It is estimated that between the years 1820 and 1876 the immigrants arriving were, as to nationality and race, as follows:English and Irish

Germans

Italians

4,527,892

2,889,235

56,874

34,717

21,498

Spaniards and Portuguese

Belgians

From Canada and British America

West Indies

Chinese .

Officers in charge of the immigrants estimate the money brought into the United States by the immigrants for the ten years, 18501860, at £83,333,333. Prior to 1860 the sentiment of the country was in favor of immigration, and every immigrant was valued, though he brought only his muscular strength, as an accession. Since 1865 a sentiment has arisen in favor of an assorted immigration, to the exclusion of Chinese, paupers, bound laborers, gypsies, persons bringing disease, and criminals.

58.-Wasting the Land.--The opening up of new lands in America, and the denudation of timber, has been done in a way to sacrifice the largest future interests to the smallest present interests, which is the essence of waste. Dr. Franklin B. Hough, Chief of Forestry at Washington, estimates that in 1870 our entire area of remaining wood lands of every kind was 380,000,000 acres, that we were stripping the wood from 15,000,000 acres yearly, and were planting less than 10,000 acres. If these dates were correct there has been a subsequent reduction of 160,000,000 acres, leaving 220,000,000 acres standing, or enough to last twentytwo years longer. It is also estimated officially that the mills of the Northern States, if they could be planted in the South, would saw up every standing pine in Florida or Alabama in twelve months, and would require but six months more for that of Georgia or either of the Carolinas. Three hundred million dollars worth per year are being cut, of a crop which nobody is planting, not because it is not one of

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the most profitable of crops, but because no private individual can afford to plant an agricultural crop which he must wait twentyfive years to reap. It is estimated that our white pine and spruce supply may not last a decade. Yet it is matter of easy computation that in thirty or forty years land in most parts of the United States, if left to grow up to timber, would, without labor, produce a crop the value of which on the stump, if spread over the period, would divide to each year about as large a return as can ordinarily be got out of the land by labor.

All this points to substitution of brick, iron, straw pulp, and similar materials at an early date, for wood. Forestry associations for planting trees have been formed in Ohio and elsewhere, but no effective check on the timber waste has yet been devised.

The rapid destruction of the forests, of the Appallachian chain and Adirondacks, has also lessened the beauty and value of many American streams, by causing the entire waterflow occasioned by the melting of the winter snows to pass off in destructive freshets or floods in the spring, after which the streams are nearly dry. In the Ohio and Mississippi these spring floods are becoming each year more destructive of life and property; and are suggesting as remedies either extended plans of irrigation by canal, which will draw off these extra supplies of water, or systems of dams along the rivers to retain it, or a compulsory restoration of the forests.

It is worthy of note that in China all these plans have been adopted. The fact that their river system is more nearly like ours, than that of any other country, may in time compel our legislation concerning rivers to more nearly approach theirs.

The wasteful destruction of buffalo, deer, prairie pheasants, and other game on our Western plains, and of birds of every kind, and especially singing birds in the Western States, in response to the demand for birds for ladies' hats, are forms of waste for whose avoidance legal penalties have been invoked.

In our streams and lakes the artificial propagation of fish has had the effect to partially restore the original supply.

Marked economic effects have attended the building, or failing to build, important highways in the United States, of whatever kind, where opportunity and need existed. The early topographical engineers of the country, including especially George Washington, who was an engineer by profession, foresaw that at whatever point on the Atlantic coast an outlet should be made for the products of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, a great, probably the greatest, Atlantic seaport would arise. Virginia was at this

time far in advance of the other States, and especially of New York, as is shown by a call made by the General Government upon the States in 1781 for money. The sum to be raised was £1,666,660, and it was divided among the original thirteen States according to the supposed value of their cultivated lands, since it was to be collected, by each State, by direct tax on land. The division was as follows:

Even in 1810 the city of New York had a population of 96,377, while Philadelphia had 96,691, Baltimore having 46,555, Boston 32,250, New Orleans 17,212, Cincinnati 2,540, and Brooklyn 4,462. It is difficult even at this day to perceive that Washington's calculation, that the metropolis of the Atlantic coast would be at Norfolk, might not have been verified by sufficient enterprise on the part of the people of Virginia. Washington urged the legislature of Virginia to build a canal connecting the Ohio River and the James or Potomac, so as to place the outlet at Norfolk. His advice was not heeded. Subsequently New York, under the leadership of DeWitt Clinton, constructed the Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie at Buffalo with the Hudson at Albany, then a stupendous feat of State enterprise in finance and civil engineering. Until that canal was built New York city had little more than the trade of the Hudson River Valley. The building of the canal made New York the Empire State, and the city the commercial metropolis of the Union.

59. The American Railway System in Its Unproductive Infancy.-American railways have passed through the several periods (1) of infancy and feebleness, demanding State aid at every step; (2) of incipient profits and precipitate haste on the part of municipalities, counties, and adjoining owners to embark in them for the value they would give to the lands adjoining; (3) of consolidation of continuous lines and pooling of competing lines, ending finally in a condition of stability, profit, and security; (4) of severe criticism and assault on the part of shippers of freight as to the discriminations in freights and fares deemed

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necessary by the railways; (5) of enormous railway grants in aid of transcontinental routes of vast future importance; and, finally, (6) of the appointment of State Boards of Railway Commissioners and the recent adoption of national legislation whose effects are not yet matured.

At the outset, in the Eastern States, railroads crept feebly into being by scattered efforts, involving much individual sacrifice.

Some town and county aid was given, or loaned, by subscriptions to stock and bonds. Frequently English loans were obtained of money enough to buy the rails, or sales of the iron rails were made by English rolling mills taking stock or bonds in return. In a rough way it might be said that individual enterprise bought the cars, town and county aid furnished the right of way and graded the roads, and English mills turned out rails in exchange for the bonds.

The first railroad projectors had no conception of the length of road required, and concentration of traffic essential, to make steam railways pay a profit. Many of them began with small capitals. The New York and Harlem Railway began (in 1831) with a capital of $350,000, authorized to construct a road from 23d Street to Harlem River, about five miles.

In 1826 the merchants of Baltimore, perceiving that the public works of Pennsylvania, and the Erie Canal, were attracting to Philadelphia and New York much of the tariff from the West, in which Baltimore had formerly participated, began to project a railroad which should connect that city with the Ohio, in lieu of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which had been found to be a work of much difficulty, in consequence of the high elevations over which it had to be carried. At this date no railroad, either in Europe or America, had been constructed for the general conveyance of freight and passengers. In England an iron tramway, the Stockton and Darlington Railroad, had been constructed for carrying coal, and near Boston the Granite Branch Railroad for carrying heavy materials to tide-water. It was much mooted whether, in case railways should be adopted, horses or steam would be the better power. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway in England was, however, in course of construction, and 2,000 miles of railway were projected.

The first railroad charter, issued in the United States, was issued to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, at the solicitation of Philip E. Thomas, president of the Mechanics' Bank of Baltimore, its chief projector. The State of Maryland voted aid to the

amount of $500,000 in 1828; work was begun amidst imposing ceremonies. Congress was prevented from voting aid only by the fact that the chairman of the Committee of Roads and Canals was also president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, whose interests conflicted with those of the proposed road. On July 4th, 1829, Charles Carroll of Carrolton, whose remarkable signature adorns the Declaration of Independence, presided over the ceremony at the age of ninety years, remarking that he considered the act second in importance, in his life, only to the signing of that Declaration, if, indeed, it was second to that. In the ensuing October, eleven and one-half miles were being graded, and one and one-half were ready for rails. Horses and mules were relied on for drawing the first "brigade of cars," the word train having not then been applied to this new use. Four brigades of cars each day were run between Baltimore and Ellicott's mills, on July 5th, 1830. Locomotive engines had not demonstrated their capacity to attain a higher rate of speed than six miles per hour in England, until their use on the Liverpool and Manchester road in the same year. The company advertised for locomotives in 1831, offering rewards of $4,000 and $3,500 respectively for first and second best, and in response to these bounties three engines were placed upon its track, one of which made a speed of thirty miles per hour.

In 1832 the further building of the road was arrested by a decision of the Maryland Court of Appeals that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal had a prior and exclusive right of way over that portion of the route lying between Point of Rocks and Harper's Ferry. In 1833 this difficulty was compromised, by the company assuming the State's obligation for 2,500 shares of the stock of the canal company, when the canal reached Harper's Ferry. The company were the first to insert steel springs under the locomotive tenders and burden cars, thereby saving one-third in cost of carriage and wear and tear. In 1835 the Washington branch was opened and carried 200 passengers daily. In 1835-6 the legislature of Maryland subscribed $3,000,000 to the capital stock of the road, as did also the city of Baltimore. In 1838 surveys had been completed to the Ohio River at Wheeling; the cost of the road was estimated for the whole route from Baltimore to Wheeling at $9,500,000, and the legislature of Virginia subscribed $1,058,420 toward the capital stock, being two-fifths of the estimated cost of so much of the route as lay within the State. In March, 1853, the road was opened to Wheeling on a running