UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. (AREA AND POPULATION.) 



645 



preachers and presiding elders, and $2,003 for 

 the bishops. The Church has 4 bishops, a pub- 

 lishing house at Huntington, Ind., where a weekly 

 journal, a monthly missionary magazine, and 

 Sunday-school periodicals and helps are published, 

 and Central College, at Huntington, Ind. The 

 Home, Frontier, and Foreign Missionary Society 

 and the Woman's Missionary Association sustain 

 home missions at about 100 stations, frontier 

 missions in 12 mission conferences, with more 

 than 100 preaching places, and a foreign mission 

 in Africa. The business of the Church Erection 

 Society is managed by the Board of Missions. 

 A permanent fund of about $8,000 has been se- 

 cured. 



The General Conference, held at Chambersburg, 

 Pa., in May, was attended by about 65 delegates 

 from the annual conferences in the United States 

 and Ontario, and by the superintendent of the 

 mission in the Imperi country, West Africa. The 

 division of the United Brethren arose out of the 

 action of the General Conference of 1889 (see the 

 Annual Cyclopaedia for 1889) in adopting a 

 new constitution and a revised Confession of 

 Faith in a manner which a dissenting minority 

 held to be invalid in consequence of failure to 

 observe precisely the steps prescribed in the con- 

 stitution of the Church. This minority withdrew 

 and organized themselves as the real General Con- 

 ference, claiming to represent the true United 

 Brethren Church. Several lawsuits have arisen 

 over disputes concerning titles to property, but 

 no decision has been rendered as yet which is 

 accepted as final. The United Brethren of the 

 Old Constitution affirm that the number of their 

 adherents is much larger than the statistical ta- 

 bles appear to show, many of them being iso- 

 lated in communities where the majority branch 

 controls the churches. Reports made to the Gen- 

 eral Conference show that of the $1,000,000 of 

 property held by the Church, nine-tenths have 

 been accumulated since the division in 1889. The 

 only debt is a comparatively small one on the 

 publishing establishment. Besides the college at 

 Huntington, Ind., educational institutions have 

 been established in Oregon and Washington. A 

 surplus was returned in the treasury of the For- 

 eign Missionary Society. Endowment funds to 

 different institutions were being sent in liberally, 

 and interest in church enterprises was growing. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a federal 

 republic in North America. The legislative power 

 is vested in the Congress, consisting of the Senate 

 and the House of Representatives. There are 90 

 Senators, 2 from each State, elected by the State 

 Legislatures for six years, one-third being re- 

 newed every second year. The House of Repre- 

 sentatives has 357 members, elected for two years 

 by the ballots of all qualified voters in the con- 

 gressional districts of each State, in most States 

 by universal adult male suffrage. The executive 

 power is vested in the President, who is com- 

 .mander-in-chief of the military and naval forces, 

 can lay before Congress projects of legislation, 

 is empowered to make treaties, subject to the 

 ratifying vote of the Senate, has the power of 

 veto over acts of Congress, which can be overcome 

 by a vote of two-thirds of each house, commis- 

 sions the officers of the army and navy, and ap- 

 points the civil officials of the Government, sub- 

 ject to confirmation by the Senate. The Vice- 

 President is President of the Senate, and in case 

 of the death, resignation, or removal of the Presi- 

 dent, he succeeds the latter for the remainder of 

 the term. In case of the death or disability of 

 both President and Vice-President, the Secretary 

 of State becomes acting President, and after him 



other members of the Cabinet in iheir order. The 

 Senate, sitting as a high court, can remove the 

 President or members of the Cabinet on articles 

 of impeachment presented by (he !!ou-e of Repre- 

 sentatives. The President and Viee- 1 'resident are 

 chosen by a college of electors, \vho lu -e chosen 

 in each State in the manner that the Lfgislature 

 prescribes, which is in every State; \>v 'popular 

 suffrage, their number being equal to* Hie -,mn 

 of the Senators and Representatives of (he State 

 in Congress. It has become the custom oi polit- 

 ical parties to nominate in national convent ion 

 their candidates for the presidency and vice- 

 presidency, and the electors, chosen in each State 

 on a collective ticket, are accustomed to vote 

 solidly for the candidates designated by their par- 

 ties beforehand. Thus the election of the Presi- 

 dent and Vice-President has come to be in reality, 

 though not in form, by the direct vote of the 

 nation. The term of the presidency is four years. 

 Elections are held on the Tuesday following the 

 first Monday in November of every leap year. 

 The President-elect is sworn into office by the 

 Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on March 4 

 of the year succeeding his election. The President 

 for the term ending March 4, 1905, was William 

 McKinley, of Ohio, elected in 1900 for the second 

 time. The Vice-President was Theodore Roosevelt, 

 of New York. The following were the members 

 of the President's Cabinet at the beginning of 

 1901: Secretary of State, John Hay, of the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia; Secretary of the Treasury, 

 Lyman J. Gage, of Illinois; Secretary of War, 

 Elihu Root, of New York; Secretary of the Navy, 

 John Davis Long, of Massachusetts; Postmaster- 

 General, C. Emory Smith, of Pennsylvania; Sec- 

 retary of the .Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, of 

 Missouri ; Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson, 

 of Iowa; Attorney-General, John William Griggs, 

 of New Jersey. 



On Sept. 6, while holding a public reception in 

 the Temple of Music of the Pan-American Exposi- 

 tion at Buffalo, President McKinley was shot by 

 an anarchist, who had concealed a revolver in 

 a handkerchief wound round his hand like a 

 bandage and fired two shots before he was seized. 

 One bullet glanced off from the breast-bone; the 

 other penetrated the abdomen. On Sept. 14 Mr. 

 McKinley died from gangrene poisoning, which 

 started from the wound in the stomach. Vice- 

 President Roosevelt, who had hastened to Buffalo 

 when the President was shot, and left for the 

 Adirondack mountains when he was pronounced 

 out of danger, returned and was sworn in as 

 President the same day. The assassin was con- 

 victed of murder on Sept. 26, his trial lasting three 

 days, and was executed in Auburn prison on Oct. 

 29. Mr. Roosevelt announced that he would fol- 

 low out the policy which President McKinley had 

 pursued for the good of the country, and he re- 

 quested the members of the Cabinet to remain in 

 office. No change in the Cabinet occurred until 

 Charles Emory Smith, on Dec. 27, resigned his 

 post. President Roosevelt at once appointed 

 Henry C. Payne, of Wisconsin, to succeed him as 

 Postmaster-General. 



Area and Population. The land area of the 

 States and Territories is 2,939,000 square miles, 

 exclusive of 31,000 square miles in the Indian 

 Territory and of Alaska, which has about 531,000 

 square miles, and Hawaii, the area of which is 

 6,640 square miles, making the total area 3,507,640 

 square miles, exclusive of Porto Rico, which has 

 an area of 3,600 square miles, and of the Philip- 

 pine and Sulu Islands, with an area of 11,400 

 square miles, Guam, with an area of 200 square 

 miles, and Tutuila and the smaller islands of the 



