America for Americans! | Page 2

South America, the home of turbulence and misrule, where ignorance,
combined with a perverted Christianity, has darkened and enslaved;
where the wheels of industry have been impeded and the march to a
higher civilization obstructed--how bold the contrast 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