OUR COUNTRY’S PROGRESS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 24, 1876

OUR COUNTRY’S PROGRESS.

The following article will repay careful perusal, not only because it is interesting in itself for the information it contains, but because it contains the very facts which our preachers will have occasion to use in speaking upon the position this government holds in prophecy. What other nation but our own can show such a record for the first hundred years of its existence?

Here, on the verge of the centennial anniversary of the birth of our Republic, let us take a brief review of the material and intellectual progress of our country during the first hundred years of its political independence.

The extent of the conceded domain of the United States, in 1776, was not more than half a million square miles; now (when the word now appears in this relation it means the year 1875) it is more than three million three hundred thousand square miles. Its population then was about a million and a half; now it is forty million.

The products of the soil are the foundations of the material wealth of a nation. It has been eminently so with us, notwithstanding the science of agriculture and the construction of good implements of labor were greatly neglected until the early part of the present century.

A hundred years ago the agricultural interests of our country were mostly in the hands of uneducated men. Science was not applied to husbandry. A spirit of improvement was scarcely known. The son copied the ways of his father. He worked with no other implements and pursued no other methods of cultivation; and he who attempted a change was regarded as a visionary or an innovator. Very little associated effort for improvement in the business of farming was then seen. The first association for such a purpose was formed in the South, and was known as the “South Carolina Agricultural Society,” organized in 1784. A similar society was formed in Pennsylvania the following year. Now there are State, county, and even town agricultural societies, in almost every part of the Union.

Agricultural implements were rude and simple. They consisted chiefly of the plow, harrow, spade, hoe, hand-rake, scythe, sickle, and wooden fork. The plow had a clumsy wrought-iron share with wooden mold-board, which was sometimes plated with pieces of old tin or sheet-iron. The rest of the structure was equally clumsy; and the implement required, in its use, twice the amount of strength of man and beast, that the present plow does. Improvements in the construction of plows during the past fifty years, save to the country, annually, in work and teams, at least $12,000,000. The first patent for a cast-iron plow was issued in 1797. To the beginning of 1875, about four hundred patents have been granted.

A hundred years ago the seed was sown by hand, and the entire crop was harvested by hard manual labor. The grass was cut with a scythe, and “cured” and gathered with a fork and hand-rake. The grain was cut with a sickle, threshed with a flail or the treading of horses, and was cleared of the chaff by a large clamshell-shaped fan of wicker-work, used in a gentle breeze. The drills, seed-sowers, cultivators, mowers, reapers, threshing-machines, and fanning-mills of our day, were all unknown. They are the inventions of a time within the memory of living men. Abortive attempts were made toward the close of the last century to introduce a threshing-machine from England, but the flail held sway until two generations ago.

Indian corn, tobacco, wheat, rye, oats, potatoes, and hay, were staple products of the farm a hundred years ago. Timothy and orchard grass had then just been introduced. The cultivation of all these has been greatly increased. Then nearly the whole products, excepting tobacco, were consumed by the million and a half people; now forty million are supported by them, and vast amounts of agricultural products are exported to foreign countries. At the present time these products amount annually, on an average, in round numbers as follows: Indian corn, 900,000,000 bushels; wheat, 270,000,000; rye, 22,000,000; oats, 300,000,000; potatoes, 165,000,000; and buckwheat (introduced within the century), 15,000,000. The hay crop averages about 28,000,000 tons; the tobacco crop about 265,000,000 pounds; flax, 28,000,000 pounds, and hemp, 12,000 tons. To these agricultural products have been added, within the century, barley, cotton, and sugar. Of barley, the average crop is about 28,000,000 bushels; cotton about 2,000,000,000 pounds, and sugar 120,000 hogsheads, of 1,000 pounds each. The expansion of the cotton culture has been marvelous. In 1784, eight bales of cotton sent to England from Charleston were seized by the custom-house authorities in Liverpool on the ground that so large a quantity could not have come from the United States. The progress of its culture was slow until the invention of the gin, by Mr. Whitney, for clearing the seed from the fibre. It did the work of many persons. The cultivation of cotton rapidly spread. From 1792 to 1800, the amount of cotton raised had increased from 138,000 pounds to 18,000,000 pounds, all of which was wanted in England, where improved machinery was manufacturing it into cloth. The value of slave labor was increased, and a then dying institution lived in vigor until killed by the civil war. The value of the cotton crop in 1792 was $30,000; now its average annual value is about $180,000,000.

Fruit culture a hundred years ago was very little thought of. Inferior varieties of apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries, were cultivated for family use. It was not until the beginning of the present century that any large orchards were planted. The cultivation of grapes and berries was almost wholly unknown fifty years ago. The first horticultural society was formed in 1829. Before that time fruit was not an item of commercial statistics in our country. Now the average annual value of fruit is estimated at $40,000,000. Our grape crop alone exceeds in value $10,000,000.

Improvements in live stock have all been made within the present century. The native breeds were descended from stock sent over to the colonies, and were generally inferior. In 1772 Washington wrote in his diary: “With one hundred milch cows on my farm, I have to buy butter for my family.” Now 11,000,000 cows supply 40,000,000 inhabitants with milk, butter, and cheese, and allow large exports of the latter article. At least 225,000,000 gallons of milk are sold annually. The annual butter product of our country now is more than 500,000,000 pounds, and of cheese 70,000,000. There are now about 30,000,000 horned cattle in the United States, equal in average quality to those of any country in the world.

A hundred years ago mules and asses were chiefly used for farming purposes and ordinary transportation. Carriage-horses were imported from Europe. Now our horses of every kind are equal to those of any other country. It is estimated that there are about 10,000,000 horses in the United States, or one to every four persons.

Sheep husbandry has greatly improved. The inferior breeds of the last century, raised only in sufficient quantity to supply the table, and the domestic looms in the manufacture of yarns and coarse cloth, have been superseded by some of the finer varieties. Merino sheep were introduced early in this century. The embargo before the war of 1812, and the establishment of manufactures here afterward, stimulated sheep and wool-raising, and these have been important items in our national wealth. There are now about 30,000,000 sheep in the United States. California is taking the lead as a wool-producing State. In 1870, the wool product of the United States amounted to 100,000,000 pounds.

Improvements in the breed of swine during the last fifty years have been very great. They have become a large item in our national commercial statistics. At this time there are about 26,000,000 head of swine in this country. Enormous quantities of pork, packed and in the form of bacon, are exported annually.

These brief statistics of the principal products of agriculture, show its development in this country, and its importance. Daniel Webster said, “Agriculture feeds; to a great extent it clothes us; without it we should not have manufactures; we should not have commerce. They all stand together like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the center, and that largest—AGRICULTURE.”

The great manufacturing interests of our country are the product of the century now closing. The policy of the British government was to suppress manufacturing in the English-American colonies, and cloth-making was confined to the household. When non-importation agreements cut off supplies from Great Britain, the Irish flax-wheel and the Dutch wool-wheel were made active in families. All other kinds of manufacturing were of small account in this country until the concluding decade of the last century. In Great Britain the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton, had stimulated the cotton and woolen manufactures, and the effects finally reached the United States. Massachusetts offered a grant of money to promote the establishment of a cotton-mill, and one was built at Beverly in 1787, the first erected in the United States. It had not the improved English machinery. In 1789, Samuel Slater came from England with a full knowledge of that machinery, and in connection with Messrs. Almy and Brown, of Providence, R. I., established a cotton factory there in 1790, with the improved implements. Then was really begun the manufacture of cotton in the United States. Twenty years later the number of cotton-mills in our country was one hundred and sixty-eight, with 90,000 spindles. The business has greatly expanded. In Massachusetts, the foremost State in the manufacture of cotton, there are now over two hundred mills, employing, in prosperous times, 50,000 persons, and a capital of more than $30,000,000. The city of Lowell was founded by the erection of a cotton-mill there in 1822; and there the printing of calico was first begun in the United States soon afterward.

With wool, as with cotton, the manufacture into cloth was confined to households, for home use, until near the close of the last century. The wool was carded between two cards held in the hands of the operator, and all the processes were slow and crude. In 1797, Asa Whittemore, of Massachusetts, invented a carding-machine, and this led to the establishment of woolen manufactures outside of families. In his famous report on manufactures, in 1791, Alexander Hamilton said that of woolen goods, hats only had reached maturity. The business had been carried on with success in colonial times. The wool was felted by hand, and furs were added by the same slow process. This manual labor continued until a little more than thirty years ago, when it was supplanted by machinery. Immense numbers of hats of every kind are now made in our country.

At the time of Hamilton’s report there was only one woolen-mill in the United States. It was at Hartford, Connecticut. In it were made cloths and cassimeres. Now woollen factories may be found in almost every State in the Union, turning out annually the finest cloths, cassimeres, flannels, carpets, and every variety of goods made of wool. In this business, as in cotton, Massachusetts has taken the lead. The value of manufactured woolens in the United States, at the close of the civil war, was estimated at about $60,000,000. The supply of wool in the United States has never been equal to the demand.

The smelting of iron ore, and the manufacture of iron, has become an immense business in our country. The development of ore deposits, and of coal used in smelting, are among the marvels of our history. English navigation laws discouraged iron manufacture in the colonies. Only blast furnaces for making pig-iron were allowed. This product was nearly all sent to England in exchange for manufactured articles; and the whole amount of such exportation, at the beginning of the old war for independence, was less than 8,000 tons annually. The colonists were wholly dependent upon Great Britain for articles manufactured of iron and steel, excepting rude implements made by blacksmiths for domestic use. During the war the Continental Congress were compelled to establish manufactures of iron and steel. These were chiefly in Northern New Jersey, the Hudson Highlands, and Western Connecticut, where excellent ore was found, and forests in abundance for making charcoal. The first use of anthracite coal for smelting iron was in the continental armory at Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, in 1775. But charcoal was universally used until 1840 for smelting ores. Now iron is manufactured in our country in every form from a nail to a locomotive. A vast number of machines have been invented for carrying on these manufactures; and the products in cutlery, fire-arms, railway materials, and machinery of every kind, employ vast numbers of

men and a great amount of capital. Our locomotive builders are regarded as the best in the world; and no nation on the globe can compete with us in the construction of steam-boats of every kind, from the iron-clad war steamer to the harbor tug.

In the manufacture of copper, silver, and gold, there has been great progress. At the close of the Revolution no manufactures of the kind existed in our country. Now the manufacture of copper-ware yearly, of every kind, jewelry and watches, has become a large item in our commercial tables.

The manufacture of paper is a very large item in the business of our country. At the close of the Revolution there were only three mills in the United States. At the beginning of the war a demand sprung up, and Wilcox, in his mill near Philadelphia, made the first writing-paper produced in this country. He manufactured the thick, coarse paper on which the continental money was printed. So early as 1794 the business had so increased that there were in Pennsylvania alone forty-eight paper-mills. There has been a steady increase in the business ever since. Within the last twenty-five years that increase has been enormous, and yet not sufficient to meet the demand. Improvements in printing presses have cheapened the production of books and newspapers, and the circulation of these has greatly increased. It is estimated that the amount of paper now manufactured annually in the United States for these, for paper-hangings, and for wrapping paper, is full 800,000,000 pounds. The supply of raw material here has not been equal to the demand, and rags to the value of about $2,000,000 in a year have been imported.

The manufacture of ships, carriages, wagons, clocks and watches, pins, leather, glass, Indian-rubber, silk, wool, sewing-machines, and a variety of other things wholly unknown or feebly carried on a hundred years ago, now flourish, and form very important items in our domestic commerce. The sewing-machine is an American invention, and the first really practical one was first offered to the public by Elias Howe, Jr., about thirty years ago. A patent had been obtained for one five years before. Great improvements have been made, and now a very extensive business in the manufacture and sale of sewing-machines is carried on by different companies, employing a large amount of capital and costly machinery, and a great number of persons.