ling of an eye it was received at Baltimore. A few days later Morse's telegraph was used to send to Washington a despatch informing members of Congress that Polk had been nominated by the Democratic national convention, which was in session at Baltimore. A congratulatory reply to the despatch was received twenty minutes after the nomination.

Anes

Still another triumph of this brilliant decade was the successful use of anesthetics. For thousands of years physicians relied thetics upon alcoholic drinks to diminish the sufferings of surgery, but a safe method of producing complete insensibility to pain was not discovered until 1842. In that year Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia removed without pain a tumor from a patient to whom ether had been administered. In 1846 Dr. W. T. Morton of Massachusetts administered ether in an operation at the General Hospital at Boston; and before many years had passed anesthetics were in use in all the hospitals of the world.

The

ance

of the

Great

Inven

tions

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of these inventions and discoveries. They influenced profoundly the Importcourse of affairs not only in America but throughout the whole world. The appearance of the reaper was the greatest event in the history of agriculture. It made the United States the paradise of the farmer, and it increased the food supply of Europe, for thousands of McCormick's machines were sent abroad. And thousands of Howe's sewing-machines were sent abroad, with the result that men and women were everywhere better clad. Morse's telegraph was the first of a long series of electrical contrivances that in time annihilated distance and made the world a whispering-gallery.

CHEAP LANDS AND IMMIGRATION

Responding to the improved plow and the reaper was a greater abundance of cheap land. In 1841 Congress passed the Preemption Act. Preemption acts had been passed as early as 1830, but the law of 1841 gave permanence to the preëmption The policy. It encouraged pioneers to push out into unoccupied ion lands and begin the actual work of settlement. By the law of 1841, if a settler entered upon a tract of land not greater than

Preëmp

Act of

1841

Immigra tion

in the Forties

160 acres, built himself a house, and began the tillage of the land, he was given the right of preëmption; that is, he had the first right against all comers of purchasing his tract from the Government on the most favorable terms and at the established price, which was in most cases still $1.25 per acre (p. 236). Under the workings of this law the homeseeker could select an eligible tract of unoccupied land, improve it, and feel assured that his land would not be sold away from him and that the labor bestowed upon his farm would not be lost. That the opportunity for settlers was boundless was shown by an official report of 1845 which stated that nearly two hundred and fifty million acres of public lands were subject to entry.

The cheapness of land acted as a lure to the immigrant. In the early years of our history immigration was small. In the thirty years before 1820 hardly more than 250,000 aliens had sought homes in the United States, and in the fifty years before 1840 hardly a million immigrants had landed upon our shores. But in the forties conditions began to favor immigration. Steamships were making regular trips across the Atlantic, and the immigrants could make the long voyage in reasonable comfort and at little expense. Then too, distress. and political unrest in Europe gave an impulse to emigration. In parts of Ireland the potato was almost the only food of the people. "Whole generations grew up, lived, married, and passed away without ever having tasted flesh meat." In 1845, and in 1846 also, the potato crop in Ireland failed and the people were panic-stricken at the fear of hunger. So the Irish in vast throngs emigrated to the United States. Moreover, in 1848, in most of the countries of Europe, especially in Germany, there were political upheavals that resulted in sending large numbers of emigrants to America.

These contributing forces raised the number of immigrants far beyond the highest point it had ever reached. Hitherto immigrants had come to America by the tens of thousands, but now they came by the hundreds of thousands. Within the decade more than 1,700,000 came; of these 260,000 were English, 435,000 were German, and 780,000 were Irish. Between

1845 and 1850 the average annual influx reached the startling number of 300,000. A large number of these new-comers remained in the East, but multitudes of them went directly to the Western country.

WESTWARD HO!

Here were factors for building up the West-improved agricultural implements, streams of immigrants, cheap lands. It has been said that the reaper alone carried the frontier line

Along the Upper Mississippi and around the Great Lakes. westward at the rate of thirty miles a year. A scene of marvelous development in the forties was the country bordering upon the banks of the Mississippi and upon the shores of the Great Lakes. Into this region poured settlers not only from Europe but from almost every part of the Union, especially from New England and the Middle States. The Iowa country was the first to be opened up. The settlement of this beautiful region did not begin early, because it was occupied by savage tribes. But piece by piece the red man lost his lands. In 1832 Iowa