Maine is James G. Blaine, who removed to this state in 1855 from Pennsylvania, where he was born January 31, 1830. Taking up the profession of journalism, for which he had special qualifications, Mr. Blaine speedily impressed himself as a young man of marked ability. Entering public life as a member of the state legislature in 1859, at the age of twentynine, in which body he served for four years - the last two as speaker — he was in 1863 promoted to the national House, in which body he continued for nearly fourteen years the last six as speaker — when he was transferred to the Senate to fill the seat vacated by Lot M. Morrill's appointment as Secretary of the Treasury. On the inauguration of President Garfield in 1881, he made Mr. Blaine his Secretary of State, which position he occupied till after Mr. Arthur succeeded to the presidency, when he resigned and devoted the time of his retirement to writing his book, "Twenty Years in Congress," which had an almost unprecedented circulation and popularity. On the accession of President Harrison to the presidency in 1889, Mr. Blaine accepted an invitation to again become the head of the State Department, which position he is now occupying with his accustomed ability and success. When the partisan prejudice, always aroused by so conspicuous and aggressive a party leader as Mr. Blaine, has passed away, he will be accorded by common consent a prominent place in the galaxy of great statesmen who have done conspicuous service and made themselves loved and honored by the American people. The Governor of Maine at the present time is Edwin C. Burleigh, who is successfully serving his second term in the gubernatorial chair. The delegation in Congress consists in the Senate, of William P. Frye, who, after serving in the legislature, as Attorney-General of the state, and ten years in the national House with great success, was promoted to the Senate in 1881 to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Blaine, and was re-elected in 1883 and 1889; and Eugene Hale, who, after serving in the legislature and for ten years in the national House, with ability and acceptance, was also pro moted to the Senate in 1881 to succeed Mr. Hamlin; and, in the House, Thomas B. Reed who, after serving in the legislature and as Attorney-General of Maine, has for fourteen years ably represented his district in the House, the last term as speaker, in which position he was brought into great prominence on account of his rulings and the ability with which he led the Republicans of the House; Nelson Dingley, Jr., who has served in the state legislature six years, two of them as speaker of the House, two terms as Governor of Maine, and ten years in the national House; and Seth L. Milliken and Charles A. Boutelle, who have each successfully served eight years in the House. Maine is distinguished, not only for its statesmen, jurists, and professional and business men who have achieved wide reputations at home and abroad, but also for its authors, poets, scholars, and artists. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the first of American poets, was a native of Maine, educated at Bowdoin and for six years a professor in that college; N. P. Willis, the distinguished poet and author; John Neal, the cultured journalist and litterateur; Seba Smith, the brilliant writer and the original of " Major Downing," and his wife, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, who was the first woman in this country to appear on a public platform; George B. Cheever, the distinguished clergyman, who was prominent in the early days of temperance reform in this country; John S. C. Abbott, the well-known author; Elijah Kellogg, the charming writer of juvenile stories; Sarah Orne Jewett, the popular author of "Deep Haven," and other charming books; Harriet Prescott Spofford, the gifted author of "Sir Rohan's Ghost," and other stories; Lyman Abbot, the well-known author and preacher; Sargent S. Prentiss, whose eloquence thrilled and moved great assemblages as no other orator has since Whitefield; Edward A. Brackett and Franklin Simmons, the distinguished sculptors; Walter M. Brackett, George W. Seavey, and Harry Brown, the well-known painters; John A. Andrew, the distinguished and scholarly war governor of Massachusetts; John D. Long, the charming talker and writer, who graced the gubernatorial chair of the old Bay State and the halls of Congress; and Chief Justice Fuller of the United States Supreme Court, whose addresses stamp him as a cultivated scholar, were all natives of Maine. Nathaniel Hawthorne spent one year of his boyhood in Raymond, Me., where he lived, as he says, "like a bird of the air," and graduated at Bowdoin in the celebrated class of 1825, in which Longfellow, John S. C. Abbott, George B. Cheever, James W. Bradbury, United States senator from Maine, 184753, and Commodore Horatio Bridge were his classmates, and Franklin Pierce in the class before him. Harriet Beecher Stowe, although not a native of Maine, yet for fourteen years resided at Brunswick, Maine, where her husband Calvin E. Stowe, was a professor in Bowdoin College, and while residing here wrote the marvellous story of "Uncle Tom's cabin," which has been read more widely and exerted a greater influence for good than any other work of fiction ever given to the world. more have become free high schools for the communities where they exist, under the wise provisions of a law enacted in 1873, by which any town is authorized to enlarge the scope of instruction contemplated by the free school system and establish a high school, one half of the expense to be paid by such town and the other half, not exceeding a certain sum, by the state. Under this law, in the year 1889, two hundred and four free high schools were maintained in as many towns, in which 14,900 pupils were taught in the higher branches, at a cost of $139799. In the same year, 143,113 pupils received instruction in the 4,364 school houses dedicated to the use of the common schools of the state, at an expense of $1,089,280. Inasmuch as the state school fund is small, the expense of maintaining these schools is borne by one half of the savings bank tax and a state tax of one mill on the dollar on the real and personal estate, all of which in 1889 yielded $374,153, which was distributed by the state to the several towns according to the number of children of school age, and the balance ($737,221) was met by municipal taxation and local funds. Maine would not have been true to the ideas which animated its early settlers if it had not early taken measures to promote general education. By an ordinance of 1647, when there were only a few hundred settlers in the territory now included Recognizing the necessity of training within the boundaries of the state, all schools for the special preparation of towns were required to support free com- young men and women as teachers in the mon schools at the public expense; and public schools, state normal schools have after the Revolution the establishment of been established at Farmington, Gorham, academies for instruction in branches and Castine, and normal departments at higher than those covered by the public Oak Grove Seminary, Vassalboro, the school was encouraged by state aid. In Maine Central Institute at Pittsfield, the 1820, when Maine was separated from Maine Wesleyan Seminary at Kent's Hill, Massachusetts and erected into a new the Eastern Conference Seminary at state, there were about one thousand Bucksport, and Westbrook Seminary at schoolhouses in the state, in which public Westbrook. schools were maintained by a tax on the inhabitants of the several towns. There were also at the same period twenty-four academies in the state, supported by private contributions and tuition charges, supplemented by state grants of land, and filling an important place in the system of popular education. Some of these academies are still in existence and doing the work for which they were established; some have grown into seminaries and collegiate preparatory schools, or normal schools for the training of teachers; and While Maine was still connected with Massachusetts, the far-seeing founders of the state recognized the importance of encouraging the higher education. Accordingly, in 1794, a charter was granted for the establishment of Bowdoin College at Brunswick, although the institution was not opened to the first class till 1802. Colby University at Waterville, which was given collegiate powers in 1820, under the name of Waterville College, was the second college established in Maine. The third college in Maine, which owes its exist ence to the indefatigable efforts of its president, Rev. Orrin B. Cheney, D. D., was incorporated originally in 1855, as the Maine State Seminary, and located at Lewiston, and was given collegiate powers in 1863, under the name of Bates College, when the first class entered. Subsequently a Free Baptist Theological School was established in connection with the college. In 1866, the State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts was established at Orono. In 1816, the Congregationalists established a Theological Seminary at Hampden, which was removed to Bangor in 1819. All of these colleges, as well as the seminaries at Kent's Hill, Bucksport, and Westbrook, the Coburn Classical Institute at Waterville, and the Collegiate Preparatory Schools at Hebron and Houlton, are in a flourishing condition. The state has been mindful of the unfortunate within its limits in establishing an asylum for the insane at Augusta, and taking initiatory steps for another such at Bangor; a reform school for boys at Cape Elizabeth; an industrial school for wayward and exposed girls at Hallowell; and a home at Bath for the needy orphan children of those who served their country in the late Civil War. The deaf and dumb, and the blind children of the state are cared for in institutions elsewhere. The Maine General Hospital at Portland, which was opened for patients in 1874, and the Maine Central Hospital at Lewiston, recently established, are doing noble work. The General Government also maintains a Maine Hospital for sick and disabled seamen at Falmouth, and the Soldiers' Home at Togus for needy and homeless soldiers. The small remnants of what were once the powerful tribes of the Penobscot or Tarratine Indians at Oldtown Island, and the Passamaquodies at Princeton, numbering 377 of the former and 523 of the latter, receive annual payments from the state, in accordance with the provisions of the treaties by which they surrendered their rights to large tracts of land, and obtain whatever is required for their subsistence beyond this by making baskets at the various summer resorts, serving as guides for sportsmen in the summer, and driving logs on the rivers in the spring. The population of Maine, which for nearly 150 years after its first settlement in 1623 until the close of the devastating Indian and French and Indian Wars in 1763, rose to scarcely twenty-two thousand, and was often reduced to one half of that number, began to increase rapidly immediately after the close of the Revolutionary War, when for the first time the inhabitants were freed from the dread of savage incursions and foreign invasions. The opening up to peaceful settlement of the territory east of the Penobscot at that period, for the first time in the history of Maine, and the encouragement given to settlers by grants and sales of lands at nominal prices, led to a large influx of settlers immediately after the close of the Revolutionary War. In 1790, the population of Maine had risen to 96,540, and in 1810 to 228,705. The embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, which seriously injured its shipping interests and export lumber trade, retarded the growth of the district; but from 1820 to 1840, during which period the valuable timber lands of Maine, within the reach of rivers and streams, were rapidly stripped of their lumber, the population increased from 298,267 at the former date, to 501,793 at the later period. In the next two decades the rate of increase was much smaller, in consequence of the large emigration from the state induced by the cheap and fertile lands of the West, to which ease of access was afforded by newly opened railroads, and by the decline in ship-building and supply of timber, and the delay in introducing manufacturing industries into Maine. The fact that the state is out of the routes of immigration and has its borders on lands that could be offered free of cost to settlers, and until recently but few manufacturing industries, has deprived Maine of the increase of population which so many other states have had from immigrants. In the decade from 1860 to 1870, the inroad made by war on our young men, and the settlement of large numbers of them in the South and West at the close of their term of service, caused a decline of the population of Maine. This decline has been arrested since 1870, notwithstanding the alluring inducements offered by the new West, and the great centres of trade and industry have continued to draw away many of our enterprising young men. The census of 1890 shows a population of 661,086 - an increase of 34,171 in the last two decades, mainly due to the development of manufacturing industries. While Maine is not distinctively an agricultural state in the sense in which the states of the fertile West are, yet it has much productive soil, especially in the river valleys and in the Aroostook region, recently settled, and is by no means without important advantages for certain kinds of farming. This might be inferred from the fact that half of the inhabitants are farmers or depend upon the products of the farm for a livelihood. The census of 1880 showed that there were then in Maine 64,309 farms, mainly in the southern, central, and the northeastern sections of that state, containing 3,484,908 acres of improved land, valued at $102,357,615, an increase of nearly five thousand farms, and over a half million improved acres in ten years. The value of the products of these farms in 1879 was $21,945,489, and including betterments, $33,470,044. Of these farms 61,528 were cultivated by the owners. The most important products were 1,107,778 tons of hay, 8,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 2,265,575 bushels of oats, 3,720,783 gallons of milk, 15,272,ooo pounds of butter and cheese, 7,059,876 dozens of eggs, 2,776,407 pounds of wool, $4,939,071 in value of animals slaughtered, $1,563,188 in value of apples, and a large crop of sweet corn for canning, to all of which the soil and climate of Maine are especially suited. The census of 1890, covering the farm statistics of Maine for 1889, is not yet available, but there is no doubt it will show a marked advance in the agricultural interests of the state, notwithstanding the increasing Western competition arising from the large reduction of through rates for cattle, produce, and dairy prod ucts. When Maine was settled, its territory was covered with a dense growth of valu able pine, spruce, oak, and other hard wood timber. For years, lumbering was the chief business, and farmers depended upon lumbermen to buy their surplus crops. In process of time the original pine and oak within easy reach was practically all cut and sold, and the spruce left only at the head waters of the rivers and in the northern part of the state, a long distance from navigable waters, where fortunately it remained safe until the adoption of the wise policy of cutting out only the larger trees at periods considerably apart, so that in the last two decades in consequence of this policy and the appearance of second growth pine the timber supply of Maine has increased rather than diminished. Inasmuch as there are immense areas in northern Maine covered with the virgin forest, and better fitted for growth of timber than for cultivation, this policy is likely to preserve an increasing supply of timber for future generations. The hard wood growth of Maine, composed mainly of maple, birch, and beech-all beautiful cabinet and finishing woods-is almost inexhaustible and easy of access, and is already supplying the materials for many minor manufacturing industries. It is within a comparatively recent period that manufacturing industries, outside of lumber mills, have been introduced into Maine to any considerable extent; yet in 1880 the value of the products of Maine manufacturing industries was $79,829,793. The value of the product of the most important of these industries was cottons, $13,319,363 ; woollens(including mixed textiles), $8,526,010; sawed lumber, $7,933,868, leather, $7,100,967; boots and shoes, $6,120,342; flour and meal,$3,966,023 ; vessels, $2,909, 846; and paper, $2,170,321. The manufacturing statistics collated with the census of 1890 are not yet summarized, but it is certain that there has been a large increase of product over 1880. In boots and shoes, paper and wood pulp, and manufactures of wood, the growth in the last decade has been surprising. In the ice, lime and granite industries of Maine, for which the statistics for 1890 have been obtained, the increase since 1880 is marked. In 1890 the output of Maine granite was valued at $2,235,839, almost double that of 1880; the lime product, at nearly $2,000,000; and the ice-crop, at nearly as much. It is inevitable that Maine will become one of the important manufacturing states of the Union, as it has greater facilities for manufacturing enterprises, so far as water power, building materials and a climate favorable to prolonged muscular effort are concerned, than any other state. In addition to the large rivers like the Kennebec, Penobscot, St. Croix and Androscoggin, navigable into the interior for some distance, there are in the state, 5147 rivers and streams, with 1568 lakes and ponds, covering an area of 2200 square miles, as their sources, delivering twelve hundred millions of cubic feet of water annually, and falling the mean distance of six hundred feet on their passage to the sea; which, when harnessed to machinery, will furnish 2,656,200 horse-power, equivalent to the working energy of thirty-four million men. Shipbuilding has always been one of the important industries of Maine. The first vessel constructed in the United States was built by Gorges' colony, in the autumn of 1607, on the Kennebec river, not many miles below the city of Bath, which for many years has been the most important wooden shipbuilding centre in the United States. The first vessels were built by Maine settlers for employment in the deep water fisheries, always one of the most valuable industries of Maine, and still important, although the decrease of mackerel and cod on the coast within the last thirty years has lessened their importance. Then came the demand for vessels for transporting lumber to the West Indies and Europe; and from 1848 to 1856 was added the extraordinary demand for American vessels for the foreign, coast, and California trade, caused by the Mexican War, the discovery of gold in California, and the Crimean War. In 1810 there were 141,057 tons of shipping owned in Maine; in 1820, only 140,373 tons; in 1840, 318,062 tons; in 1850, 501,421 tons; in 1870, 394,003; and in 1890, 373,929 tons. In 1840 the number of tons of vessels of all classes built in Maine was 38,964; in 1850, 91,212; in 1860, 57,868; in 1880, 37,165 and in 1890, 56,319. During the past year an iron and steel shipbuilding plant has been successfully established at Bath, where two gunboats for the U. S. Navy are in process of construction. Inasmuch as the northern half of Maine, with the exception of a part of the Aroostook County, is unsettled, the railroad system of the state is as yet confined to the southern and central sections. The number of miles of railway constructed and in operation in the state is 14012, of which 1441⁄2 miles, running from the Canadian border on the west across the northerly part of the southern half of the state to the Mattawamkeag, where it connects with the Maine Central system, is owned and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway, and 891⁄2 miles, running from Portland to Island Pond, is leased by the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, and forms a part of that system. Of the remainder, 6574 miles, including the trunk line running through the centre of the southern half of the state, from Portland to Vanceboro, and numerous branches, is owned or leased by the Maine Central Railroad Co. The Boston and Maine Railroad controls the two parallel lines running from Portland westward to the New Hampshire line. All of these roads are managed with commendable efficiency and enterprise, and together with numerous steamboat lines afford ample facilities for freight and passengers to the sections of the state which they reach, and special conveniences for summer travel. The tourist can leave Boston in the morning, and reach Bar Harbor, the Rangeley Lakes, and most of the summer resorts in Maine the same day. At the present time, plans are in progress which promise to speedily give direct railroad communication to Aroostook and Washington Counties, which have as yet had only indirect railroad connections through New Brunswick. The fact that Maine is in the extreme northeastern angle of the United States has given the impression that the climate is more rigorous and inhospitable than that of any other state. But six states of the Union, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washing |