Photograph from Frederic C. Howe 

 A LAPLAND WOMAN 



nificant. Furthermore, no State, no na- 

 tion, no continent has ever before stag- 

 gered under such an overwhelming debt. 

 If the war were to end now, its financial 

 obligations alone, to say nothing of the 

 devastation, would reach a total of 

 $60,000,000,000. Think of a continent, 

 with much of the flower of its brains 

 and brawn either dead or maimed, and 

 vast areas of its productive territory 

 in ruins, facing a debt whose interest 

 charges alone annually will equal the cost 

 of six Panama canals ! And that conti- 

 nent one which, before the war, sent us 

 a million of its people every year because 

 living was hard at home ! 



Whoever has stood at the gate at Ellis 

 Island and watched the human tide surge 

 through, and whoever has traveled among 

 the peasants of Europe must realize how 

 narrow before the war was the margin 

 between their total income and their nec- 

 essary outgo. Against these things must 

 be matched the efficiency that the war 

 has forced upon the people and the na- 

 tions and the spirit of self-sacrifice it has 

 engendered. 



America has always been a polyglot 

 nation, although all tongues do finally 

 melt into hers. It is said that twenty 



years after Hudson discovered Manhat- 

 tan fourteen languages were spoken in 

 New Amsterdam. The religious wars in 

 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 

 sent thousands and tens of thousands of 

 French Huguenots, German Protestants, 

 and English Puritans to our shores. One 

 American-built vessel is said to have 

 made 116 round trips between Xew York 

 and Liverpool in nineteen years, during 

 which time it brought 30,000 immigrants 

 to America. 



A MAX VALUED AT FIFTY DOLLARS 



The first colonial charter granted by 

 England for the purposes of new settle- 

 ment was conditioned on homage and 

 rent. This was the Virginia charter for 

 the land extending from Cape Fear to 

 Halifax, the rent of which was to be one- 

 fifth of the net produce of gold, silver, 

 and copper. The land aristocracy was 

 promoted by the provision that a planter 

 might add fifty additional acres of land 

 for every person he would transport into 

 Virginia at his own cost. When the Pil- 

 grims were outfitting, each immigrant 

 was rated at a capital of ten pounds. No 

 divisions of profits was to be made for 

 seven years. 



In the early days the people who came 

 were largely of the sturdy pioneer type. 

 A great many of them could neither read 

 nor write, while most of those who could 

 were able to do so only in a limited way. 

 The transpositions in many names in 

 America came from the carelessness or 

 inability of public officials in spelling 

 men's names straight in deeds, wills, and 

 other documents. 



GOVERNOR BERKELEY OPPOSED THE 

 PRIXTING PRESS 



In 171S three hundred and nineteen 

 Scotch-Irish empowered their agent to 

 negotiate terms with the Governor of 

 Massachusetts for their settlement in that 

 colony. Ninety-six per cent of the whole 

 number wrote their names out in full. It 

 has been said that at that time in no other 

 part of the British Empire could such 

 a proportion of men miscellaneously se- 

 lected have written their names. Twenty- 

 six per cent of the German male immi- 

 grants above sixteen years of age who 

 came to America in the first half of the 

 eighteenth century made their marks. 



