CONTINENTAL CONQUEST 



engaged in the agricultural industry in 1890 was ten 

 million seven hundred thousand more than two and a 

 half times the entire population in 1790. In acres the 

 total amount of land classed as farms by the last census 

 was nearly six hundred million, of which nearly four 

 hundred million was under actual cultivation, the rest 

 being woodlands. The number of individual farms was 

 four million six hundred and fifty thousand. The annual 

 product was worth four billion dollars. " In ten years," 

 says Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in his inspiring book, Tri- 

 umphant Democracy , "a territory larger than Britain, and 

 almost equal in extent to the entire area of France and 

 Germany, was added to the farm area of America." 



Marvellous as this statement is, it exhibits but one 

 item in the record of continental conquest which con- 

 ferred such phenomenal prosperity upon the American 

 people in the past. Agriculture is the basis of civiliza- 

 tion, and upon the foundation so quickly and thorough- 

 ly laid, the new nation hastened to erect the superstruct- 

 ure of a complex industrial life. The existence of an 

 enormous population on the farms furnished a great field 

 for manufactures. This industry now employs between 

 four and five million workmen, who annually receive and 

 expend nearly two billion dollars in wages, and create an 

 annual product worth nearly nine billion dollars. 



Agriculture and manufactures both finished products 

 wrought by millions of workmen from the raw materials 

 of the new continent combined in demanding the most 

 extensive arrangements for internal transportation ever 

 provided on the face of the earth. The total railroad 

 mileage at the last census was one hundred and sixty- 

 three thousand five hundred miles, which is more than 







