Our industrial growth has been equally remarkable.  In 1792, the United States had no cotton mill.  In 1850, there were 1074, employing 100,000 hands.  Only forty-one years ago the first section of the first railroad in this country, the Baltimore and Ohio, was opened to a distance of twenty-three miles.  We have now 52,000 miles in operation.  It was only thirty-four years ago that the magnetic telegraph was invented.  Now the estimated length of telegraph wire in operation is over 100,000 miles.  In 1833, the first reaper and mower was constructed, and in 1846, the first sewing machine was completed.  Think of the hundreds of thousands of both of these classes of machines now in use.  And there are now more lines of telegraph and railroad projected and in process of construction than ever before, and greater facilities and larger plans for manufactories of all kinds than at any previous point of time.  And should these industries increase in the same geometrical ratio, and time continue ten years, the figures we now chronicle would then read about as the records of a century ago now read to us.

And Nature herself, by the physical features she has stamped upon our country, has seemed to lay it out as a field for national development on the most magnificent scale.  Here we have the largest lakes, the longest rivers, the mightiest cataracts, the deepest caves, the broadest and most fertile prairies, and the richest mines of gold and iron and coal and copper, to be found upon the globe.  “When America was discovered, there were but sixty millions of gold in Europe.  California and the territories round her have produced one thousand millions of dollars in gold in twenty years.  Sixty-one million dollars was the largest annual gold yield ever made in Australia.  California has several times produced ninety millions of gold in a year.” (Townsend, p. 384.) “The area of workable coal beds in all the world outside the United States is estimated at 26,000 square miles.  That of the United States, not including Alaska, is estimated at over 200,000 square miles, or eight times as large as the available coal area of all the rest of the globe!” (American Year Book for 1869, p. 655.) “The iron product and manufacture of the United States has increased enormously within the last few years, and the vast beds of iron convenient to coal in various parts of the Union, are destined to make America the chief source of supply for the world.”  “Three mountains of solid iron [in Missouri], known as Iron Mountain, Pilot Knob, and Shepherd’s Mountain, are among the most remarkable natural curiosities on our continent.” (Id. p. 654.)