duced, we find that they represent, in the lesser degree only, the art of agriculture.

We number now nearly or quite fifty million people. A hun dred millions could be sustained, without increasing the area of a single farm or adding one to their number, by merely bringing our product up to the average standard of reasonably good agriculture; and then there might remain for export twice the quantity we now send abroad, to feed the hungry in foreign lands. No longer divided by the curse of slavery, this nation is now united by bonds of mutual interest and of common speech, tied by the iron band of eighty-five thousand miles of railway, and is yet only beginning to feel the vital power and grandeur of a truly national existence.

What may be the future of this land few can yet conceive.

Texas alone comprises as much territory as the German Empire, England, and Wales combined. Texas has now about two million people within her boundaries; the Empire of Germany, England, and Wales, about sixty-seven millions. The good land in Texas is equal in area to the good land in Germany and Great Britain.

Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa combined, more than equal France in area, and possess more fertile land. Only twenty-five years ago John Brown and his companions redeemed Kansas from slavery; Nebraska was then indicated on our own maps as a part of “the Great American Desert ;" and Iowa had scarcely become a State. Their population may now be two million five hundred thousand. France has thirty-seven millions.

The great middle section of Eastern Tennessee, Northern Georgia, Western Carolina, and Southern Virginia, has been hemmed in by the curse of slavery, and is yet almost a terra incognita; but it is replete with wealth in minerals, in timber, and in fertile valleys of almost unequalled climate for health and vigor. This section is equal to the Austrian Empire in its area, and more than equal in resources. It has a sparse population of only one or two millions. The Austrian Empire has over thirty-two millions.

The healthy upland country of Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas, contains vast areas of fertile woodland, which can be bought by the hundred thousand acres at half a dollar, or 2s., an acre, on which sheep and cotton thrive equally well. These sections are being slowly occupied by white farmers, and wait for immigrants who can bring them to use. In a few short years, sheep, fed mainly upon the kernel of the cotton-seed and upon the grasses that follow the cotton, will send to market from the same fields, alternately occupied, as much wool as cotton.

This warm section is more than equal to Italy in area: it has perhaps two millions of people. Italy contains twenty-seven millions.

The fertile lands in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and along the Potomac, in Maryland, more than equal Belgium. They may contain half a million of people. ́Belgium has more than five millions.

In the consideration of this problem of productive capacity, there are other factors of the greatest importance. What are the burdens to be borne by our people compared to others? What is the mortgage on this land that we possess?

It is but fourteen years since our national debt was over $3,000,000,000. Its full amount never appeared by the books of the treasury, because, after the accounts that were due and unpaid at the end of the war could be audited and entered $250,000,000 had been paid. Since then it has been reduced $750,000,000 more, and we now owe but $2,000,000,000.

Our army is but a border police of twenty-five thousand men. Be fore the end of the century our debt may be all paid; and, if jus. tice is done to the Indian tribes, we shall have less need of an army than now.

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Let us, however, return to the main purpose of this paper. It has been proved that cheap transportation has been plished to a degree that the wildest advocate of a state or national railway system never dreamed of. In 1869 the average charge on a ton of merchandise, all kinds included, from Chicago to the seaboard, was $24. In 1870 it was a little less than $8, and has been at times much lower. This is the average on all merchandise. Grain and meat are carried at much lower rates; at times as low as $3.60 per ton to New York, and, I believe, $2.50 per ton to Baltimore.

Within twenty years a revolution has been effected in construction of ocean steamers by the substitution of the screw for the paddle, and the adoption of the compound engine.

Yet we have but entered upon the age of steel: no one yet knows the exact economy of the steel rail. The present locomotive-engine is barbarous in its waste of fuel; not over three or four per cent of the power of the fuel is utilized by being converted into the actual motion of the train, while the dead weight of the clumsy wooden car averages three to one of the load carried. Not over one pound in a hundred of the fuel consumed is actually and absolutely applied to the movement of the load; the rest is absorbed by waste and friction.

The absolute cost of grain and meat in the West and South west cannot, as before stated, now be defined with positive accuracy. Suffice it that the present cost and the present rates of transportation have caused a social revolution in the East, and are causing a social revolution in Great Britain. But the future effect of the unknown factor cannot yet be conceived. The ultimate cost of moving grain

and meat must be less, and can never be more. 'There will be greater competition and greater economy. We are constructing thousands of miles of new railway, and hundreds of inventive braius are at work upon the problem of diminishing the cost of construction and operation.

If one per cent of the absolute power stored up in our coal-beds has sufficed to make the changes we are now witnessing, what will be the effect when we learn how to utilize two per cent and decrease the other elements of cost in the same proportion? What are the terms of the equation by which we shall convert distance into dollars or pounds sterling a few years hence? In that unknown quantity is not the margin for the rent of land in Englaud to be sought, if any rent is to be paid? and upon the solution of this problem in social mathematics does not the duration of the present social order in Great Britain mainly depend?

In conclusion, the extent of our present railway service may be considered; and for this purpose I avail myself of the carefully prepared tables of Mr. Henry V. Poor, editor of The Railway Manual of the United States.

In the year 1879, 3750 miles were added to our total mileage, making 85,591 miles in operation January 1, 1880. It is estimated that 6000 miles will be constructed in 1880, if the rails can be obtained, making the prospective mileage of January 1, 1881, 91,591. The construction of railways from 1869 to 1873, at the high cost imposed upon the country by the combination of an inflated paper currency and an excessive tariff, doubtless had more to do with the panic of 1873 than any other single factor; but it already appears that the panic, so far as it was caused by railway construction, arose from the bad and speculative methods in these undertakings more than from want of justification in the plans of many of them. It will be observed, however, that while the railway system as a whole may not have exceeded 2 per cent in the dividends paid, the New York Central Railroad and its connections, comprising a system of about one thousand miles, remained very profitable during the whole period of depression, as did many other lines.

It will also be observed that, while thus profitable to its owners, the New York Central Railroad system, or consolidated line, does the largest amount of work at the least cost, probably carrying ten million tons in 1879, and that it is the controlling factor in the movement of meat and grain from West to East.

It follows that the great cheapness that has been attained is not temporary, but permanent; and that increase of traffic, within certain limits not yet found, is marked by decrease of cost.

From the statistics of 1879, just compiled, it appears that the average charge on all merchandise over the New York Central Railroad and its connections was only 0.81 cents per ton per mile,

There is much contention in this country in regard to the railroad corporation as a factor in our own politics, and much complaint is made in respect to alleged monopolies; but it will be observed that the great lines against which this charge is made to wit, the sys. tems consolidated and designated as the New York Central, the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore and Ohio-may also be named and designated as comprising the specific miles of railroad on which the largest service is done for the community at the least relative cost.

It would matter not if all these lines were consolidated, even under one man's guidance. The same rule would control him that now controls them all, and compels a constant abatement in the charge, constant improvement in method, and constant reduction in cost of operation. The rule is that it is not the competition of rail with rail that controls or limits the charge that may be made for their use, but the competition of product with product in the great markets of the country and of the world. No man, and no combination of men, can permanently prevent this competition working its just and beneficent results in the wider distribution of the elements of subsistence, in the abundant consumption of which material prosperity consists.

Prior to the discovery of gold in California and Australia, in 1849 and 1850, there was no mine of either gold or silver of any importance under the control of an English-speaking state, or within reach of a railroad.

In the first few years after these discoveries came the enormous supply of gold from placer-mining or washing under a rude system, and controlled by "Lynch law."

In 1866 the opening of the Pacific Railroads altered all the conditions of the cost of production. The gold and silver bearing States and Territories of the United States are now penetrated by more than five thousand miles of railways, reaching the very mouths of the mines. Their branches are being constantly extended; and now Arizona and New Mexico, the regions from which the Spaniards derived the greatest supply of these metals, are being penetrated by the railroad in several directions. Hydraulic mining has been perfected, and is conducted in the most complete and scientific manner.

Within one or two years after each mining-camp is established, if the work is profitable, a town or city grows up, law is enforced, and science is applied under safe conditions.

On the flanks of the ridges in which the mines are opened lie the great plains stocked with cattle, and on which, by irrigation, the largest crops of wheat are now produced. Laborers are to be had at moderate wages, and all the conditions of low cost of production have been brought in force, such as never existed before in the his

tory of the world in respect to precious metals.

What the effect of these vast changes may yet be is a question of geology.

First came the surface-washings, next the immense yields of the Comstock lode, and now the wonders of Leadville; while the rumors from Arizona whisper of chances that may eclipse all these. Yet behind all these, attracting far less attention, hydraulic mining is working steadily and surely over areas not yet measured.

In this again the railroad has been the most potent factor. What is to be the result of this new force, applied to unknown quantities of gold and silver, is a problem that the future only can solve.

What is called the "silver question," now agitating many na tions, is but one phase of the effect of this new force applied to silver-mining. The effect of the enormous production, especially of gold, since 1850, is yet a question at issue among economists.

It must be remarked here that since 1852 there has been a singular uniformity in the production of gold and silver combined, and this has been used as an argument for bi-metallism. In Cernuschi's last pamphlet a table is given of "Money issued by Mines, Mountains, and Rivers," from 1849 to 1878 inclusive. The great annual production was reached in 1852, £26,550,000 of gold, £8,120,000 of silver; total, £34,670,000. The variation since then has been £4,500,000 over in 1853, £3,000,000 less in 1862; the average of twenty-seven years having been £33,677,000. The total product of gold and silver for twenty-seven years, according to this statement, has been as follows:

This is rather a large sum; but it may be remarked that the value of the American cotton crop of the last ten years has been $2,500,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 in gold. We need more cotton than we do gold or silver. But who can tell when the second Comstock lode may be discovered?

It may well be asked, Has this railroad scaled down the national debts of the world?" If it is to become dangerous to lend money to nations for purposes of war, and pay as you fight becomes the rule, the monument about to be erected to the great men by whose efforts the Union Pacific Railroad was constructed may perhaps bear a tribute to them as among the peacemakers of the world. But this carries us into the region of visionary politics. The Pacific Railroad is but one line completed since the war.

Since April, 1865, we have added fifty thousand miles to our railway service, and the addition in 1880 will be six thousand more. In the same period an industrial revolution has occurred in the States that were made free by the war, such as has never before occurred.