels, more than half as much as the entire production of Europe for the same period. Indeed, the value of our farm products is estimated at the amazing figure of more than two and one-half billions of dollars, a sum which staggers the imagination. Our iron industry, after a history of marked vicissitudes, has at length attained a gigantic development, which enables us to compete in home markets with the best manufactured articles of the British people. In the line of labor-saving implements, we are now supplying the world with our manifold improved appliances in every branch of agricultural and mechanical pursuits. The spread of our railway system is on a scale of grandeur quite commensurate with the “magnificent distances” which we have spanned, and the colossal obstacles of mountain, desert, lake, and river, over which our engineering has triumphed. It was not until 1829 that the Post Office took its place among the departments of our government, yet already the lightning express has replaced the tardy mail coach, with its cumbersome apparatus and tiresome travel, while the eager appetite for news stops at nothing short of telegraph and telephone, poured through the columns of the newspaper, with its multiplied daily editions. Nearly six thousand daily and weekly journals fill our land with latest intelligence from the ends of the earth. The sneering inquiry, “Who reads an American book?” finds answer in the ceaseless tide of publications which flood the literary markets of the world, all bearing titles of American authorship and imprint of American publishers. In Periodical literature we have come up abreast with our ancient prototypes, the venerable Quarterlies and staid Reviews of London and Edinburgh, while in the field of elegant reading, illustrated journalism and popular science, we show the world models which they have not yet learned to equal. In the mining interests of our country we have exhibited a productiveness so amazing that the story of it reads like a tale of faerie. Yet the United States, as a nation, is but at the very threshold of progress and development. Consider, if you please, the vast area yet to be opened to settlement; the boundless acreage of virgin and tillable lands yet untouched by plough or spade; the far-stretching maze of inland waters yet unvexed by the keel of commerce; the primeval forests that cover with merchantable woods of various grain and dye the immense sweep of our unpeopled wilderness; the countless mill-sites where water-powers are awaiting the establishment of factories; the coal-fields whose deposits, covering hundreds of thousands of square miles, are but barely scratched by the miner’s tool, in many cases not yet laid open to the reach of labor; the mineral treasures that underlie the soil of many of our great commonwealths, starring the gulches of the Black Hills, the canons of Nevada, and the savage ravines of Montana with silver and gold; the exhaustless subterranean lakes of petroleum, whose refined oils are carrying the light of American commerce to the palm-groves of Damascus, to the deserts of Africa, to the kraals of Caffraria, and to the palaces of Cathay. Here is a prospect that must fill with patriotic emotion the breast of every American citizen. To such a goodly heritage are we born, and upon us and upon our posterity rests the grave responsibility of rightly measuring its infinite possibilities and of providing for its wise enjoyment, its judicious guardianship, and its progressive improvement.—America, Nov. 15, 1879.