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PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



PUBLIC DO CUMENTS. Message of Presi- 

 dent GEANT, at the commencement of the first 

 session of the Forty-fourth Congress, December 

 7, 1875. 

 To the Senate and House of Representatives : 



In submitting my seventh annual message to Con- 

 gress, in this centennial year of our national existence 

 as a free and independent people, it affords me great 

 pleasure to recur to the advancement that has been 

 made from the time of the colonies, one hundred 

 years ago. We were then a people numbering only 

 three millions. Now we number more than forty 

 millions. Then industries were confined almost ex- 

 clusively to the tillage of the soil. Now manufacto- 

 ries absorb much of the labor of the country. 



Our liberties remain unimpaired; the bondmen 

 have been freed from slavery ; we have become pos- 

 sessed of the respect, if not the friendship, of all 

 civilized nations. Our progress has been great in 

 all the arts ; in science, agriculture, commerce, navi- 

 gation, mining, mechanics, law, medicine, etc. ; and 

 in general education the progress is likewise encour- 

 aging. Our thirteen States have become thirty-eight, 

 including Colorado (which has taken the initiatory 

 steps 'to become a State), and eight Territories, in- 

 cluding the Indian Territory and Alaska, and exclud- 

 ing Colorado, making a territory extending from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific. On the south we have ex- 

 tended to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the west from 

 the Mississippi to the Pacific. 



One hundred years ago the cotton-gin, the steam- 

 ship, the railroad, the telegraph, the reaping, sew- 

 ing, and modern printing-machines, and numerous 

 other inventions of scarcely less value to our business 

 and happiness, were entirely unknown. 



In 1776, manufactories scarcely existed even in 

 name in all this vast territory. In 1870, more than 

 two millions of persons were employed in manufac- 

 tories, producing more than $2,100,000,000 of prod- 

 ucts in amount annually, nearly equal to our national 

 debt. From nearly the whole of the population of 

 1 r76 being engaged in the one occupation of agricult- 

 ure, in 1870 so numerous and diversified had become 

 the occupation of our people that less than six mill- 

 ions out of more than forty millions were so engaged. 

 The extraordinary effect produced in our country by 

 a resort to diversified occupations has built a market 

 for the products of fertile lands distant from the sea- 

 board and the markets of the world. 



The American system of locating various and ex- 

 tensive manufactories next to the plough and the 

 pasture, and adding connecting railroads and steam- 

 boats, has produced in our distant interior country 

 a result noticeable by the intelligent portions of all 

 commercial nations. The ingenuity and skill of 

 American mechanics have been demonstrated at 

 home and abroad in a manner most flattering to their 

 pride. But for the extraordinary genius and ability 

 of our mechanics, the achievements of our agricult- 

 urists, manufacturers, and transporters throughout 

 the country would have been impossible of attain- 

 ment. 



The progress of the miner has also been great. 

 Of coal our production was small ; now many millions 

 of tons are mined annually. So with iron, which 

 formed scarcely an appreciable part of our products 

 half a century ago, we now produce more than the 

 world consumed at the beginning of our national ex- 

 istence. Lead, zinc, and copper, from being articles 

 of import, we may expect to be large exporters of 

 in the near future. The development of gold and 

 silver mines in the United States and Territories has 

 not only been remarkable, but has had a large influ- 

 ence upon the business of all commercial nations. 

 Our merchants in the last hundred years have had a 

 success and have established a reputation for enter- 

 prise, sagacity, progress, and integrity, unsurpassed 

 by peoples of older nationalities. This "good 

 name" is not confined to their homes, but goes out 



upon every sea and into every port where commerce 

 enters. With equal pride we can point to our prog- 

 ress in all of the learned professions. 



As we are now about to enter upon our second 

 centennial commencing our manhood as a nation 

 it is well to look back upon the past and study what 

 will be best to preserve and advance our future great- 

 ness. From the fall of Adam for his transgression 

 to the present day, no nation has ever been free from 

 threatened danger to its prosperity and happiness. 

 We should look to the dangers threatening us, and 

 remedy them so far as lies in our power. We are a 

 republic whereof one man is as good as another before 

 the law. Under such a form of government it is of 

 the greatest importance that all should be possessed 

 of education and intelligence enough to cast a vote 

 with a right understanding of its meaning. A large 

 association of ignorant men cannot, for any consid- 

 erable period, oppose a successful resistance to tyr- 

 anny and oppression from the educated few ? but 

 will inevitably sink into acquiescence to the will of 

 intelligence, whether directed by the demagogue or 

 by priestcraft. Hence the education of the masses 

 becomes of the first necessity for the preservation 

 of our institutions. They are worth preserving, be- 

 cause they have secured the greatest good to the 

 greatest proportion of the population of any form of 

 government yet devised. All other forms of govern- 

 ment approach it just in proportion to the general 

 diffusion of education and independence of thought 

 and action. As the primary step, therefore, to our 

 advancement in all that has marked our progress in 

 the past century, I suggest for your earnest consid- 

 eration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a 

 constitutional amendment be submitted to the Legis- 

 latures of the several States for ratification, making 

 it the duty of each of the several States to establish 

 and forever maintain free public schools adequate to 

 the education of all the children in the rudimentary 

 branches within their respective limits, irrespective 

 of sex, color, birthplace, or religions ; forbidding 

 the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, 

 or pagan tenets ; and prohibiting the granting of 

 any school-funds, or school-taxes, or any part there- 

 of, either by legislative, municipal, or other author- 

 ity, for the benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, 

 of any religious sect or denomination, or in aid or 

 for the benefit of any other object of any nature or 

 kind whatever. 



In connection with this important question, I 

 would also call your attention to the importance of 

 correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, 

 will probably lead to great trouble in our land be- 

 fore the close of the nineteenth century. It is the 

 accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church- 

 property. 



In 1850, 1 believe, the church-property of the Unit- 

 ed States which paid no tax, municipal or State, 

 amounted to about $83,000,000. In 1860, the amount 

 had doubled; in 1875, it is about $1,000,000,000. 

 By 1900, without check, it is safe to say this prop- 

 erty will reach a sum exceeding $3,000,000,000. So 

 vast a sum, receiving all the protection and Kenefits 

 of government, without bearing its proportion of the 

 burdens and expenses of the same, will not be looked 

 upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the 

 taxes. In a growing country, where real estate en- 

 hances so rapidly with time as in the United States, 

 there is scarcely a liihit to the wealth that may be. 

 acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if 

 allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The 

 contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded 

 to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration with- 

 out constitutional authority and through blood. 



I would suggest the taxation of all property equal- 

 ly, whether church or corporation, exempting only 

 the last resting-place of the dead, and, possibly, 

 with proper restrictions, church-edifices. 



Our relations with most of the foreign powers con- 

 tinue on a satisfactory and friendly footing. 



