PHYSICAL ADVANTAGES 341 and northern Minnesota; and the vast woods of the Pacific slope were soon to become American. It is only fair to note two physical conditions which held less of promise. 1. A sectional elevation on page 342 shows that the meridian 100 cuts the country into fairly equal but very conditions different halves. The eastern half is essentially of one character, and was easily made one section as to communication by railroads and canals. Neither fact Two holds good for the western half. That vast re- adverse gion contains, in succession (to quote Dr. Draper), "an arid, sandy district, the soil saline and sterile; an enormous belt of elevated land without an equivalent in Europe, the eastern side a desert, the western Asiatic in character; and, on the rapid Pacific incline, the moist, genial atmosphere of Great Britain and Spain; the contrasts of nature. a Persia, an India, a Palestine, a series of zones with all The imperial Republic has a Tartary of its own." These diverse zones from east to west had little opportunity, however, to operate in hostility to political union. The American people did not come under their influence at all until just before the great Civil War. The question of Union or Disunion was settled for generations to come by men reared under the influence of the uniform eastern half of the continent. 2. The lines of 22 and 41 degrees Fahrenheit, for January, may be taken as convenient bounds for the true “temperate' zone (map, page 2). By those, or any other suitable lines of equal temperature, the climatic temperate zone in North America (in the interior as on the coast) is far narrower than SECTIONAL ELEVATION OF THE UNITED STATES IN LATITUDE 40° NORTH. (After Draper. Elevations magnified.) p-o, sea level; a, Appalachian crest; b, Mississippi; c, beginning of saline plains; d-e, Great Salt Lake region; e-f, great elevated basin; f, Coast range; o-c, Atlantic section; c-p, Pacific section. The slope bd is more than 1000 miles long, up to the mountain passes, which are about 10,000 feet above the sea (with peaks rising 4000 or 4300 feet higher.) The true rise, therefore, is less than 10 feet to a mile. in Europe. Its width in Europe is one of the causes for that continent's becoming the earliest home of true civilization. Its narrowness in America is in itself a condition unfavorable to progress; but this influence was minimized by the late date of settlement and the advanced civilization of the early settlers. Population and its dis Population had doubled since the Revolution opened, and in 1800 it counted 5,308,483, or more than a third the population of the British Isles at that time. Of the total, a fifth were slaves. Two thirds of the Whites were north of Mason and Dixon's line, and nine tenths of the whole population dwelt east of the mountains. The land was untamed, - forests tribution in 1800 THE WESTWARD MARCH 343 hardly touched, and minerals undisturbed. Even in the coast district, settlement had only spotted the primeval wilderness; and rough fishing hamlets marked havens where now bristle innumerable masts and smokestacks. The great bulk of the people lived in little agricultural villages or in the outlying cabin farms. Less than one twentieth were "urban." By the first census (1790), only six towns had six thousand people: Philadelphia, 42,500; New York, 32,000; Boston, 18,000; Charleston, 16,000; Baltimore, 14,000; 14,000; and Providence, 6000. By 1800 these figures had risen to 70,000, 60,000, 24,000, 20,000, 26,000, and 8000. The first three cities had begun to pave MOVEMENT OF CENTERS OF POPULATION (O) AND MANUFACTURES (+). The their streets with cobblestones, to light them with dimly flaring lamps, and to bring in wholesome drinking water in wooden pipes; but police systems and fire protection hardly existed, and the complete absence of sewers resulted in incessant fevers and plagues. Washington was a village of contractors and workmen, living in sheds and boarding houses. The westward march of our population had barely begun. In 1800 the "center of population" was eighteen miles west of Baltimore. Ten years before, it had been forty- The westone miles farther east. The half million people west ward march of the mountains dwelt still in four or five isolated groups, all included in a broad, irregular wedge of territory with its apex reaching not quite to the Mississippi (map, facing page 258). The greater part of our own half of the vast valley was yet unknown even to the frontiersman. In his inaugural, Jefferson, enthusiast that he was regarding his country's future, asserted that we then had "room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and even thousandth generation." Before his next inaugural, he was to double that territory. Communication remained much as before the Revolution. The States had little more intercourse with one another, as Communi- yet, than the colonies had enjoyed. The lowest cation letter postage was eight cents: from New York to Boston it was twenty cents. In 1790 there were only 75 post offices in the country for a territory and population which under modern conditions would have some 6000. A traveler could jolt by clumsy and cramped stagecoach, at four miles an hour, from Boston to New York in three days, and on to Philadelphia in two days more longer than it now takes to go from Boston to San Francisco. Such travel, too, cost from three to four times as much as modern travel by rail. South of the Potomac, traveling was possible only on horseback with frequent embarrassments from absence of bridges or ferries. Between 1790 and 1800, a few canals were constructed, and attention was turning to the possibilities in that means of communication. Freights by land averaged, it is computed, ten cents a mile per ton, even in the settled areas, or eight times the rates our railroads charge. Merely to move sugar from the coast to any point 300 miles inland cost more than sugar sold for anywhere in the country before the World War. Occupations had changed little since 1775 (pages 159 ff.). The year after the peace with England saw the first American voyage to China; and shipmasters began at once Occupations to reach out for the attractive profits of that Oriental trade. The European wars were favoring our carrying trade with the Old World. John Jacob Astor was organizing the great American Fur Company, to follow the furs into the far Northwest. Manufactures were making a little prog OCCUPATIONS AND WAGES 345 ress. A few iron mills were at work; and, between 1790 and 1812, some of the machinery recently invented in England for spinning and weaving cotton was introduced. In England, by 1800, such machinery had worked an "Industrial Revolution"; but it did not come into use extensively here until the War of 1812 forced us to manufacture our own textiles. For America the chief result of the Industrial Revolution at this time was England's increased demand for raw cotton for her new factories. Cotton had been "Cotton is costly because the seed had always had to be King' separated from the fiber by hand. But in 1793 Eli Whitney, a Connecticut schoolmaster in Georgia, invented an "engine" for this work. This cotton gin was simple enough to be run by a slave; and with it one man could "clean as much cotton as 300 men could by hand. Southern planters at once gave their attention to meeting the new English demand. In 1791 we exported only 200,000 pounds: in 1800 the amount was 100 times that; and this was doubled the third year after. Soon the South could boast, "Cotton is King.' |