America for Americans! | Page 2

between these two sections of our continent--a contrast that must be suggestive to every thoughtful mind and awaken the question whether this is due to what some call the fortuities of national life or whether it is the result of a genius of government that is sublime and a religion that is divine. And if we turn our eyes over the great deep to the most favored nations beyond the Atlantic, the contrast inspires grateful emotions, and we are equally led to contemplate the causes which have brought about a condition so favorable to us. The most venerable nations in Europe, countries that have lived through more than a millennium, are to-day shaken by internal disturbance. Those institutions which have come down from the hoary past, which have been considered pre-eminent in the affections and faith of mankind, now topple to their fall. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," whether man or woman; and no government in Europe is in a state of peaceful security. Alarm dwells in the palace. Fear, like a bloody phantom, haunts the throne, and the vast nations of Europe, with all their agriculture and commerce and manufacture, and all their majesty of law and ordinances of religion, are maintained in a questionable peace by not less than three millions of men armed to the teeth; while in this country, so vast in its domain, so complicated in its population, from North to South, from East to West, preserved in peace, not by standing armies or floating navies, but by a moral sense, a quickened conscience, the guardian of our homes, our altars, and our nation.
Certainly the farmer stands nearest to God. Agriculture underlies all national wealth. The farmer ministers to the wants of king and prince, of president and senator; the farmer must be esteemed as the direct medium of blessing through whom God manifests his goodness to the nation. We have been accustomed to such phenomenal crops that it almost goes without saying that the past year has been phenomenal in its agricultural productions. Indeed there has been a wealth in the soil, a wealth in the mines, a wealth in the seas, which awakens astonishment and admiration in the minds of those beyond the deep--for it is a statistical fact that our agricultural products for the year just closing is not less than three and a half thousand millions of dollars in valuation. How difficult to appreciate the fact! One thousand seven hundred million bushels of corn, valued at five hundred and eighty millions of dollars; four hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat, valued at three hundred and fifty-five millions of dollars; six and a half million bales of cotton, estimated in valuation at two hundred and fifty millions of dollars. And including all the other agricultural products, the statistician of the Government estimates the value at three and a half thousand millions of dollars. And this is but a repetition of other years. No! It exceeds other years! It is a great fact that one and a half millions of square miles of cultivated land in this country now subject to the plow could feed a thousand millions of persons, and then we could have five thousand millions of bushels of grain for exportation.
In ten years, from 1870 to 1880, we produced over seven hundred millions of dollars of precious metals, and the last year the valuation is estimated at seventy-five millions in gold and silver; and rising above these colossal and phenomenal figures, our great manufacturing people during the past year have produced not less than five thousand millions of dollars in valuation. The mind staggers in the presence of these tremendous facts.
Then our national wealth is as phenomenal as are the annual products of soil, and mine, and skill, and commerce. In 1880 our national wealth was estimated at forty-four thousand millions of dollars, which would buy all Russia, Turkey, Italy, South Africa, and South America--possessions inhabited by not less than one hundred and seventy-seven millions of people. This enormous national wealth exceeds the wealth of Great Britain by two hundred and seventy-six millions of dollars. England's wealth is the growth of centuries, while our wealth, at the most, can be said to be the growth of one century. Nay, the fact is that most of ours has been created in the last twenty years. In 1860 our national wealth was estimated at sixteen thousand millions of dollars. But from 1860 to 1880 our wealth increased twenty-eight thousand millions of dollars--ten thousand millions more than the entire wealth of the Empire of Russia. From 1870 to 1880, ten years, the increase was twenty thousand millions. This is without a parallel. Surely these great facts call upon the President of the United States to convoke the freemen of