IV, — ^SUNNY PROGRESSIVISM AND THE SHADOW OF WAR 



was the pride of publicists, and Chicago boasted a population of twenty- 

 five thousand; a shallow wave of settlement was flowing over the vast 

 interior to break against the bluffs of the Missouri, though the pioneers 

 still feared to pitch tents on the broad prairielands, and chose rather 

 the rugged and rocky woodlands skirting the waterways as sites for 

 homesteads; the fertile subhumid plains, with ten million buffalo feed- 

 ing on their nutritious grasses, were still mapped as "the great Amer- 

 ican desert;" the Rocky Mountain region beyond was a mystical land, 

 yielding the wildest and weirdest of travelers' tales; California was an 

 Ultima Thule more remote in thought and interest than are Hawaii or 

 even the Philippines to-day. . . . 



The progress of the nation during the half-century is beyond par- 

 allel. By normal growth and peaceful absorption without foreign con- 

 quest the population has trebled, and the national wealth has increased 

 tenfold. The subjugation of natural forces has proceeded at a higher 

 rate, and the extension of knowledge and the diffusion of intelligence 

 have gone forward more rapidly still. This advance, so great as to be 

 grasped by few minds, is the marvel of human history. The world has 

 moved forward as it never did before. Yet fully half of the progress of 

 the world, during the last fifty years, has been wrought through the 

 unprecedented energy of American enterprise and genius, guided by 

 American science. . . . 



The genius of American astronomers has brought appreciation from 

 laymen as well as investigators, and their labors have been rewarded by 

 increased facilities; x\merica is better endowed today with observatories 

 and apparatus than any other country, — nearly as well as all the rest of 

 the world. Most of our rapidly growing universities have their own 

 observatories. A dozen years ago the installation of Lick Observatory 

 was an event in the scientific world, and attracted such public attention 

 as to leave little for the two observatories installed within the year, — 

 Flower Observatory in Pennsylvania, and Yerkes Observatory, an ad- 

 junct of the University of Chicago. Fifty years ago astronomy was a 

 sober and sluggish science, far removed from practical every-day inter- 

 ests, cultivated respectably in Europe and beginning to attract serious 

 attention in this countrv. To-day its data are doubled and its activity is 

 tripled; it touches industry and the public welfare at many points, and 

 advances more rapidly than ever before; and a full share of this progress 

 is due to American genius and industry. . . . 



The formula of physical science came to America as a mariner's 

 compass to a crew of maroons. Already a nation of inventors inspired 

 by intellectual freedom, Americans were still blind leaders of the blind; 

 for invention is impossible without at least intuitive recognition of the 

 unifomiity of nature, while without conscious recognition of this law 

 the inventor drifts in a sea of uncertainties, making port only by chance. 

 The newly formulated doctrine was seized and assimilated with such 

 avidity that within a decade it was more generally understood and 

 adopted in this country than in all Europe. Under its stimulus invention 

 throve and manufacturing grew apace: the crude reaper was made a 

 self-raker, next a harvester or header, then a self-binder or field-thresher, 



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