CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



motive was put on the rails in this year; and 

 Professor Joseph Henry set up his trial telegraph 

 wire and gave the electric current its first lesson 

 in obedience. 



There was no free library in the world in 1831. 

 The first one was started in Peterborough, N. H., 

 two years later. In England, electoral reform 

 had not begun, a General Fast had been ordered 

 because of the prevalence of cholera, and a four- 

 pound loaf cost more than the day's pay of a 

 laborer. The United States was a twenty-four- 

 State republic, with very little knowledge of 

 two- thirds of its own territory. The source of 

 the Mississippi River, for instance, was un- 

 known. To send a letter from Boston to New 

 York cost the price of half a bushel of wheat. 

 There was no newspaper in Wisconsin and no 

 house in Iowa. The first sale of lots was an- 

 nounced in Chicago, but there was then no public 

 building in that hamlet, nothing but a few log 

 cabins in a swampy waste that was populous 

 only in wild ducks, bears, and wolves. Forty 

 of the latter were shot by the villagers in 1834. 



Of the many eminent men who had the same 



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