372 CHARLES M. HARVEY 



Northern and the other transcontinental roads, threw open 

 the trans-Mississippi west to settlement, and incited a popula- 

 tion expansion without parallel in the previous history of the 

 country, or in the history of any other part of the world. 

 During the civil war, for the first time since 1848, the railway 

 construction in the country at large dropped below 1,000 miles 

 a year. In the south railway construction practically ceased. 

 The 35,000 miles of railway in the United States in 1865 ex- 

 panded to 52,000 in 1870, virtually all the gain being in the 

 north and west. The south' s industrial expansion was to 

 begin a little later. The 52,000 miles of 1870 increased to the 

 93,000 of 1880, to the 166,000 in 1890, 194,000 in 1900, and 

 to 212,000 at the beginning of 1905. This increase in railway 

 mileage is a fair index of the industrial and financial growth 

 of the country in the forty years since Lee and Johnston sur- 

 rendered. 



The world quickly grasped the vast opportunities which 

 the overthrow of the confederacy and the removal of the last 

 cause for internal trouble would bring to the United States. 

 More capital for industrial investment was sent to this coun- 

 try in the five years immediately after Appomattox than in 

 any fifteen years before that time. The immigration, which 

 had dropped to 89,000 in each of the two years of 1861 and 

 1862, went up to 247,000 in 1865, after the close of the war, 

 and was 387,000 in 1870. It crossed the 400,000 mark for 

 the first time in 1872, it went above the 600,000 line in 1881 

 and the 700,000 mark was left behind a year later. That 

 represented the maximum annual inflow until it went up to 

 857,000 in 1903, dropping to 812,000 in 1904. The immigra- 

 tion tide, however, is subject to ebbs and flows, dependent on 

 the industrial conditions in the United States and on the 

 political and industrial conditions at home. The prosperity 

 here and the depression abroad, coupled with the domestic 

 troubles in Russia and Austria and the crushing burden of 

 taxation in Italy, is sending the immigration now up to unprec- 

 edented figures. Very nearly three times as many immi- 

 grants have landed in the United States in the years since 

 Appomattox as came here in the previous seventy six years, 

 since the first inauguration of Washington as president. 



