United States

UNITED STATES, The, the short title usually given to the great federal republic which had its origin in the revolt of the British colonies in North America, when, in the Declaration of Independence, they described themselves as The Thirteen United States of America. Officially the name is The United States of America, but The United States (used as a singular and not a plural) has become accepted as the name of the country; and pre-eminent usage has now made its citizens Americans, in distinctiofi from the other inhabitants of North and South America.

The area of the United States, as here considered, exclusive of Alaska and outlying possessions, occupies a belt nearly twenty degrees of middle latitude in width, and crosses Boundaries sad Area, North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The southern boundary is naturally defined on the east by the Gulf of Mexico; its western extension crosses obliquely over the western highlands, along an irregular line determined by aggressive Americans of Anglo-Saxon stock against Americans of Spanish stock. The northern boundary, after an arbitrary beginning, finds a natural extension along the Great Lakes, and thence continues along the 49th parallel of north latitude to the Pacific (see Bulletin 171, U.S. Geological Survey). The area thus included is 3,026,789 sq. m.

Physical Geography

Coast.

The Atlantic coast of the United States is, with minor exceptions, low; the Pacific coast is, with as few exceptions, hilly or mountainous. The Atlantic coast owes its oblique N.E.S.W. trend to crustal deformations which in very early geological time gave a beginning to what later came to be the Appalachian mountain system; but this system had Its climax of deformation so long ago (probably in Permian time) that it has since then been very generally reduced to moderate or low relief, and owes its present altitude either to renewed elevations along the earlier lines or to the survival of the most resistant rocks as residual mountains. The oblique trend of the coast would be even more pronounced but for a comparatively modern crustal movement, causing a depression in the northeast, with a resulting encroachment of the sea upon the land, and an elevation. in the south-west, with a resulting advance of the land upon the sea. The Pacific coast has been defined chiefly by relatively recent crustal deformations, and hence still preserves a greater relief than that of the Atlantic. The minor features of each coast will be mentioned in connection with the lani districts of which the coast-line is only the border.

General Topography and Drainage.

The low Atlantic coast and the hilly or mountainous Pacific coast foreshadow the leading features in the distribution of mountains within the United States. The Appalachian system, originally forest-covered, on the eastern side of the continent, is relatively low and narrow; it is bordered on the south-east and south by an important coastal plain. The Cordilleran system on the western side of the continent is lofty, broad and complicated, with heavy forests near the north-west coast, but elsewhere with trees only on the higher ranges below the Alpine region, and with treeless or desert intermont valleys, plateaus and basins, very arid in the south-west. Between the two mountain systems extends a great central area of plains, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico northward, far beyond the national boundary, to the Arctic Ocean. The~ rivers that drain the Atlantic slope of the Appalachians are comparatively short; those that drain the Pacific slope include only two, the Columbia and the Colorado, which rise far inland, near the easternmost members of the Cordilleran system, and flow through plateaus and intermont basins to the ocean. The central plains are divided by a hardly perceptible height of land into a Canadian and a United States portion; from the latter the great Mississippi system discharges southward to the Gulf of Mexico. The upper Mississippi and some of the Ohio basin is the prairie region, with trees originally only along the watercourses; the uplands towards the Appalachians were included in the great eastern forested area; the western part of the plains has so dry a climate that its herbage is scanty, and in the south it is barren. The lacustrine system of the St Lawrence flows eastward from a relatively narrow drainage area.

Relation of General Topography to Settlement.

The aboriginal occupants of the greater part of North America were comparatively few in number, and except in Mexico were not advanced beyond the savage state, The geological processes that placed a much narrower ocean between North America and western Europe than between North America and eastern Asia secured to the New World the good fortune of being colonized by the leading peoples of the occidental Old World, instead of by the less developed races of the Orient. The transoceanic invasion progressed slowly through the 17th and ~8th centuries, delayed by the head winds of a rough ocean which was crossed only in slow sailing vessels, and by the rough backwoods of the Appalachians, which retarded the penetration of wagon roads and canals into the interior. The invasion was wonderfully accelerated through the I9th century, when the vast area of the treeless prairies beyond the Appalachians was offered to the settler, and when steam transportation on sea and land replaced sailing vessels and wagons. The frontier was then swiftly carried across the eastern half of the central plains, but found a second delay in its advance occasioned by the dry climate of the western plains. It was chiefly the mineral wealth of the Cordilleran region, first developed on the far Pacific slope, and later in many parts of the inner mountain ranges, that urged pioneers across the dry plains into the apparently inhospitable mountain region; there the adventurous new-corners rapidly worked out one mining district after another, exhausting and abandoning the smaller camps to early decay and rushing in feverish excitement to new-found river fields, but establishing important centres of varied industries in the more important mining districts. It was not until the settlers learned to adapt themselves to the methods of wide-range cattle raising and of farming by irrigation that the greater value of the far western interior was recognized as a permanent home for an agricultural population.

The purchase of Louisiana a great area west of the Mississippi river from the French in 1803 has sometimes been said to be the cause of the westward expansion of the United States, but the Louisiana purchase has been better interpreted as the occasion for the expansion rather than its cause; for, as Lewis Evans of Philadelphia long ago recognized (1749), whoever gained possession of the Ohio Valleythe chiet eastern part of the central plainswould inevitably become the masters of the continent.

Physiographic Subdivisions

The area of the United States may be roughly divided into the Appalachian belt, the Cordilleras and the central plains, as already indicated. These large divisions need physiographic subdivision, which will now be made, following the guide of structure, process and stage; that is, each subdivision or province will be defined as part of the earths crust in which some similarity of geological structure prevails, and upon which some process or processes of surface sculpture have worked long enough to reach a certain stage in the cycle of physiographic development.

The Appalachians.

The physiographic description of the Appalachian mountain system offers an especially good opportunity for the application of the genetic method based on structure, process and stage. This mountain system consists essentially of two belts: one on the south-east, chiefly of ancient and greatly deformed crystalline rocks, the other on the north-west, a heavy series of folded Palaeozoic strata; and with these it will be convenient to associate a third belt, farther north-west, consisting of the same Palaeozoic strata lying essentially horizontal and constituting the Appalachian plateau. The crystalline belt represents, at least in part, the ancient highlands from whose ruins the sandstones, shales and limestones of the stratified series were formed, partly as ~narine, partly as fluviatile deposits. The deformation of the Appalachianswas accomplished in two chief periods of compressive deformation, one in early Palaeozoic, the other about the close of Palaeozoic time, and both undoubtedly of long duration; the second one extended its effects farther northwest than the first. These were followed by a period of minor tilting and faulting in early Mesozoic, by a moderate upwarping in Tertiary, and by a moderate uplift in post-Tertiary time. The later small movements are of importance because they are related to the existing topography with which we are here concerned. Each of the disturbances altered the attitude of the mass with respect to the general base-level of the ocean surface; each movement therefore introduced a new cycle of erosion, which was interrupted by a later movement and the beginning of a later cycle.

Thus interpreted, the Appalachian forms of to-day may be ascribed to three cycles of erosion: a nearly complete Mesozoic cycle, in which most of the previously folded and faulted mountain masses were reduced in Cretaceous time to a peneplain or lowland of small relief, surmounted, however, in the north-east and in the south-west by monadnocks of the most resistant rocks, standing singly or in groups; an incomplete Tertiary cycle, initiated by the moderate Tertiary upwarping of the Mesozoic peneplain, and of sufficient length to develop mature valleys in the more resistant rocks of the crystalline belt or in the horizontal strata of the plateau, and to develop late mature or old valleys in the weaker rocks of the stratified belt, where the harder strata were left standing up in ridges; and a brief post-Tertiary cycle, initiated by an uplift of moderate amount and in progress long enough only to erode narrow and relatively immature valleys. Glacial action complicated the work of the latest cycle in the northern part of the system. In view of all this it is possible to refer nearly every element of Appalachian form to its appropriate cycle and stage of development. The more resistant rocks, even though dissected by Tertiary erosion, retain in their summit tiplands an indication of the widespread peneplain of Cretaceous tinie, now standing at the altitude given to it by the Tertiary upwarping and post-Tertiary uplift; and the most resistant rocks surmount the Cretaceous peneplain as unconsumed monadnocks of the Mesozoic cycle. On the other hand, the weaker rocks are more or less completely reduced to lowlands by Tertiary erosion, and are now trenched by the narrow and shallow valleys of the short post-Tertiary cycle. Evi-Jently, therefore, the Appalachians as we now see them are not the still surviving remnants of the mountains of late Palaeozoic deformation; they owe their present height chiefly to the Tertiary upwaroing and uoliftinr. and their form to the normal urocesses of sculpture which, having become nearly quiescent at the close,of the Mesozoic cycle, became active again in Tertiary and later times.

The belts of structure and the cycles of erosion thus briefly described are recognizable with more or less continuity from the Gulf of St Lawrence i 500 m. south-westward to Alabama, where the deformed mountain structures pass out of sight under nearly horizontal strata of the Gulf coastal plain. But the dimensions of the several belts and the strength of the relief developed by their later erosion varies greatly along the system. In a north-eastern section, practically all of New England is occupied by the older crystalline belt; the corresponding northern part of the stratified belt in the St Lawrence and Champlain-Hudson valleys on the inland side of New England is comparatively free from the ridge-making rocks which abound farther south; and here the plateau member is wanting, being replaced, as it were, by the Adirondacks, an outlier of the Laurentian highlands of Canada which immediately succeeds the deformed stratified belt west of Lake Champlain. In a middle section of the system, from the Hudson river in southern New York to the James river in southern Virginia, the crystalline belt is narrowed, as if by the depression of its south-eastern part beneath the Atlantic Ocean or beneath the strata of the Atlantic coastal plain which now represents the ocean; but the stratified belt is here broadly developed in a remarkable series of ridges and valleys determined by the action of erosion on the many alternations of strong and weak folded strata; and the plateau assumes full strength southward from the monochinal Mohawk valley which separates it from the Adirondacks. The linear ridges of this mIddle section are often called the Alleghany Mountains. In a south-western section the crystalline belt again assumes importance in breadth and height, and the plateau member maintains the strength that it had in the middle section, but the intermediate stratified belt again has fewer ridges, -because of the infrequence here of ridge-making strata as compared to their frequency in the middle section.

The middle section of the Appalachians, rather arbitrarily limited by the Hudson and the James rivers, may be described first because it contains the best representation of the three longitudinal belts of which the mountain system as a whole is The Middle composed. The mountain-making compression of the ,4pialaheavy series of Palaeozoic strata has here produced a chians. marvellous series of rock folds with gently undulating axes, trending north-east and south-west through a belt 70 or 80 m. wide; no less wonderful is the form that has been produced by the processes of sculpture. The peculiar configuration of thr~ ridges may be apprehended as follows: The pattern of the folded ~trata on the low-lying Cretaceous peneplain must have resembled the pattern of the curved grain of wood on a planed board. When the peneplain was uplifted the weaker strata were worn down almost to a lowland of a second generation, while the resistant sandstones, of which there a1~- three chief members, retained a great part of their new-gained altitude in the form of long, narrow, even-crested ridges, well deserving of the name of Endless Motintains given them by the Indians, but here and there bending sharply in peculiar zigzags which give this Alleghany section of the mountains an unusual individuality. The postTertiary uplift, giving the present altitude of 1000 or 1500 ft. in Pennsylvania, and of 2500 or 3500 ft. in Virginia, has not significantly altered the forms thus produced; it has only incited the rivers t0 intrench themselves 100 or more feet beneath the lowlands of tertiary erosion. The watercourses to-day are, as a rule, longitudinal, following the strike of the weaker strata in paths that they appear to have gained by spontaneous adjustment during the long Mesozoic cycle; but now and again they cross from one longitudinal valley to another by a transverse course, and there they have cut down sharp notches or water-gaps in the hard strata that elsewhere stand up in the long even-crested ridges.

The transition from the strongly folded structure of the Alleghany ridges and valleys to the nearly horizontal structure of the Appala; chian plateau is promptly made; and with the change of structure comes an appropriate change of form. The horizontal strata of the plateau present equal ease or difficulty of erosion in any direction; the streams and the submature valleys of the plateau therefore ramify in every direction, thus presenting a pattern that has been called insequent, because it follows no apparent control. Further mention of the plateau is made in a later section.

The crystalline belt of the middle Appalachians, 60 or 80 m- wide, is to-day of moderate height because the Tertiary upwarping was there of moderate amotint. The height is greatest along the inner or north-western border of the belt, and here a sub-mountainous topography has been produced by normal dissection, chiefly in the Tertiary cycle; the valleys being narrow because the rocks are resistant. The relief is strong enough to make occupation difficult; the slopes are forested; the uplands are cleared and well occupied b farms and villages, but many of the valleys are wooded glens. Wit continued decrease of altitude south-eastward, the crystalline belt dips under the coastal plain, near a line marked by the Delaware river from Trenton to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and thence south-south-westward through Maryland and Virginia past the cities of Baltimore, Washington and Richmond.

The Pennsylvania portionof the crystalline belt is narrow, as has been said, because of encroachment upon it by the inward overlap of the coastal olain: it ~s low because of small Tertiary unlift: but.

still more, it is discontinuous, because of the inclusion of certain belts of weak non-crystalline rock; here the rolling uplands are worn down to lowland belts, the longest of which reaches from the southern corner of New York, across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, into central Virginia.

The middle section of the Appalachians is further distinguished from the north-eastern and south-western sections by the arrangeDrain age. ment of its drainage: its chief rivers rise in the plateau belt and flow across the ridges and valleys of the stratified belt and through the uplands of the crystalline belt to the sea. The rivers which most perfectly exemplify this habit are the Delaware, Susquehanna and Potomac; the Hudson, the north-eastern boundary of the middle section, is peculiar in having headwaters in the Adirondacks as well as in the Catskills (northern part of the plateau); the James, forming the south-western boundary of the section, rises in the inner valleys of the stratified belt, instead of in the plateau. The generally transverse course of these rivers has given rise to the suggestion that they are of antecedent origin; but there are many objections to this over-simple, Gordian explanation. The south-east course of the middle-section rivers is the result of many changes from the initial drainage; the Mesozoic and Tertiary upwarprngs were probably very influential in determining the present general courses.

For the most part the rivers follow open valleys along belts of weak strata; but they frequently pass through sharp-cut notches in the na1row ridges of the stratified beltthe Delaware water-gap is one of the deepest of these notches; and in the harder rocks of the crystalline belt they have eroded steep-walled gorges, of which the finest is that of the Hudson, because of the greater height and breadth of the crystalline highlands there than at points where the other rivers cross it. The rivers are shallow and more or less broken by rapids in the notches; rapids occur also near the outer border of the crystalline belt, as if the rivers there had been lately incited to downward erosion by an uplift of the region, and had not yet had time to regrade their courses. This is well shown in the falls of the Potomac a few miles above Washington; in the rapids 01 the lower Susquehanna; and in the falls of the Schuylkill, a branch which joins the Delaware at Philadelphia, where the water-power has long been used in extensive factories. Hence rivers in the Appalachians are not navigable; it is only farther down-stream, where the rivers have been converted into estuaries and bayssuch as Chesapeake and Delaware baysby a slight depression of the coastal plain belt, that they serve the purposes of navigation. But the Hudson is strikingly exceptional in this respect; it possesses a deep and navigable tide-water channel all through its gorge in the highlands, a feature which has usually been explained as the result of depression of the land, but may also be explained by glacial erosion without change of land-level; a feature which, in connection with the Mohawk Valley, has been absolutely determinative of the metropolitan rank reached by New York City at the Hudson mouth.

The community of characteristics that is suggested by the association of six north-eastern states under the name New England The North- is in large measure warranted by the inclusion of easternA all these states within the broadened crystalline belt palachians of the north-eastern Appalachians, which is here 150 m. wide. The uplands which prevail through the centre of this area at altitudes of about iooo ft. rise to 1500 o~ 2000 ft. in the north-west, before descent is made to the lowlands of the stratified belt (St Lawrence-Champlain-Hudson valleys, described later on as part of the Great Appalachian valley), and at the same time the rising uplands are diversified with monadnocks of increasing number and height and by mature valleys cut to greater and greater depths; thus the interior of New England is moderately mountainous. When the central uplands are followed south-east or south to the coast, their altitude and their relief over the valleys gradually decrease; and thus the surface gradually passes under the sea. The lower coastal parts, from their accessibility and their smaller relief, are more densely populated; the higher and more rugged interior is still largely forested and thinly settled; there are large tracts of unbroken forest in northern Maine, hardly 150 m. from the coast. In spite of these contrasts, no physiographic line can be drawn between the higher and more rugged interior and the lower coastal border; one merges into the other. New England is a unit, though a diversified unit.

The Appalachian trends (N.E.S.W.) that are so prominent in the stratified belt of the middle Appalachians, and are fairly well marked in the crystalline belt of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, are prevailingly absent in New England. They may be seen on the western border, in the Hoosac range along the boundary of Massachusetts and New York; in the linear series of the Green Mountain summits (Mt Mansfield. 4364 ft., Killington Peak, 4241 ft.) and their (west) piedmont ridges farther north in Vermont; and in the ridges of northern Maine: these are all in synipathy with Appalachian structure: so also are certain open valleys, as the Berkshire (limestone) Valley in western Massachusetts and the correspondin Rutland (limestone and marble) Valley in western Vermont; an more particularly the long Connecticut Valley from northern New Hampshire across Massachusetts to the sea at the southern border of Connecticut, the populous southern third of which is broadly &roded along a belt of red Triassic sandstones with trap ridges.

But in general the dissection of the New England upland is as irregular as is the distribution of the surmounting monadnocks. The type of this class of forms is Mt Monadnock in south-western New Hampshire, a fine example of an isolated residual mass rising from an upland some 1500 ft. in altitude and reaching a summit height of 3186 ft. A still larger example is seen in Mt Katahdin (5200 ft.) in north-central Maine, the greatest of several similar isolated mountains that-are scattered over the interior uplands without apparent system. The White Mountains of northern New Hampshire may be treated as a complex group of rnonadnocks, all of subdued forms, except for a few cliffs at the head of cirque-like valleys, with Mt Washington, the highest of, the dome-like or low pyramidal summits, reaching 6293 ft., and thirteen other summits over 5000 ft. The absence of range-like continuity is here emphasized by the occurrence of several low passes or notches leading directly through the group; the best-known being Crawfords Notch (1900 ft.).

In consequence of the general south-eastward slope of the highlands and uplands of New England, the divide between the Atlantic rivers and those which flow northward an~j westward D ~t into the lowland of the stratified belt in Canada and r New York is generally close to the boundary of these two physiographic districts. The chief rivers all flow south or south-east:

theyare the Connecticut, Merrimack, Kennebec, Penobscot and St John, the last being shared with the province of New Brunswick.

The drainage of New England is unlike that of the middle and south-western Appalachians in the occurrence of numerous lakes and falls. These irregular features are wanting south of the limits of Pleistocene glaciation; there the rivers have had time, in the latest cycle of erosion into which they have entered, to establish themselves in a continuous flow, and as a rule to wear down their courses to a smoothly graded slope. In New England also a wellestablished drainage undoubtedly prevailed in preglacial times; but partly in consequence of the irregular scouring of the rock floor, and even more because of the very irregular deposition of unstratified and stratified drift in the valleys, the drainage is now in great disorder. Many lakes of moderate size and irregular outline have been formed where drift deposits formed barriers across former river courses; the lake outlets are more or less displaced from former river paths. Smaller lakes were formed by the deposition of washed drift around the longest-lasting ice remnants; when the ice finally melted away, the hollows that it left came to be occupied by ponds and lakes. In Maine lakes of both classes are numerous; the largest is Moosehead Lake, about 35 m. long and of a very irregular shore line.

The features of a coast can be appreciated only when it is perceived that they result from the descent of the land surface beneath the sea and from the work of the sea ,upon the shore line thus determined; and it is for this reason that through- Coast, out this article the coastal features are described in connection with the districts of which they are the border. The maturely dissected and recently glaciated uplands of New England are now somewhat depressed with respect to sea-level, so that the sea enters the valleys, forming bays and estuaries, while the interfiuve uplands and hills stand forth in headlands and islands. Narragansett Bay, with the associated headlands and islands on the south coast, is one of the best examples. Where drift deposits border the sea, the shore line has been cut back or built forward in beaches of submature expression, often enclosing extensive tidal marshes; but the great part of the shore line is rocky, and there the change from initial pattern due to submergence is as yet small. Hence the coast as a whole is irregular, with numerous embayments, peninsulas and islands; and in Maine this irregularity reaches a disadvantageous climax.

As in the north-east, so in the south-west, the crystalline belt widens and gains in height; but while New England is an indivisible unit, the southern crystalline belt must be subdivided The Southinto a higher mountain belt on the north-west, 60 m. western A wide where broadest, and a lower piedmont belt on the p,,Jachjan~ south-east, 100 m. wide, from southern Virginia to South Carolina. This subdivision is already necessary in Maryland, where the mountain belt is represented by the Blue Ridge, which is rather a narrow upland belt than a ridge proper where the Potomac cuts across it; while the piedmont belt, relieved by occasional monadnocks stretches from the eastern base of the Blue Ridge to the coastal plain, into which it merges. Farther south, the mountain belt widens and attains its greatest development, a true highland district, in North Carolina, where it includes several strong mountain groups. Here Mt Mitchell risesto 6711 ft., the highest of the Appalachians, and about thirty other summits exceed 6000 ft., while the valleys are usually at altitudes of about 2000 ft. Although the relief is strong, the mountain forms are rounded rather than rugged; few of the summits deserve or receive the name of peaks; some are called domes, from their broadly rounded tons, others are known as balds, becatise the widespread forest cover is replaced over their heads by a grassy cap.

The height and massiveness of the mountains decrease to the south-west, where the piedmont belt sweeps westward around them in western Georgia and eastern Alabama Some of the residual mountains hereabouts are reduced to a mere skeleton or framework by the retrogressive penetration of widening valleys between wasting spurs; the very type of vanishing forms, Certain districts within the mountains, apparently consisting of less resistant crystalline rocks, have been reduced to basin-like peneplains in the same time that served only to grade the slopes and subdue the summits of the neighboring mountains of more resistant rocks; the best example of this kind is the Asheville peneplain in North Carolina, measuring about 40 by 20 m. across; but in consequence of later elevation, its general surface, now standing at an altitude of 2500 ft is mattirely dissected by the French Broad river and its many branches in valleys 300 ft. deep; the basin floor is no longer a plain, but a hilly district in the midst of the mountains; Asheville on its southern border is a noted health resort.

The rivers of the mountain belt, normally dividing and subdividing in apparently fnsequent fashion between the hills and spurs, generally follow open valleys; there are few waterfalls, the streams being as a rule fairly well graded, though their current is rapid and their channels are set with coarse waste. The valley floors always join at accordant levels, as is the habit among normally subdued mountains; they thus contrast with glaciated mountains such as the Alps and the Canadian Rockies, where the laterals habitually open as hanging valleys in the side slope of the main valleys. It is a peculiar feature of the drainage in North Carolina that the headwaters lie to the east of the highest mountains, and that the chief rivers flow north-westward through the mountains to the broad valley lowland of the stratified belt and then through the plateau, as the members of the Mississippi system. It is probable that these rivers follow in a general way courses of much more ancient origin than those of the Atlantic rivers in the middle Appalachians.

The piedmont belt may be described as a maturely dissected peneplain over much of its extent; it is indeed one of the best examples of that class of forms. Its uplands are of fairly accordant altitude, which gradually decreases from 500 to 1000 ft. near the mountain belt to half that height along the coastal plain border. The uplands are here and there surmounted by residual monadnocks in the form of low domes and knobs; these increase in height and number towards the mountain belt, and decrease towards the coastal plain: Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, Georgia, a dome of granite surmounting the schists of the uplands, is a striking example of this class of forms. The chief rivers flow south-eastward in rather irregular courses through valleys from 200 to 500 ft. deep; the small branches ramify indefinitely in typical insequent arrangement; the streams are nearly everywhere well graded; rapids are rare and lakes are unknown.

The bofindary between the mountains and the piedmont belt is called the Blue Ridge all along its length; and although the nan:e is fairly appropriate in northern Virginia, it is not deserved in the Carolinas, where the ridge is only an escarpment descending abruptly 1000 or 1500 ft~ from the valleys of the mountain belt to the rolling uplands of the piedmont belt; and as such it is a form of unusual occurrence. It is not defined by rock structure, but appears to result from the retrogressive erosion of the shorter Atlantic rivers, whereby the highlands, drained by much longer rivers, are undercut. The piedmont belt merges south-eastward into the coastal plain, the altitudes of the piedmont uplands and of the coastal plain hills being about the same along their line of junction. Many of the rivers, elsewhere well graded, have rapids as they pass from the harder rocks of the piedmont to the semi-consolidated strata of the coastal plain.

There is one feature of the Appalachians that has greater continuity than any other; this is the Great Valley. Itis determined The Great structurally by a belt of topographically weak limestones VaJie and shales (or slates) next inland from the crystalline ~ uplands; hence, whatever the direction of the rivers which drain the belt, it has been worn down by Tertiary erosion to a continuous lowland from the Gulf of St Lawrence to central Alabama. Through all this distance of 1500 in. the lowland is nowhere interrupted by a transverse ridge, although longittidinal ridges of moderate heiyht occasionally diversify its surface. In the middle section, as already stated, the Great Valley is somewhat open on the east, by reason of the small height and broad interruptions of the narrow crystalline belt; on the west it is limited by the complex series of Alleghany ridges and valleys; in the north-east section the valley is strongly enclosed on the east by the New England uplands, and on the west by the Adirondacks and Catskills (see below); in the south-west section the valley broadens from the North Carolina highlands on the south-east almost to the Cumberland plateau on the north-west, for here also the ridge-making formations weaken, although they do not entirely disappear.

A strikin,g contrast between New England and the rest of the Appalachians is found in the descent of the New England uplands Th At! ~ to an immediate frontage on the sea; while to the south of New York harbour the remainder of the Appala Plain chians are set back from the sea by the interposition of a coastal plain, one of the most characteristic examples of this class of forms anywhere to be found. As in all such cases, the plain consists of marine (with some estuarine and flu viatile) stratified deposits, more or less indurated, which were laid down when the land stood lower and the sea had its shore line farther inland than to-day. An uplift, increasing to the south, revealed part of the shallow sea bottom in the widening coastal plain, from its narrow beginning at New York harbour to its greatest breadth of 110 or 120 m. in Georgia: there it turns westward and is continued in the Gulf coastal plain, described farther on. The coastal plain, however, is the result, not of a single recent uplift, but of movements dating back to Tertiary time and continued with many oscillations to the present; nor is its surface smooth and unbroken, for erosion began upon the inner part of the plain long before the outer border was revealed. Indeed, the original interior border of the plain has been well stripped from its inland overlap; the higher-standing inner part of the plain is now maturely dissected, with a relief of 200 to 500 ft., by rivers extended seaward from the older land anti by their inntimerable branches, which are often of insequent arrangement; while the seaward border, latest uplifted, is prevailingly low and smooth, with a hardly perceptible seaward slope of but a few feet in a mile; and the shallow sea deepens very gradually for many nules off shore.

South Carolina and Georgia furnish the broadest and most typical section of this important physiographic province: here the more sandy and hilly interior parts are largely occupied by pine forests, which furnish much hard or yellow pine lumber, tar and turpentine. Farther seaward, where the relief is less and the soils are richer, the surface is cleared and cotton is an important crop.

A section of the coastal plain, from North Carolina to southern New Jersey, resembles the plain farther south in general form and quality of soils, but besides being narrower, it is further characterized by several embayments or arms of the sea, caused by a slight depression of the land after mature valleys had been eroded in the plain. The coastal lowland between the sea arms is so flat that, although distinctly above sea-level, vegetation hinders drainage and extensive swamps or pocossins occur. Dismal Swamp, on the border of North Carolina and Virginia, is the largest example.

The small triangular section of the coastal plain in New Jersey north of Delaware Bay deserves separate treatment because of the development there of a pectiliar topographic feature, which throws light on the occurrence of the islands off the New England coast, described in the next paragraph. The feature referred to results from the occurrence here of a weak basal formation of clay overlaid by more resistant sandy strata; the clay belt has been stripped for a score or more of miles from its original inland overlap, and worn down in a longitudinal inner lowland, while the sandy belt retains a significant altitude of 200 or 300 ft. overlooking the inner lowland in a well-defined slope dissected by many inland-flowing streams, and descending from its broad crest very gently seaward, thus giving ri~e to what has been called a belted coastal plain, in which the relief is arranged longitudinally and the upland member, with its very unsymmetrical slopes, has sometimes been called a cuesta. This is a ferm of relief frequently occurring elsewhere, as in the Niagara cuesta of the Great Lake district of the northern United States and in the Cotswold and Chiltern hills of England, typical examples of the cuesta class. The Delaware river, unlike its southern analogues, which pursue a relatively direct course to the sea, turns south-westward along the inner lowland for some 50 m.,

There is good reason for believing that at least along the southern border of New England a narrow coastal plain was for a time added to the continental border; and that, as in the New Jersey section the plain was here stripped from a significant breadth of inland overlap and worn down so as to form an inner lowland enclosed by a longitudinal upland or cuesta; and that when this stage was reached a submergence, of the kind which has produced the many embayments of the New England coast, drowned the outer part of thy plain and the inner lowland, leaving only the higher parts of the cuesta as islands. Thus Long Island (fronting Connecticut, but belonging to New York state), Block Island (part of the small state of Rhode Island), Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket (parts of Massachusetts) may be best explained. Heavy terminal moraines and outwashed fluviatile plains have been laid on the cuesta remnants, increasing their height as much as 100 ft. and burying their seaward slope with gravel and sand. Moreover, the sea has worked on the shore line thus originated, reducing the size of the more exposed islands farther east, and even consuming some islands which are now represented by the Nantucket shoals.

The same Paiaeozoic formations that are folded in the belt of the Alleghany ridges lie nearly horizontal in the plateau district next north-west. The exposed strata are in large part resistant sandstones. While they have suffered active e dissection by streams during the later cycles of erosion, ~ the hilltops have retained so considerable an altitude ~

that the district is known as a plateau; it might be better described as a dissected plateau, inasmuch as its uplands are not contiQuous but are nearly everywhere interrupted by ramifying insequent valleys. The unity and continuity of the district, expressed in the name Appalachian plateau, is seldom recognized in local usage. Its iiorth-eastern part in eastern New York is known as the Catskill Mountains; here it reaches truly mountainous heights in great dome-like masses of full-bodied form, with two summits rising a little over 4000 ft. The border of this part of the plateau descends eastward by a single strong escarpment to the Hudson valley, from which the mountains present a fine appearance, and northward by two escarpments (the second being called the Helderberg Mountains) to the Mohawk Valley, north of which rise the Adirondacks; but to the south west the dissected highland continues into Pennsylvania and Virginia, where it is commonly known as the Alleghany plateau. A curious feature appears in northern Pennsylvania: here the lateral pressure of the Palaeozoic mountain-making forces extended its effects through a belt about fifty miles wider than the folded belt of the Hudson Valley, thus compressing into great rock waves a part of the heavy stratified series which in New York lies horizontal and forms the Catskills; hence one sees, in passing south-west from the horizontal to the folded strata, a beautiful illustration of the manner in which land sculpture is controlled by land structure. Altitudes of 1200 ft. prevail in Pennsylvania and increase in Virginia; then the altitude falls to about 1000 ft. in Kentucky and Tennessee, where the name Cumberland plateau is used for the highest portion, and to still less in northern Alabama, where the plateau, like the mountain belt, disappears under the Gulf coastal plain. Through all this distance of 1000 m. the border of the plateau on the south-east is an abrupt escarpment, eroded where the folded structure of the mountain belt reveals a series of weaker strata; but in the north-west the plateau suffers only a gradual decrease of height and of relief, until the prairie plains are reached in central Ohio and southern Indiana and Illinois, about 150 m. inland from the escarpment. Two qualifications must, however, be added. In certain parts of the plateau there are narrow anticlinal uplifts, an outlying effect of mountain-making compression; here a ridge rises if the exposed strata are resistant, as in Chestnut ridge of western Pennsylvania; but here a valley is excavated if the exposed strata are weak, as in Sequatchie Valley, a long narrow trough which cuts off a strip of the plateau from its greater body in Tennessee. Again, in Kentucky and Tennessee, there is a double alternation of sandstone and limestone in the plateau-making strata; and as the skyline of the plateau bevels across these formations, there are west-facing escarpments, made ragged by mature dissection, as one passes from the topographically strong sandstone to the topographically weak limestone.

In the north-east (New York and Pennsylvania) the higher parts of the plateau are drained by the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers directly to the Atlantic; farther west and south-west, the plateau is drained to the Ohio rrver and its branches. The submature or mature dissection of the plateau by its branching insequent streams results in giving it an excess of sloping surface, usually too steep for farming, and hence left for tree growth.

The Superior Oldland.An outlying upland of the Laurentian highlands of Canada projects into the United States west and south of Lake Superior. Although composed chiefly of crystalline rocks, which are commonly associated with a rugged landscape, and although possessing a greatly deformed structure, which must at some ancient period have been associated with strong relief, the upland as a whole is gently rolling, and the inter-stream surfaces are prevailing plateau-like in their evenness, with altitudes of 1400 to 1600 ft. in their higher areas. In this province, therefore, we find a part of one of those ancient mountain regions, initiated by crustal deformation, but reduced by long continued erosion to a peneplain of modern relief, with occasional surmounting monadnocks of moderate height not completely consumed during the peneplanation of the rest of the surface. The erosion of the region must have been far advanced, perhaps practically completed, in very ancient times, for the even surface of the peneplain is overlapped by fossiliferous marine strata of early geological date (Cambrian); and this shows that a depression of the region beneath an ancient sea took place after a long existence as dry land. The extent of the submergence and the area over which the Palaeozoic strata were deposited are unknown; for in consequence of renewed elevation without deformation, erosion in later periods has stripped off an undetermined amount of the covering strata. The valleys by which the uplands are here and there trenched to moderate depth appear to be, in part at least, the work of streams that have been superposed upon the perieplain through the now removed cover of stratified rocks. Glaciation has strongly scoured away the deeply-weathered soils that presumably existed here in preglacial time, revealing firm and rugged ledges in the low hills and swells of the ground, and spreading an irregular drift cover over the lower parts, whereby the drainage is often much disordered; here being detained in lakes and swamps (muskegs) and there rushing down rocky rapids. The region is therefore generally unattractive to the farmer, but it is inviting to the lumberman and the miner.

The Adirondack Mountains .T his rugged district of northern New York may be treated as an outlier in the United States of the Laurentian highlands of Canada, from which it is separated by the St Lawrence Valley. It is of greater altitude (Mt Marcy 5344 ft.) and of much greater relief than the Superior Oldland; its heights decrease gradually to the north, west and south, where it is unconformably overlapped by Palaeozoic strata like those of Minnesota and Wisconsin; it is of more broken structure and form on. the east, where the disturbances of the Appalachian system have developed ridges and valleys of linear trends, which are wanting or but faintly seen elsewhere. (See ADIRONDACKS.)

Region of tile Great LakesThe Palaeozoic strata, already mentioned as lapping on the southern slope of the Superior Olclland and around the western side of the Adirondacks- are but parts of a great area of similar strata, hundreds of feet in thickness, which dec]ine gently southward from the great oldland of the Laurentian highlands of eastern Canada. The strata are the deposits of an ancient sea, which in the earlier stage of geological investigation was thought to be part of the primeval ocean, while the Laurentian highlands were taken to be the first land that rose from the primeval waters. Inasmuch, however, as the floor on which the overlapping strata rest is, like the rest of the Laurentian and Superior Oldland, a worn-down mountain region, and as the lowest member of the sedimentary series usually contains pebbles of the oldiand rocks, the better interpretation of the relation between the two is that the visible oldiand area of to-day is but a small part of the primeval continent, the remainder of which is still buried under the Palaeozoic cover; and that the visible oldiand, far from being the first part of the continent to rise from the primeval ocean, was the last part of the primeval continent to sink under the advancing Palaeozoic seas. When the oldland and its overlap of stratified deposits were elevated again, the overlapping strata must have had the appearance of a coastal plain; but that was long ago; the strata have since then been much eroded, and to-day possess neither the area nor the smooth form of their initial extent. I-fence this district may be placed in the class of ancient coastal plains. As is always the case in the broad denudation of the gently inclined strata of such plains, the weaker layers are worn down in sub-parallel belts of lower land between the oldiand and the belts of more resistant strata, which rise in uplands.

Few better illustrations of this class of forms are to be found than that presented in the district of the Great Lakes. The chief upland belt or cuesta is formed by the firm Niagara limestone, which takes its name from the gorge and falls cut through the upland by the Niagara river. As in all such forms, the Niagara cuesta has a relatively strong slope or infacing escarpment on the side towards the oldland, and a long gentle slope on the other side. Its relief is seldom more than 200 or 300 ft., and is commonly of small measure, but its continuity and its contrast with the associated lowlands worn on the underlying and overlying weak strata suffice to sake it a feature of importance. The cuesta would be straight from east and west if the slant of the strata were uniformly to the south; but the strata are somewhat warped, and hence the course of the cuesta is strongly convex to the north in the middle, gently convex to the south at either end. The cuesta begins where its determining limcstone begins, in west-central New York; there it separates the lowlands that contain the basins of lakes Ontario and Erie; thence it curves to the north-west through the province of Ontario to the belt of islands that divide1 Georgian Bay from Lake Huron; then westward throtigh the land-arm between lakes Superior and Michigan, and south-westward into the narrow points that divide Green Bay from Lake Michigan, and at last westward to fade away again with the thinning out of the limestone; it is hardly traceable across the Mississippi river. The arrangement of the Great Lakes is thus seen to he closely synipathetic with the course of the lowlands worn on the two belts of weaker strata on either side of the Niagara cuesta; Ontario, Georgian Bay and Green Bay occupy depressions in the lowland on the inner side of the cuesta; Erie, Huron and Michigan lie in depressions in the lowland on the outer side. When the two lowlands are traced eastward they become confluent after the Niagara limestone has faded away in central New York, and the single lowland is continued under the name of Mohawk Valley, an east-west longitudinal depression that has been eroded on a belt of relatively weak strata between the resistant crystalline rocks of the Adirondacks on the north and the northern escarpment of the Appalachian plateau (Catskills-Helderbergs) on the south; forming a pathway of great historic and economic importance between the Atlantic seaports and the interior.

In Wisconsin the inner lowland presents an interesting feature in a knob of resistant quartzites, known as Baraboo Ridge, rising from the buried oldland floor through the partly denuded cover of lower Palaeozoic strata. This knob or ridge may be appropriately regarded as an ancient physiographic fossil, inasmuch as, being a monadnock of very remote origin, it has long been preserved from the destructive attack of the weather by burial under sea-floor deposits, and recently laid bare, like ordinary organic fossils of much smaller size, by the removal of part of its cover by normal erosion.

The occurrence of the lake basins in the lowland belts on either side of the Niagara cuesta is an abnormal feature, not to be explained by ordinary erosion, which can produce only valleys. The basins have been variously ascribed to glacial erosion, to obstruction of normal outlet valleys by barriers of glacial drift, and to crustal warping in connection with or independent of the presence of the glacial sheet. No satisfactory solution of this problem has been reached; but the association of the Great Lakes and other large lakes farther north in Canada with the great North American area of strong and repeated glaciation is highly suggestive.

Lake Superior is unlike the other lakes; the greater part of its basin occupies a depression. in the oldland area, independent of the overlap of Palaeozoic strata. The western half of the basin occupies a trough of synclinal structure; but the making of this syndine is so ancient that it cannot be directly connected with the occurrence of the lake to-day. A more reasonable explanation ascribes the lake basin to a geologically modern depression. within the Superior oldland area; but there is at present no direct evidence in favor of this hypothesis. The Great Lakes are peculiar in receiving the drainage of but a sma]l peripheral land area, enclosed by an ill-defined water-parting from the rivers that run to Hudson Bay or the Gulf of St Lawrence on the north and to the Gulf of Mexico on the south.

Large canals and locks on both sides of the Sault (pronounced Soo) Ste Marie in the outlet of Lake Superior are actively used except during three or four winter months. The three lakes of the middle group stand at practically the same level: Michigan and Huron are connected by the Strait of Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw); Huron and Erie by the St Clair and Detroit rivers, with the small Lake St Clair between them. The navigable depth of these two short rivers is believed to be the result of a slow elevation of the land in the north-east, still in progress, whereby the, waters have risen on their former shores near Detroit. Niagara river, connecting lakes Erie and Ontario, with a fall of 326 ft. (160 ft. at the cataract) in 30 m, is manifestly a watercourse of very modern origin; for a large river would now have a thoroughly matured valley had it long followed its present course; the same is true of the St Lawrence, which in its several rapids and in its subdivision into many channels at the Thousand Islands, presents every sign of youth. Canals on the Canadian side of these unnavigable stretches admit vessels of a considerable size to lakes Ontario and Erie.

The Prairie States.The originally treeless prairies of the upper Mississippi basin began in Indiana and extended westward and north-westward until they merged with the drier region described Leyond as the Great Plains. An eastward extension of the same region, originally tree-covered, extended to central Ohio. Thus the prairies may be described as lying in a general way between the Ohio and Missouri rivers on the south and the Great Lakes on the north. Under the older-fashioned methods of treating physical geography, the prairies were empirically described as level prairies, rolling prairies, and so on. The great advance in the interpretation of land forms now makes it possible to introduce as thoroughly explanatory a description of these fertile plains as of forms earlier familiar, such as sand dunes, deltas and sea cliffs. The prairies are, in brief, a contribution of the glacial period; they consist for the most part of glacial drift, deposited unconformably on an underlying rock surface of moderate or small relief. The rocks here concerned are the extension of the same stratified Palaeozoic formations already described as occurring~in the Appalachian region and around the Great Lakes. They are usually fine-textured limestones and shales, lying horizontal; the moderate or small relief that they were given by mature preglacial erosion is now buried under the drift, but is known by numerous borings for oil, gas and water.

The greatest area of the prairies, from Indiana to North Dakota, consists of till plains, that is, sheets of unstratified drift, 30, 50 or even 100 ft. thick, which cover the underlying rock surface for thousands of square miles (except where postglacial stream erosion has locally laid it bare), and present an extraordinarily even surface. The till is presumably made in part of preglacial soils, but it is more largely composed of rock waste mechanically comminuted by the crccpiiig ice sheets; although the crystalline rocks from Canada and some of the more resistant stratified rocks south of the Great Lakes occur as boulders and stones, a great part of the till has been crushed and ground to a clayey texture. The till plains, although sweeping in broad swells of slowly changing altitude, are often level to the eye, and the view across them stretches to the horizon, unless interrupted by groves of trees along the watercourses, or by belts of low morainic hills. Here and there faint depressions occur, occupied by marshy sloughs, or floored with a rich black soil of pestglacial origin. It is thus by sub-glacial aggradation that the prairies have been leyelled up to a smooth surface, in contrast to the higher and non-glaciated hilly country next south.

The great ice sheets formed terminal moraines around their border at various halting stages; but the morainic belts are of small relief in comparison to the great area of the ice; they rise gently from the till plains to a height of 50, 100 or more feet; they may be one, two or three miles wide; and their hilly surface, dotted over with boulders, contains many small lakes in basins or hollows, instead of streams in valleys. The morainic belts are arranged in groups of concentric loops, convex southward, because the ice sheets advanced in lobes along the lowlands of the Great Lakes; neighboring morainic loops join each other in re-entrants (north-pointing cusps), where two adjacent glacial lobes came together and formed their moraines in largest volume. The discovery of this significant looped arrangement of the morainic belts is the greatest advance in interpretation of glacial phenomena since the first suggestion of a glacial period; it is also the strongest proof that the ice here concerned was a continuous sheet of creeping land ice, and not a discontinuous series of floating icebergs, as had been supposed. The moraines are of too small relief to be shown on any maps but those of the largest scale; yet small as they are, they are the chief relief of the prairie states, and, in association with the nearly imperceptible slopes of the till plains, they determine the course of many streams and rivers, which as a whole are consequent upon the surface form of the glacial deposits.

The complexity of the glacial period and its subdivision into several glacial epochs, separated by interglacial epochs of considerable length (certainly longer than the postglacial epoch) has a structural consequence in the superposition of successive till sheets, alternating with non-glacial deposits, and also a physiographic consequence in the very different amount of normal postglacial erosion suffered by the different parts of the glacial deposits. The southernmost drift sheets, as in southern Iowa and northern Missouri, have lost their initially plain surface and are now maturely dissected into gracefully rolling forms; here the valleys of even the small streams are well opened and graded, and marshes and lakes are wanting: hence these sheets are of early Pleistocene origin. Nearer the Great Lakes the till sheets are trenched only by the narrow valleys of the large streams; marshy sloughs still occupy the faint depressions in the till plains, and the associated moraines have abundant small lakes in their undrained hollows: hence these drift sheets are of late Pleistocene origin.

When the ice sheets fronted on land sloping southward to the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the drift-laden streams flowed freely away from the ice border; and as the streams, escaping from their subglacial channels, spread in broader channels, they ordinarily could not carry forward all their load; hence they acted not as destructive but as constructive agents, and aggraded their courses. Thus local sheets or aprons of gravel and sand are spread more or less abundantly along the outer side of the morainic belts; and long trains of gravel and sands clog the valleys that lead southward from the glaciated to the non-glaciated area. Later when the ice retreated farther and the unloaded streams returned to their earlier degrading habit, they more or less completely scoured out the valley deposits, the remains of which are now seen in terraces on either side of the present flood plains.

When the ice of the last glacial epoch had retreated so far that Its front lay on a northward slope, belonging to the drainage area of the Great Lakes, bodies of water accumulated in front of the ice margin, forming glacio-marginal lakes. The lakes were small at first, and each had its own outlet at the lowest depression in -the height of land to the south; but as the ice melted back, neighboring lakes became confluent at the level of the lowest outlet of the group; the outflowing streams grew in the same proportion and eroded a broad channel across the height of land and far down stream, while the lake waters built sand reefs or carved shore cliffs along their margin, and laid down sheets of clay on their floors. All of these features are easily recognized in the prairie region. The present site of Chicago was determined by an Indian portage or carry across the low divide between Lake Michigan and the headwaters of the Illinois river; and this divide lies on the floor of the former outlet channel of the glacial Lake Michigan. Corresponding outlets are known for the glacial lakes Erie, Huron and Superior, and for a very large sheet of water, named Lake Agassiz, which once overspread a broad till plain in northern Minnesota and North Dakota. The outlet of this glacial lake, called river Warren, eroded a large channel in which the Minnesota river, of to-day is an evident misfit.

Certain extraordinary features were produced when the retreat of the ice sheet had progressed so far as to open an eastward outlet for the marginal lakes along the depression between the northward slope of the Appalachian plateau in west-central New York and the southward slope of the melting ice sheet; for when this eastward outlet came to be lower than the south-westward outlet across the height of land to the Ohio or Mississippi river, the discharge of the marginal lakes was changed from the Mississippi system to the Hudson system. Many well-defined channels, cutting across the north-sloping spurs of the plateau in the neighborhood of Syracuse, NY., mark the temporary paths of the ice-bordered outlet river. Successive channels are found at lower and lower levels on the plateau slope, thus indicating the successive courses taken by the lake outlet as the ice melted farther and farther back. On some of these channels deep gorges were eroded heading in temporary cataracts which exceeded Niagara in height but not in breadth; the pools excavated by the plunging waters at the head of the gorges are now occupied by little lakes. The most significant stage in this series of changes occurred when the glacio-marginal lake wateis were lowered so that the long cuesta of Niagara limestone was laid bare in western New York; the previously confluent waters were then divided into two lakes; the higher one, Erie, supplying the outfiowing Niagara river, which poured its waters down the escarpment of the cuesta to the lower lake, Ontario, whose outlet for a time ran down the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson: thus Niagara falls began. (See NIAGARA.)

Many additional features associated with the glacial period might be described, but space can be given to four only. In certain districts the subglacial till was not spread out in a smooth plain, but accumulated in elliptical mounds, 100 or 200 ft. high, half a mile or a mile long, with axes parallel to the direction of the ice motion as indicated by striae on the underlying rock floor; these hills are known by the Irish name, drumlins, used for similar hills in north-western Ireland. The most remarkable groups of drumlins occur in western New York, where their number is estimated at over 6000, and in southern Wisconsin, where it is placed at 5000. They completely dominate the topography of their districts.

A curious deposit of an impalpably fine and unstratified silt, known by the German name bess, lies on the older drift sheets near the larger river courses of the upper Mississippi basin. It attains a thickness of 20 ft. or more near the rivers and gradually fades away at a distance of ten or more miles on either side. It is of inexhaustible fertility, being in this as well as in other respects closely like the bess in China and other parts of Asia, as well as in Germany. It contains land shells, and hence cannot be attributed to marine or lacustrine submergence. The best explanation suggested for bess is that, during certain phases of the glacial period, it was carried as dust by the winds from the flood plains of aggrading rivers, and slowly deposited on the neighboring grass-covered plains.

South-western Wisconsin and parts of the adjacent states of Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota are known as the driftless area, because, although bordered by drift sheets and moraines, it is free from glacial deposits. It must therefore have been a sort of oasis, when the ice sheets from the north advanced past it on the east and west and joined around its southern border. The reason for this exemption from glaciation is the converse of that for the southward convexity of the morainic loops; for while they mark the paths of greatest glacial advance along lowland troughs (lake basins), the driftless area is a district protected from ice invasion by reason of the obstruction which the highlands of northern Wisconsin and Michigan (part of the Superior oldland~ offered to glacial advance.

The course of the upper Mississippi river is largely consequent i upon glacial deposits. Its sources are in the morainic lakes in northern Minnesota; Lake Itasca being only one of many glacial lakes which supply the headwater branches of the great river. The drift deposits thereabouts are so heavy that the present divides between the drainage basins of Hudson Bay, Lake Superior and the Gulf of Mexico evidently stand in no very definite relation to the preglacial divides. The course of the Mississippi through Minnesota is largely guided by the form of the drift cover. Several rapids and the Falls of St Anthony (determining the site of Minneapolis) are signs of immaturity, resulting from superposition through the drift on the under rock. Farther south, as far as the entrance of the Ohio, the Mississippi follows a rock-walled valley 300 to 400 ft. deep, with a flood-plain 2 to 4 m. wide; this valley seems to represent the path of an enlarged early-glacial Mississippi, when much precipitation that is to-day discharged to Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St Lawrence was delivered to the Gtilf of Mexico, for the curves of the present river are of distinctly smaller raditis than the curves of the valley. Lake Pepin (30 m. below St Paul), a picturesque expansion of the river across its flood-plain, is due to the aggradation of the valley floor where the Chippewa river, coming from the north-east, brought an overload of fluvio-glacial drift. Hence even the father of waters, like so many other rivers in the Northern states, owes many of its features more or less directly to glacial action.

The fertility of the prairies is a natural consequence of their origin. During the mechanical comminution of the till no vegetation was present to remove the minerals essential to plant growth, as is the case in the soils of normally weathered and dissected peneplains, such as the Appalachian piedmont, where the soils, though not exhausted by the primeval forest cover, are by no means ~so rich as the till sheets of the prairies. Moreover, whatever the rocky understructure, the till soil has been averaged by a thorough mechanical mixture of rock grindings; hence the prairies are continuously fertile for scores of miles together.

The true prairies, when first explored, were covered with a rich growth of natural grass and annual flowering plants. To-day they are covered with farms. The cause of the treelessness has been much discussed. It does not seem to lie in peculiarities of temperature or of precipitation; for trees thrive where they are properly planted on the prairies; every town and farm to-day has its avenues and groves of trees; but it should be noted that west of the Mississippi river increasing aridity becomes an important factor, and is the chief cause of the treelessness of the Great Plains (see below). The treelessness of the prairies cannot be due to insufficient time for tree invasion since glacial evacuation; for forests cover the rocky uplands of Canada, which were occupied by ice for ages after the prairies were laid bare. A more probable cause is found in the fineness of the prairie soil, which is inimical to the growth of young trees in competition with the grasses and annual plants. Prairie fires, both of natural and artificial origin, are also a contributive cause; for young trees are exterminatedby fires, but annual plants soon reappear.

The Gulf Coastal Plain.The westward extension of the Atlantic coastal plain around the Gulf of Mexico carries with it a repetition of certain features already described, and the addition of several new ones. As in the Atlantic coastal plain, it is only the lower, seaward part of this region that deserves the name of plain, for there alone is the surface unbroken by hills or valleys; the inner part, initially a plain by reason of its essentially horizontal (gently seaward-sloping) structure, has been converted by mature dissection into an elaborate complex of hills and valleys, usually of increasing altitude and relief as one passes inland.

The special features of the Gulf Plain are the peninsular extension of the plain in Florida, the belted arrangement of relief and soils in Alabama and in Texas, and the Mississippi embayment or inland extension of the plain half-way up the course of the Mississippi river, with the Mississippi flood plain there included.

A broad, low crustal arch extends southward at the junction of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains; the emerged half of the arch, constitutes the visible lowland peninsula of Florida; the submerged half extends westward under the shallow Florida. overlapping waters of the Gtmlf of Mexico. The northern part of the peninsula is composed largely of a weak limestone; here much of the lowland drainage is underground, forming many sink-holes (swallOwholes). Many small lakes in the lowland appear to owe their basins to the solution of the limestones. Valuable phosphate deposits occur in certain districts. The southern part of the state includes the Everglades (qv.), a large area of low, flat, marshy land, overgrown with tall reedy grass, a veritable wilderness; thus giving Florida an unenvied first rank among the states in marsh area. The eastern coast is fringed by long-stretching sand reefs, enclosing lagoons so narrow and continuous that they are popularly called rivers. At the southern end of the peninsula is a series of coral islands, known as keys; they appear to be due to the forward growth of corals and other lime-secreting organisms towards the strong current of the Gulf Stream, by which their food is supplied:

the part of the peninsula composed of coral reefs is less than has been formerly supposed. The western coast has fewer and shorter off-shore reefs; much of it is of minutely irregular outline, which seems to be determined less by the work of the sea than by the forward growth of mangrove swamps in the shallow salt water.

A typical example of a belted coastal plain is found in Alabama and the adjacent part of Mississippi. The plain is here about 1.50 m. wide. The basal formation if chiefly a weak limestone, which has been stripped from its original Alabama. innermost extension and worn down to a flat inner lowland of rich black soil, thus gaining the name of the black belt. The lowland is enclosed by an upland or cuesta, known as Chunnenugga Ridge, sustained by partly consolidated sandy strata; the upland, however, is not continuous, and hence should be described as a maturely dissected cuesta. It has a relatively rapid descent toward the inner lowland, and a very gradual descent to the coast prairies, which become very low, flat and marshy before dipping under the Gulf waters, where they are generally fringed by off-shore reefs.

The coastal plain extends 500 m. inland on the axis of the Mississippi embayment. Its inner border affords admirable examples of topographical discordance where it sweeps north-westward square across the trend of the piedmont belt, the ridges and valleys, and the plateau of the Appalachians, which are all terminated by dipping gently beneath the unconformable cover of the coastal The, lain strata. In the same way the western side of the em- Mississippi ~ayment, trending south and south-west, passes along the Emba.vmeni.lower south-eastern side of the dissected Ozark plateau of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, which in many ways resembles the Appalachian plateau, and along the eastern end of the Massern ranges of the Ouachita mountain system in central Arkansas, which in geological history and topographical form present many analogies with the ridges and valleys of the Appalachians; and as the coastal plain turns westward to Texas it borders the Arbuckle hills in Oklahoma, a small analogue of the crystalline Appalachian belt. In the embayment of the coastal plain some low cuesta-like belts of hills with associated strips of lowlands suggest the features of a beltedcoastal plain; the hillybeltordissected cuesta determined by the Grand Gulf formation in western Mississippi is the most distinct. Important salt deposits occur in the coastal plain strata near the coast. The most striking feature of the embayment is the broad valley which the Mississippi has eroded across it.

The lower Mississippi is the truck in which three large rivers Join; the chief figures (approximate only) regarding them are as follows: Drainage Area Percentage of (square miles). Total Discharge.

Upper Mississippi. 170,000 18

Ohio 210,000 31

Missouri 530,000 14

The small proportion of total water volume supplied from the great Missouri basin is due to the light precipitation in that region. The h L lower Mississippi receives no large tributary from the T e ower east, but two important ones come from the west; the Mississippi Arkansas drainage area being a little less than that River. of the Ohio, and the basin of the Red River of Louisiana being about half as large. The great river thus constituted drains an area of about 1,250,000 sq. m., or about one-third of the United States; and discharges 75,000 cub. yds. of water per second, or 785,190,000,000 cubic yds. per annum, which corresponds roughly to one quarter of the total precipitation on its drainage basin. Its load of land waste (see I. C. Russell, Rivers of North America) is as follows: In suspension.. 6,718,694,400 cub. ft. or 241 ft. deep over 1 sq. in.

Sweptalongbottom 750,000,000 ,, ,, 26 ,, ,, I

In soltition. -. 1,350,000,000 ,, ,, 45 ,, ,, I

Average annual removal of waste from entire basin, th in. or 1 ft. in 4000 years.

The head of the coastal plain embayment is near the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Thence southward for 560 m. the great river flows through the semi-consolidated strata of the plain, in which it has eroded a valley, 40 or 50 in. wide, and 29,700 sq. m. in area, enclosed by bluffs one or two hundred feet high in the northern part, generally decreasing to the southward, but with local increase of height associated with a decrease in flood plain breadth on the eastern side where the Grand Gulf cuesta is traversed. This valley in the coastal plain, with the much narrower rock-walled valley of the upper river in the prairie states, is the true valley of the S3ississippi river; but in popular phrase the Mississippi valley is taken to include a large central part of the Mississippi drainage basin. The valley floor is covered with a flood plain of fine silt, having a southward slope of only half a foot to a mile. The length of the river itself, from the Ohio mouth to the Gulf, is, owing to its windings, about 1060 ni.; its mean fall is about 3 in. in a mile. On account of the rapid deposition of sediment near the main channel at times of overflow, the flood plain, as is normally the case on mature valley floors, has a lateral slope of as much as 5, 10, or even 12 ft. in the first mile from the river; but this soon decreases to a less amount. Hence at a short distance from the river the flood plain is often swampy, unless its surface is there aggraded by the tributary streams: for this reason Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi rank next after Florida in swamp area.

The great river receives an abundant load of silt from its tributaries, and takes up ano lays down silt from its own bed and banks with every change of velocity. The swiftest current te,-ids, by reason of centrifugal force, to follow the outer side of every significant curve in the channel; hence the concave bank, against which the rapid current sweeps, is worn away; thus any chance irregularity is exaggerated, and in time a series of large serpentines or meanders is developed,, the most-symmetrical examples at present being those near Greenville, Miss. The growth of the meanders tends to give the river continually increasing length; but this tendency is counteracted by the sudden occurrence of cut-offs from time to time, so that a fairly constant length is maintained.

The floods of the Mississippi usually occur in spring or aummer; Owing to the great size of the drainage basin, it seldom happens that the three upper tributaries are in flood at the same time; the coincident occurrence of floods in only two tributaries is of serious import in the lower river, which rises 30, 40, or occasionally 50 ft. The abundant records by the Mississippi River Commission and the United States Weather Bureau (by which accurate and extremely useful predictions of floods in the lower river course are made, on the basis of the observed rise in the tributaries) demonstrate a num~ bar of interesting features, of which the chief are as follows: the fall of the river is significantly steepened and its velocity isaccelerated down stream from the point of highest rise; conversely, the fall and the velocity are both diminished up stream from the same point.

The load of silt borne down stream by the river finally, after many halts on the way, reaches the waters of the Gulf, where the decrease of velocity, aided by the salinity of the sea water, causes the formation of a remarkable delta, leaving less aggraded areas as shallow lakes (Lake Pontchartrain on the east, and Grand Lake on the west of the river). The ordinary triangular form of deltas, due to the smoothing of the delta front by sea action, is here wanting, because of the weakness of sea action in comparison with the strength of the current in each of the four distributaries or passes into which the river divides near its mouth. (See MISSISSIPPI RIVER.)

After constriction from the Mississippi embayment to 250 m. in western Louisiana, the coastal plain continues south-westward with this breadth until it narrows to about 130 in. in The Texas southern Texas near the crossing of the Colorado river, ~

(of Texas); but it again widens to 300 m. at the ~ a national boundary as a joint effect of ernbayment up the valley of the Rio Grande and of the seaward advance of this rivers rounded delta front: these several changes take place in a distance of about 500 in., and hence include a region of over ioo,00o sq. m. less than half of the large state of Texas. A belted arrangement of relief s and soils, resulting from differential erosion on strata of unlike composition and resistance, characterizes almost the entire area of the coastal plain. Most of the plain is treeless prairie, but the sandier belts are forested; two of them are known as cross timbers, because their trend is transverse to the general course of the main consequent rivers. An inland extension from the coastal plain in north-central Texas leads to a large cuesta known as Grand Prairie (not structurally included in the coastal plain), upheld at altitudes of 1200 or 1300 ft. by a resistant Cretaceous limestone, which dips gently seaward; its scalloped inland-facing escarpment overlooks a denuded central prairie region of irregular structure and form; its gentle coastward slope (16 ft. to a mile) is dissected by many branching consequent streams; in its southernpart, as it ap~iroaches the Colorado river the cuesta is dissected into a belt of discontinuous hills. The western cross timbers follow a sandy belt along the inner base of the ragged escarpment of Grand Prairie; the eastern cross timbers follow another sandy belt in the lowland between the eastern~ slope of Grand Prairie and the pale western escarpment of the next eastward and lower Black Prairie cuesta. This cuesta is supported at an altitude of 700 ft. or less by a chalk formation, which gives an infacing slope some 200 ft. in height, while its gently undulating or rolling seaward slope (2 or 3 ft. in a mile), covered with marly strata and rich black soil, determines an important cotton district. Then comes the East Texas timber belt, broad in the north-east, narrowing to a point before reaching the Rio Grande, a low and thoroughly dissected cuesta of sandy Eocene strata; and this is followed by the Coast Prairie, a very young plain, with a seaward slope of less than 2 ft. in a mile, its smooth surface interrupted only by the still more nearly level flood plains of the shallow, consequent river valleys. Near the Colorado river the dissected cuesta of the Grand Prairie passes southward, by a change to a more nearly horizontal structure, into the dissected Edwards plateau (to be referred to again as part of the Great Plains), which terminates in a maturely dissected fault scarp, 300 or 400 ft. in height, the northern boundary of the Rio Grande embayment. From the Colorado to the Rio Grande, the Black Prairie, the timber belt and the Coast Prairie merge in a vast plain, little differentiated, overgrown with chaparral (shrub-like trees, often thorny), widening eastward in the Rio Grande delta, and extending southward into Meico.

Although the Coast Prairie is a sea bottom of very modern uplift, it appears already to have suffered a slight movement of depression, for its small rivers all enter embayments; the larger rivers, however, seem to have counteracted the encroachment of the sea on the land by a sufficiently active delta building, with a resulting forward growth of the land into the sea. The Mississippi has already been mentioned as rapidly building forward its digitate delta; the Rio Granide, next in size, has built its delta about 50 m. forward from the general coast-iine, but this river being much smaller than the Mississippi, its delta front is rounded by seashore agencies. In front of the Brazos and the Colorado, the largest of the Texan rivers, the coast-line is very gently bowed forward, as if by delta growth, and the sea touches the mainland in a nearly straight shore line. Nearly all the rest of the coast is fringed by off-shore reefs, built up by waves from the very shallow sea bottom; in virtue of weak tides, the reefs continue in long unbroken stretches between the few inlets.

The Great Plains.A broad stretch of country underlaid by nearly horizontal strata extends westward from the 97th meridian to the base of the Rocky Mountains, a distance of from 300 to 500 in., and northward from the Mexican ,boundary far into Canada. This is the province of the Great Plains. Although the altitude of plains increases gradually from,6oo or 1200 ft. on the east to 4000, 5000 or 6000 ft. near the mountains, the local relief is generally small; the sub-arid climate excludes tree growth and opens far-reaching views. The plains are by no means a simple unit; they are of diverse structure and of various stages of erosional development; they are occasionally interrupted by buttes and escarpments; they are frequently broken by valleys: yet on the whole a broadly extended surface of moderate relief so often prevails that the name, Great Plains, for the region as a whole is well deserved. The western boundary of the plains is usually well defined by the abrupt ascent of the mountains. The eastern boundary of the plains is more climatic than topographic. The line of 20 in. of annual rainfall trends a little east of northward near the 97th meridian, and if a boundary must be drawn where nature presents only a gradual transition, this rainfall line may be taken to divide the drier plains from the moister prairies. The plains may be described in northern, intermediate, central and southern sections, in relation to certain peculiar features.

The northern section of the Great Plains, north of latitude 44, including eastern Montana, north-eastern Wyoming and most of the Dakotas, is a moderately dissected peneplain, one of the best examples of its class. The strata here are Cretaceous or early Tertiary, lying nearly horizontal. The surface is shown to be a plain of degradation by a gradual ascent here and there to the crest of a ragged escarpment, the cuesta-remnant of a resistant stratum; and by the presence of lava-capped mesas and dike-ridges, surmounting the general level by 500 ft. or more and manifestly demonstrating the widespread erosion of the surrounding plains. All these reliefs are more plentiful towards the mountains in central Montana. The peneplain is no longer in the cycle of erosion that witnessed its production; it appears to have suffered a regional elevation, for the riversthe upper Missouri and its branchesno longer flow on the surface of the plain, but in well graded, maturely opened valleys, several hundred feet below the general level. A significant exception to the rule of mature valleys occurs, however, in the case of the Missouri, the largest river, which is broken by several falls on hard sandstones about 50 m. east of the mountains. This peculiar feature is explained as the result of displacement of the river from a better graded preglacial valley by the Pleistocene ice-sheet, which here overspread the plains from the moderately elevated Canadian highlands far on the north-east, instead of from the much higher mountains near by on the west. The present altitude of the plains near the mountain base is 4000 ft.

The northern plains are interrupted by several small mountain areas. The Black Hills, chiefly in western South Dakota, are the largest group: they rise like a large island from the sea, occupying an oval area of about 100 m. north-south by 50 m. east-west, reaching an altitude in Harney Peak of 7216 ft., and an effective relief over the plains of 2000 or 3000 ft. This mountain mass is of flat-arched, dome-like structure, now well dissected by radiating consequent streams, so that the weaker uppermost strata have been eroded down to the level of the plains where their upturned edges are evenly truncated, and the next following harder strata have been sufficiently eroded to disclose the core of underlying crystalline rocks in about half of the domed area.

In the intermediate section of the plains, between latitudes 44 and 42, including southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska, the erosion of certain large districts is peculiarly elaborate, giving rise to a minutely dissected form, known as bad lands, with a relief of a few hundred feet, This is due to several causes: first, the dry climate, which prevents the growth of a grassy turf; next, the fine texture of the Tertiary strata in the had land districts; and consequently the success with which every little nIl, at times of rain, carves its own little valley. Travel across the bad lands is very fatiguing because of the many small ascents and descents; and it is from this that their name, mauvaises terres pour traverser, was given by the early French voyageurs.

The central section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 42 and 36, occupying eastern Colorado and western Kansas, is, briefly stated, for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain; that is, this section was once smoothly covered with a gently sloping plain of gravel and sand that had been spread far forward on a broad denuded area as a piedmont deposit by the rivers which issued from the mountains; and since then it has been more or less dissected by the erosion of valleys. The central section of the plains thus presents a marked contrast to the northern section; for while the northern section owes its smoothness to the removal of local gravels and sands from a formerly uneven surface by the action of degrading rivers and their inflowing tributaries, the southern section owes its smoothness to the deposition of imported gravels and sands upon a previously I uneven surface by the action of aggrading rivers and their outgoing distributaries. The two sections are also unlike in that residual eminences still here and there surmount the peneplain of the northern section, while the fluviatile plain of the central section completely buried the pre-existent relief. Exception to this statement must be made in the south-west, close to the mountains in southern Colorado, where some lava-capped mesas (Mesa de Maya, Raton Mesa) stand several thousand feet above the general plain level, and thus testify to the widespread erosion of this region before it was aggraded.

The southern section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 351/2 and 2Q~ ~. lies in eastern Texas and eastern New Mexico: like the central section it is for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain, but the lower lands which surround it on all sides place it in so strong relief that it stands up as a table-land, known from the time of Mexican occupation as the Llano Estacado. It measures roughly Iso m. east-west and 400 m. north-south, but it is of very irregulal outline, narrowing to the south. Its altitude is 5500 ft. at the highest western point, nearest the mountains whence its gravels were supplied; and thence it slopes south-eastward at a decreasing rate, first about 12 ft., then about 7 ft. in a mile, to its eastern and southern borders, where it is 2000 ft. in altitude: like the High Plains farther north, it is extraordinarily smooth; it is very dry, except for occa sional shallow and temporary water sheets after rains. The Llano is separated from the plains on the north by the mature consequent valley of the Canadian river, and from the mountains on the west by the broad and probably mature valley of the Pecos river. On the east it is strongly undercut by the retrogressive erosion of the headwaters of the Red, Brazos and Colorado rivers of Texas, and presents a ragged escarpment, 500 to 800 ft. high, overlooking the central denuded area of that state; and there, between the Brazos and Colorado rivers, occurs a series of isolated outliers capped by a limestone which underlies both the Llano on the west and the Grand Prairies cuesta on the east. The southern and narrow part of the table-land, called the Edwards Plateau, is more dissected thanthe rest, and falls off to the south in a frayed-out fault scarp, as already mentioned, overlooking the coastal plain of the Rio Grande embayment. The central denuded area, east of the Llano, resembles the east-central section of the plains in exposing older rocks; between these two similar areas, in the space limited by the Canadian and Red rivers. rise the subdued forms of the Wichita MountaiIis in Oklahoma, the westernmost member of the Ouachita system.

The Cordilleran Region.From the western border of the Great Plains to the Pacific coast, there is a vast elevated area, occupied by mountains, plateaus and intermont plains. The intermont plains are at all altitudes from sea-level to 4000 ft.; the plateaus from 5000 to 10,000 ft.; and the mountains from 8000 to 14,000 ft. The higher mountains are barren from the cold of altitude; the timber line in Colorado stands at 11,000 to 12,000 ft.

The chief provinces of the Cordihleran region are: The Rocky Mountain system and its basins, from northern New Mexico northward, including all the mountains from the front ranges bordering on the plains to the Uinta and Wasatch ranges in Utah; the Pacific ranges including the Sierra Nevada of California, the Cascade range of Oregon and Washington, and the Coast range along the Pacific nearly to the southern end of California; and a great intermediate area, including in the north the Columbian lava plains and in the south the large province of the Basin ranges, which extends into Mexico and widens from the centre southward, so as to meet the Great Plains in eastern New Mexico, and to extend to the Pacific coast in southern California. There is also a province of plateaus between the central part of the Basin ranges and the southern part of the Rocky Mountains. An important geological characteristic of most of the Cordilferan region is that the Carboniferous strata, which in western Europe and the eastern United States contain many coal seams, are represented in the western United States by a marine limestone; and that the important unconformity which in Europe and the eastern United States separates the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras does not occur in the western United States, where the formations over a great area follow in conformable sequence from early Palaeozoic through the Mesozoic.

The Rocky Mountains begin in northern Mexico, where the axial crystalline rocks rise to 12,000 ft. between the horizontal structures of the plains on the east and the plateaus on the west. The Pocky The upturned stratified formations wrap around the Mountains. flanks of the range, with ridges and valleys formed on their eroded edges and drained southward by the Pecos river to the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico. The mountains rapidly grow wider and higher northward, by taking on new complications of structure and by including large basins between the axes of uplift, tintil in northern Colorado and Utah a complex of ranges has a breadth of 300 m., and in Colorado alone there are 40 summits over 14,000 ft. in altitude, though none rises to 14,500. Then turning more to the north-west through Wyoming, the ranges decrease in breadth and height; in Montana their breadth is not more than 150 m .,and only seven summitsexceed 11,000 ft. (one reaching 12,834).

As far north as the gorge of the Missouri river in Montana, the Front range, facing the Great Plains, is a rather simple uplift, usually formed by upturning the flanking strata, less often by a fracture. Along the eastern side of the Front Range in Colorado most of the upturned stratified formations have been so well worn down that, except for a few low piedmont ridges, their even surface may now be included with that of the plains, and the crystalline core of the range is exposed almost to the mountain base. Here the streams that drain the higher areas descend to the plains through narrow canyons in the mountain border, impassable for ordinary roads and difficult of entrance even by railways; a well-known example is the gorge of Clear Creek east of the Georgetown mining district. The crystalline highlands thereabouts, at altitudes of 8000 to 10,000 ft., are of so moderate a relief as to suggest that the mass had stood much lower in a former cycle of erosion and had then been worn down to rounded hills; and that since uplift to the present altitude the revived streams of the current cycle of erosion have not entrenched themselves deep enough to develop strong relief. This idea is confirmed 80 m. farther south, where Pikes Peak (14,108 ft.), a conspicuous landmark far out on the plains, has every appearance of being a huge monadnock, surmounting a rough peneplain of 10,000 ft. in general elevation. The idea is still better confirmed farther north in Wyoming, where the Laramie Range, flanked with upturned strata on the east and west, is for the most part a broad upland at altitudes of 7000 or 8000 ft., with no strong surmounting summits, and as yet no deep carved valleys. Here the first of the Pacific railways chose its pass. When the summit is reached, the traveller is tempted to ask, Where are the mountains? so small is the relief of the upland surface. This low range turns westward in a curve through the Rattlesnake Mountains towards the high Wind River Mountains (Gannett Peak, 3,775 ft.), an anticlinal range within the body of the mountain system, with flanking strata rising well on the slopes. Flanking strata are even better exhibited in the Bighorn Mountains, the front range of northern Wyoming, crescentic in outline and convex to the northeast, like the Laramie Range, but much higher; here heavy sheets of limestone arch far up towards the range crest, and are deeply notched where consequent streams have cut down their gorges.

Farther north in Montana, beyond the gorge of the Missouri river, the structure of the Front Range is altogether different; it is here the carved residual of a great mass of moderately bent Palaeozoic strata, overthrust eastward upon the Mesozoic strata of the plains; instead of exposing the oldest rocks along the axis and the youngest rocks low down on the flanks, the younger rocks of the northern range follow its axis, and the oldest rocks outcrop along its eastern flanks, where they override the much younger strata of the plains; the harder strata, instead of lapping on the mountain flanks in great slab-like masses, as in the Bighorns, form out-facing scarps, which retreat into the mountain interior where they are cut down by outfiowing streams.

The structure of the inner ranges is so variable as to elude simple description; but mention should be made of the Uinta range of broad anticlinal structure in north-east Utah, with east-west trend, as if corresponding to the east-west Rattlesnake Mountains, already named. The \Vasatch Range, trending north-south in central Utah, is peculiar in possessing large east-West folds, which. are seen in cross-section in the dissected western face of the range, becatise the whole mass is there squarely cut off by a great north-south fault with down-throw to the Basin Range province, the fault face being elaborately carved.

Volcanic action has been restricted in the Rocky Mountains proper. West Spanish Peak (I~l,62o ft.), in the Front Range of southern Colorado, may be mentioned as a fine example of a deeply dissected volcano, originally of greater height, with many unusually strong radiating dike-ridges near its denuded flanks. Iii north-western Wyoming there are extensive and heavy lava sheets, uplifted and dissected, and crowned with a few dissected volcanoes. It is in association with this field of extinct volcanic activity that a remarkable group of geysers and hot springs has been developed, from which the Yellowstone river, a branch of the Missouri, flows northeastward, and the Snake river, a branch of the Columbia, flows south-westward. The geyser district is held as a national domain, the Yellowstone Park.

Travellers whose idea of picturesqueness is based upon the abnormally sharpened peaks of the ice-sculptured Alps are disappointed with the scenery of the central and southern ranges of the Rocky Mountains. It is true that many of these ranges are characterized by the rounded tops and the rather evenly slanting, waste-covered slopes which ncrmally result from the long-continued action of the ordinary agencies of erosion; that they bear little snow in summer and are practically wanting in glaciers; that forests are often scanty on the middle and lower slopes, the mord so because of devastation by fires; and that the general impression of great altitude is much weakened because the mountains are seen from a base which itself is 5000 or 6000 ft. above sea-level. Nevertheless the mountains are of especial interest to the physiographer who wishes to make a comparative study of land forms as affected by normal and by glacial sculpture, in order to give due attention to process as well as to structure and stage in the analysis and description of mountain topography. A journey along the range from south to north reveals most strikingly a gradual increase - in the share of sculpture due to Pleistocene glaciers. In New Mexico, if glaciers were formed at all in the high valleys, they were so small as not greatly to modify the more normal forms. In central Colorado and Wyoming, where the mountains are higher and the Pleistocene glaciers were larger, the valley heads were hollowed out in well-formed cirques, often holding small lakes; and the mountain valleys were enlarged into U-shaped troughs as far down as the ice reached, with hanging lateral valleys oii the way. Different stages of cirque development, with accompanying transformation of ioountain shape, are finely illustrated in several ranges around the headwaters of the Arkansas river in central Colorado, where the highest summit of the Ro~k~ Mountains is found (Mt Massive, 14,424 ft., in the Sawatch range); and perhaps even better in the Bighorn range of Wyoming. In this central region, however, it is only by way of exception that the cirques were so far enlarged by retrogressive glacial erosion as to sharpen the preglacial dome-like summits into acute peaks; and in no case did glacial action here extend down to the plains at the eastern base of the mountains; but the widened, trough-like glaciated valleys frequently descend to the level of the elevated intermont basins, where moraines were deployed forward on the basin floor. The finest examples of this kind are the moraines about Jackson Lake on the basin floor east of the Teton Range (Grand Teton, 13,747 ft.), a superb north-south range which lies close to the meridional boundary line between Wyoming and Idaho. Farther north in Montana, in spite of a decrease of height, there are to-day a few small glaciers with snowfields of good size; and, here the effects of sculpture by the much larger Pleistocene glaciers are seen in forms of almost alpine strength.

The intermont basins which so strongly characterize the Rocky Mountain system are areas which have been less uplifted than the enclosing ranges, and have therefore usually become the depositories of waste from the surrounding mountains.

Some of the most important basins may be mentioned. San Luis Valley is an oval basin about 60 m. long near the southern end of the mountain system in New Mexico and Colorado; its level, treeless floor, at an altitude of 7000 ft~. is as yet hardly trenched by the Rio Grande, which escapes through an impassable canyon south-, ward on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The much smaller basin of the upper Arkansas river in Colorado is well known because the Royal (;orge, a very narrow cleft by which the river escapes through the Front Range to the plains, is followed by a railroad at riverlevel. South Park, directly west of Pikes Peak, is one of the highest basins (nearly 10,000 ft.), and gains its name from the scattered, park-like growth of large pine trees; it is drained chiefly by the South Platte river (Missouri-Mississippi system), through a deep gorge in the dissected mass of the plateau-like Front Range. The Lararnie Plains and the Green river basin, essentially a single structural basic between the east-west ranges of Rattlesnake Mountains on the north and the Uinta Range on the south, measuring roughly 260 m. east-west by Too m. north-south, is the largest intermont basin; it is well known from being traversed through its greatest length by the Union Pacific railway. Its eastern part is drained north-eastward through a gorge that separates the Laramie and Rattlesnake (Front) ranges by the North Platte river to the Missouri-Mississippi; its western part, where the basin floor is much dissected, often assuming a bad-land expression, is drained southward by the Green river, through a deep canyon in the Uinta Ran~e to the Colorado river and then to the Pacific. The Bighorn basin has a moderately dissected floor, drained north-eastward by Bighorn river through a deep canyon in the range of the same name to the Missouri. Several smaller basins occur in Montana, all somewhat dissected and drained through narrow gorges and canyons by members of the Missouri system.

The Plateau province, next west of the southern Rocky Mountains, is characterized for the most part by large-textured forms, developed on a great thickness of nearly horizontal Palaeozoic, The Plateau Mesozoic and Tertiary formations, and by a dry climate. provpee The province was uplifted and divided into great blocks by faults or monoclinal flexures and thus exposed to long-lasting denudation in a mid-Tertiary cycle of erosion; and then broadly elevated again, with renewed movement on some of the fault lines; thus was introduced in late Tertiary time the current cycle of erosion in which the deep canyons of the region have been trenched. The results of the first cycle of erosion are seen in the widespread exposure of the resistant Carboniferous limestone as a broad platform in the south-western area of greater uplift through central Arizona, where the higher formations were worn away; and in the development of a series of huge, south-facing, retreating escarpments of irregular outline on the edges of the higher formations farther north. Each escarpment stands forth where a resistant formation overlies a weaker one; each escarpment is separated from the next higher one by a broad step of weaker strata. A wonderful series of these forms occurs in southern Utah, where in passing northward from the Carboniferous platform one ascends in succession the Vermilion Cliffs (Triassic sandstones), the ViThite Cliffs (Jurassic sandstones, of remarkably cross-bedded structure, interpreted the dunes of an ancient desert), and finally the Pink Cliffs (Eocene strata of fluviatile and lacustrine origin) of the high, forested plateaus. Associated with these irregular escarpments are occasional rectilinear ridges, the work of extensive erosion on monoclinal structures, of whick Echo Cliffs, east of the Painted Desert (so called from its manycoloured sandstones and clays), is a good example.

With the renewal of uplift by which the earlier cycle of erosion was interrupted and the present cycle introduced, inequalities of surface due to renewed faulting were again introduced; these still appear as cliffs, of more nearly rectilinear front than the retreating escarpments formed in the previous cycle. These cliffs are peculiar in gradually passing from one formation to another, and in having a height dependent on the displacement of the fault rather than on the structures in the fault face; they are already somewhat battered and dissected by erosion. The most important line of cliffs of this class is associated with the western and southern boundary of the plateau province, where it was uplifted from the lower ground. The few rivers of the region must have reached the quiescence of old age iii the earlier cycle, but were revived by uplift to a vigorous youth in the current cycle; and it is to this newly introduced cycle of physiographic evolution that the deep canyons of the Plateau province are due. Thus the Virgin river, a northern branch of the Colorado, has cut a vertical slit, 1000 ft. deep, hardly wider at the top than at the bottom, in the heavy Triassic sandstones of southern Utah; but the most famous example is the Grand Canyon (qv.) of Arizona, eroded by the Colorado river across the uplifted platform of Carboniferous limestone.

During the current cycle of erosion, several of the faults, whose scarps had been worn away in the previous cycle, have been brought to light again as topographic features by the removal of the weak strata along one side of the fault line, leaving the harder strata on the other side in relief; such scarps are known as fault-line scarps, in distinction from the original fault scarps. They are peculiar in having their altitude dependent on the depth of revived erosion, instead of the amount of faulting, and they are sometimes topographically reversed, in that the revived scarp overlooks a lowland worn on a weak formation in the upheaved fault-block. Another consequence of revived erosion is seen in the occurrence of great landslides, where the removal of weak (Permian) clays has sapped the face of the Vermilion Cliffs (Triassic sandstone), so that huge slices of the cliff face have slid down and forward a mile or two, all shattered into a confused tumult of forms for a score or more of miles along the cliff base.

Volcanic features occur in abundance in the Plateau province. Some of the high plateaus in the north are capped with remnants of heavy lava flows of early eruption. A group of large volcanoes occurs on the limestone platform s6uth of the Grand Canyon, culminating in Mt San Francisco (12,794 ft.), a moderately dissected cone, and associated with many more recent smaller cones and freshlooking lava flows. Mt Taylor in western New Mexico is of similar age, but here dissection seems to have advanced farther, probably because of the weaker nature of the underlying rocks, with the result of removing the smaller cones and exposing many lava conduits or pipes in the form of volcanic necks or buttes. The Henry Mountains in south-western Utah are peculiar in owing their relief to the doming or blistering up of the plateau strata by the underground intrusion of large bodies or cisterns (laccolites) of lava, now more or less exposed by erosion.

The lava plains of the Columbia basin are among the most extensive volcanic outpourings in the world. They cover 200,000 sq. m. or more in south-eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho, and are known to be 4000 ft. deep in sonic river gorges. The lava completely buries the pre-existent land forms over most of its extent. The earlier supposition that these vast lava flows came chiefly from fissure eruptions has been made doubtful by the later discovery of flat-sloping volcanic cones from which much lava seems to have been poured out in a very liquid state. Some of the flows are still so young as to preserve their scoriaceous surface; here the shore-line of the lava contours evenly around the spurs and enters, bay-like, into the valleys of the enclosing mountains, occasionally isolating an outlying mass. Other~ parts of the lava flood are much older and have been more or less deformed and eroded. Thus the uplifted, dislocated and dissected lava sheets of the Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains on the east (about the headwaters of the Snake river) are associated with the older lavas,of the Columbian plains.

The Columbia river has entrenched itself in a canyon-like valley around the northern and Western side of the lava plains; Snake river has cut a deeper canyon farther south-east where the plains are higher and has disclosed the many lava sheets which build up the plains, occasionally revealing a buried mountain in which the superposed river has cut an even narrower canyon. One of the most remarkable features of this province is seen in the temporary course taken by the Columbia river across the plains, while its canyon was obstructed by Pleistocene glaciers that came from the Cascade Mountains on the north-west. The river followed the temporary course long enough to erode a deep gorge, known as Grande Coulee, along part of its length.

The lava plains are treeless and for the most part too dry for agriculture; but they support many cattle and horses. Along parts of their eastern border, where the rainfall is a little increased by the approach of the westerly winds to the Rocky Mountains, there is a belt of very deep, impalpably fine soil, supposed to be a dust deposit brought from the drier parts of the plains farther west; excellent crops of wheat are here raised.

The large province of the Basin ranges, an arid region throughout, even though it reaches the sea in southern California, involves some novel problems in its description. It is characterized The Basla by numerous disconnected mountain ranges trending north and south, from 30 to 100 in. in length, the higher V ranges reaching altitudes of 8000 or 10,000 ft., separated by broad, intermont desert plains or basins at altit,udes varying from sea-level (or a little less) in the south-west, to 4000 or 5000 ft. farther inland. Many of the intermont plainsthese chiefly in the north-appear to be heavily aggraded with mountain Waste; while others-these chiefly in the southare rock-floored and thinly veneered with alluvium. The origin of these forms is still in discussion; but the following interpretation is well supported. The ranges are primarily the result of faulting and uplifting of large blocks of the earths crust. The structure of the region previous to faulting was dependent on long antecedent processes of accumulation and deformation and the surface of the region then was dependent on the amount of erosion suffered in the prefaulting cycle. When, the region was broken into fault blocks and the blocks were uplifted and tilted, the back slope of each block was a part of the previously eroded surface and the face of the block was a surface of fracture; the present form of the higher blocks is more or less affected by erosion since faulting, while many of the lower blocks have been buried under the waste of the higher ones. In the north, where dislocations have invaded the field of the horizontal Columbian lavas, as in south-eastern Oregon and north-eastern California, the blocks are monoclinal in structure as well as in attitude; here the amount of dissection is relatively moderate, for some of the fault faces are described as ravined but not yet deeply dissected; hence these dislocations appear to be of recent date. In Western Utah and through most of Nevada many of the blocks exhibit deformed structures, involving folds and faults of relatively ancient (Jurassic) date; so ancient that the moun~ tains then formed by the folding were worn down to the lowland stage of old age before the block-faulting occurred. When this old-mountain lowland was broken into blocks and the blocks were tilted, their attitude, but not their structure, was monoclinal; and in this new attitude they have been so maturely re-dissected in the ne~v cycle of erosion upon which they have now entered as to have gained elaborately carved forms in which the initial form of the uplifted blocks can hardly be perceived; yet at least some of them still retain along one side the highly significant feature of a relatively simple base-line, transecting hard and soft structures alike, and thus indicating the faulted margin of a tilted block. Here the less uplifted blocks are now heavily aggraded with waste from the dissected ranges: the waste takes the form of huge alluvial fans, formed chiefly by occasional boulder-bearing floods from the mountains; each fan heads in a ravine at the mountain base, and becomes laterally confluent with adjacent fans as it stretches several miles forward with decreasing slope and increasing fineness of material.

In the southern part of the Basin Range province the ranges are well dissected and some of the intermont depressions have rock floors with gentle, centripetal slopes; hence it is suggested that the time since the last dislocation in this part of the province is relativel remote; that erosion in the current cycle has here advanced muc farther than in the central or northern parts of the province; and that, either by outwash to the sea or by exportation of wind-borne dust, the depressions-perhaps aggraded for a time in the earlier stages of the cyclehave now been so deeply worn down as to degrade the lower and weaker parts of the tilted blocks to an evenly sloping surface, leaving the higher and harder parts still in relief as residual ranges. If this be true, the southern district will furnish a good illustration of an advanced stage of the cycle of arid erosion, in which the exportation of waste from enclosed depressions by the wind has played an important part. In. such case the washing of the centripetal slopes of the depressions by occasional sheetfloods (widespreading sheets of turbid running water, supplied by heavy short-lived rains) has been efficient in keeping the rock floor at even grade toward a central basin, where the finest waste is collected while waiting to be removed by the winds.

Only a small part of the Basin Range province is drained to the sea. A few intermont areas in the north-west part of the province have outlet westward by Kla1nath river through the Cascade range and by Pitt river (upper part of the Sacramento) through the Sierra Nevada: a few basins in the south-east have outlet by the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico; a much larger but still narrow medial area is drained south-westward by the Colorado to the head of the Gulf of California, where this large and very turbid river has formed an extensive delta, north of which the former head of the gulf is now cut off from the sea and laid bare by evaporation as a plain below sea-level. It is here that an irrigation project, involving the diversion of some of the river water to the low plain, led to disaster in 1904, when the flooded river washed away the canal gates at the intake and overflowed the plain, drowning the newly established farms, compelling a railway to shift its track, and forming a lake (Salton Sea) which would require years of evaporation to remove (see COLORADO RIvER). Many streams descend from the ravines only to wither away on the desert basin floors before uniting in a trunk river along the axis of a depression; others succeed in uniting in the winter season, when evaporation is much reduced, and then their trunk flows for a few score miles, only to disappear by sinking (evaporating) farther on. A few of the large streams may, when in flood, spr.ead out in a temporary shallow sheet qn a dead level of clay, or playa, in a basin centre, but the sheet of water vanishes in the warm season and the stream shrinks far up its course, the absolutely barren clay floor of the playa, impassable when wet, becomes firm enough for crossing when dry. One of the southwestern basins, with its floor below sea-level, has a plain of salt in its centre. A few of the basins are occupied by lakes without outlet, of which Great Salt Lake, in north-west Utah, is the largest. Several smaller lakes occur in the basins of western Nevada, next east of the Sierra Nevada. During Pleistocene times all these lacustrine basins were occupied by lakes of much greater depthand la~ger size; the outlines of the eastern (Lake Bonneville) and the western (Lake Lahontan) water bodies are well recorded by shore lines and deltas on the enclosing slopes, hundreds of feet above the present lake surfaces; the abandoned shore lines, as studied by G. K. Gilbert and I. C. Russell, have yielded evidence of past climatic changes second in importance only to those of the Pleistocene glaciated areas. The duration of the Pleistocene lakes was, however, brief as compared with the time since the dislocation of the faulted blocks, as is shown by the small dimensions of the lacustrine beaches compared to the great volume of the ravine-heading fans on which the beaches often lie.

Strong mountain ranges follow the trend of the Pacific coast, 150 or 200 m. inland. The Cascade Range enters from Canada, trending sotithward across the international boundary through ThePacifk Washington and Oregon to latitude 41; the Sierra Ranges. Nevada extends thence south-eastward through Cali fornia to latitude 35. The lower coast ranges, nearer the ocean, continue a little farther southward than the Sierra Nevada, before giving way to that part of the Basin Range province which reaches the Pacific in southernmost California.

The Cascade Range is in essence a maturely dissected highland, composed in part of upwarped Colombian lavas, in part of older rocks, and crowned with several dissected volcanoes, of which the chief are (beginning in the north) Mts Baker (Io,827 ft.), Rainier (14,363 ft.), Adams (12,470 ft.) and Hood (11,225 ft.); the first three in \Vashington, the last in northern Oregon- These bear snowfields and glaciers; while the dissected highlands, with ridges of very irregular arrangement, are everywhere sculptured in a fashion that strongly suggests the work of numerous local Pleistocene glaciers as an important supplement to preglacial erosion. Lake Chelan, long and narrow, deep set between spurless ridges with hanging lateral valleys, and evidently of glacial origin, ornaments one of the eastern valleys. The range is squarely transected by the Columbia river, which bears every appearance of antecedent origin:

the cascades in the river gorge are caused by a sub-recent landslide of great size from the mountain walls. Kiamath river, draining several lakes in the north-west part of the Basin Range province and traversing the Cascade Range to the Pacific, is apparently also an antecedent river.

The Cascade Mountains present a marked example of the effect of relief and aspect on rainfall; they rise across the path of the prevailing westerly winds not far inland from a great ocean; hence they receive an abundant rainfall (80 in. or more, annually) on the Westward or windward slope, and there they are heavily forested; but the rainfall is light on the eastward slope and the piedmont district is dry; hence the forests thin out on that side of the range and treeless lava plains follow next eastward.

The Sierra Nevada may be described, in a very general way, as a great mountain block, largely composed of granite and deformed metamorphosed rocks, reduced to moderate relief in an earlier (Cretaceous and Tertiary?) cycle of erosion, sub-recently elevated with a slant to the west, and in this position sub-maturely dissected. The region was by no means a peneplain before its slanting uplift; its surface then was hilly and in the south mountainous; in its central and still more in its northern part it was overspread with lavas which flowed westward along the broad open valleys from many vents in the eastern part: near the northern end of the range, eruptions have continued in the present cycle, forming many cones and young lava flows. The tilting of the mountain mass was presumably not a simple or a single movement; it was probably slow, for Pitt river (headwaters of the Sacramento) traverses the northern part of the range in antecedent fashion; the tilting involved the subdivision of the great block into smaller ones, in the northern half of the range at least; Lake Tahoe (altitude 6225 ft.) near the range crest is explained as occupyilig a depression between two block fragments; and farther north similar depressions now appear as aggraded highland meadows. The tilting of the great block resulted in presenting a strong slope to the east, facing the deserts of the Basin Range province and in large measure determining their aridity; and a long moderate slope to the west. The altitudes along the upraised edge of the block, or range crest, are approximately 5000 ft. in the north and 11,000 ft. in the south. The mountains in the southern part of the block, which had been reduced to subdued forms in the former cycle of erosion, were thus given a conspicuous height, forming the High Sierra, and greatly sharpened by revived erosion, normal and glacial. In this way Mt Whitney (14,502 ft.) came to be the highest summit in the United States (excluding Alaska). The displacement of the mountain block may still be in progress, for severe earthquakes have happened in the depression next east of the range; that of Owens Valley in 1870 was strong enough to have been very destructive had there been anything in the desert valley to destroy. In the new altitude of the mountain mass, its steep eastern face has been deeply carved with short canyons; and on the western slope an excellent beginning of dissection has been made in the erosion of many narrow valleys, whose greatest depth lies between their headwaters which still flow on the highland surface, and their mouths at the low western base of the range. The highlands and uplands between the chief valleys are but moderately dissected; many small side streams still flow on the highland, and descend by steeply incised gorges to the valleys of the larger rivers. Some of the chief valleys are not cut in the floors of the old valleys of the former cycle, because the rivers were displaced from their former courses by lava flows, which now stand up as table mountains. Glacial erosion has been potent in excavating great cirques and small rock-basins, especially among the higher southern surmounting summits, many of which have been thus somewhat reduced in, height while gaining an Alpine sharpness of form; some of the short and steep canyons in the eastern slope have been converted into typical glacial troughs, and huge moraines have been laid on the desert floor below them. Some of the western valleys have also in part of their length beeIi converted into U-shaped troughs; the famous Yosemite Vailey, eroded in massive granite, with side cliffs 1000 or 2000 ft. in height, and the smaller Hetch-I-Ietchy Valley not far away, are regarded by some observers as owing their peculiar forms to glacial modifications of normal preglacial valleys.

The western slope of the Sierra Nevada hears fine forests similar to those of the Cascade Range and of the Coast Range, but of more open growth, and with the redwood exchanged for groves of big trees (Sequoia gigantea) of which the tallest examples reach 325 ft. The higher summits in the south are above the tree line and expose great areas of bare rock: mountaineering is here a delightful summer recreation, with camps in the highland forests and ascents to the lofty peaks. Gold occurs in quartz veins traversing various formations (some as young as Jurassic), and also in gravels, which were for the most part deposited previous to the uplift of the Sierra block. Some of the gravels then occurred as piedmont deposits along the western border of the old mountains; these gravels are now more or less dissected by new-cut valleys. Other auriferous gravels are buried under the upland lava flows, and are now reached by tunnels driven in beneath the rim of the table mountains. The reputed discovery of traces of early man in the lava-covered gravels has not been authenticated.

The northernmost part of the coast ranges, in Washington, is often given independent rank as the Olympic Range (Mt Olympus, 8150 ft.); it is a picturesque mountain group, bearing snowfields and glaciers, and suggestive of the dome-like uplift of a previously worn-down mass; but it is now so maturely dissected as to make the suggested origin uncertain. Farther south, through Oregon and northern California, many members of the coast ranges resemble the Cascades and the Sierra in offering well-attested examples of the uplift of masses of disordered structure, that had been reduced to a tame surface by the erosion of an earlier cycle, and that are now again more or less dissected.

Several of the ranges ascend abruptly from the sea; their base is cut back in high cliffs; the Sierra Santa Lucia, south of San Francisco, is a range of this kind; its seaward slope is almost uninhabitable. Elsewhere moderate re-entrants between the ranges have a continuous beach, concave seaward; such re-entrants afford imperfect harbourage for vessels; Monterey Bay is the most pronounced example of this kind. On still other parts of the coast a recent small elevatory movement has exposed part of the former sea bottom in a narrow coastal plain, of which some typical harbourless examples are found in Oregon. Most of the recent movements appear to have been upward, for the coast presents few embayments such as would result from the depression and partial submergence of a disse~ted mountain range; but three important exceptions must be made to this rule.

In the north, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the intricately branching waterways of Puget Sound between the Cascade and the Olympic ranges occupy trough-like depressions which were filled by extensive glaciers in Pleistocene times; and thus mark the beginning of the great stretch of forded coast which extends northward to Alaska. rhe waterways here afford excellent harbours. The second important embayment is the estuary of the Columbia river; but theoccurrence of shoals at the mouth decreases the use that might otherwise be made of the river by ocean-going vessels. More important is San Francisco Bay, situated about midway on the Pacific coast of the United States, the result of a moderate depression whereby a transverse valley, formerly followed by Sacramento river through the outermost of the Coast ranges, has been converted into a narrow straitthe Golden Gate and a wider intermont longitudinal valley has been flooded, forming the expansion of the inner bay.

The Coast Range is heavily forested in the north, where rainfall is abundant in all seasons; but its lower ranges and valleys have a scanty tree growth in the south, where the rainfall is very light: here grow redwoods (Sequoia semperzirens) and live oaks (Quercus agrifolia). The chief metalliferous deposits of the range are of mercury at New Almaden, not far south of San Francisco. The open valleys between the spaced ranges offer many tempting sites for settlement, but in the south irrigation is needed for cultivation.

The belt of ielative depression between the inner Pacific ranges and the Coast range is dhided by the fine volcano Mt Shasta (14,380 ft.) in northern California into unlike portions. To the north, the floor of the depression is for the most part above baselevel, and hence is dissected by open valleys, partly longitudinal, partly transverse, among hills of moderate relief. This district was originally for the most part forested, but is now coming to be cleared and farmed.

South of Mt Shasta, the Valley of California is an admirable example of an aggraded intermont depression, about 400 m. long and from 30 to 70 m. wide. The floor of this depression being below baselevel, it has necessarily come to be the seat of the mountain waste brought down by the many streams from the newly uplifted Sierra Nevada on the east and the coast ranges on the west; each stream forms an alluvial fan of very gentle slope; the fans all become laterally confluent, and incline very gently forward to meet in a nearly level axial belt, where the trunk riversthe Sacramento from the north and the San Joaquin from the south-east--wander in braided courses; their tendency to aggradation having been increased in the last half century by the gravels from gold washing; their waters entering San Francisco Bay. Kings river, rising in the high southern Sieria near I~It Whitney, has built its fan rather actively, and obstructed the discharge from the part of the valley next farther south, which has thus come to be overflowed by the shallow waters of Tulare Lake, of flat, reedy, uncertain borders. A little north of the centre of the valley rise the Marysville Buttes, the remains of a maturely dissected volcano (2128 ft). Elsewhere the floor of the valley is a featureless, treeless plain. (W. M. D.)

Geology

All the great systems of rock formations are represented in the United States, though close correlation with the systems of Europe is not always possible. The general geological column for the country is shown in the following table:

Eras of Time. Periods of Time.

Groups of Systems. Systems of Rocks.

Present.

Pleistocene.

I Pliocene.

Cainozoic - ~ Miocene.

Oligocene.

LEocene.

Transition (Arapahoe and Denver formations).

~ Upper Cretaceous.

Widespread unconformity.

Mesozoic -. - ~ Comanchean (Lower Cretaceous). I Jurassic.

LTriassic.

Permian.

Coal Measures, or Pennsylvanian.

Widespread unconformity.

Subcarboniferous, or Mississippian.

Palaeozoic.. Devonian.

Silurjan.

Widespread unconformity.

Ordoviciari.

LCambrian.

Great unconformity.

Keweenawan -

Widespread unconformity.

Upper Huronian.

Proterozoic, Widespread unconformity.

Middle Huronian.

Widespread ii nconformity, Lower Huronian.

Great unconformity.

~Great Granitoid Series (intru sive in the main, Laurentian).

Archeozoic - -. Archean Great Schist Series (Mona, Kitchi, Keewatin, Quinnissec; Lower Huronian of some L authors).

Archeozoic (Archean) Group.The oldest group of rocks, called the Archean, was formerly looked upon, at least in a tentative way, as the original crtist of the earth or its downward extension, much altered by the processes of metamorphism. This view of its origin is now known not to be applicable to the Archean as a whole, since this system contains some metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. In other words, if there was such a thing as an original crust, which may be looked upon as an open question, the Archean, as now defined, does not appear to represent it. The meta-sedimentary rocks of the Archean include metamorphosed limestone, and schists which carry carbonaceous matter in the form of graphite. The marble and graphite, as well as some other indirect evidence of life less susceptible of brief statement, have been thought by many geologists sufficient to warrant the inference that life existed before the close of the era when the Archean rocks were formed. Hence the era of their formation is called the Archeozoic era.

Most of tie Archean rocks fall into one or the other of two great series, a schistose series and a granitoid series, the latter being in large part intrusive in the former. The rocks of the granitoid series appear as great masses in the schist series, and in some places form great protruding bosses. They were formerly regarded as older thaii the schists and were designated on this account primitive, fundamental, &c. They have also been called Laurenlian, a name which is still sometimes applied to them.

Nearly all known sorts of schist are represented in the schistose nart of the system. Most of them are the metamorphic products of igneous rocks, among which extrusive rocks, many of them pyroelastic, predominate. Metamorphosed sedimentary rocks are widely distributed in the schistose series, but they are distinctly subordinate to the meta-ignecius rocks, and they are so highly metamorphic that stratigraphic methods are not usually applicable to them. In some areas, indeed, it is diffictilt to say whether the schists are metasedimentary or meta-igneous. The likeness of the Archean of one part of the country to that of another is one of its striking features.

The Archean appears at the surface in many parts of the United States, and in still larger areas north of the national boundary. It appears in the cores of some of the western mountains, in some of the deep canyons of the west, as in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in northern Arizona, and over considerable areas in northern Wiscpnsin and Minnesota, in New England and the piedmont plateau east of the Appalachian Mountains, and in a few other situations. Wherever it comes to the surface it comes up from beneath younger rocks which are, as a rule, less metamorphic. By means of deep borings it is known at many points where it does not appear at the surface, antI is believed to be universal beneath younger systems.

I.ocally the Archean contains iron ore, as in the Vermilion district of northern Minnesota, and at some points in Ontario.- The ore is mostly in the form of haematite.

Prolerozoic (Algonkian) Systems.The Proterozoic group of rocks (called also Algonkian) includes all formations younger than the Archean and older than the Palaeozoic rocks. The term Archean was formerly proposed to include these rocks, as well as those now called Archean, btit the subdivision here recognized has come to be widely approved.

The Proterozoic formations have a wide distribution. They appear at the surface adjacent to most of the outcrops of the Archean, and in some other places. In many localities the two groups have not been separated. In some places this is because the regions where they occur have net been carefully studied since the subdivision into Archeozoic and Proterozoic was made, and in others because of the inherent difficulty of separation, as where the Proterozoic rocks are highly metamorphosed. On the whole, the Proterozoic rocks are predominantly sedimentary and subordinately igneous. Locally both the sedimentary and igneous parts of the group have been highly metamorphosed; but as a rule the alteration of the sedimentary portions has not gone so far that stratigraphic methods are inapplicable to them, though in some places detailed study is necessary to make out their structure.

The Proterozoic formations are unconformable on the Archean in most places where their relations are known. The unconformity between these groups is therefore widespread, probably more so than any later unconformity. Not only is it extensive in area, but the stratigraphic break is very great, as shown by (I) the excess of metamorphism of the lower group as compared with the upper, and (2) the amount of erosion suffered by the older group before the deposition of the younger. The first of these differences between the two systems is significant of the dynamic changes suffered by the Archean before the beginning of that part of the Proterozoic era represented by known formations. The extent of the unconformity is usually significant of the geographic changes of the interval unrecorded by known Proterozoic rocks.

The Proterozoic formations have been studied in detail in few great areas. One of these is about Lake Superior, where the formations have attracted attention on account of the abundant iron ore which they contain. Four major subdivisions or systems of the group have been recognized in this region, as shown in the preceding table. These systems are separated one from another by unconformitics in most places, and the lower systems, as a rule, have sufferetl a greater degree of metamorphism than the upper ones, though this is not to be looked upon as a hard and fast rule. The commoner sorts of rock in the several Huronian systems are quartzite and slate (ranging from shale to schist); bi~t limestone is not wanting, and igneous rocks, both intrusive and extrtisive, some metamorphic and some not, abound. Iron ore occurs in the sedimentary part of the Huronian, especially in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Canada. The ore is chiefly haematite, and has been developeci from antecedent ferruginous sedimentary deposits, through concentration and purification by ground water.

The lower part of the Keweenawan system consists of a great succession of lava flows, of prodigious thickness.- This portion of the system is overlain by thick beds of sedimentary rock, mostly conglomerate and sandstone, derived from the igneous rocks beneath. A few geologists regard the sedimentary rocks here classed as Keweenawan as Palaeozoic; but they have yielded no fossils, and are unconformable beneath the Upper Cambrian, which is the oldest sedimentary formation of the region which bears fossils. The aggregate thickness of the Proterozoic systems in the Lake Superior region is several miles, as usually computed, but there are obvious difficulties in determining the thickness of such great systems, especially when they are mtich metamorphosed. The copper of the Lake Superior region is in the Keweenawaii system, chiefly in its sedimentary and amygdaloidal parts.

The Proterozoic formations in other parts of the continent cannot be correlated in detail with those of the Lake Superior region. The number of systems is not everywhere the same, nor are they everywhere alike, and their definite correlation with one another is not possible now, and may never be. The Proterozoic formations have yielded a few fossils in several places, especially Montana and northern Arizona; but they are so imperfect, their numbers, whether of individuals or of species, are so small, and the localities where they occur so few, that they are of little service in correlation throughout the United States. The carbon-bearing shales, slates and schists, and the limestone, are indications that life was relatively abundant, even though but few fossils are preserved. ,Among the known fossils are vermes, crustacea and probably brachiopods and pteropods The character of the sediments of the Proterozoic is such as to show that mature weathering affected the older rocks before their material was worked over into the Proterozoic formations. This mature weathering, resulting in the relatively complete separation of the quartz from the kaolin, and both from the calcium carbonate and other basic materials, implies conditions of rock decay comparable to those of the present time.

In all but a few places where their relations are known, the Proterozoic rocks are unconformable beneath the Palaeozoic Where conformity exists the separation is made on the basis of fossils, it having been agreed that the oldest rocks carrying the Olenellus fauna are to be regarded as the base of the Cambrian system.

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Cambrian System.The lower part of the Cambrian system, characterized by the Olenellus fauna, is restricted to the borders of the continent, where it rests on the older rocks unconformably in most places. The middle part of the system, characterized by the Paradoxides fauna, is somewhat more widespread, resting on the lower part conformably, but overlapping it, especially in the south and west. The upper part of the system, carrying the Dicellocephalus fauna, is very much more extensive; it is indeed one of the most widespread series of rocks on the continent. The lower, middle and upper parts of the system all contain marine fossils. This being the case, the distribution of the several divisions indicates that progressive submergence of the United States was in progress during the period, and that most of the country was covered by the sea before its close.

- The system is composed chiefly of clastic rocks, and their composition and structure show that the water in which they were deposited was shallow. In the interior, the upper part of the system, the Potsdam sandstone, is generally arenaceous. It is well exposed in New York, Wisconsin, Missouri and elsewhere, about the outcrops of older rocks. The system is also exposed in many of the western mountains or about their borders, especially about those the cores of which are of Archean or Proterozoic rock.

The thickness of the system has been estimated at 10,009 to 12,000 ft. in eastern New York, and almost as much in the southern Appalachian Mountains (Georgia and Alabama); but its average thickness is much less. In Wisconsin, where the Upper Cambrian only is present, the thickness is about Iooo ft. The greater thickness in the east appears to be due in part to the fact that an extensive area of land, Appalachia. lay east of the site of the Appalachian Mountains throughout the Palaeozoic era, and quantities of sediment from it Were accumulated where these mountains were to arise later. The greatness of the thickness, as it has been measured, is also due in part to the oblique position in which the beds of sediment were originally deposited.

The Cambrian formations have not been notably metamorphosed, except in a few regions where dynamic metamorphism has been effective. The system is without any notable amount of igneous rock. As in other parts of the world, the system here contains abundant fossils, among which trilobites, brachiopods and worms are the most abundant. The range of forms, however, is great.

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limestone, and therefore much less elastic rock, than the Cambrian, pointing to clearer seas in which life abounded. The succession of beds in New York has become a sort of standard with which the system in other parts of the United States has been compared. The succession of formations in that state is as follows Upper Ordovician (or J and Indiana).

Cincinnatian) Lorraine beds.

1 Utica shales.

Middle Ordovician (or I Trenton limestone.

Ordovician Mohawkian) -~ Black River limestone.

(Lowville limestone.

Lower Ordovician (or I Chazy limestone.

Canadian) -~ Beekmantown limestone.

~. (~=Calciferous).

The classification in the right-hand column of this table is not applicable in detail to regions remote from New York.

There is in some places an unconformity between the Richmond beds (or their equivalent) and underlying formations, and this unconformity, together with certain palaeontological considerations, has raised the question whether the uppermost part of the system, as outlined above, should not be classed as Silurian (Upper Silurian). Over the interior the strata are nearly horizontal, but in the mountain regions of the east and west, as well as in the mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma, they are tilted and folded, and locally much metamorphosed. The outcrops of the system appear for the most part in close association with the outcrops of the Cambrian system, but the system appears in a few places where the Cambrian does not, as in southern Ohio and central Tennessee. The thickness of the system varies from point to point, being greatest in the Appalachian Mountains, and much less in the interior.

The oil and gas of Ohio and eastern Indiana come from the middle portion of the Ordovician system. So also do the lead and zinc of south-western Wisconsin and the adjacent parts of Iowa and Illinois. The lead of south-eastern Missouri conies from about the same horizon.

The fossils of the Ordovician system show that life made great progress during the, period, in numbers both of individuals and of species. The life, like that of the later Cambrian, was singularly cosmopolitan, being in contrast with the provincial character of the life of the earlier Cambrian and of the early (Upper) Silurian which followed. Beside the expansion of types which abounded in the Cambrian, vertebrate remains (fishes) are found in the Ordovician. So, also, are the first relics of insects. The departure of the Ordovician life from that of the Cambrian was perhaps most pronounced in the great development of the molluscs and crinoids (including cystoids), but corals were also abundant for the first time, and graptolites came into prominence.

Siluriaii System.The Silurian system is much less widely distributed than the Ordovician. This and other corroborative facts imply a widespread emergence of land at the close of the Ordovician period. As a result of this emergence the stratigraphic break between the Ordovician and the Silurian is one of the greatest in the whole Palaeozoic group.

The classification of the system in New York is as follows:

rManlius limestone.

Cayugan (Neo- or J Rondout waterlime.

Upper Silurian) ~ Cobleskill limestone.

LSalina beds.

IGuelph dolomite.

Silurian -. Niagaran (Meso- or J Lockport limestone.

Middle Silurian) Rochester shale.

- Clinton beds.

Oswegan (Palaeo-or 1~1e~na sandstone.

Lower Silurian) ~ Oneida conglomerate.

(Shawangunk grit.

The lower part of this system is chiefly elastic, and is known only in the eastern part of the continent. The middle portion contains much limestone, generally known as the Niagara limestone, and is mtich more widespread than the lower, being found very generally over the eastern interior, as far west as the Mississippi and in places somewhat beyond. The Niagara limestone contains the oldest known coral reefs of the continent. They occur in eastern Wisconsin and at other points farther east and south, It is over this limestone that the Niagara falls in the world-famous cataract. One member of the middle division of the system (Clinton beds) contains much iron ore, especially in the Appalachian Mountain region. The ore is extensively worked at some points, as at Birmingham, Alabama. The upper part of the system is more restricted than the middle, and includes the salt-bearing series of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, with its peculiar fauna. It is difficult to see how salt could have originated in this region except under conditions very different climatically from those of the present time.

In the interior the thickness of the system is less than 1000 ft. in many places, but in and near the Appalachian Mountains its thickness is much greatermore than five times as great if the maximum thicknesses of all formations be made the basis of calculation. In the Great Plains and farther west the Silurian has little known representation. Either this part of the continent was largely land at this time, or the Silurian formations here have been worn away or remain undifferentiated. Rocks of Silurian age, however, are known at some points in Arizona, Nevada and southern California.

Corals, echinoderms, brachiopods and all groups of molluscs abounded. Graptolites had declined notably as compared with the Ordovician, and the trilobites passed their climax before the end of the period. Certain other remarkable crustacea, however, had made their appearance, especially in connection with the Salina series of the east.

There are numerous outliers of the Silurian north of the United States, even tip to the Arctic regions. These outliers have a common fauna, which is closely related to that of the interior of the United States. They give some clue to the amount of erosion which the system has suffered, and also afford a clue to the route by which the animals whose fossils are found in the United States entered this country., Thus, the Niagara fauna of the interior of the United States has striking resemblances to the mid-Silurian fatinasof Sweden and Great Britain. It seems probable, therefore, that marine animals found migratory conditions between these regions, probably by way of northern islands. The fauna of the Appalachian region is far less like that of Europe, and indicates but slight connection with the fauna of the interior. Both the earlier and the later parts of the Silurian period seem to have been times when physical conditions were such as to favor the development of provincial faunas, while during the more widespread submergence of the middle Silurian the fauna was more cosmopolitan.

Devonian System.The Devonian system appears in some parts of New England, throughout most of the Appalachian region, over much of the eastern interior from New York to the Missouri River, in Oklahoma, and perhaps in Texas. It is absent from the Great Plains, so far as now known, and is not generally present in the Rocky Mountains, though somewhat widespread between them and the western coast. As a whole, the system is more-widespread than the Silurian, though not so widespread as the Ordovician. As in the case of the Ordovician and the Silurian, the New York section has become a standard with which the system in other parts of the country is commonly compared. This section is as follows: ~Chautauquan-Chemung (including CatI skill).

Upper - IPortage beds.

Devonian Senecan.. -~ Genesee shale.

lTully limestone.

~Erian.. Hamilton shale.

I Marcellus shale.

1) ni Middle ~ ~Onondaga (Corniferous ,evo an. Devonian I Ulsterian. limestone)

I. 1 Schoharie grit. I,Esopus grit.

Oriskanian Oriskany beds.

(Kingston beds.

Lower. 1 HelderbergianJ Becraft limestone.

Devonian New Scotland beds.

(Coeymans limestone.

The formations most widely recognized are the Helderberg limestone, the Onondaga limestone and the Hamilton shale.

The Catskill sandstone, found chiefly in. the Catskill Mountain region of New York, is one of the distinctive formations of the system. It has some similarity to the Old Red Sandstone of Great Britain. In part, at least, it is equivalent in time of origin to the Chemung formation; but the latter is of marine origin, while the Catskill formation appears to be of terrestrial origin.

No other system of the United States brings out more clearly the value of palaeontology to palaeogeography. The faunas of the early Devonian seem to have entered what is now the interior of the United States from the mid-Atlantic coast. The Onondaga fauna which succeeded appears to have resulted from the commingling of the resident lower Devonian fauna with new emigrants from Europe by way of the Arctic regions. The Hamilton fauna which followed represents the admixture of the resident Onondaga fauna with new types which are thought to have come from South America, showing that faunal connections for marine life had been made between the interior of the United States and the lands south of the Caribbean Sea, a connection of which, before this time, there was no evidence. The late Devonian fauna of the interior represents the commingling of the Hamilton fauna of the eastern interior with new emigrants from the north-west, a union which was not effected until toward the close of the period.

Like the earlier Palaeozoic systems, the Devonian attains its greatest known thickness in the Appalachian Mountains, where sediments from the lands of pre-Cambrian rock to the east accumulated in quantity. Here clastic rocks predominate, while limestone is more abundant in the interior, If the maximum thicknesses of all Devonian formations be added together, the total for the system is as much as 15,000 ft.; but such a thickness is not found in any one pluce.

The Devonian system yields much oil and gas in western Pennsylvania, south-western New York, West Virginia and Ontario; and some of the Devonian beds in Tennessee yield phosphates of commercial value. The Hamilton formation yields much flagstone.

Among the more important features of the marine life of the period were (1) the great development of the molluscs, especially of cephalopods; (2) theabundanceoflargebrachiopods; (3) theaberrant tendencies of the trilobites; (4) the profusion of corals; and (5) the abundance, size and peculiar forms of the fishes. The life of the land waters was also noteworthy, especially for the great deployment of what may be called the crustacean-ostracodermo-vertebrate group. The crustacea were represented by eurypterids, the ostracoderms by numerous strange, vertebrate-like forms (Cephalaspis, Gyathaspis, Trematopsis, Bothriolepss, &c.), and the vertebrates by a great variety of fishes, The land life of the period is represented more fully among the fossils than that of any preceding period. Gymnosperms were the highest types of plants.

The Devonian system is not set off from theMississippian by any marked break. On the other hand, the one system merges into the other, so that the plane of separation is often indistinct.

Mississippian SystemThe Mississippian system was formerly regarded as a part of the Carboniferous, and was described under the name of Lower Carboniferous, or Subcarboniferous, without the rank of a system. This older classification, which has little support except that which is traditional, is still adhered to by many geologists; hut the fact seems to be that the system is set off from the Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) more sharply than the Cambrian is from the Ordoviciao, the Silurian from the Devonian, or the Devonian from the Mississippian.

The system is well developed in the Mississippi Basin, whence its name, Its formations are much more widespread than those of any other system since the Ordovician. They appear at the surface in great areas in the interior, in the south-west and about many of the western mountains. In many places in the west they rest on what appear to be Ordovician beds, but without unconformity. The explanation of the apparent conformity of the strata from the Cambrian to the Pennsylvanian in some parts of the west, with no fossils defining with certainty any horizon between the Ordovician and the Mississippian, is one of the open problems in the geology of the United States.

The subdivision of the system for various regions in the eastern part of the United States is as follows:

Mississippi River States. Ohio. Pennsylvania. M~

4. Kaskaskia or Chester 7.7. Maxville 3. St Louis 6. Logan 3. Mf 2. Osage or Augusta (in- 5.5. Black Hand 2. Mauch Chunk cluding the Bur- 4. Cuyahoga 2. Gr lington, Keokuk 3. Sunbury and \Varsaw) 2. Berea grit 1. Kinderhook or Chou- 1. Bedford I. Pocono I. P0

teau In the interior the Kinderhook series has a distribution similar to that of the Devonian; the Osage series is more widespread, pointing to progressive submergence; and the St Louis is still more extensive. This epoch, indeed, is the epoch of maximum submerg,ence during the period, and the maximum since the Ordovician. Uefore its close the sea of the Great Basin which had persisted since the Devonian was connected with the shallow sea which covered much of the interior of the United States. The fourth series, the Kaskaskia or Chester, is more restricted, and points to the coming emergence of a large part of the United States. In the Mississippi Basin the larger part of the system is of limestone, though there is some clastic mateiial in both its basal and its upper parts. In Ohio the system contains much clastic rock, and in Pennsylvania little else. The Mauch Chunk series (shale and sandstone) is now believed to be largely of terrestrial origin.

The system ranges in thickness from nearly 5000 ft. maximum in Pennsylvania to 1500 ft. in the vicinity of the Mississippi river. In ~Vest Virginia some 2000 ft. of limestone are assigned to this system. The zinc and lead of the Joplin district of Missouri are in the limestone of this system, and the corresponding limestone in some parts of Colorado, as at Leadville, is one of the horizons of rich ore.

The end of the period was marked by the widespread emergence of the continent, and parts of it were never again submerged, so far as is known. Certainly there is no younger marine formation of comparable extent in the continent. When deposition was renewed in the interior of the continent, the formations laid down were largely non-marine, and, over great areas, they rest upon the Mississippian unconformably.

From the conditions outlined it is readily inferred that the faunas of the system were cosmopolitan. All types of life to which shallow, clear sea-water was congenial appear to have abounded in the interior. It was perhaps at this time that the crinoids, as a class, reached their climax, and most forms of lime-carbonate-secreting life seem to have thriven. Where the seas were less clear, as in Ohio, the conditions are reflected in the character of the fossils. Marine fishes had made great progress before the close of the period. Amphibia appeared before its close, and plant life was abundant and varied, though the types were not greatly in advance of those of the Devonian. The time of stich widespread submergence was hardly the time for the great development of land vegetation.

Pennsylvanian SystemThe Pennsylvanian or Upper Carboniferous system overlics the Mississippian unconformably over a large part of the United States. In the eastern half of the country the system consists of shales and sandstones chiefly, btit there is some limestone, and coal enough to be of great importance economically, though it makes but a small part of the system quantitatively. The larger part of the system in this part of the country is not of marine origin; yet the sea had access to parts of the interior more than once, as shown by the marine fossils in some of the beds. The dominantly terrestrial formations of the eastern half of the country are in contrast with the marine formations of the west. The line separating the two phases of the system is a little east of the 1 ooth meridian. West of the Mississippi the Coal Measures are subdivided into two series, the Des Moines below and the Missouri above. In the eastern part of the country (Pennsylvania, Ohio, &c.) the system is divided into four principal parts:

~ 4. Monongahela formation (or series)Upper Productive Coal Measures.

J 3 Conemaugh formation (or series)Lower Pennsylvanian. - Barren Coal Measures.

2. Allegheny formation (or series)Lower Prodtictive Coal Measures.

1. Pottsville formation (or series).

The Pottsville formation is chiefly clastic, and corresponds roughly to the Millstone Grit of England. The Allegheny and Monongahela series contain most of the coal, though it is not wanting in the other subdivisions of the system. Productive coal beds are found in five principal fields. These are (1) the Anthracite field in eastern Pennsylvania, nearly 500 sq. m. in extent; (2) the Appalachian field, having an area of about 71,000 sq. m. (75% being productive), and extending from Pennsylvania to Alabama; (3) the northern interior field, covering an area of about 11,000 sq. m. in southern Michigan; (4) the eastern interior field in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, with an area of about 58,000 sq. m. (55% being productive); and (5) the western interior and southwestern field, some 94,000 sq. m. in extent, reaching from -~ Iowa on the north to Texas on the south. There I d is also a coalfield in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, bryan. about 18,000 sq. os. in extent. Some of the well-known beds of coal are known to be continuous for several h Ch k thousands of square miles.

uc un Unlike the older systems of the Palaeozoic, the enbrier Pennsylvanian system has not its maximum thickness - in the Appalachian Mountains, but in Arkansas, in a region which was probably adjacent to high lands at that time. These lands perhaps lay in the present - position of the Ouachita Mountains.

______ The close of the Pennsylvanian period was marked by the beginning of profound changes, changes in geography and climate, and therefore changes in the amount and habitat of life, and in the sites of erosion and sedimentation. One of the great changes of this time was the beginning of the development of the Appalachian Mountain system. The site of these mountains had been, for the most part, an area of deposition throughout the Palaeozoic era, and the body of sediments which had gathered here at the western base of Appalachia, by the close of the Pennsylvanian period, was very great. At this time these sediments, together with some of Appalachia itself, began to be folded up into the Appalachian Mountains. These mountains have since been worn down, so that, in spite of their subsequent periods of growth, their height is not great.

The chief interest of the palaeontology of this system is in the plants, which were very like those of the Coal Measures of other parts of the earth and showed a high development ,of forms that are now degenerate. Among land animals the amphibia had great development at this time. So also had insects and some other forms, of land life.

Permian Period.The Permian system appears in smaller areas in the United States than any other Palaeozoic system. The Upper Barren Coal Measures of some parts of the east (Ohio, Pennsylvania, &c.) are now classed as Permian on the basis of their fossil plants. They represent but a part of the Permian period, and are commonly described under the name of the Dunkard series.

The system has much more considerable development west of the Mississippi than east of it, especially in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and beyond. Some of the Permian beds of this region are marine, while others are of terrestrial origin. In this part of the country the Permian beds are largely red sandstone, often saliferous and gypsiferous. They are distinguished with difficulty from the succeeding Triassic, for the beds have very few fossils. The system has its maximum known thickness in Texas, where it is said to be 7000 ft. in maximum thickness. West of the Rocky Mountainf the Permian has not been very generally separated from overlying and underlying formations, though it has been differentiated in a few places, as in south-western Colorado and in some parts of Arizona. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the palaeontology of the system is its paucity of fossils, especially in those parts of the system, such as the Red Beds, which are of terrestrial origin.

In the United States no direct evidence has been found of the low tensperaturewhich brought about glaciation in many other parts of the earth during this period. Salt and gypsum deposits, and other features of the Permian beds, together with the fewness of fossils, indicate that the climate of the Permian was notably arid in many regions.

Triassic SystemThis system has but limited representation in the eastern part of the United States, being known only east of the Appalachian Mountains in an area which was land throughout most of the Palaeozoic era, hut which was deformed when the eastern mountains were developed at the close of the Palaeozoic. In the troughs formed in its surface during this time of deformation, sediments of great thickness accumulated during the Triassic period. These sediments are now mostly in the form of red sandstone and shale, with conglomerate, black shale and coal in some places. These rocks do not represent the whole of the period. They are often known as the Newark series, and seem to be chiefly, if not wholly, of terrestrial origin. The sedimentary rocks are affected by many dikes and sheets of igneous rock, some of the latter being extrusive and some intrusive. The strata are now tilted and much faulted, though but little folded. In the western plains and in the western mountains the Triassic is not clearly separated from the Permian in most places. So far as the system is differentiated, it is a part of the Red Beds of that region. The tendency of recent years has been to refer more and more of these beds to the Permian. The Triassic system is well developed on the Pacific coast, where its strata are of marine origin, and they extend inland to the Great Basin region.

The climate of the period, at least in its earlier part, seems to have been arid like that of the Permian, as indicated both by the paucity of fossils and by the character of the sediments. The salt and gypsum constitute a positive argument for aridity. The character of some of the conglomerate of the Newark series of the east, and the widespread redness of the beds, so far as it is original, also point to aridity.

As in other parts of the earth, the Triassic was the age of gymnosperms, which were represented by diverse types. Reptiles were the dominant form of animals, and land reptiles (dinosaurs) gained over their aquatic allies.

Jurassic SystemThis system is not known with certainty in the eastern half of the United States, though there are some beds on the mid-Atlantic coast, along the inland border of the coastal plain, which have been thought by some, on the basis of their reptilian fossils, to be Jurassic. The lower and middle parts of the system are but doubtfully represented in the western interior. If present, they form a part of the Red Beds of that region. On the Pacific coast marine Jurassic beds reach in from the Pacific to about the same distance as the Triassic system. The Upper Jurassic formations are much more widely distributed. During the later part of the period the sea found entrance at some point north of the United States to a great area in the western part of the continent, developing a bay which extended far down into the United States from Canada. In this great bay formations of marine origin were laid down. At the same time marine sedimentation was continued on the Pacific coast, but the faunas of the west coast and the interior bay are notably unlike, the latter being more like that of the coast north of the United States. This is the reason for the belief that the bay which extended into the United States had its connection with the sea north of the United States.

The Jurassic faunas of the United States were akin to those of other continents. The great development of reptiles and cephalopods was among the notable features. At the close of the period there were considerable deformations in the west. The first notable folding of the Sierras that has been definitely determined dates from this time, and many other mountains of the west were begun or rejuvenated. The close of the period, too, saw the exclusion of the sea from the Pacific coast east of the Sierras, and the disappearance, so far as the United States is concerned, of the great north-western bay of the late Jurassic. Before the close of the period, the aridity which had obtained during the Permian, and at least a part of the Triassic, seems to have disappeared.

Comanchean System.This system was formerly classed as the lower part of the Cretaceous, but there are strong reasons for regarding it as a separate system. Its distribution is very different from that of the Upper Cretaceous, and there is a great and widespread unconformity between them. The faunas, too, are very unlike. The Comanchean formations are found (I) on the inland border of the coastal plain of the Atlantic (Potomac series) and Gulf coasts (Tuscaloosa series at the east and Comanchean at the west); (2) along the western margin of the Great Plains and in the adjacent mountains; and (3) along the Pacific coast west of the Sierras. In the first two of these positions, the formations show by their fossils that they are of terrestrial origin in some places, and partly of terrestrial and partly of marine origin in others. In the coastal plain the Comanchean beds are generally not cemented, but consist of gravel, sand and clay, occupying the nearly horizontal position in which they were originally deposited. Much plastic clay and sand are derived from them. In Texas, whence the name Comanchean comes, and where different parts of the system are of diverse origins, there is some limestone. This sort of rock increases in importance southward and has great development in Mexico. In the western interior there is difference of opinion as to whether certain beds rich in reptilian remains (the Morrison, Atlantosaurus, Como, &c.) should be regarded as Jurassic or Comanchean. On the western coast the term Shastan is sometimes applied to Lower Cretaceous. In the United States, marine Shastan beds are restricted to the area west of the Sierras, but they here have great thickness.

Widespread changes at the end of the period exposed the areas where deposition has been in progress during the period to erosion, and the (Upper) Cretaceous formations rest upon the Comanchean unconformably in most parts of the country. The Comanchean system contains the oldest known remains of netted-veined leaved plants, which mark a great advance in the vegetable world. Reptiles were numerous and of great size. They were the largest type of life, both on land and in the sea.

Cretaceous System.This system is much more extensively developed in the United States than any other Mesozoic system. It is found (1) on the Atlantic coastal plain, where it laps up on the Comanchean, or over it to older formations beyond its inland margin; (2) on the coastal plain of the Gulf region in similar relations; (3) over the western plains; (4) in the western mountains; and (5) along the Pacific coast. Unlike the Cornanchean, the larger part of the Cretaceous system is of marine origin. The distribution of the beds of marine origin shows that the sea crept upon the eastern and southern borders of the continent auring the period, covered the western plains, and formed a great mediterranean sea between the eastern and western lands of the continent, connecting the Gulf of Mexico on the south and the Arctic Ocean on the north. This widespread submergence, followed by the deposition of marine sediments on the eroded surface of Comanchean and older rocks, is the physical reason for the separation of the system from the Comanchean. This reason is reinforced by palaeontological considerations.

Both on the Atlantic and over the western plains, the system is divided into four principal subdivisions:

Atlantic Coast. Western Plains.

4. Manasquan formation. 4. Laramie.

3. Rancocas formation. 3. Montana: Fox Hills; Fort 2. Monmouth formation. Pierre.

I. Matawan formation. 2. Colorado: Niobrara; Benton.

1. Dakota.

The most distinctive feature of the Cretaceous of the Atlantic coastal plain is its large content of greensand marl (glauconite). The formations are mostly incoherent, and have nearly their original position. In the eastern Gulf states there is more calcareous material, represented by limestone or chalk, In the Texan region and farther north the limestone becomes still more important. In the western plains, the first and last principal subdivisions of the system (Dakota and I,aramie) are almost wholly non-marine. The Dakota formation is largely sandstone, which gives rise to hogbacks where it has been tilted, indurated and exposed to erosion along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. The Colorado series contains much limestone, some of which is in the form of chalk. This is par excellence the chalk formation of the United States. That the chalk was deposited in shallow, clear seas is indicated both by the character of the fossils other than foraminifera and by the relation of the chalk to the elastic portions of the series. The Montana series, most of which is marine, was deposited in water deeper than that of the Colorado epoch, though the series is less widespread than the preceding. The Laramie is the great coalbearing series of the west, and corresponds in its general physical make-up and in its mode of origin to the Coal Measures of the east. The coal-bearing lands of the Laramie have been estimated at not less than 100,000 sq. m. On the Pacific coast the Cretaceous formations are sometimes grouped together under the name of Chico. The distribution of the Chico formations is similar to that of the Comanchean system in this region.

The Cretaceous system is thick. If maximum thicknesses of its several parts in different localities, as usually measured, are added together, the total would approach or reach 25,000 ft.; but the strata of any one region have scarcely more than half this thickness, and the average is much less.

The close of the period was marked by very profound changes which may be classed under three general headings: (1) the emergence of great areas which had been submerged until the closing stages of the period; (2) the beginning of the development of most of the great mountains of the west; (3) the inauguration of a protracted period of igneous activity, stimulated, no doubt, by the crustal and deeper-seated movements of the time. These great changes in the relation of land and water, and in topography, led to correspondingly great changes in life, and the combination marks the transition from the Mesozoic to the Cainozoic era.

Tertiary Systems.The formations of the sevefl Tertiary peripds have many points of similarity, but in some respects they are sharply differentiated one from another. They consist, in most parts of the country, of unconsolidated sediments, consisting of gravel, sand, clay, &c., together with large quantities of tuff, volcanic agglomerate, &c. Some of the sedimentary formations are of marine, some of brackish water, and some of terrestrial origin. In the western part of the country there are, in addition, very extensive flows of lava covering in the aggregate some 200,000 sq. m. Terrestrial sedimentation was, indeed, a great feature of the Tertiary. This was the result of several conditions, among them the recent development, through warping and faulting and volcanic extrusion, of high lands with more or less considerable slopes. From these high lands sediments were borne down to lodge on the low lands adjacent. The sites of deposition varied as the period progressed, for the warping and faulting of the surface, the igneous extrusions, and the deposition of sediments obliterated old basins and brought new ones into existence. The marine Tertiary formations are confined to the borders of the continent, appearing along the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts. The brackish water formations occur in some parts of the same general areas, while the terrestrial formations are found in and about the western mountains. As in other parts of the world, the chiefest palaeontological interest of the Tertiary attaches to the mammalian fossils.

The Eocene beds are unconformable, generally, upon the Cretaceous, and unconformable beneath the Miocene. On the Atlantic coast they are nearly horizontal, but dip gently seaward. E~eene On this coast they are nowhere more than a few system. hundred feet thick. In the Gulf region the system is more fully represented, and attains a greater thicknessI7oo ft. at least. In the Gulf region the Eocene system contains not a little non-marine material. Thus the lower Eocene has some lignite in the eastern Gulf region, while in Teias lignite and saliferous and gypsiferous sediments are found, though most of the system is marine and of shallow water origin. The Eocene of the western Gulf region is continued nor,h as far as Arkansas. The classification of the Eocene (and Oligocene) formations in the Gulf region, especially east of the Mississippi, is as follows:

4. Jacksonian Upper Eocene.

3. Claibornian Middle Eocene.

2. Chickasawan ?~ Lower Eocene.

1. i\Iidwayan The Jacksonian is sometimes regarded as Oligocene. This classification is based almost wholly on the fossils, for there seems to be little physical reason for the differentiation of the Oligocene anywhere on the continent.

On the Pacific coast the marine Eocene lies west of the Sierras, and between it and the Cretaceous there is a general, and often a great, unconformity. The system has been reported to have a thickness of more than 7000 ft. in some places, and locally (e.g. the Pescadero formation) it is highly metamorphic. The Eocene of southern California carries gypsum enough to be of commercial value. It is also the source of much oil. The system is wanting in northern California and southern Oregon, but appears again farther north, and has great development in Oregon, where its thickness has been estimated at more than 10,000 ft. As in other comparable cases, this figure does not make allowance for the oblique attitude in which the sediments were deposited, and should not be construed to mean the vertical thickness of the system.

In \Vashington the Eocene is represented by the Puget series of brackish water beds, with an estimated thickness exceeding that of the marine formations of Oregon. Workable coal beds are distributed through 3000 ft. of this series. The amount of the coal is very great, though the coal is soft.

Terrestrial Eocene formationseolian, fluvial, pluvial and lacustrineare widespread in the western part of the United States, both in and about the mountains. By means of the fossils, several more or less distinct stages of deposition have been recognized. Named in chronological order, these are:

I. The Fort Union stage, when the deposition was widespread about the eastern base of the northern part of the Rocky Mountains, and at some points in Colorado (Telluride formation) and New Mexico (Puerco beds), where volcanic ejecta entered largely into the formation. The Fort Union stage is closely associated with the Laramie, and their separation has not been fully effected.

2. The Wasatch stage, when deposition was in progress over much of Utah and western Colorado, parts of Wyoming, and elsewhere.

3. The Bridger stage, when deposition was in progress in the -\Vind River basin, north of the mountain of that name, and in the basin of Green river.

~. The Uinta stage, when the region south of the mountains of that name, in Utah and Colorado, was the site of great deposition.

More or less isolated deposits of some or all of these stages are found at numerous points in the western mountain region. The present height of the deposits, in some places as much as 10,000 ftgives some suggestion of the changes in topography which have taken place since the early Tertiary. The thickness of the system in the west is great, the formations of each of the several stages mentioned above running into thousands of feet, as thicknesses are commonly measured.

The Miocene system, generally speaking, has a distribution similar to that of the Eocene. The principal formation of the Mi Atlantic coastal plain is the Chesapeake formation, ~ ~ largely of sand. In Florida the system contains Y calcium phosphate of commercial value. The Miocene of the Atlantic and Gulf regions nowhere attains great thickness. The oil of Texas and Louisiana is from the Miocene (or possibly Oligocene) dolomite. On the Pacific coast the system has greater development. It contains much volcanic material, and great bodies of siliceous shale, locally estimated at 4000 ft. thick and said to be made up largely of the secretions of organisms. Such thicknesses of such material go far to modify the former opinion that the Tertiary periods were short. The Miocene of California is oilproducing. The terrestrial Miocene formations of the western part of the country are similar in kind, and, in a general way, in distribution, to the Eocene of the same region. The amount of volcanic material, consisting of both pyroclastic material and lava flows, is great.

At the close of the Miocene, deformative movements were very widespread in the Rocky Mountains and between the principal development of the Coast ranges of California and Oregon, and mountain-making movements, new or renewed, were somewhat general in the west. At the close of the period the topography of the western part of the country must have been comparable to that of the present time. This, however, is not to be interpreted to mean that it has remained unmodified, or but slightly modified since that time. Subsequent erosion has changed the details of topography on an extensive scale, and subsequent deformative movements have renewed large topographic features where erosion had destroyed those developed by the close of the Miocene. But in spite of these great changes since the Miocene, the great outlines of the topography of the present were probably marked out by the close of that period. Volcanic activity and faulting on a large scale attended the deforijiation of the closing stages of the Miocene.

The Pliocene system stands in much the same stratigraphic relation to the Miocene as the Miocene does to the Eocene. The marine Pliocene has but trifling development on the Atlantic Piior~ne coast north of Florida, and somewhat more extensive System. development in the Gulf region. The marine Pliocene of the continent has its greatest development in California (the Merced series, peninsula of San Francisco), where it is assigned a maximum thickness of nearly 6000 ft., and possibly as much as 13,000 ft. This wide range is open to doubt as to the correlation of some of the beds involved. Thicknesses of several thousand feet are recorded at other points in California and elsewhere along the coast farther north. Marine Pliocene beds are reported to have an altitude of as much as 5000 ft. in Alaska. The position of these beds is significant of the amount of change which has taken place in the west since the Pliocene period. The non-marine formations of the Pliocene are its most characteristic feature. They are widely distributed in the western mountains and ,on the Great Plains. In origin and character, and to some extent in distribution, they are comparable with the Eocene and Miocene formations of the same region, and still more closely comparable with deposits now making. In addition to these non-marine formations of the west, there is the widespread Lafayette formation, which covers niuch of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plain, reaching far to the north from the western Gulf regio,1, and having uncertain limits, so far as now worked out, in various directions. The Lafayette formation has been the occasion of much difference of opinion, but is by many held to be a non-marine formation, made up of gravels, sands and clays, accumulated on land, chiefly through the agency of rain and rivers. Its deposition seems to have followed a time of deformation which resulted in an increase of altitude in the Appalachian Mountains, and in an accentuation of the contrast between the highlands and the adjacent plains. Under these conditions sediments from the high lands were washed out and distributed widely over the plains, giving rise to a thin but widespread formation of ill-assorted sediment, without marine fossils, and, for the most part, without fossils of any kind, and resting unconformably on Cretaceous, Eocene and Miocene formations. To the seaward the non-marine phase of the formation doubtless grades into a marine phase along the shore of that time, but the position of this shore has not been defined. The marine-part of the Lafayette is probably covered by sediments of later age.

In earlier literature the Lafayette formation was described under the name of Orange Sand, and was at one time thought to be the southern equivalent of the glacial drift. This, however, is now known not to be the case, as remnants of the formation, isolated by erosion, lie under the old glacial drift in Illinois, and perhaps elsewhere. It seems probable that the Lafayette formation of the Gulf coastal plain is continuous northward and westward with gravel deposits on the Great Plains, washed out from the Rocky Mountains to the west. The careful study of these fluvial formations is likely to throw much light on the history of the deformative movements and changes in topography in the United States during the late stages of geological history.

Deformative movements of the minor sort seem to have been in progress somewhat generally during the Tertiary periods, especially in the western part of the country, but those at the close of the Pliocene seem to have exceeded greatly those of the earlier stages. They resulted in increased height of land, especially in the west, and therefore in increased erosion. This epoch of relative uplift and active erosion is sometimes called the Sierran or Ozarkian epoch. The details of the topography of the western mountains are largel of post-Pliocene development. The summits of some of the big mountains, such as the Cascades, appear to be remnants of a peneplain developed in post-Miocene time. If so, the mountains themselves must be looked upon as essentially post-Pliocene. Deformative movements resulting in close folding were not common at this time, but such movements affected some of the coast ranges of California. This epoch of great deformation and warping marks the transition from the Tertiary to the Quaternary.

Quaternary Formations.The best-known formations of the Quaternary period are those deposited by the continental glaciers which were the distinguishing feature of the period ~

and by the waters derived from them. The glacial ac drift covers something like half of the continent, though much less than half of the United States. Besides the drift of the icesheets, there is much drift in the western mountains, deposited by local glaciers. Such glaciers existed in all the high mountains of the west, even down to New Mexico and Arizona.

The number of glacial epochs now recognized is five, trot eounting minor episodes. Four defined zones of interglacial deposits are detected, all of which are thought to represent great recessions of the ice, or perhaps its entire disappearance. The climate of some of the interglacial epochs was at least as warm as that of the present time in the same regions. The glacial epochs which have been differentiated are the following, numbered in chronological order:

(5) Wisconsin, (4) Iowan, (3) Illinoian, (2) Kansan, (I) SubAftonian, or Jerseyan. Of these, the Kansan ice-sheet was the most extensive, and the later ones constitute a diminishing series.

Essentially all phases of glacial and aqueo-glacial drift are represented. The principal terminal moraines are associated with the ice of the Wisconsin epoch. Terminal moraines at the border of the Illinoian drift are generally feeble, though widely recognizable, and such moraines at the margin of the Iowan and Kansan drift sheets are generally wanting. The edge of the oldest drift sheet is buried by younger sheets of drift in most places.

Loess is widespread in the Mississippi River basin, especially along the larger streams which flowed from the ice. Most of the bess is now generally believed to have been deposited by the wind. The larger part of it seems to date from the closing stages of the Iowan epoch, but bess appears to have come into existence after other glacial epochs as well. Most of the fossils of the bess are shells of terrestrial gastropods, but bones of land mammals are also found in not a few places. Some of the bess is thought to have been derived by the wind from the surface of the drift soon after the retreat of the ice, before vegetation got a foothold upon the new-made deposit; but a large part of the bess, especially that associated with the main valleys, appears to have been blown up on to the bluffs of the valleys from the flood plains below. As might be expected under these conditions, it ranges from fine sand to silt which approaches clay in texture. Its coarser phases are closely associated with dunes in many places, and locally the bess makes a considerable part of the dune material.

Much interest attaches to estimates of time based on data afforded by the consequences of glaciation. These estimates are far apart, and must be regarded as very uncertain, so far as actual numbers are concerned. The most definite are connected with estimates of the time since the last glacial epoch, and are calculated from the amount and rate of recession of certain falls, notably those of the Niagara and Mississippi (St Anthony Falls) rivers. The estimate of the time between the first and last glacial epochs is based on changes which the earlier drift has undergone as compared with those which the younger drift has undergone. Some of the estimates make the lapse of time since the first glacial epoch more than a million years, while others make it no more than one-third as long. The time since the last glacial epoch is but a fraction of the time since the first probably no more than a fifteenth or a twentieth.

Outside the region affected by glaciation, deposits by wind, rain, rivers, &c., have been building up the land, and sedimentation has N ~ been in progress in lakes and about coasts. The nontO ~ glacial deposits are much like the Tertiary in kind and gaca. distribution, except that marine beds have little representation on the land. On the coastal plain there is the Columbia series of gravels, sands and barns, made up of several members. Its distribution is similar to that of the Lafayette, though the Columbia series is, for the most part, confined to lower levels. Some of its several members are definitely correlated in time with some of the glacial epochs. The series is widespread over the lower part of the coastal plain. In the west the Quaternary deposits are not, in all cases, sharply separated from the late Tertiary, but the deposits of glacial drift, referable to two or more glacial epochs, are readily differentiated from the Tertiary; so, also, are certain lacustrine deposits, such as those of the extinct lakes Bonneville and Lahontan. On the Pacific coast marine Quaternary formations occur up to elevations of a few scores of feet, at least, above the sea.

Igneous rocks, whether lava flows or pyroclastic ejections, are less important in the Quaternary than in the Tertiary, though volcanic activity is known to have continued into the Quaternary. The Quaternary beds of lakes Bonneville and Lahontan have been faulted in a small way since they were deposited, and the old shore lines of these lakes have been deformed to the extent of hundreds of feet. So also have the shorelines of the Great Lakes, which came into existence at the close of the glacial period.

Much has been written and more said concerning the existence of man in the United States before the last glacial epoch. The present state of evidence, however, seems to afford no warrant for the conclusion that man existed in the United States before the end of the glacial period. Whatever theoretical reasons there may be for assuming his earlier existence, they must be held as warranting no more than a presumptive conclusion, which up to the present time lacks confirmation by certain evidence.

The following sections from selected parts of the country give some idea of the succession of beds in various type regions. The thicknesses, especially where the formations are metamorphosed, are uncertain.

WEST CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS

Triassic.

Chicopee shale 200 ft. (?)

Granby tuff 580,,

Blackrock diabase (cones and dikes) -

Longmeadow sandstone 1000,,

Sugarboaf arkose 4660

Mount Toby conglomerate.

Unconformity.

Devonian.

Beroardston series 2950 ft.

Unconformity.

Silurian.

Leyden argillite 300 ft.

Conway schist Amherst schist - ~.-5ooo (~)

Brinfield fibrolite-schist J

Goshen schist 2000 ,, (?)

Unconformity.

Ordovician.

Hawley schist 2000 ft. (?)

Savoy schist 5000 ,, ?)

Chester amphibolite 3000 ,, (?)

Rowe schist 4000 ,, (?)

Hoosic schist 1500 ,, (?)

Unconformity.

Cambrian.

Becket gneiss 2000 ft.(?)

Unconformity.

Proterozoic.

Washington gneiss 2000 ft.(?)

(Base not exposed.)

The above section is fairly representative for considerable parts of New England.

WEST VIRGINIA, &C.

Pennsylvanian.

(Top of system removed by erosion.)

Braxton formation 700 ft.

Upshur sandstone 300 500

Pugh formation 300 450,,

Pickens sandstone 400 500,,

Unconformity.

Mississippian.

Canaan formation1000-1300ft.

Greenbrier limestone 350 400

Pocono sandstone 70 90,,

Devonian.

Flampshire formation1500-1800ft.

Jennings formation 3000-3800

Romney shale 1000f 300

Unconformity.

Monterey sandstone 50 200 ft.

Silurian.

Lewiston limestone 5501050 ft.

Rockwood formation 100 800

Cacapon sandstone 100 630,,

Tuscarora quartzite 30 300

Junjata formation 2051250

Ordovician.

Martinsburg shale 8ooi8oo ft.

Middle and Upper Cambrian.

Shenandoah limestone 2400 ft.

(Base not exposed.)

This section is fairly representative for the Appalachian Mountain tract, though the Cambrian is often more fully represented.

OHIo Permian.

Dunkard formation C. 25 ft.

Pennsylvanian.

Monongahela formation 200 250 ft.

Conemaugh formation 400 500

Alleghany formation 165 300,,

Pottsville conglomerate 250

Unconformity.

Mississippian.

Maxville limestone C. 25 ft.

Waverley series Logan group 100 150 ft.

Black Hand conglomerate, 50 500

Cuyahoga shale 250 300

Sunbury shale 5 30,,

Berea grit 5_ 175

Bedford shale 50 150 ,,

De1oniUn.

Ohio shale 3002600 ft.

Olentangy shale 20 35

Delaware limestone 30 40

Columbus limestone 110 ,,

Silurian.

Monroe formation 50 600 ft.

Niagara group 150 350

Clinton limestone, 10 50 ,,

Medina shales (?) - 50 150

(Belfast bed.)

Ordovwian.

Saluda beds 20* ft.

Richmond formation 300 *

Lorraine formation 300*

Eden (Utica) shale 250

Trenton limestone 130

IOWA

Glacial drift.

Unconformity.

Upper Cretaceous.

Benton formation 0 150 ft.

Dakota formation 50 100,,

Unconformity.

Pennsylvanian.

Missouri formation 1500 It.

Des Moines formation 250 400

Unconformity.

Mississippian.

St Louis limestone 100 ft.

Osage (Augusta) formation 200 300,,

Kinderhook formation 150 200,,

Devonian.

Lime Creek formation 80 ft.

State Quarry beds 20 40

Sweetland Creek shales 20 40

Unconformity.

Cedar Valley limestone 250 300 ft.

\Vapsipinicon formation (Independence, Fayette, Davenport) 100 150

Silurian.

Anamosa limestone 50 75 ft.

Le Claire limestone 50

Delaware stage 200,,

Unconformity.

Ordovician.

Maquoketa shales 175 ft.

Possible Unconformity.

Galena-Trenton limestone 290 ft.

St Peters sandstone 100,, Oneota formation (includes Shakopee, New Richmond and Oneota proper). .. 300,, Cambrian.

St Croix sandstone (~ Potsdam)... 1000 ft.

Unconformity.

Proterozoic.

Sioux quartzite (?)

This section is fairly representative for much of the central Mississippi Basin.

OKLA I1OMA

Pennsylvanian.

(Summit removed by erosion.)

Seminole conglomerate 50 ft.

Holdenville shale 260

Wewaka formation 700

Wetumka shale 120

Calvin sandstone 145 240

Senora formation 140 485

Stuart shale 90 280

Thurman sandstone 80 260,,

Boggy shale 2000-2600

Savannah sandstone 7501100

McAlester shale 1150-1500

Hartshorne sandstone 150 200,,

Atoka formation (Chickahoc chert lentil) - 3200,,

Wapanucka limestone 100 150

Mississippian.

Caney shale 1500 ft.

Devonian.

\Voodford chert fioo ft.

Silurian.

Hunton limestone i6o ft.

Sylvan shale (upper part) 50 100

Ordovician.

Sylvan shale (lower part) 250 ft.

Viola limestone 750

Simpson series 1600,,

Arbuckle limestone 4000--6000,,

Cambrian.

Regan sandstone. 50 100 ft.

Unconformity.

Pre- Cambrian.

Tishomingo granite (?)

Composite section. The upper part is taken from vicinty of Coalgate, the lower part from the vicinity of Atoka.

WEST CENTRAL CoLoRADo Eocene or later.

West Elk breccia 3000 ft.

Unconformity.

Cretaceous.

Ruby formation 2500 ft.

Unconformity.

Ohio formation (local only) 200 ft.

Unconformity.

Laramie formation 2000 ft.

Montana formation 2800

Niobrara formation 100 200.,

Benton formation 150 300

Dakota formation 40 300 Jurassic.

Gunnison formation 350 500 ft.

Unconformity.

Pennsylvanian.

Maroon conglomerate 4500 ft.

Possible unconformity.

Weber limestone 100 550 ft.

Unconformity.

Mississippian.

Leaciville limestone 400 525 ft.

Apparent unconformity.

Ordovician.

Yule limestone 350 450 ft. Upper Cambrian.

Sawatch quartzite 50 350 ft.

Unconformity.

A rchean.

THE BIGHORN MOUNTAINS OF WYOMING

Cretaceous.

Dc Smet formation (shale and sandstone) 4000 ft.

Kingsbury conglomerate 01500,,

Piney formation (shale and sandstone) - 2500,,

Parkman sandstone 350,,

Pierre shale I5003500

Colorado formation 1050-1700

Comanchean.

Cloverly formation (upper part may be Cretaceous) 30- 300 ft.

Morrison formation (may be Jurassic). 100 300,, Jurassic.

Sundance formation 250 350 ft. Unconformity.

Triassic and Permian.

Chugwater formation 7501200 ft.

Pennsylvanian.

Tensleep sandstone 30 150 ft.

Amsden sandstone 150 350,,

Mississippian.

Madison limestone 1000 ft.

Unconformity.

Ordovician.

Bighorn limestone 300 ft.

Unconformity.

Cambrian (Upper).

Deadwood formation 900 ft.

Unconformity.

Pre- Cambrian.

Granites.

This section is fairly representative for the Rocky Mountains.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Q uaternary.

Alluvium, &c.

Terrace deposits and dune sand.

Pliocene (?)

Paso Robles formation 1000 +ft.

Unconformity.

Miocene (?)

Pismo formation (in south part of area). 3000 *ft. Santa Margarita (in north part of area). 1550 * Unconformity.

Miocene.

Monterey shale5000-7000ft.

Vaquero sandstone 0 500

Unconformity.

Cretaceous.

Atascadero formation3000-4000ft.

Unconformity.

Comaachean.

Toro formation (Knoxville) 3000* ft.

Unconformity.

Jura-Trias.

San Luis formation (Franciscan). .. 1000 ~ ft.

Unconformity.

Graniteage undetermined.

This section is representative of the southern Pacific coast.

SECTION IN CENTRAL WASHINGTON

Pliocene (?).

Howson andesite 250 ft.

Miocene.

Keechelus andesite series 4000 ft.

Unconformity.

Guye formation (sedimentary beds with some lava flows) 3500 ~ ft.

Eocene.

Roslyn formation (sandstone and shale; coal) C. 3000 ft.

Teanaway basalt 4000

Kachess rhyolite 02000

Swauk formation (clastic rocks with some tufT, &c.) 2005000

Unconformity.

Pre- Tertiary.

Igneous and metamorphic rocks.

This section is representative of the north-west part of the country. BIBLIOGRAPHYA detailed bibliography for North American geology from 1732 to 1891, inclusive, is given in U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 527 (1896); for I8921900 in Bulletin z88 (1902); for1901-1905in Bull. 301 (1906); for1906-1907in Bull. 372 (1909);

for 1908 in Bull. 409 (1909), &c. A few of the more important and available publications are enumerated below.

General Treatises.T. C. Chamberlin and R. D. Salisbur Geologic Processes (New York) and Earth History (2 vols., New York J. D. Dana, Manual of Geology (New York, 1862); W. B. Scott, Introduction to Geology (New York, 1897); and Joseph Le Conte, Elements of Geology (New York, 1878).

Official Reports.F. V. Hayden, Reports of the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (12 vols., Washington, 1873I883); Clarence King, Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (~ vols. and atlas, Washington, 1870-1880); George M. Wheeler, Geographical and Geological Exploration and Surveys West of the iooth Meridian (7 vols. and 2 atlases, Washington, 1877-1879); and Reports of the U.S. Geological Survey (since 1880): (I) Monographs on special topics and areas, about 50 in number; (2) Professional Papersmonographic treatment of somewhat smaller areas and lesser topics, about 60 in number; (3) Bulletins, between 300 and 400 in number; and (4) Annual Reports (previous to 1903) containing many papers of importance, of the sort now published as Professional Papers. Reports of state geological surveys have been published by most of the states east of the Missouri river, and some of those farther west (California, Washington, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming) and south (Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana). Among the more important periodicals are the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America (Rochester, N.Y., 1889 seq.); the American Journal of Science (New Haven, Conn., 1818 seq.); the American Geologist (Minneapolis, i888 seq.); Journal of Geology (Chicago, 1893 seq.); Economic Geology (Lancaster, Pa., 1905 seq.). Occasional articles of value are to be found in the American Naturalist and Science, and in the Transactions and Proceedings of various state and municipal academies of science, societies, &c. (R. D. S.; T. C. C.)

Climate

The chief features of the climate of the United States may be best apprehended by relating them to the causes by which they are controlled. Two leading features, from which many others follow, are the intermediate value of the mean annual temperatures and the prevalence of westerly winds, with which drift the areas of high and low pressurecyclonic and anticyclonic areascontrolling the short-lived, non-periodic weather changes. The first of these features is determined by the intermediate position of the United States between the equator and the north pole; the second by the equatorial-polar temperature contrast and the eastward rotation of the planet. Next, dependent on the inclination of the earths axis, is the division of the planetary year into the terrestrial seasons, with winter and summer changes of temperature, wind-strength and precipitation: these seasonal changes are not of the restrained measure that is characteristic of the oceanic southern temperate zone, but of the exaggerated measure appropriate to the continental interruptions of ~the northern land-and-water zone, to which the term temperate is so generally inapplicable. The effects of the continent are already visible in the mean annual temperatures, in which the poleward temperature gradient is about twice as strong as it is on the neighboring oceans; this being a natural effect of the immobility of the land surface, in contrast to the circulatory movement of the ocean currents, which thus lessen the temperature differences due to latitude: on the continent such differences are developed in full force. Closely associated with the effect of continental immobility are the effects dependent on the low specific heat and the opacity of the lands, in contrast with the high specific heat and partial transparence of the ocean waters. In virtue of these physical characteristics, the air over the land becomes much warmer in summer and much colder in winter than the air over the oceans in corresponding latitudes; hence the seasonal changes of temperature in the central United States are strong; the high temperatures appropriate to the torrid zone advance northward to middle latitudes in summer, and the low temperatures appropriate to the Arctic regions descend almost to middle latitudes in winter. As a result, the isotherms of July are strongly convex poleward as they cross the United States, the isotherm of 70 Sweeping up to the northern boundary in the north-west, and the heat equator leaping to the overheated deserts of the south-west, where the July mean is over 90. Conversely, the isotherms of January are convex southward, with a monthly mean below 32 in the northern third of the interior, and of zero on the mid-northern boundary. The seasonal bending of the isotherms is, however, unsymmetrical for several reasons. The continent being interrupted on its eastern side by the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, with the Great Lakes between these two large water bodies, the northward bending of the July isotherms is most pronounced in the western part of the United States. Indeed the contrast between the moderate temperatures of the Pacific coast and the overheated areas of the next interior deserts is so great that the isotherms trend almost parallel to the coast, and are even overturned somewhat in southern California, where the most rapid increase of temperatures in July is found not by moving southward over the ocean toward the equator, but north-eastward over the land to the deserts of Nevada and Arizona. So strong is the displacement of the area of highest interior temperatures westward from the middle of the continent that the Gulf of California almost rivals the Red Sea as an ocean-arm under a desert-hot atmosphere. In the same midsummer month all the eastern half of the United States is included between the isotherms of 66 and 82; the contrast between Lake Superior and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, 1200 m. to the south, is not so great as between the coast of southern California and the desert 15o m. inland to the north-east. In January the northern water areas of the continent are frozen and snow-covered; Hudson Bay becomes unduly cold, and the greatest southward bending of the isotherms is somewhat east of the continental axis, with an extension of its effects out upon the Atlantic; but the southward bending isotherms are somewhat looped back about the unfrozen waters of the lower Great Lakes. In the midwinter month, it is the eastern half of the country that has strong temperature contrasts; the temperature gradients are twice as strong between New Orleans and Minneapolis as on the Pacific coast, and the contrast between Jacksonville, Fla., and Eastport, Me., is about the same as between San Diego, Cal., and the Aleutian Islands.

The strong changes of temperature with the seasons are indicated also by the distribution of summer maxima and winter minima; summer temperatures above 112 are known in the south-western deserts, and temperatures of 100 are sometimes carried far northward on the Great Plains by the hot winds nearly to the Canadian boundary; while in winter, temperatures of 40 occur along the mid-northern boundary and freezing winds sometimes sweep down to the border of the Gulf of Mexico. The temperature anomalies are also instructive: they rival those of Asia in value, though not in area, being from 15 to 20 above the mean of their latitude in the northern interior in summer, and as much below in winter. The same is almost true of the mean annual range (mean of July to mean of January), the states of the northern prairies and plains having a mean annual range of 70 and an extreme range of 135. In this connection the effect of the prevailing winds is very marked. The equalizing effects of a conservative ocean are brought upon the Pacific coast, where the climate is truly temperate, the mean annual range being only 10 or 12, thus resembling western Europe; while the exaggerating effects of the continental interior are carried eastward to the Atlantic coast, where the mean annual range is 40 or 50.

The prevailing winds respond to the stronger poleward temperature gradients of winter by rising to a higher velocity and a more frequent and severer cyclonic storminess; and to the weaker gradients of summer by relaxing to a lower velocity with fewer and weaker cyclonic storms; but furthermore the northern zone occupied by the prevailing westerlies expands as the winds strengthen in winter, and shrinks as they weaken in summer; thus the stormy westerlies, which impinge upon the north-western coast and give it plentiful rainfall all through the year, in winter reach southern California and sweep across part of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida; it is for this reason that southern California has a rainy winter season, and that the states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico are visited in winter by occasional intensified cold winds, inappropriate to their latitude. In summer the stormy westerly winds withdraw from these lower latitudes, which are then to be more associated with the trade winds. In California the effect of the strong equatorward turn of the summer winds is to produce a dry season; but in the states along the Gulf of Mexico and especially in Florida the withdrawal of the stormy westerlies in favor of the steadier trade winds (here turned somewhat toward the continental interior, as explained below) results in an increase of precipitation. The general winds also are much affected by the changes of pressure due to the strong continental changes of temperature. The warmed air of summer produces an area of low pressure in the west-central United States, which interrupts the belt of high pressure that planetary conditions alone would form around the earth about latitude 30; hence there is a tendency of the summer winds to blow inward from the northern Pacific over the Cordilleras toward the continental centre, and from the trades of the torrid Atlantic up the Mississippi Valley; conversely in winter time, the cold air over the lands produces a large area of high pressure from which the winds tend to flow outward; thus repelling the westerly winds of the northern Pacific and greatly intensifying the outflow southward to the Gulf of Mexico and eastward to the Atlantic. As a result of these seasonal alternations of temperature and pressure there is something of a monsoon tendency developed in the winds of the Mississippi Valley, southerly infiowing winds prevailing in summer and northerly outfiowing winds in winter; but the general tendency to inflow and outflow is greatly modified by the relief of the lands, to which we next turn.

The climatic effects of relief are seen directly in the ascent of the higher mountain ranges to altitudes where low temperatures prevail, thus preserving snow patches through the summer on the high summits (over 12,000 ft.) in the south, and maintaining snowfields and moderate-sized glaciers on the ranges in the north. With this goes a general increase of precipitation with altitude, so that a good rainfall map would have its darker shades very generally along the mountain ranges. Thus the heaviest measured rainfall east of the Mississippi is on the southern Appalachians; while in the west, where observations are as yet few at high level stations, the occurrence of forests and pastures on the higher slopes of mountains which rise from desert plains clearly testifies to the same rule. The mountains also introduce controls over the local winds; diurnal warming in summer suffices to cause local ascending breezes which frequently become cloudy by the expansion of ascent, even to the point of forming local thunder showers which drift away as they grow and soon dissolve after leaving the parent mountain. Conversely, nocturnal cooling produces well-defined descending breezes which issue from the valley mouths, sometimes attaining an unpleasant strength toward midnight.

The mountains are of larger importance in obstructing and deflecting the course of the general winds. The Pacific ranges, standing transverse to the course of the prevailing westerlies near the Pacific Ocean, are of the greatest importance in this respect; it is largely by reason of the barrier that they form that the tempering effects of the Pacific winds are felt for so short a distance inland in winter, and that the heat centre is displaced in summer so far towards the western coast. The rainfall from the stromy westerly winds is largely deposited on the western slopes of the mountains near the Pacific coast, and arid or desert interior plains are thus found close to the great ocean. The descending winds on the eastern slopes of the ranges are frequently warm and dry, to the point of resembling the Fhn winds of the Alps; such winds are known in the Cordilleran region as Chinook winds. The ranges of the Rocky Mountains in their turn receive some rainfall from the passing winds, but it is only after the westerlies are reinforced by a moist indraft from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlanticthe result of summer or of cyclonic inflowthat rainfall increases to a sufficient measure on the lower lands to support agriculture without irrigation. The region east of the Mississippi is singularly favored in this way; for it receives a good amount of rainfall, well distribu ted through the year, and indeed is in this respect one of the largest regions in the temperate zones that are so well watered. The Great Plains are under correspondingly unfavourable conditions, for their scanty rainfall is of very variable amount. Along the transition belt between plains and prairies the climate is peculiarly trying as to rainfall; one series of five or ten years may have sufficient rainfall to enable the farmers to gather good crops; but the next series following may be so dry that the crops fail year after year.

The cyclonic inflows and anticyclonic outflows, so characteristic of the belt of westerly winds the world over, are very irregular in the Cord illeran region; but farther eastward they are typically developed by reason of the great extent of open country. Although of reduced strength in the summer, they still suffice to dominate weather changes; it is during the approach of a low pressure centre that hot southerly winds prevail; they sometimes reach so high a temperature as to wither and blight the grain crops; and it is almost exclusively in connection with the cloudy areas near and south-east of these cyclonic centres that violent thunderstorms, with their occasional destructive whirling tornadoes, are formed. With the passing of the low pgessure centre, the winds shift to west or northwest, the temperature falls, and all nature is relieved. In wintertime, the cyclonic and anticyclonic areas are of increased frequency and intensity; and it is partly for this reason that many meteorologists have been disposed to regard them as chiefly driven by the irregular flow of the westerly winds, rather than as due to convectional instability, which should have a maximum effect in summer. One of the best indications of actual winter weather, as apart from the arrival of winter by the calendar, is the development of cyclonic disturbances of such strength that the change frcm their warm, sirocco-like southerly inflow hi front of their centre, to the cold wave of their rear produces lion-periodic temperature changes strong enough to overcome the weakened diurnal temperature changes of the cold season, a relation which practically never occurs in summer time. A curious feature of the cyclonic storms is that, whether they cross the interior of the country near the northern or southern boundary or along an intermediate path, they converge towards New England as they pass on toward the Atlantic; and hence that the north-eastern part of the United States is subjected to especially numerous and strong weather changes. (W. M. D.)

Fauna and Flora

Fauna.Differences of temperature have produced in North America seven transcontinental life-zones or areas characterized by relative uniformity of both fauna and flora; they are the Arctic, Hudsonian and Canadian, which are divisions of the Boreal Region; the Transition, Upper Austral and Lower Austral, which are divisions of the Austral Region, and the Tropical. The Arctic, Hudsonian and Canadian enter the United States from the north and the Tropical from the south; but the greater part of the United States is occupied by the Transition, Upper Austral and Lower Austral, and each of these is divided into eastern and western subzones by differences in the amount of moisture. The Arctic or ArcticAlpine zone covers in the United States only the tops of a few mountains which extend above the limit of trees, such as Mt Katahdin in Maine, Mt Washington and neighboring peaks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the loftier peaks of the Rocky, Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains. The larger animals are rare on these mountain-tops and the areas are too small for a distinct fauna. The Hudsonian zone covers the upper slopes of the higher mountains of New England, New York and North Carolina and larger areas on the elevated slopes of the Rocky and Cascade Mountains; and on the western mountains it is the home of the mountain goat, mountain sheep, Alpine flying-squirrel, nutcracker, evening grosbeak and Townsends solitaire. The Canadian zone crosses from Canada into northern and northwestern Maine, northern and central New Hampshire, northern Michigan, and north-eastern Minnesota and North Dakota, covers the Green Mountains, most of the Adirondacks and Catskills, the higher slopes of the mountains in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, the lower slopes of the northern Rocky and Cascade Mountains, the upper slopes of the southern Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains, and a strip along the Pacific coast as far south as Cape Mendocino, interrupted, however, by the Columbia Valley. Among its characteristic mammals and birds are the lynx, marten, porcupine, northern red squirrel, Beldings and Kennicotts ground squirrels, varyin and snowshoe rabbits, northern jumping mouse, white-throate sparrow, Blackburnian warbler, Audubon. warbler, olive-backed thrush, three-toed woodpecker, spruce grouse, and Canada jay; within this zone in the North-eastern states are a few moose and caribou, but farther north these animals are more characteristic of the Hudsonian zone. The Transition zone, in which the extreme southern limit of several boreal species overlaps the extreme northern. limit of numerous austral species, is divided into an eastern humid or Alleghanian area, a western arid area, and a Pacific coast humid area. The Alleghanian area comprises most of the lowlands of New England. New York and Pennsylvania, the north-east corner of Ohio, most of the lower peninsula of Michigan, nearly all of Wisconsin, more than half of Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, north-eastern South Dakota, and the greater part of the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania to Georgia. It has few distinctive species, but within its borders the southern mole and cotton-tail rabbit of the South meet the northern star-nosed and Brewers moles and the varying hare of the North, and the southern bobwhite, Baltimore oriole, bluebird, catbird, chewink, thrasher and wood thrush are neighbors of the bobolink, solitary vireo and the hermit and Wilson s thrushes. The Arid Transition life-zone comprises the western part of the Dakotas, north-eastern Montana, and irregular areas in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas, covering for the most part the eastern base of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains and the higher parts of the Great Basin and the plateaus. Its most characteristic animals and birds are the white-tailed jack-rabbit, pallid vole, sage hen, sharp-tailed grouse and greentailed towhee; the large Columbia ground-squirrel (Spermophflus columbianus) is common in that part of the zone which re west of the Rocky Mountains, but east of the Rockies it is replaced by another species (Cynomys) which closely resembles a small prairie dog. The Pacific Coast Transition life-zone comprises the region between the Cascade and Coast ranges in Washington and Oregon, parts of northern California, and most of the California coast region from Cape Mendocino to Santa Barbara. It is the home of the Columbia black-tail deer, western raccoon, Oregon spotted skunk, Douglas red squirrel, Townsends chipmunk, tailless sewellel (Haplodcn rufus), peculiar species of pocket gophers and voles, Pacific coast forms of the great-horned, spotted, screech and pigmy owls, sooty grouse, Oregon ruffed grouse, Stellers jay, chestnutbacked chickadee and Pacific winter wren. The Upper Austral zone is divided into an eastern humid (or Carolinian) area and a western arid (or Upper Sonoran) area. The Caiolinian area extends from southern Michigan to northern Georgia and from the Atlantic coast to Western Kansas, comprising Delaware, all of Maryland except the mountainous Western portion, all of Ohio except the north-east corner, nearly the whole of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, eastern Nebraska and Kansas, south-eastern South Dakota, western central Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, middle and eastern Kentucky, middle Tennessee and the Tennessee valley in eastern Tennessee, middle Virginia and North Carolina, western \Vest Virginia, north-eastern Alabama. northern Georgia, western South Carolina, the Connecticut Valley in Connecticut, the lower Hudson Valley and the Erie basin in New York, and narrow belts along the southern and Western borders of the lower peninsula of Michigan. It is the northernmost home of the opossum, grey fox, fox squirrel, cardinal bird, Carolina wren, tufted tit, gnat catcher, summer tanager and yellow-breasted chat. The Upper Sonoran life-zone comprises south-eastern Montana, central, eastern and north-eastern Wyoming, a portion of south-western South Dakota, western Nebraska and Kansas, the western extremity of Oklahoma, north-western Texas, eastern Colorado, south-eastern New Mexico, the Snake plains in Idaho, the Columbia plains in Washington, the Malheur and Harney plains in Oregon, the Great Salt Lake and Sevier deserts in Utah, and narrow belts in California, Nevada and Arizona. Among its characteristic mammals and birds are the sage cotton-tail, black-tailed jack-rabbit, Idaho rabbit, Oregon, Utah and Townsends ground squirrels, sage chipmunk, fivetoed kangaroo rats, pocket mice, grasshopper mice, burrowing owl, Brewers sparrow, Nevada sage sparrow, lazuli finch, sage thrasher, Nuttall s poor-will, Bullocks oriole and rough-winged swallow. The Lower Austral zone occupies the greater part of the Southern states, and is divided near the 98th meridian into an eastern humid or Austroriparian area and a western arid or Lower Sonoran area. The Austroriparian zone comprises nearly all the Gulf States as far West as the mouth of the Rio Grande, the greater part of Georgia, eastern South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, and extends up the lowlands of the Mississippi Valley acru_~s western Tennessee and Kentucky into southern Illinois andlndiana and across eastern and southern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma into south-eastern Missouri and Kansas. It is the home of the southern fox-squirrel, Cotton rat, ricefield rat, wood rat, free-tailed bat, mocking bird, painted bunting, prothonotary warbler, red-cockaded woodpecker, chuckwills-widow, and the swallow-tailed and Mississippi kites. A southern portion of this zone, comprising a narrow strip along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida and up the Atlantic coast to South Carolina, is semi-tropical, and is the northernmost habitation of several small mammals, the alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), the ground dove, white-tailed kite, Florida screech owl and Chapman s night-hawk. The Lower Sonoran zone comprises the most arid parts of the United States: south-western Texas, south-western Arizona and a portion of northern Arizona, southern Nevada and a large part of southern California. Some of its characteristic mammals and birds are the long-eared desert fox, four-toed kangaroo rats, Sonoran pocket mice, big-eared and tiny white-haired bats, road runner, cactus wren, canyon wren, desert thrashers, hooded oriole, black-throated desert sparrow, Texas night-hawk and Gambels quail. It is the northernmost home of the armadillo, ocelot, jaguar, red and grey cats, and the spiny pocket mouse, and in southern Texas especially it is visited by several species of tropical birds. There is some resemblance to the Tropical life-zone at the south-eastern extremity of Texas, but this zone in the United States is properly restricted to southern Florida and the lower valley of the Colorado along the border of California and Arizona, and the knowledge of the latter is very imperfect. The area in Florida is too small for characteristic tropical mammals, but it has the true crocodile (Crocodilus americanus) and is the home of a few tropical birds. Most of the larger American mammals are not restricted to any one faunal zone. The bison, although now nearly extinct, formerly roamed over nearly the entire region between the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains. The black bear and beaver were also widely distributed. The Virginia deer still ranges from Maine to the Gulf states and from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. The grizzly bear, cougar, coyote, prairie dog and antelope are still found in several of the Western states, and the grey wolf is common in the West and in northern Minnesota, \Visconsin and Michigan.

Flora.The Alpine flora, which is found in the United States only on the tops of those mountains which rise above the limit of trees, consists principally of a variety of plants which bloom as soon as the snow melts and for a short season make a brilliant display of colors. The flora of the Hudsonian and the Canadian zone consists largely of white and black spruce, tamarack, canoe-birch, balsam-poplar, balsam-fir, aspen and grey pine. In the Alleghanian Transition zone the chestnut, walnut, oaks and hickories of the South are interspersed among the beech, birch, hemlock and sugar maple of the North. In the Western Arid Transition zone the flora consists largely of the true sage brush (A rtemisia trident ata), but some tracts are covereci with forests of yellow or bull pine (Pinus ponderosa). The Pacific coast Transition zone is noted for its forests of giant conifers, principally Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, Pacific cedar and Western hemlock, Here, too, mosses and ferns grow in profusion, and the sadal (Gaultheria shailon), thimble berry (Rubus nootkamus), salmon berry (Rubus spectabilis) and devils club ,(Fatsia horr-ida) are characteristic shrubs. In the Carolinian zone the tulip tree, sycamore, sweet gum, rose magnolia, short-leaf pine and sassafras find their northernmost limit Sage brush is common to both the western arid Transstion zone and the Upper Sonoran zone, but in suitable soils of the latter several greasewoods (Artiplex confertifolia, A. canescens, A. nultalli, Tetradymia canescens, Sarcobatus vermiculatus and Gray-ia spinosa) are characteristic species, and on the mountain slopes are some nut pines (psif on) and junipers. The Austroriparian zone has the long-leaf and loblolly pines, magnolia and live oak on the uplands, and the bald cypress, tupelo and cane in the swamps; and in the semi-tropical Gulf strip are the cabbage palmetto and Cuban pine; here, too, Sea Island cotton and tropical fruits are successfully cultivated. The Lower Sonoran zone is noted for its cactuses, of which there is a great variety, and some of them grow to the height of trees; the mesquite is also very large, and the creosote bush, acacias, yuccas and agaves are common. The Tropical belt of southern Florida has the royal palm. coco-nut palm, banana, Jamaica dogwood, manchineel and mangrove; the Tropical belt in the lower valley of the Colorado has giant cactuses. desert acacias, palo-verdes and the Washington or fan-leaf palm. Almost all of the United States east of the 98th meridian is naturally a forest region, and forests cover the greater part of the Rocky Mountains, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevadas and the Coast Range, but throughout the belt of plains, basins and deserts west of the Rocky Mountains and on the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains there are few trees except along the watercourses, and the prevailing type of vegetation ranges from bunch grass to sage brush and cactuses according to the degree of aridity and the temperature. In the eastern forest region the number of species decreases somewhat from south to north, but the entire region differs from the densely forested region of the Pacific Coast Transition zone in that it is essentially a region of deciduous or hardwood forests, while the latter is essentially one of coniferous trees; it differs from the forested region of the Rocky Mountains in that the latter is not only essentially a region of coniferous trees, but one where the forests do not by any means occupy the whole area, neither do they approach in density or economic importance those of the eastern division of the country. Again, the forests of most of the eastern region embrace a variety of species, which, as a rule, are very much intermingled, and do not, unless quite exceptionally, occupy areas chiefly devoted to one species; while, on the other hand, the forests of the westincluding both Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast divisionsexhibit a small number of species, considering the vast area embraced in the region; and these species, in a number of instances, are extraordinarily limited in their range, although there are cases in which one or two species have almost exclusive possession of extensive areas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.C. H. Merriam, Life Zones and Crop Zones of the United States, Bulletin No. 10 of the United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Biological Survey (Washington, 1898); I. C. Russell, North America (New York, 1904); W. T. Hornaday, American Natural History (New York, 1904); W. Stone and W. E. Cram, American Animals (New York, 1902); E. Coues, Key to North American Birds (Boston, 1896); Florence M. Bailey, Handbook of Birds of the Western United States (Boston, 1902); E. D. Cope, The Crocodilians, Lizards and Snakes of North America, in the Report of the United States National Museum for the year 1898 (Washington, 1900); L. Stejneger, The Poisonous Snakes of North America, ibid., 1893 (Washington, 1895). (N. D. M.)

Population and Social Conditions

Geographical Growth of the Nation.

The achievement of independence found the people of the United States owning the entire country between the Gulf and the Great Lakes, excepting only Florida, as far to the west as the Mississippi; but the actual settlements were, with a few minor exceptions, confined to a strip of territory along the Atlantic shore. The depth of settlement, from the coast inland, varied greatly, ranging from what would be involved in the mere occupation of the shore for fishing purposes to a body of agricultural occupation extending back to the base of the great Atlantic chain, and averaged some 250 m.i Westward, beyonc the general line of continuous settlement, were four extensions of population through as many gaps in the Appalachian barrier, constituting the four main paths along which migration westward first took place: the Mohawk Valley in New York, the upper Potomac, the Appalachian Valley, and around the southern base of the Appalachian system. Four outlying groups beyond the mountains, with perhaps a twentieth part of the total population of the nation, one about Pittsburg, one in West Virginia, another in northern Kentucky, and the last in. Ten.nessee: all determined in situalion by river highwaysbore witness to the qualities of strength and courage of the American pioneer. Finally, there were in 1790 about a score of small trading or military posts, mainly of French origin, scattered over the then almost unbroken wilderness of the upper Mississippi Valley and region of the Great Lakes.

Twelve decennial censuses taken since that time (18oo191o) have revealed the extraordinary spread of population over the present area of the country (see CENSUS: United StoJes). The large percentage of the population, particularly Continental United Populatin enumerated.

Total populatin. T,

Number of foreign ~ immi~rants Population Population ~ entennf in ~ensus within area within added. preceding ears. of 1790. area. Number. .8 ~ decide. Total.

1790 3,929,625 3,929,214 819,41

1800 5,247,355 61,128 5,308,483 35.1 819,41

1810 6,779,308 460,573 7,239,881 36~4 1,698,11

1820 8,293,869 1,344,584 9,638,453 33-I 250,000t I,752,3~

1830 10,240,232 2,625,788 I2,860,69~ 335 143,439 I,752,3~

1840 11,781,231 5,288,222 17,063,353 32.7 599,125 I,752,3~

1850 14,569,584 8,622,292 23,191,876 359 1,713,251 2,939,0~

r86o 17,326,157 14,117,164 31,443,321 356 2,598,214 2,97O,o~

1870 19,687,504 18,870,867 38,558,371 226 2,314,824 2,970,0

1880 23,925,639 26,263,570 50,155,783 30~I 2,812,191 2,970,0

1890 28,188,321 34,791,445 ~2,947,7f4 24.9 5,246,613 2,970,0,

1900 33,533,630 42,749,757 75,994,575* 20-7 3,844,420 2,970,1,

1910 91,972,266* 21O 7,753,8I6~

• Excludes persons of the military and naval service stationed abr f Estimates of total up to 1820.

~ Total, 27,604,509, exclusive of at least some hundreds of thousands Louisiana purchase from France.

II Florida purchase from Spain; population counted first, 1830.

Annexation of Texas (385,926 sq. m.); peace cession from Me sq. rn).

• Gadsden purchase from Mexico.

of the great urban centres, that is established to-day in the river lowlands, reflects the role that water highways have played in the peopling of the country. The dwindlings and growths of Nevada down to the present day, and to not a slight degree the general history of the settlement of the states of the Rocky Mountain region, arc a commentary on the fate of mining industries. The initial settlement of the Pacific coast following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and of the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains after the discovery of gold in 2859, ifiustrates the same factor. The Mormons settled Utah to insure social isolation, for the security of their theological system. A large part of the Great Plains to the east of the Rockies was taken up as farms in the decade 1880 1890; abandoned afterwards, because of its aridity, to stock grazing; and reconverted from ranches into farms when a system of dry farming had proved its tillage practicable. The negro more or less consciously moves, individufily, closer into the areas whose climate and crops most nearly meet his desires and capabilities as a farmer; and his race as i whole unconsciously is adjusting its habitat to the boundar es of the Austroriparian life zone. The countrys centre of population in 110 years moved more than 5oo m westward, almost exactly along the 39th parallel of latitude: 9.5 degrees of longitude, with an extreme variation. of less than 19 minutes of latitude.

Growth of tile Nation in Population.If the I9th century was remarkable with respect to national and urban growth the world over, it was particularly so in the growth of the United States. Malthus expressed the opinion that only in such a land of unlimited means of living could population. freely increase.

The total population increased from 1800 to 1900 about fourteen fold (1331.6%).i The rate of growth indicated in 1900 was still double the average rate of western Europe.2 In the whole world Argentina alone (1869-1895) showed equal (and greater) growth. At the opening of the century not only all the great European powers of to-day but also even Spain and Turkey exceeded the United States in numbers; at its close only Russia. At the census of 1910, while the continental United States population (excluding Alaska) was 91,972,266, the total, including Alaska, Hawaii and Porto Rico, but excluding the Philippine Islands, Guam, Samoa and the Canal Zone, was 93,402,151.

States, exclusive of Alaska, Areas (excluding water), in square miles.

tal area. Settled area.

Total area covered by Density of population.

I ~ire~SUsaea~

Area Area with Estimated 8

acquired in not less than ,area of preceding two persons isolated o decade, per sq. m. settlements Total. s ~ ~, ~

beyond the, a general h,i~ 0 0

frontier. ~ si g. o a .~ ~

6 239,935 13,850 417,170 16.4 9.4 9.6

6 305,708 33,800 434,670 17-4 126 0-2 122

7 878,641f 407,945 25,100 556,010 177 16.3 o8 13-0

.7 54,24O~ 508,717 4,200 688,670 18-9 f99 24 13-9

7 632,717 4,700 877,170 20.3 24-5 4~3 14.5

7 807,292 2,150 1,183,870 2f~I 28.2 7.1 24.4

1 I,i86,674~f 979,249 38,375 1,519,170 23.7 34.9 5.3 15.2

,8 31,017* 1,194,754 107,375 1,951,520 26.3 41.5 5.7 16I

,8 1,272,239 131,910 2,126,290 303 47.2 7.6 13.4

8 1,569,565 260,025 2,727,454 32.0 57.4 Io6 184

8 1,947,280 2,974,159 32.2 67.6 13-6 19.2

8 100 1,925,590 2,974,159 395 80.4 16-7 25.5

2,974,159 309 Dad (5318 lfl 1830; 6100 in 1840; 91,219 in 1900).

of Canadians and Mexicans.

ico (520,068 sq. m.); extinction of British claims to Oregon (280,680

In 1790 there were about 600,000 white families in the United States. Speaking broadly, there were few very rich and few very poor. Food was abundant. Both social traditiolis and the religious beliefs of the people encouraged fecundity. The country enjoyed domestic tranquillity. All this time, too, the land was but partially settled. Mechanical labor was scarce, and even. upon the farm it was difficult to command hired service, almost the only farm laborers down to 185o, in the north, being young men who went out to work for a few years to get a little money to marry upon. A change was probably inevitable and came, apparently, between 1840 and 1850.

The accessions in that decade from Ireland and Germany were enormous, the total immigration rising to 1,713,251 against 599,125 during the decade preceding, and against only 143,439 from 2820 to 1830. These people came in condition to breed with unprecedented rapidity, under the stimulus of an abundance, 2According to Lavasseur and Bodio, 14.5% from 1860 to 1880;

2I~2% from 1880 to I9o0; from 1886-1900, 11.0%.

in regard to food, shelter and clothing, such as the most fortunate of them had never known. Yet in spite of these accessions, the population of the country realized a slightly smaller proportion of gain than when the foreign arrivals were almost insignificant.

For a time the retardation of the normal rate of increase among the native population was concealed from view by the extraordinary immigration. In the decade1850-1860it was seen that almost a seventh of the population of the country consisted of persons born abroad. From 1840 to 1860 there came more than four million. immigrants, of whom probably three and a half million, with probably as many children born in America, were living at the latter date.

The ten years from 1860 to 1870 witnessed the operation of the first great factor which reduced the rate of national increase, namely the Civil War. The superintendent of the Ninth Census, 1870, presented a computation 01 the effects of this causefirst, through direct losses, by wounds or disease, either in actual service of the army or navy, or in a brief term following discharge; secondly, through the retardation of the rate of increase in the colored element, due to the privations, exposures and excesses attendant upon emancipation; thirdly, through the check given to immigration by the existence of war, the fear of conscription, and the apprehension abroad of results prejudicial to the national welfare. The aggregate effect of all these causes was estimated a~ a loss, to the population of 1870 of 1,765 ,o00. Finally, the temporary reduction of the birth-rate, consequent upon the withdrawal of perhaps one-fourth of the national militia (males of 18 to 44 years) during two-fifths of the decade, may be estimated at perhaps 750,000.

The Tenth Census put it beyond doubt that economic and social forces had been at work, reducing the rate of multiplication. Yet no war had intervened; the industries of the land had flourished; the advance in accumulated wealth had been beyond all precedent; and immigration had increased.

It is an interesting question what has been the contribution of the foreign elements of the countrys population in the growth of the ggregate. This question is closely connected with a still more important one: namely, what effect, if any, has foreign immigration had upon the birth-rate of the native stock. In I850 the foreignborn whites (2,244,602 in number) were about two-thirds of the colored element and one-eighth of the native-white element; in 1870 the foreign-born whites (5,567,229) and the native whites of foreign parentage (5,324,786) each exceeded the colored. In 1900 the two foreign elements constituted one-third of the total population. The absolute numbers of the four elements were: native whites of native parents, 40,949,362; natives of foreign parents, 15,646,017; foreign-born whites, 10,213,817; colored, 8,833,994.

Separating from the total population of the country in 1900 the non-Caucasians (9,185,379), all white persons having both parents foreign (20,803,800), and one-half (2,541,365) of the number of persons having only one parent foreign, the remaining 43,555,250 native inhabitants comprised the descendants of the Americans of 1790, plus those of the few inhabitants of annexed territories, plus those in the third and higher generations of the foreigners who entered the country after 1790 (or for practical purposes, after 1800). The second element may be disregarded. For the exact determination of the last element the census affords no precise data, but affords material for various approximations, based either upon the elimination of the probable progeny of immigrants since 1790; on the known increase of the whites of the South, where the foreign element has always been relatively insignificant; on the percentage of natives having native grandfathers in Massachusetts in 1905; or upon the assumed continuance through the 19th century of the rate of native growth (one-third decennially) known to have prevailed down at least to 1820. The last is the roughest approximation and would indicate a native mass of 50,000,000 in 1900, or a foreign contribution of approximately half. The results of computations by the first two methods yield estimates of the contribution of foreign stock to the native element of 1900 varying among themselves by only 1.8%. The average by the three methods gives 8,539,626 as such contributiOn, making 31,884,791 the total number of whites of foreign origin in 1~oo; and this leaves 35,015,624 as the progeny of the original stock of 1790.1 Adding to the true native whites of 1900 (35,015,624) the native negroes (8,813,658), the increase of the native stock, white and black, since 1790 would thus be about 1091%, and of the whites of 1790 (3,172,006) alone about 1104%. It is evident that had the fecundity of the American stock of 1790 been equal only to that of Belgium (the most fertile population of western Europe in the 19th century) then the additions of foreign elementg to the American people would have been ,by I 900 in heavy preponderance over the original, mainly British., elements. A study of the family names appearing on the census rolls of two prosperous and typical American counties, one distinctively urban and the other rural, in 1790 and I900, has confirmed the popular impression that the British element is growing little, and that the fastest reproducers to-day are the foreign elements that have become large in the immigration current in very recent decades. In applying to the total population of 1790 the rate of growth shown since 1790 by the white people of the South, this rate, for the purpose of the above compirtations, is taken in its entirety only up to 1870, and thereafterin view of the notorious lesser birth-rate since that year in the North and Westonly one half of the rate is used. If, however, application be made of the rate in its entirety from 1790 to 1900, the result would be a theoretical pure native stock in 1900 equal to the then actually existing native and foreign stock combined.

In 1900 more than half of every 100 whites in New England and the Middle states (from New York to Maryland) were of foreign parentage (i.e. had one or both parents foreign), and in both sections the proportion is increasing with great rapidity. The Southern states, on the other hand, have shown a diminishing relative foreign element since 1870, and had in 1900 only 79 of foreign parentage in 1000 whites. Relatively to their share of the countrys aggregate population the North Atlantic states, and those upon the Great Lakesthe manufacturing and urbanized states of the Unionhold much the heaviest share of immigrant population.

The shares of different nationalities in the aggregate mass of foreigners have varied greatly. The family names on the re.~isters of the first census show that more than 90% of the white ulation was then of British stock, and more than 80 was Englis. The Germans were already near 6%. The entry of the Irish began on a great scale after 1840, and in 1850 they formed nearly half of all the foreign-born. In that year 85.6% of this total was made, up by natives of Great Britain and Gei~many. The latter took first place in 1880. In 1900 i~hese two countries represented of the total only 52.7%; add the Dutch, the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Swiss to the latter and the share was 65.1%. A great majority of all, of these elements except the British are settled in the states added to the original Unionthe Scandinavians- being the most typically agricultural element; while almost all the other nationalities are in excess, most of them heavily so, in the original states of 1790, where they land, and where they are absorbed into the lower grades of the industrial organization. Since 1880 Italians, Russians, Poles, Austrians, Bohemians and Hungarians have enormously increased in the immigrant population. Germans, Irish, British, Canadians, Scandinavians, Slays and Italians were the leading elements in 1900.

In 1790 the negroes were I9~3% of the countrys inhabitants;, in 1900 only ir6%. While the growth of the countrys aggregate population from 1790 to 1900 was 1833-9%, that of the whites was 2005.9%, and of the negroes only I o667%.

Certain generalizations respecting the South and the North, the East and the. West are essential to an understanding of parts of the history of the past, and of social conditions in the present. For the basis of such comparisons the country is divided by the census into five groups of states:

(I) the North Atlantic division~down to New Jersey and Pennsylvania; (2) the South Atlantic divisionfrom Delaware to Florida (including West Virginia); (3) the North Central divisionincluding the states within a triangle tipped by Ohio, Kansas and North Dakota; (4) the South Central division -covering a triangle tipped by Kentucky, Alabama and Texas; and (5) the Western divisionincluding the Rocky Mountains and Pacific states. The first and third lead to-day in manufacturing interests; the third in agricultural; the fifth in mining.

Groups 1 and 3 (with the western boundary somewhat inde~nite) are colloquially known as the North and 2 and 4 as the South. The two sections started out with population growths in the decade1790-1800very nearly equal (36.5 and 33.7%); but in every succeeding decade before the Civil War the growth of the North was greater, and that of the South less, than its increment in the initial decade. In the two twenty-year periods after 1860 the increases of the North were 61.9 and 48.7%; of the South, 48.4 and 48.5%. In 1790 the two sections were of almost equal population; in 1890, 1900 and 1910 the population of the North was practically double that of the South. In the decade1890-1900the increase of the South exceeded slightly that of the North for the same period owing to the rapid development in recent years of the Southern states west of the Mississippi, which only the Western group ,has exceeded since 1870.1 In general the increase of the two sections every 1000 in the South was as follows from 1790 to 1900

1004; 1025; 1092; 1f8i; 1253; 1455; 1562; 1769; 2057; 1930; 2005

1932 -

since 1880 has been nearly equal. But while this growth was relatively uniform over the South, in the North there was a low (often a decreasing) rate of rural and a high rate of urban growth. Throughout the 19th century the rates of growth of the North Central division and that of the eastern half of the South Central division steadily decreased. It is notable that that of the South Atlantic group has grown faster since 1860 than ever before, despite the Civil War and the conditions of an. old settled region: a fact possibly due to the effects of the emancipation of the slaves.

Comparing now the population of the regions east and west of the Mississippi, we find that the population of the first had grown from 3,929,214 in 1790 to 55,023,513 in r~oo; and that of the second from 97,401 in f8ro to 20,971,062 in 1900. From 1860 to 1890 the one increased its numbers decennially by one half, and the other by under one fifth; but from 1890 to 1910 the difference in growth was slight, owing to a tremendous falling off in the rate of growth of much of the Western and the western states of the North Central divisions. Only an eighth of the countrys total population lived in I900 west of the 96th meridian, which divides the country into two nearly equal parts. Although, as already stated, the population of the original area of 1790 was passed in 1880 by that of the added area, the natives of the former were still in excess in 1900.

Urban and Rural Population.The five cities of the country that had 8000 or more inhabitants in 1790 had multiplied to 548 in 1900. Only one of the original six (Charleston) was in the true South, which was distinctly rural. The three leading colonial cities, Philadelphia, w York and Boston, grew six-fold in the I 8th century, and fiftyfo in the next. The proportion of the population living in cities seems to have been practically constant throughout the 18th century and up to 1820. The great growth of urban centres has been a result of industrial expansion since that time. This growth has been irregular, but was at a maximum about the middle of the century. On an average throughout the 110 years, the population in cities of 8000 considerably more than doubled every twenty years.i The rate of rural growth, on the other hand, fell very slowly down to 1860,2 and since then. (disregarding the figures of the inaccurate census of 1870) has been steady at about half the former rate. In Rhode Island, in 1900, eight out of every ten persons lived in cities of 8000 or more inhabitants; in Massachusetts, seven in ten. In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut the city element also exceeded half of the population. At the other extreme, Mississippi had only 3% of urban citizens. If the limit be drawn at a population of 2500 (a truer division) the urban. element of Rhode Island becomes 950%; of Massachusetts, 91.5; of Mississippi, 77. All the Southern states are still relatively rural, as well to-day as a hundred years ago. Ten states of the Union had a density in 1910 exceeding 100 persons to the square mile: Illinois (100.7), Delaware (103), Ohio (117), Maryland (130.3), Pennsylvania (171.3), New York (191.2), Connecticut (231.3), NewJersey (~3i~~3), Massachusetts (418.8) and Rhode Island (508.5).

There are abundant statistical indications that the line (be the ~fiuence that draws it economic or social) between urban centres of nly 2500 inhabitants and rural districts is much sharper to-day than was that between the country and cities of 8000 inhabitants (the largest had five times that number) in 1790. The lower limit is therefore a truer division line to-day. Classifying, then, as urban centres all of above 2500 inhabitants, three-tenths of the total population lived in the latter centres in 1880 and four-tenths (3o,583,4f 1) in i~oo; their population doubled in these twenty years. It one regards the larger units, they held naturally a little more of the total population of the countryjust a third (33.1%; ten times their proportion of the countrys total in 1790); and they grew a little faster. The same years, however, made apparent a rapid fall, general and marked, yet possibly only temporary, in the rate at which such urban centres, as well as larger ones, had been gaining upon the rural districts; this reaction being most pronounced in the South and least so in the North Atlantic states, whose manufacturing industries are concentrated in dense centres of population.

Interstate migratIon is an interesting element in American national life. A fifth of the total population of 1900 were living in other states than those of birth; and this does not take account of temporary nor of multiple migration. Every state numbers among its residents natives ot nearly every other state. This movement is complicated by that of foreign immigration. In 1900 the percentage of resident natives varied from 92.7% in South Carolina to 15% in Oklahoma; almost all of the Southern states having high percentages.

SexesThe percentages of males and females, of all ages, in the aggregate population of 1900, were 51.0 and 49.0 respectively. The corresponding figures for the main elements of the population were as follows: for native whites, 50.7 and 49~3; foreign whites, 54.0 and 46.0; negroes, 49.6 and 50.4. The absolute excess of males rn the aggregate population has been progressively greater at every successive census since 1820, save that of 1870Which followed the Civil War, and closed a decade of lessened immigration. The relative excess of males in each unit of population has not constantly progressed, but has been continuous. In densely settled regions females generally predominate; and males in thinly settled regions. In every 1000 urban inhabitants there were, in 1900, 23 (in 1890 only 19) more females than in 1000 rural inhabitants. In the rural districts, so far as there is any excess of females, it is almost solely in the Southern cotton belt, where negro women are largely employed as farm hands.

Vital Statistics, 1900.The median age of the aggregate population of 1900that is, the age that divides the population into halveswas 22.85 years. In 1800 it was 15.97 years. A falling birth-rate, a falling death-rate, and the increase in the number of adult immigrants, are presumably the chief causes of this difference. The median age of the foreign-born in 1900 was 38.42 years. The median age of the population of cities of 25,000 or more inhabitants was 355 years greater than that of the inhabitants of smaller urban centres and rural districts, owing probably in the main to the movement of middle-aged native and foreign adults to urban centres, and the higher birth-rate of the rural, districts. The median age of the aggregate population is highest in New England and the Pacific states, lowest in the South, and in the North Central about equal to the countrys average. The average age of the countrys population in 1900 was 262 years. The United States had a larger proportion (59.1%) within the productive age limits of 15 and 60 years than most European countries; this being due to the immigration of foreign adults (corresponding figure 80.3%), the productive group among the native whites (55.8%) being smaller than in every country of Europe. The same is true, however, of the population over 60 years of age.

The death-rate of the United States, though incapable of exact determination, was probably between 16 and 17 per 1000 in 1900; and therefore less than in most foreign countries.

Th~ following statement of the leading causes of death Death-rate. during the eleven years1890-1900in 83 cities of above 25,000 population, is given by Dr J. S. Billings: Average Annual Death- rate per Ioo,000 Popuia- Consum ti Pneumon Typhoid Diphtheria an tion for the ciues of the p on. a. Fever. croup.

Sectioni Indicated.

New England.. 244 220 30 77

Middle states.. 259 268 32 101

Lake states.. 156 159 48 79

Southern states - 277 189 50 54

West North Central 183 142 38 61

Among the statistics of conjugal condition the most striking facts are that among the foreign-born the married are more than twice as numerous as the single, owing to the predominance of adults among the immigrants; and the native whites of foreign parents marry late and in much smaller proportion Ma~~

than do the native whites of native parentagethe age. explanation of which is probably to be found in the reaction of the first American generation caused on. one hand by the high American standard of living, and on the other by the relative economic independence of women. In 1900 1.0% of the males and 10.9% of the females from 15 to 19 years of age were married; from 20 to 24 years, 21.6% and 46.5% respectively. Of females above 15 years of age 31.2% were single, 56~9 married, II~2 widowed, 0.5 divorced; many of the last class undoubtedly reporting themselves as of the others. The corresponding figures for males were:

40.2, 54~5, 4.6 and 0.3%. In 1850 there were 56 persons (excluding the slave population) in an average American family; fifty years later there were only 4.7a decline, which was constant, of 16I %. In 1790, 5 persons was also the normal familyi.e. the greatest proportion (14%) of the total were of this size; but in F mill 1900 the model family was that of 3 persons by a more a es. decisive proportion (18%). The minimum state average of 1790, which was 5~4 in Georgia, was greater than the maximum of 1900. Within the area of 1790 there were twice as many families in 1900 as in 1790 consisting of 2 persons, and barely half as many consisting of 7 and upward; New England having shown the greatest and the South the least decrease. In 1790 about a third and in 1900 more than one half of all families had less than 5 members.

The data gathered by the Federal census have never made possible a satisfactory and trustworthy calculation of the birthrate, and state and local agencies possess no such data Birth-rate for any considerable area. But the evidence is on the whole cumulative and convincing that there was a remarkable falling off in the birth-rate during the 19th century. And it may be noted, because of its bearing upon the theory of General Francis A. Walker, that the Old South of 1790, practically unaided by immigration, maintained a rate of increase at least approximatin that attained by other sections of the country by native an foreign stock combined. Not a state of the Union as it existed in 1850 showed an increase, during the half-century following, in the ratio of white children under 16 to fooo white females over f6 years: the ratio declined for the whole country from 1600 to iioo; and it has fallen for the census area of 1790 from 1900 in that year to 1400 in 1850 and 1000 in 1900. On the other hand, elaborate colonial censuses for New York in 1703 and 1812 show Whites under 16 Years per boo Sections of the of Total Population.

Country.i 1790.1820.1850.1880.1900.

Area of 1790 49 483 414 373 344

New England 470 443 358 309 291

Middle states 494 485 405 358 326

Old South 502 508 464 431 402

Added area ---526463 406 368

ratios of 1900 and 2000, and reinforce the suggestions of various other facts that the social, as well as the economic, conditions in colonial times were practically constant.

The decline in the proportion of children since 1860 has been decidedly less in the South (Southern Atlantic and South Central states as defined below) than in the North and West, but in the most recent decades the last section has apparently fast followed New England in having a progressively lesser proportion of children. In the North there was little difference in 1900 in the ratios shown by city and country districts, but in the South the ratio in the latter was almost twice that reported for the former.

The decades 1840-1850,1880-1890and1860-1870have shown much the ~reatest decreases in the percentage of children; and some have attri~uted this to the alleged heavier immigration of foreigners (largely adults)- in the case of the two former decades, and the effects of the Civil War in the third. So also the three decades immediately succeeding the above showed minimum decreases; and this has been attributed to a supposed greater birth-rate among the immiggants.

These uncertainties raise a greater one of much significance, viz. what has been the cause of the reduction in the national birth-rate indicated by the census figures? The question has been very differently judged. In the opinion of General Francis A. Walker, superintendent of the censuses of 1870 and 1880, the remarkable fact that such reduction coincided with a cause that was regarded as certain to quicken the increase of population, viz, the introduction of a vast body of fresh peasant blood from Europe, afforded proof that in this matter of population morals are far more potent than physical causes. The change, wrote General Walker, which produced this falling off from the traditional rate of increase of about 3% per annum, was that from the simplicity of the early times to comparative luxury; involving a rise in the standard of living, the multiplication of artificial necessities, the extension of a paid domestic service, the introduction of women into factory labor.2 In his opinion the decline in the birth-rate coincidently with the increase of immigration, and chiefly in those regions where immigration was greatest, was no mere coincidence; nor was such immigrant invasion due to a weakening native increase, or economic defence; but the decline of the natives was the effect of the increase of the foreigners, which was a shock to the principle of population among the native element. Immigration therefore, according to this theory, had amounted not to a reinforcement of our population, but to a replacement of native by foreign stock. That if the foreigners had not come, the native clement would long have filled the places the foreigners usurped, I entertain says General Walker not a doubt.

It is evident that the characteristics of the factory age to which reference is made above would have acted upon native British as upon any other stock; and that it has universally so acted there is abundant statistical evidence, in Europe and even in a land of such youth and ample opportunities as Australia. The assumption explicitly made by General Walker that among the immigrants no influence was yet excited in restriction of population, is also not only gratuitous, but inherently weak; the European peasant who landed (where the great majority have stayed) in the eastern industrial states was thrown suddenly under the influence of the forces just referred to; forces possibly of stronger influence upon him than upon native classes, which are in general economically and socially more stable, On the whole, the better opinion is probably that of a later authority on the vital statistics of the country, Dr John Shaw Billings,i that though the characteristics of modern life doubtless influence the birth-rate somewhat, by raising the average age of marriage, lessening unions, and increasing divorce and prostitution, their great influence is through the transmutation into necessities of the luxuries of simpler times; not automatically, but in the direction of an increased resort to means for the prevention of child-bearing.

Education.In the article EDucATIoN (United States), and in the articles on the -several states, details are given generally of the conditions of American education. Here the statistics of literacy need only be considered.

In 1900 illiterates (that is, persons unable to write, the 2 See his Discussions in Economics and Statistics, ii. 422, Immigration and Degradation, See the Forum (June, 1893), XV. 467.

majority of these being also unable to read) constituted nearly one-ninth (10.7%) of the population of at least ten years of age; but the greatest part of this illiteracy is due to the negroes and the foreign immigrants. Since 1880 the proportion of illiteracy has steadily declined for all classes, save the foreignborn between 1880 and 1890, owing to the beginning in these years, on a large scale, of immigration from southern Europe. Illiteracy is less among young persons of all classes than in the older age-groups, in which the foreign-born largely fall. This is due to the extension of primary education during the last half of the I 9th century. The older negroes (who were slaves) naturally, when compared with the younger, afford the most striking illustration of this truth. On the other hand, a notable exception is afforded by the native whites of native parents, particularly in the South, where child illiteracy (and child labor) is highest; the declining proportion of illiterates shown by the age~groups of this class up to 24 years is apparently due to a will to learn late in life.

The classification of the illiterate population (above 10 years of age) by races shows that the Indians (56.2%), negroes (44.5%), Chinese (29.0%), Japanese (18.3%), foreign white (13.0%), native white of native parentage (5.7%), and native whites of foreign parents (I6%), are progressively more literate. The advantage of the last as compared with native whites of native parentage is apparently owing to the lesser concentration of these in cities. The percentages of illiterate children for different classes in 1900 were as follows: negroes, 30 I; foreign whites, 56; native whites of foreign parentage, o~ native whites of native parentage, 4~4. There is a greater difference in the North than in the South between the child illiteracy of the Caucasian and non-Caucasian elements; also a ranking of the different sections of the country according to the child illiteracy of one and the other race shows that the negroes of the South stand relatively as high as do its whites. All differences are lessened if the comparison be limited to children, and still further lessened if also limited to cities. Thus, the illiteracy of non-Caucasians was 44.5%, of their children. 30.1%, and of such in cities of 25,000 inhabitants, 7.7%,

In the total population of 10 years of age and over the female sex is more illiterate than the male, but within the age-group 10 to 24 years the reverse is true. In 1890 females preponderated among illiterates only in the age-group 10 to 19 years. The excess of female illiteracy in the total population also decreased within the same period, from 20.3 to 108 illiterates in a thousand. The tendency is therefore clearly toward an ultimate higher literacy for females; a natural result where the two sexes enjoy equal facilities of schooling, and the females greater leisure. Among the whites attending school there was still in 1900 a slight excess of males; among the negro pupils females were very decidedly in excess. In all races there has been since 1890, throughout the country, a large increase in the proportion of girls among the pupils of each age-group; and this is particularly true of the group of 15 years and upwardthat is of the grammar school and high school age, in which girls were in 1900 decidedly preponderant. A similar tendency is marked iii college education.

Religious Bodies.According to the national census of religious bodies taken in 1906 there were then in the country 186 denominations represented by 212,230 organizations, 92.2% of which represented 164 bodies which in history and general character are identified more or less closely with the Protestant Reformation or its subsequent development. The Roman Catholic Church contributed 5.9% of the organizations. Among other denominations the Jewish congregations and the Latter Day Saints were the largest. The immigrant movement brings with it many new sects, as, for example, the Eastern. Orthodox churches (Russian, Servian, Syrian and Greek), which had practically no existence in 1890, the year of the last preceding census of religious bodies. But the growth of independent churches is most remarkable, having been sixfold since 1890.

The statistics of communicants or members are defective, and because of the different organization in this respect of different bcdies, notably of the Protestants and Roman Catholics, comparisons are more or less misleading. Disregarding, however, such incomparability, but excluding 15% of all Roman Catholics (for children under 9 years of age), the total number of church members was 32,936,445, of whom 61.6% were Protestants, 36.7% Roman Catholics and 1.7% members of other churches. The corresponding figures in 1890 were 680, 30-3 and 1.7%. For the reasons just given these figures do not accurately indicate the religious affiliations of the population of the United States. In this particular they very largely understate the number of Hebrews, whose communicants (0.3%) are heads of families only, and largely of the Protestants; whereas they represent practically the total Roman Catholic population above 9 years of age. In comparing the figures of 1890 with those of 1906 these cautions are not of force, since both census counts were taken by the same methods. The membership of the Protestant bodies increased in the interval 44-8%, while that of the Roman Catholic Church increased 93-5%. The immigration from Catholic countries could easily account for (though this does not prove that in fact it is the only cause of) this great increase of the Roman Catholic body.

Among the Protestants, the Mcthodists with 17.5% of the total membership, the Baptists with 17.2, the Lutherans with 64, the Presbyterians with 5.6 and the Disciples and Christians with 3~5 each of these bodies comprising more than a million members together include one-half of the total church membership of the country, and four-fifths (81.3%) of all Protestant members.

The Baptists and Methodists are much stronger in the South, relatively to other bodies, than elsewhere; the former constituting in the South Atlantic states 43~9 / of all church members, and in the South Central states 395%. Adding in the Methodists these proportions become 76-3 and 65-3%. The Lutherans are relativel~ strongest in the North Central division of the country (13.2%); the Presbyterians in the North Atlantic and Western divisions (6-0%); and the Disciples in the South Central division (6-f %). The Roman Catholics are strongest in the Western division and the North Atlantic division, with 49.2% in the former and 56.6% in the latter of all church members; their share in the North Central division is 36-9%. Thus the numerical superiority of the Baptists and Methodists in the two Southern divisions is complementary to that of the Roman Catholics in the other three divisions of the country. New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the eastern part of the country, Louisiana in the south, and New Mexico, Arizona, California and Montana in the western part are distinctively Roman Catholic states, with not less than 63% of these in the total church body. Racial elements are for the most part the explanation. So also the immigration of French Canadians and of Irish explains the fact that in every state of one-time Puritan New England the Roman Catholics were a majority over Protestants and all other churches. This was true in I89o of 12 states, while in one other the Roman Catholics held a plurality; in 1906 the corresponding figures were 16 and 20. The Protestant bodies are more widely and evenly distributed throughuut the country than are the Roman Catholics.

The total value of church property (almost in its entirety exempt from taxation) reported in 1906 was $1,257,575,867, of which $935,942,578 was reported for Protestant bodies, $292,638,786 for Roman Catholic bodies, and $28,994,502 for all other bodies.

Occupations.29,o73,233 persons 10 years or more of age nearly two-fifths (38-3%) of the countrys total population were engaged in gainful occupations in 1900. Occupations were reported first for free males in 1850, and sin.ce 1860 women workers have been separately reported. Five main occupation groups are covered by the census: (I) agriculture, (2) professional service, (3) domestic and personal service, (4) trade and transportation, (5) manufacture and mechanical pursuits. The percentage of all wage-earners engaged in these groups in 1900 was 357~ 4.3, 19.2, 164, and 24-4 respectively. Outside of these are the groups of mining and fishing.

Although manufactures have increased tremendously. of recent yearstheir products representing in 1905 a gross total of $14,802,147,087 as compared with $6,309,000,000 for those of farms (according to the U.S. Department of Agri cuiture)agriculture is still the predominant industry of the United States, employing nearly half of the workers, and probably giving subsistence to considerably more than half of the people of the country.

Turning to the factor of sex, it may be stated that the t umber of the gainfully employed in 1900 above give1~ included 8 / of all the men and boys, and 18-8% of all the women and gi in the country. The corresponding figures in 1880 were 78.7 and 4.7% The proportion of women workers is greatest in the North Atlantic group of states (22-1%) where they are engaged in manufacturing, and in the South (23.8) where negro women are engaged in agricultural operations. The percentage of such wage-earners is therefore increasing much more rapidly in the former region. But in all other parts of the country the increase is faster than in the South; since aside from agriculture, which has long been in a relatively stable condition, there is not by any means so strong a movement of women into professional services in city districts. The increase is universal. There is not a state that does not show it. The greatest increase for any section between 1880 and 1900 was that of the North Central division from 8-8 to 14-3%. Here too both factorsfarm-life, as in North Dakota, and manufacturing, as in illinoisshowed their plain influence.

Of all agricultural laborers 9.4%Were females in 1900 ~ in 1880); but in the South the proportion was much greaterI 6-5 in the South Atlantic and 14-9 in the South Central division. In professional service 34.2% (in 188o, 29.4) were females, the two northern sections showing the highest proportions. In the occupations of musicians and teachers of music, and of school-teachers and professors (which together account for seven-eighths of professional women) women preponderate. The same sex constituted only 37-5% (34.6 0/c, in 1880) of the wage-earners of the third group; the South also showing here, as is natural in view of its colored class, much the highest and the Wescern division of states much the lowest percentage. Women are in excess in the occupations of boarding and lodging house keepers, housekeepers, launderers, nurses and midwives, and servants and waiters. These account for almost all women in this group; servants and waitresses make up two-thirds of the total. Finally, in the fourth and fifth groups the percentage of women was 10-6 (3-4 in 1880) and 18-5 (16.7 in 1880). In manufactures the South Atlantic states show a higher percentage than the North Central, owing to the element of childlabour already indicated. In the third group women greatly preponderate in the occupation of stenographers and type-writers; and in those of book-keepers and accountants, clerks and copyists, packers and shippers, saleswomen (which is the largest class), and telegraph and telephone operators they have a large representation (13 to 34 ~ A great Variation exists in the proportion of the sexes employed in different manufacturing industries. Of dress-makers, milliners, seamstresses (which together niake up near half of the total in this occupation group) more than 96% are women. Of the makers of paper boxes, of shirts, collars and cuffs, of hosiery and knitting mill operatives, of glove-makers, silk mill operatives and book-binders they are more than half; so also of other textile workers, excluding wool and cotton mill operatives (these last the second largest group of women workers in manufactures), in which occupations males arc in a slight excess. The distribution of women wageearners in 1900 among the great occupation groups was as follows:

in agriculture, 18-4%; professional service, 8f %; domestic and personal service, 39,4%; trade and transportation, 9.4%; manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 24-7%.

The proportion which children fo to 15 years of age engaged in gainful occupations bore to the whole number of such children was in 1880 24-4% for males, and 9.0% for females. Twenty years later the corresponding figures were 26f and I02%. In the North Atlantic and North Central states, notwithstanding their manufacturing industries, the proportions were much lower (17.1 and I 7O in 1900), and they increased very little in the period mentioned. In the Western group the increase was even less, and the total (10.9% in 1900) also. But in the South Atlantic and the South Central stateswhere agrictilture, mining and manufacturing have in recent decades become importantalthough the increase was very slight, the proportions were far above those of the other sections, both in 1880 and in 1900. In the former year the ratios were 40.2 and 41.5, in the latter 41-6 and 427%. In Alabama (70.8% in 1880), North and South Carolina, amid Arkansas the ratio exceeded 5o % in 1900.

National Wealth.Mulhall has estimated the aggregate wealth of the United States in 1790 at $620,000,000, assigning of this value $479,000,000 to lands and $141,000,000 to buildings and improvements. It is probable that this estimate is generous according to the values of that time. But even supposing $1,000,000,000 to be a juster estimate according to present-day values, it is probable that the increase of this since 1790 has been more than a hundredfold and since 1850 (since when such data have been gathered by the census) about fifteenfold. The value of farm property increased from $3,967,343,580 in 1850 to $20,439,901,164 in 1900. The gross value of manufactures rose in the same interval from $1,019,106,616 to $13,010,036,514; of farm products, from $2,212,540,927 in 1880 to $6,309,000,000 in 1900. The census estimate of the true value of property constituting the national wealth was limited in an enumeration of 1850 to taxable realty and privately held personalty; in 1900 it covered also exempt realty, government land, and corporation and ptiblic personalty. The estimate of the national wealth of 1850 was $7,I35,78o,228jj~ 1904 (made by the census office), $107,104,192,410. It may be added that the net ordinary revenue of the government was in 1850 $43,592,889, and in 1909 $662,324,445; that the value of imports rose from $7.48 ~er capita in 1850 to $14.47 in 1909; and of exports from $6.23 to $18.50. The public debt on the 1st of November 1909, less certificates and notes offset by cash in the Treasury, was $1,295,147,432o4.

(F.S.P.)

Industries and Commerce

Manufactures

In the colonial period there were beginnings in some lines of manufacturing, but the policy of the British government was generally hostile and the increase was insignificant. In the first decades after the establishment of independence the resources and energies of the nation were absorbed in the task of occupying the vacant spaces of a continent, and sub-, duing it to agriculture; and so long as land was so abundant that the spreading population easily sustained itself upon the fruits of the soil, and satisfied the tastes of a simple society with the products of neighborhood handicrafts, there was no incentive to any real development of a factory economy. This has been, for the most part, a development since the Civil War.

No attempt was made in the census enumerations of 1790 and 1800 to obtain statistics of manufactures. In 1810 Congress provided for such a report, but the results were so imperfect that there was never published any summary for the country, nor for any state. Nor were the data secured in 1820 and 1840 of much value. Since 1850, however, provision has been made on an ample scale for their collection, although the constant modifications of the schedules under which the statistics were arranged makes very difficult comparisons of the latest with the earlier censuses.

From 1850 to 1900 fairly full industrial statistics were gathered as a part of each decennial census. In 1905 was taken the first of a new series of special decennial censuses of manufactures, in which only true factoriesthat is, establishments producing standardized products intended for the general marketwere included, and mere neighborhood (local) establishments of the hand trades were excluded. Without corrections, therefore, the figures of earlier censuses are not comparable with those of the census of 1905. Thus of 512,254 establishments included in the reports of 1900, six-tenths, employing II ~2% of the total number of wage-earners and producing 123% of the total value of all manufactures, must be omitted as neighborhood establishments in order to make the following comparison of the results of the two enumerations of 1900 and 1905. The magnitude in 1905 of each of the leading items, and its increase since 1900, then appear as follows: number of factories, 216,262, increase 4.2%; capital invested, $12,686,265,673, increase 41.3% salaries, $574,761,231, increase 50.9%; total wages, $2,009,735,799, increase 29.9%; miscellaneous expenses, $1,455,019,473, increase 60-7%; cost of materials, $8,503,949,756, increase 29.3%; value of products, including custom work and repairing (in such factories), $14,802,147,087, being an increase of 29.7%. Of the last item $3,269,757,067 represented the value of the products of rural factories (that is, those in cities of under 8000 inhabitants). The increase of the different items during the five years was greater in every case in the rural than in the urban factories. There was a very slight decline in the number of child laborers both in city and country, their total number in 1905 being 159,899 and in 1900 161,276. The total wages paid to children under i6 years, however, which was in 1905 $27,988,207, increased both in the city and, especially, in the country, and was 13.9% greater in 1905 than five years earlier. In the same period there was an increase of 16.0% in the number and of 27.5% in the wages of women workers of 16 years (and upwards) of age.

Deducting from the total value of manufactured products in 1905 the cost of partially manufactured materials, including mill supplies; a net or true value of $9,821,205,387 remains. Partially manufactured articles imported for use in manufactures are not included. Deducting from this the cost of raw materials and adding the cost of mill supplies, the result$6,743,399,7f8

is the value added to materials by manufacturing processes.

The extent to which manufactures are controlled by large factories is shown by the fact that although in 1905 only II~2% of the total number reported products valued at $100,000 or over, these establishments controlled 81.5% of the capital, employed 7 ~6% of the wage earners, and produced 793% of the value of the products, of all establishments reported. 523% of the total number, employing 66.3% of all wage-earners, and producing 69.7% of the total product-value, were in urban centres.

Only six establishments in a thousand employed as many as 500 workers, and only two in a thousand employed as many as 1000 workers. Cotton mills are most numerous in the last class of establishments. The manufacture of lumber and timber gave employment to the largest total number of workers; and this industry, together with those of foundry and machine shops (including locomotives, stoves and furnaces), cotton goods (including small wares), railway car and repair shops, and iron and steel, were (in order) the five greatest employers of labor.

Measured by the gross value of products, wholesale slaughtering and meat packing was the most important industry in 1903. The products were valued at $801,757,137. In each of four other industries the products exceeded in value five hundred millions of dollars, namely, those of foundry and machine shops, flour and grist mills, iron and steel, and lumber and timber. In one other, cotton goods, the value was little less. These six industries contributed 27.2% of the value of all manufactured products. Both in 1905 and in 1900 the group of industries classed as of food and kindred products ranked first in the cost of materials used and the value of products; the group of iron and steel ranking first in capital and in wages paid; and textiles in the number of wage-earners employed.

The c-1n~e reltion of maniifnctiires i-n sarri,lfiire; rsflerterl in the fact that, of the raw materials used, 79.4% came from the farm. The remainder came from mines and quarries, 15.0%; forests, 5.2%; the sea, 0.4%.

Four statesNew York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Massachusetts each manufactured in 1900 products valued at over $1,000,000,000; New York exceeding and Pennsylvania attaining almost twice that sum. The manufacture of some products is highly localized. Thus, of silk goods, worsteds, the products of blast furnaces, of rolling mills and steel works, glass, boots and shoes, hosiery and knit goods, slaughtering and meat products, agricultural implements, woollens, leather goods, cotton goods and paper and wood pulp, four leading states produced in each case from 88~5%, in the case of silk goods, to 58.6% in the case of pulp.

M. G. Mulhall (Industry and Weatlh of Nations, 1896) assigned fourth place to the United States in 1880 and first place in 1894 in the value of manufactured products,, as compared with other countries. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (Les tats- Unis au XX Sicle, Paris, 1904) would assign primacy to the United States as far back as 1885. Since the English board of trade estimated the exports of British manufactured goods at from 17 to 20% of the industrial output of the United Kingdom in 1902, this would indicate a manufactured product hardly two-thirds as great as that of the true factory establishments of the United States in 1900. But exact data for comparison do not exist for other countries than the United States. In the production of pig iron, the share of the United States seems to have been in 1850 about one-eighth and that of Great Britain onehalf of the worlds product; while in 1903 the respective shares were 38.8 and 19.3%; and Germanys also slightly exceeded the British output. In the manufacture of textiles the United States holds the second place, after Great Britain; decidedly second in cottons, a close competitor with Great Britain and France in woollens, and with France in silks. In the manufacture of food products the United States holds a lead that is the natural result of immense advantages in the production of raw materials. No other country produces half so much of leather. In the dependent industry of boots and shoes her position is commanding. These facts give an idea of the rank of the country among the manufacturing countries of the world. The basis of this position is generally considered to be, partly, immense natural resources available as materials, and, partly, an immense home market.

For Agriculture, see the article AGRICULTURE; for Fisheries, see FIsHERIEs; and for Forestry, see FORESTS AND FORESTRY.

Minerals.In 1619 the erection of works for smelting the ores of iron was begun at Falling Creek, near Jamestown, Va., and iron appears to have been made in 1620; but the enterprise was stopped by a general massacre of the settlers in that region. In 1643 the business of smelting and manufacturing iron was begun at Lynn, Mass., where it was successfully carried on, at least up to 1671, furnishing most of the iron used in the colony. From the middle of the 17th century the smelting of this metal began to be of importance in Massachusetts Bay and vicinity, and by the close of the century there had been a large number of ironworks established in that colony, which, for a century after its settlement, was the chief seat of the iron manufacture in America, bog ores, taken from the bottom of the ponds, being chiefly used. Early in the I 8th century the industry began to extend over New England and into New Jersey, the German bloomery forge being employed for reducing the ore directly to bar iron, and by the middle of that century it had taken a pretty firm hold in the Atlantic colonies. About 1789 there were fourteen furnaces and thirty-four forges in operation in Pennsylvania. Before the separation of the colonies from the mother country, the mahufacture of iron had been extended through all of them, with the possible exception of Georgia. As early as 1718 iron (both pig and bar) began to be sent to Great Britain, the only country to which the export was permitted, the annual amount between 1730 and 1775 varying ordinarily between 2000 and 3000 tons, but in one year (1771) rising to between 7000 and 8000 tons.

The first metal other than iron mined by whites within the territory of the United States was lead, the discovery of which on the American continent was recorded in 1621. The first English settlers on the Atlantic bartered lead of domestic origin with the Indians in the 17th century, and so did the French in the upper Mississippi Valley. The ore of the metal occurring in the Mississippi basingalena----is scattered widely and in large quantities, and being easily smelted by the roughest possible methods was much used at an early date. In the second half of the 18th century, during the period of French and Spanish domination in the valley, lead was a common medium of exchange, but no real mining development took place. Copper was the next metal to be mined, so far as is known. The first company began work about 1709, at Simsbury, Conn. The ore obtained there and in New Jersey seems to have been mostly shipped to England. A few years later attempts were made to work mines of lead and cobalt in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The first mining excitement of the United States dates back to the discovery of gold by the whites in the Southern states, along the eastern border of the Appalachian range, in Virginia, and in North and South Carolina. The existence ~of gold in that region had been long known to the aboriginal inhabitants, but no attention was paid to this by the whites, until about the beginning of the soth renf,irv, when n,ipvpts were found, one of which weighed 28 lb.

From 1824 the search for gold continued, and by 1829 the business had become important, and was attended with no little excitement. In 1833 and 1834 the amount annually obtained had risen to fully a million of dollars. A rapid development of the lead mines of the West, both in Missouri and on the Upper Mississippi in the region where Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois adjoin one another, took place during the first quarter of the I9th century, and as early as 1826 or 1827 the amount of this metal obtained had risen to nearly 10,000 tons a year. By this time the making of iron had also become important, the production for 1828 being estimated at 130,000 tons.

In 1820 the first cargo of anthracite coal was shipped to Philadelphia. From 1830 the increase in the production was very rapid, and in 1841 the annual shipments from the Pennsylvania anthracite region had nearly reached 1,000,000 tons, the output of iron at that time being estimated at about 300,000 tons. The development of the coal and iron interests, and the increasing importance of the gold product of the Appalachian auriferous belt, and also of the lead product of the Mississippi Valley, led to a more general and decided interest in geology and mining; and about 1830 geological surveys of several of the Atlantic states were begun, and more systematic explorations for the ores of the metals, as well as for coal, were carried on over all parts of the country then open to settlement. An important step was taken in 1844, when a cession of the region on the south shore of Lake Superior was obtained from the Chippewa Indians. Here explorations for copper immediately began, and for the first time in the United States the business of mining for the metals began to be developed on an extensive scale, with suitable appliances, and with financial success. An event of still greater importance took place almost immediately after the value of the copper region in question had been fully ascertained. This was the demonstration of the fact that gold existed in large quantities along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada of California. In five years from the discovery of gold at Coloma on the American river, the yield from the auriferous belt of the Sierra Nevada had risen to an amount estimated at between sixty-five and seventy millions of dollars a year, or five times as much as the total production of this metal throughout the world at the beginning of the century.

The following details show the development of the mineral resources of the country at the middle of the 19th century. In 1850

the shipments of anthracite amounted to nearly 3,500,000 ~ L1~ tons; those of Cumberland or semi-bituminous coal were Industries about 200,000 tons. The yearly production of pig iron a ou had risen to between 500,000 and 600,ooo tons. The annual yield of gold in the Appalachian belt had fallen off to about $500,000 in value, that of California had risen to $36,000,000, and was rapidly approaching the epoch of its culmination (1851I 853). No silver was obtained in the country, except what was separated from the native gold, that mined in California containing usually from 8 to 10% of the less valuable metal. The ore of mercury had been discovered in California before the epoch of the gold excitement, and was being extensively worked, the yield in the year1850-1851being nearly 2,000,000 lb. At this time the copper mines of Lake Superior were being successfully developed, and nearly 6oo tons of metallic copper were produced in 1850. At many points in the Appalachian belt attempts had been made to work mines of copper and lead, but with no considerable success, About the middle of the century extensive works were erected at Newark, New Jersey, fo1~ the manufacture of the oxide of zinc for paint; about 1100 tons were produced in 1852. The extent and value of the deposits of zinc ore in the Saucon Valley, Pennsylvania, had also just become known in 1850. The lead production of the Missouri mines had for some years been nearly stationary, or had declined slightly from its former importance; while that of the upper Mississippi region, which in the years just previous to 1850 had risen to from 20,000 to 25,000 tons a year, was declining, having in 1850 sunk to less than 18,000 tons.

At the end of the century, in only fifty years, the United States had secured an easy first place among the mineral-producing countries of the world. It held primacy, with a large margin, in the yield of coal, iron, lead and copper, the minerals most important in manufactures; in gold its output ini~usifrIcs was second only to that ,of South Africa (though practically equalled by that of Australia); and in silver to that of Mexico. Although the data are in general incomplete upon which might be based a comparison of the relative standing of different countries in the production of minerals of lesser importance than those just mentioned, it was estimated by M. G. Mulhall (Industries and Wealth of Nations, edition of 1896, pp. 3435) that Great Britain then produced approximately one-third, the United States one-third, and all other countries collectively one-third of the minerals of the world in weight.

The leading products, as reported by the Geological Survey for 1907, were as follows: coal, $614,798,898 (85,604,312 tons of anthracite coal, 394.759,112 of bituminous); petroleum, $120,106,749; natural gas, ~54,222,399; iron ore, $131,996,147 (pig iron, $529,958,000); copper, refined, $173,799,300; gold, coinage value, $90,435,700; buii~..ing-stone, $71,105,805; silver, commercial value, ~272OO,700: lean. reftn~I ~2~1o7.co6~ and zinc. r~6ned. ~,6 AOl OlO

The North Atlantic and the North Central census groups of states (that is, the territory east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio rivers, and north of Maryland) produced two-thirds of the total output. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia, California, Colorado, Montana, Michigan, New York and Missouri were the ten states of greatest absolute production in 1907. The rank relative to area or population is of course different. Those which, according to the bureau of the census, produced $1000 or over per sq. m. in 1902 were Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia; $500 to $1000, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Vermont and Massachusetts. Seventeen states produced from $ioo to $500 per sq. m.

The total mineral output for the decade1899-1908according to the United States Geological Survey was as follows:

Value of Value of Year. Total Value Non-metallic Metallic of Products. Products. Products.

1908 1,595,670,186 1,045,497,070 549,923,116

1907 2,071,607,964 1,167,705,720 9c~,8o2,244

1906 1,902,517,565 1,016,206,709 886,110,856

1905 1,623,928,720 921,075,619 702,453,101

1904 1,361,067,554 859,383,604 501,099,950

1903 1,491,928,980 793,962,609 624,3 i8,008

1902 1,323,102,717 617,251,154 642,258,584

1901 1,141,972 309 567,318,592 518,266,259

1900 1,107,020,352 512,195,262 550,425,286

1899 1,014,355,705 446,090,251 525,472,981

The vastly greater part of mineral products are used in manufactures within the United States, and only an insignificant part (for example, 247% in 1902) is exported in the crude form.

Coal exists in the United States in large quantity in each of its important varieties: anthracite, or hard coal; bituminous, or soft coal; and lignite; and in various intermediate and c al special grades. Geologically the anthracite and bituminous coals mainly belong to the same formation, the Carboniferous, and this is especially true of the better qualities; though it is stated by the United States Geological Survey that the geQlogic age of the coal beds ranges from Carboniferous in the Appalachian and Mississippi Valley provinces to Miocene (Tertiary) on the Pacific coast, and that the quality of the coal varies only to a very uncertain degree with the geologic age. The following estimates rest upon the same authority: (I) total area underlaid by coal measures, 496,776 sq. m., of which 250,531 are credited to anthracite and bituminous, 97,636 to sub-bituminous and 148,609 to lignite; (2) total original coal supply of the country, 3,076,204,000,000 short tons, including 21,000,000,000 tons of anthracite in Pennsylvania, and small amounts elsewhere (semi-anthracite and semi-bituminous), 650,157,000,000 tons of sub-bituminous and 743,590,000,000 tons of lignite; (3) easily accessible coal still available, 1,992,979,000,000 tons; (4) available coal accessible with difficulty, f,153,225,000,000 tons.

The total production of coal from 1814 (the year in which anthracite was first mined in Pennsylvania) to 1908 amounted to 7,280,940,265 tons, which represented an exhaustionadding 50% for waste in mining and preparationof 11,870,049,900, or four-tenths of I % of the supposed original supply.

In 1820 the total production was only 3450 tons In 1850 it was already more than 7,000,000. And since then, while the population increased 230% from 1850 to 1900, the production of coal increased 4,084%. At the same time that the per capita consumption thus rose in 1907 to 5~6 tons, the waste was estimated by the National Conservation Commission at 3~0 tons per capita. This waste, however, is decreasing, the coal abandoned in the mine having averaged, in the beginning of mining, two or three times the amount taken out; and the chief part of the remaining waste is in imperfect combustion in furnaces and fire-boxes. Thus, notwithstanding the fact that the supposed supply still available at the close of 1908 was 7369 times the production of that year, and 4913 times the exhaustion such production represented, so extraordinary has been the increased consumption of the country that, in the opinion of the Geological Survey (1907), if the rate of increase that has held for the last fifty years is maintained, the supply of easily available coal will be exhausted before the middle of the next century (A.o. 2050).

In 1870 both Great Britain and Germany exceeded the United States in the production of coal. Germany was passed in 1871

(definitively in 1877); Great Britain in 1899. Since 1901 the United States has produced more than one-third of the worlds output.

Coal was produced in 1908 in 30 states out of the 46 of the Union; and occurs also in enormous quantities in Alaska; 690,438 men were employed in this year in the coal mines. Pennsylvania (117,179,527 tons of bituminous and 83,268,754 of anthracite), Illinois (47,659,690), West Virginia (41,897,843), Ohio (26,270,639), Indiana (12,314,890) and Alabama (11,604,593) were the states of greatest production. The production of each was greater still in 1907.

The total oiitnijt amounted to zLIc.8a2.6o2 short tons, valued at $532 3 i4,1 17 in 1908 and to 480,363,424t0ns, valued at $614,798,898 in 1909 Pennsylvania produced three-fourths of the total output of the country in 1860, and since 1900 slightly less than one-half. Up to 1870 there was more anthracite mined in Pennsylvania than bituminous in the whole country, but since that year the production of the latter has become vastly the greater, the totals in 1907, in which year each stood at its maximum, being 83,268,754 and 332,573,944 tons respectively.

Inasmuch as the present production is not considered locally and with more or less justiceas at all indicative of the wealth in coal of the respective states, it may be said that according to estimates of the Geological Survey the following states are credited with the deposits indicated of true bituminous coal, including local admixtures of anthracite, the figures being millions of short tons:

Colorado, 296,272; Illinois, 240,000; \Vest Virginia, 231,000; Utah, 196,408; Pennsylvania, 112,574; Kentucky, 104,028; OhiO, 86,028; Alabama, 68,903; Indiana, 44,169; Missouri, 40,ooo; New Mexico, 30,805, Tennessee, 25,665; Virginia. 21,600; Michigan, 12,000; ~Iaryland, 8,044; Texas, 8,000; Kansas, 7,022; and Montana, 5,000; with lesser deposits in other states. At the same time there are estimated deposits of sub-bituminous coal, isolated or mixed with bituminous, amounting to 75,498 millions of tons in Colorado (which is probably the richest coal area of the country); and in other states as follows: Wyoming, 423,952 millions of tons; New Mexico, I3,975; Washington, 20,000; Montana, 18,560; California and Oregon, 1000 each; and lesser amounts elsewhere. Finally, of true lignite beds, or of lignite mix d with sub-bituminous qualities, the states of North Dakota, Montana, Texas and South Dakota are credited with deposits of 500,000; 279,500; 23,000; and 10,000 millions of tons respectively. But it is to be remembered that the amount and the fuel value of both the lignite and, to a lesser degree, the sub-bituminjus coals, is uncertain to a high degree.

Petroleum, according to the report of the National Conservation Commission in 1908, was then the sixth largest contributor to the Petrol nations mineral wealth, furnishing about one-sixteenth eum. of the total. Oil was produced in 1908 in sixteen states., This productive area is divided by the United States Geological Survey into six fields (in addition to some scattering states) with reference to the quality of oil that they produce, such quality determining their uses. The Appalachian field (Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee) produces oil rich in paraffin, practically free from sulphur and asphalt, and yielding the largest percentage of gasoline and illuminating oils. This is the highest grade crude oil produced in the world. The California field produces oil characterized by much asphalt and little or no paraffin, and low in volatile constituents. The Lima (Ohio)-Indiana, the Illinois, the Mid-Continent (Kansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas) and the Gulf (Texas and Louisiana) fields produce oils containing more or less of sulphur and asphalt between the extremes of the two other fields just mentioned. The geological conditions of the different fields, and the details of the composition of the oils yielded, are exceedingly varied, and their study has been little more than begun In 1859 when the total output of the country is supposed to have been only 2000 barrels of oil, production was confined to Pennsylvania and New York. Ohio, West Virginia and California appeared as producers in 1876, Kentucky and Tennessee in 1883, Colorado in 1887. Indiana in 1889, along with Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Missouri, Oklahoma in 1891, Wyoming in 1894, and, lastly, Louisiana in 1902. From 1859 to 1876 the Appalachian field yielded IoO% of the total output of the country; in 1908 its share had fallen to 13.9%. Ia the same period of 50 years the yearly output rose from 2000 to 179,572,479 barrels (134,717,580 in 1905) and to a grand total of 1,986,180,942 barrels, worth $1,784,583,943, or more than half the value of all the gold, and more than the commercial value of all the silver produced in the country since 1792. The production in 1908 exceeded in value the output of both metals. Deducing from the figures of production since 1859 an equation of increase, one finds that in each nine years as much oil has been produced as in all preceding years together, and in recent years the factor of increase has been higher. So rapid has been the extension of the yielding areas, so diverse the fate of many fields, so shifting their relative rank in output, that the otitlook from year to year as regards all these elements is too uncertain to admit of definite statements respecting the relative importance of the five fields already mentioned The total output of these, it may be stated, from 1901 to 1908uniting the yield of the Illinois to the Lima-Indiana field (since their statistics were long so united, until their industrial differences became apparent), and adding a sixth division for the production of scattered areas of productionwas as follows:

Appalachian, 235,999,859; Lima-Indiana-Illinois, 219,609,347; Mid- Continent, 136,148,892; Gulf, 159,520,306; California, 27,931,687; and others, 3,367,666; the leading producers in1907-1908being the Mid-Continent and the California areas.

The worlds output of oil was trebled between 1885 and 1895, and quadrupled between 1885 and 1900. In this increase the United States had the largest share. So recently as 1902 the output of the United States was little greater than that of Kussia (the two yielding 91.4% of the worlds product), but this advantage has since then been greatly increased, so that the one has produced 63.1 and the other 21.8% of the total output of the world. In 1908 the Geological Survey issued a preliminary map of the then known areas productive of oil and natural gas in the United States, estimating the extent of the former at 8850 and of the latter at 9365 sq. m. The supply of oil in this area was estimated at from 15,000,000,000 to 20,000,000,000 barrels; and the National Conservation Commission of 1908 expressed the opinion that in view of the rapid increase of production and the enormous loss through misuse the supply cannot be expected to last beyond the middle of this century.

Natural gas, as a source of light and for metallurgical purposes, became important in the mid-eighties. In recent years its use for industrial purposes has lessened, and for domestic pdr-Naturaj Gas poses increased. The existence of outflows or springs of gas in the region west of the Alleghanies had long been known, and much gas was used for illuminating purposes in Fredonia, New York, as early as 1821. Such gas is a more or less general concomitant of oil all through the petroleum-bearing areas of the country. The total output of the country rose from a value of $215,000 ifl 1882 to one of $54,640,374 ifl 1908, with several fluctuations up and down in that interval. Pennsylvania, with a product valued at $155,620,395 from 1899 to 1908, West Virginia with $84,955,496, Ohio with $48,172,450 and Indiana with $46,141,553 were the greatest producers of the Union.

The National Conservation Commission in 1908 estimated the area of the known gas fields of the country at 9000 sq. hi.; the portion of their yield in 1907 that was utilized at 400,000,000,000 cub. ft.; and the Waste at an equal amountmore than 1,000,000,000 of cub. ft. daily, or enough to supply all the cities in the United States of above 100,000 population.

Of other non-metallic mineral substances, apart from coal, petroleum and natural gas, little need be said in detail. Stone is of the greatest actual importance, the value of the quarry output, including some prepared or manufactured product, such as dressed and crushed stone, averaging $65,152,312 annually in 1904-1908.

Limestone is by far the largest element, and with granite makes up two-thirds of the total value. Vermont, Pennsylvania and New York are the leading producers. In this, as in other cases, actual product may indicate little regarding potential resources, and still less regarding the distribution of these throughout the Union. Glass and other sands and gravel ($13,270,032), lime ($11,091,186), phosphate rock ($10,653,558), salt ($7,553,632), natural mineral waters ($7,287,269), sulphur ($6,668,215, almost wholly from Louisiana), slate ($6,316,8 I7), gypsum ($4,138,560), clay ($2,599,986), asphalt ($1,888,881), talc and soapstone ($1,401,222), borax ($975,000, all from California), and pyrite ($857,113) were the next most important products in 1908. It may be noted that the output in almost every item of mineral production was considerably greater in 1907 than in 1908, and the isolated figures of the latter year are of little interest apart from showing in a general way the relative commercial importance of the products named. In the yield of gypsum, phosphate rock and salt the United States leads the world. In sulphur it is a close second to Sicily. Phosphate rock is heavily exported, and in the opinion of the National Conservation Commission of 1908 the supply cannot long satisfy the increasing demand for export, which constitutes a waste of a precious natural resource. Other minerals whose production may be found stated in detail in the annual volume on Mineral Resources of the United States Geological Survey are: natural pigments, felspar, white mica, graphite, fluorspar, arsenic, quartz, barytes, bromine. Some dozens of varieties of precious stones occur widely. Of building-stone, clay, cement, lime, sand and salt, the countrys supply was estimated by the National Conservation Commission of 1908 to be ample.

In 1907 iron ore was mined for blast-furnace use in twenty-nine states only, but the ore occurs in almost every state of the Union. As nearly as can be estimated from imperfect statistics, frirn the total ore production of the country rose steadily from 2,873,400 long tons in, 1860 to 51,720,619 tons in 1907. The United States became practically independent of foreign ore imports during the decade 1870 to 1879. The iron-producing area of the country may be divided, with regard to natural geographic, historic and trade considerations, into four districts: (1) the Lake Superior district, embracing the states of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin; (2) the southern district, embracing the triangle tipped by Texas, Maryland and Georgia; (3) the northern district, embracing the triangle tipped by Ohio, New Jersey and Massachusetts, plus the states of Iowa and Missouri; (4) the western district, which includes the states of the Rocky Mountain region and Pacific coast. Of these districts the Lake Superior regionwhich embraces the Marquette range (opened in 1854), the Menominee (1872), the Gogebic (1884), the Vermilion (1884) and the Mesabi (1892)first attracted exploration about 1844, when the copper deposits of the same region were opened, and produced from 1854 to 1908 a total of 1/210,239,551 long tons, of which 341,036,883 were mined in the period 1889-1908. From the Mesabi range alone, opened in 1892, no less than 168,143,661 long toas were taken up to 1908. The share of the whole district for some years past has been practically four-fifths of the total output of the country; and together with the yield of the southern district, more than 90%. Minnesota alone produces more than half of the same total, having multiplied her product since 1889 by more than 33 times. Michigan held first place in output until 1901. Alabama is the third great producer of the Union, and with the other two made up in 1907 more than four-fifths of the countrys total. In 1907 the product of Minnesota (28,969,658 long tons) was greater than that of Germany (with Luxemburg), and nearly twice the production of Great Britain.

Of the two classes of iron minerals used as ores of that metal, namely, oxides and carbonates, the latter furnish to-day an insignificant proportion of the countrys product, although such ores were the basis of a considerable part of the early iron industry, and even so late as 1889 represented one-thirteenth of the total. Of the oxides, various forms of the brown ores in locations near to the Atlantic coast were the chief basis of the early iron industries. Magnetites were also early employed, at first in Catalan forges, in which by means of a direct process the metal was secured from the ores and forged into blooms without being cast; later they were smelted in blast furnaces. But in the recent and great development of the iron industry the red haematite ores have been overwhelmingly predominant. From 1889 to 1907 the average yearly percentages of the red haematite, brown ores, rnagnetite and carbonate in the total ore production were respectively 824, I0I, 7.1 and 0.4. In the census of 1870 the share of the three varieties appeared almost equal; in 1899 that of the red ores had risen to near two-thirds of the total. The red and brown ores are widely distributed, every state in the Union in 1907, save Ohio and North Carolina, producing one or both. Magnetite production was confined to mountain regions in the east and west, and only in Ohio were carbonates mined.

An investigation was made in 1908 for the National Conservation Commission of the ore reserves of the country. This report was made by Dr. C. W. Hayes of the Geological Survey. With the reservations that only in the case of certain red haematite bedded deposits can any estimate be made of relative accuracy, say within 10%; that the concentration deposits of brown ore can be estimated only with an accuracy represented by a factor varying between 0.7 and 3; and that the great Lake Superior and the less known Adirondack deposits can be estimated within 15 to 20%, the total supply of the country was estimated at 79,594,220,000 long tons73,21o,415,000 of which were credited to haematite ores and 5,054,675,000 to magnetite. Almost 95% is believed to lie about Lake Superior.

Ihe output of pig iron and steel in 1907 was 25,781,361 and 23,362,594 long tons respectively. It is believed that the first steel made in the United States was made in Connecticut in 1728. Crucible steel was first successfully produced in 1832, Bessemer and open-hearth in 1864. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Alabama and New York are the leading states in production.

The washing of the high or Tertiary gravels by the hydraulic process and the working of mines in the solid rock did not, on the Gold and whole, compensate for the diminished yield of the Silver ordinary placer and river diggings, so that the product of gold in California continued to fall off, and by 1860

had decreased to about half what it had been ten years before. Discoveries in other Cordilleran territories, notably in Montana and Idaho, made up, however, in part for the deficiency of California, so that in I 860 the total amount of gold produced in the United States was estimated at not less than $45,000,000. In the latter part of the decade1850-1859the territories adjacent to California on the east, north and south were overrun by thousands of miners from the Sierra Nevada goldfields, and within a few years an extraordinary number of discoveries were made, some of which proved to be of great importance. The most powerful impulse to mining operations, and the immediate cause of a somewhat lengthy period of wild excitement and speculation, was the discovery and successful opening of the Comstock lode in 1859, in the western part of what is now Nevada, but was then part of Utah. About this lode grew up Virginia City. From 1859 to 1902 the total yield of this lode was $204,653,040 in silver and $148,145,385 in gold; the average annual yield from 1862 to 1868 was above eleven millions; the maximum yield $36,301,537 in 1877; and the total product to July 1880 was variously estimated at from $304,752,171.54 to $30618125125. The lode was an ore channel of great dimensions included within volcanic rocks of Tertiary age, themselves broken through pre-existing strata of Triassic age, and exhibited some of the features of a fissure vein, combined in part with those of a contact deposit and in part with those of a segregated vein. The gangue was quartz, very irregularly distributed in bodies often of great sizes, for the most part nearly or quite barren of ore. The metalliferous portion of the lode was similarly distributed in great masses, known as bonanzas. The next most famous lode is that of Leadville, Colorado, which from 1879 to 1889 yielded $147,834,186, chiefly in silver and lead. In later years the Cripple Creek district of Colorado became specially prominent.

The total oatput of gold and silver in the United States according to the tables published by the Director of the Mint has been as follows :

Gold. Silver.

ears. Quantity in Quantity in, Commercial Fine Ounces. Value. Fine Ounces. Value.

• $

1792-1847 1,187,170 24,537,000 309,500 404,500

1848-1872 58,279,778, 2,204,750,00 118,568,200 157,749,900

1873-1908 88,833,232 1,836,344,000 I,664,371,30o 1,379,892,200

148,300,179 $3,065,632,000 i,78~,x~g,ooo $1,538,046,600

Colorado ($22,871,000), Alaska ($19,858,800), California ($19,329,700), Nevada ($11,689,400), South Dakota ($7,742,200), Utah ($3,946,700), Montana ($3,160,000) and Arizona ($2,500,000)

were the leading producers in 1908, in which year the totals for the two metals were $94,560,000 for gold and $28,050,600 for silver.

The grade of precious ores hafidled has generally and greatly decreased in recent yearsaccording to the census data of 1880 and 1902, disregarding all base metallic contentsfrom an average commerical value of $29.07 to one of $8.29; nevertheless the product of gold and silver has greatly increased. This is due to improvements in mining methods and reduction processes, which have made profitable low-grade ores that were not commercially available in 1880.

Copper was produced in 1908 in twenty-four states of the Union. Their output was almost seventeenfold the quantity reported by the census of 186o. The quantity produced from 1845 Cop er the year in which the Lake Superior district became a producer, and in which the total product was only 224,000 lbup to 1908 was 13,106,205,634 lb. The increases from 1845 to 1850, in each decennial period thereafter, and from 1901 to 1908, were as follcws, in percentages: 50.0, 27.0, 6.1, 7~2, f48, 9.1 and 5.8. The total product passed 10,000,000 lb in 1857, 20,000,000 lb in 1867, 30,000,000 lb in 1873, 40,000,000 lb in 1875, 50,000,000 lb in 1879 and 100,000,000 lb in 1883. Comparing the product of the United States with that of the world, the figures for the two respectively were 23,350 and I51,936 long tons in 1879, when the United States was second to both Spain (and Portugal) and Chile as a producer; 51,570 and 199,406 long tons in 1883, when the Unites States first took leading rank; 172,300 and 334,565 long tons in 1895, when the yield of the United States first exceeded that of all other parts of the world combined; and 942,570,000 and 1,667,098,000 lb in 1908.

The three leading producing states or Territories of the Union are, and since the early eighties have been, Arizona, Montana and Michigan. With Utah and California their yield in 1908 was 93% of the total. During the decade ending with that year the average yearly output of the three first-named was 197,706,968 Ib, 267,172,951 lb and 192,187,488 lb respectively.

The production of lead was for many years limited, as already mentioned, to two districts near the Mississippi: one the so-called Upper Mines of Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois; the other I. d the Lower Mines of south-eastern Missouri. The national government, after reserving the mineral lands (1807) and attempting to lease them, concluded in 1847 to sell them, owing to the difficulty of preventing illegal entry and collecting royalties. The yield of the Upper Mines culminated about 1845, and long ago became insignificant. The greatest lead district is in south-western Missouri nod south-eastern Kansas, known as the Joplin-Galena district after the names of the two cities that are its centre. The United States is the gleatest lead producer and consumer in the world, its percentage of the total output and consumption averaging 30.4% and 32-5% respectively in the years 1904-1908. Since 1825 the total product of lead refined from domestic ores and domestic base bullion was, up to the close of 1908, 7,091,548 short tons. An annual yield of 100,000 tons was first passed in 1881; of 200,000, ill 1891; of 300,000, in 1898. The total refined domestic product in 1907 was 337,340, and the total domestic lead smelted was 365,166 tons. Of the smelter domestic product 235,559 tons were of desilverized lead and 129,607 of soft lead. Considerable quantities of foreign ores and base bullion are also refined in the United States. The average percentage of metallic recovery from lead ores was about 68%, in 1880, and again in 1902, according to the national censuses of these years. According to the bureau of the census the value in 1902 of the lead yielded by copper, by non-argentiferous lead and zinc, and by gold and silver ores respectively was $19,053, $5,850,721 and $12,311,239. This reflects the revolutionary change in the history of lead mining since the first discovery of argentiferous lead ores in the Rocky Mountain states in 1864, which became available only after the building of railways. Until the completion of the Union Pacific in 1869 there was no smelting of such ores except for their silver contents. The deposits in the Joplin-Galena district were discovered in 1848, but attracted little attention for three decades. Of the soft lead smelted in 1907 no less than 94.8% came from Missouri. Idaho, Utah and Colorado produce together almost as great a proportion of the desilverized lead, half of which has come in recent years from Idaho.

Spelter production began in the United States in 1858 in an experimental way, and regular production in 1860. The census of the latter year reported an output of product valued at $72,600. According to the census data for 1889 and 1902 there was an in Zinc crease in value of product of 184.1% in the interval, and of 109.5% in the quantity of ore produced. The value of products in 1902 were reported as $340,686 from gold and silver ores, and $8,665,675 from non-argentiferous lead and zinc ores. The total product of zinc from domestic ore for the entire country was 7343 short tons in 1873, passed 100,000 tons in 1898, and 200,000 in 1907, when it amouiited to 223,745 tons. From 1904 to 1908 the share of the United States in the worlds output averaged 28-2%, and in the worlds consumption (disregarding stocks) 27.5%. Of the product of 1907 above stated no less than 63.4% came from Missouri alone; Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and New Jersey yielding together 30.8% more.

Most of the quicksilver produced in the United States comes from California (86% of the total in 1908), but a considerable quantity M comes from Texas, and small amounts are produced CIWJV. in Utah, Arizona and Oregon. Veins of cinnabar are known elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain and Sierra Nevada regions but not in workable quantities. The mercurial ores of the Pacific Coast ranges occur in very irregular deposits in the form of strings and bunches, disseminated through a highly metamorphosed siliceous rod~c. The first locality where the metal was successfully mined was at New Almaden, about 100 m. south of San Francisco. These mines have been productive since 1824. Another old mine, discovered in 1853, is the New Idria located another 100 to. farther south. These two are still among the foremost producers.

From 1850 to 1908 California produced a total of 2,052,000 flasks of metal, of 76.5 lb (since June I, 1904, 750 lb net) each. The year of greatest yield was 1877, with 79,395 flasks. The production had steadily fallen to 16,984 flasks in 1908, but in the opinion of the United States Geological Survey this reduction is mainly attributable, in recent years at least, to market conditions, and does not truly indicate the exhaustion of the mines, although the ores now available are of low grades, those of New Almaden having shown a decrease in yield from 36.7% in1850-1851to o~74% in 1895-1896, so that only the greatest metallurgical skill and business economy can sustain the mines against a weak market.

Bauxite was produced on a commercial scale in four states in 1908: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee; Arkansas pro- Other ducingas for years pastmore than six-tenths of the total product of the country. This rose from an insignificant amount in 1889 to 97,776 long tons (valued at $480,330) in 1907. The consumption of the United States is, however, much larger than its product, and is rapidly growing. The production of aluminium rose from 83 lb in 1883 to 7,500,000 lb in 1903, and a consumption (the Geological Survey not reporting the production) of 17,211,000 lb in 1907. Antimony, bismuth, selenium, tellurium, chromic iron ore, tin, nickel, cobalt, vanadium, titanium, molybdenum, uranium and tantalum are produced in the United States in small amounts, but such production in several cases has amounted to only slight discoveries, and in general they are of little importance in the market. Of tungsten the United States was in 1907 the greatest producer in the world (1640 tons in a total of 6062). Tin ores have been widely discovered, but though much has been hoped for from them, particularly from the deposits in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, there has been no more than a relatively insignificant commercial production.

Commerce, Foreign and Domestic.The English colonies that became the United States carried on during the colonial period a commerce with the mother country, and also, both so far as the legislative trammels of the British colonial system permitted it and illicitly, a fairly active commerce with the West Indies. This latter became of increasing moment in the successive periods of European colonial wars of the 18th century. With the achievement of independence~ by the United States the same interest became of still greater importance to the new nation, so as to constitute a leading element in its early diplomacy. Although relatively unsuccessful in securing access to the British islands, the importance of the United States as a supplier of the other West Indies continually grew, and when the communication of the French and Spanish islands with their metropolises was practically cut off by the British during the Napoleonic wars, the dependence of these colonies upon the American carrying trade became absolute. It was the profits of this neutral trade, notwithstanding the losses to which it was exposed by the high-handed measures of the British and the French governments, that caused these insults to be more or less patiently endured by the trading interests. When President Jefferson, and after him President Madison, attempted to secure redress for these rnjuries by the imposition of an embargo on American vessels, the West Indian trade was temporarily ruined, the war of 181215 with Great Britain contributing to the same end. The East Indian trade had been opened from New England ports late in the 18th century. The whaling and cod and mackerel fisheries were of earlier colonial origin. As general carriers American ships gained no importance until the Napoleonic wars; and this interest was greater in the West Indies than in Europe. Such were the main branches of national commerce up to the time of the second war with England. After the war of 1812 new outlets were found in all directions, and the I

commerce of the country grew apace, until in the years immediately preceding the Civil War the United States was a close second to Great Britain among the trading countries of the world. The Civil War caused enormous losses to the merchant marine, and the worldwide substitution about this time of iron steamers for wooden steamers and sailing vessels contributed to prevent a recovery; because, although ship-building was one of the earliest arts developed in the colonies, and one that was prosecuted with the highest success so long as wooden ships were the dominant type, the United States has never achieved marked success with the iron steamer, and the law has precluded the registry as American of vessels built abroad. The American clipper ships that were constructed at Baltimore and elsewhere during the last three decades before the Civil War were doubtless the swiftest sailers that have ever been built.

The total trade of the country by land and sea, the movement inward and outward, is shown in the following table for various years since 1861: Imports by Land Exports by Land Year. and Sea, and Sea. Total Commerce.

$ $ $

1861 335,650,153 249,344,913 584,995,066

1870 462,377,587 529,5I9,3o2 991,896,889

1880 667,954,746 835,638,658 1,503,593,404

1890 789,310,409 857,828,684 1,647,139,093

I 900 849,941,184 1,394,483,082 2,244,424,266

1905 1,117,513,071 1,518,561,666 2,636,074,737

1909 1,475,612,580 1,728,203,271 3,203,815,851

The excess of exports over imports in the decade1899-1908totalled $5,728,214,844; and in the same period there was an excess of exports of gold and silver, above imports, of $444,908,963. Of the total exports of 1909 $1,700,743,638 represented domestic merchandise. The remainder, or element of foreign exports, has been of similarly small relative magnitude since about 1880, but was of course much larger while the carrying trade was of importance. From 1820 up to 1880 agricultural products made up with remarkable steadiness almost exactly four-fifths of all exports of domestic merchandise. Since then the increase of manufactures, and to a slight degree that of minerals, has lessened much the share of agricultural products, which in 1906 was 56.43%, that of manufactures beiIig 35.11% and of minerals 3.09%. The following table indicates in a general way the increased value, in round millions of dollars, of the leading agricultural exports since 1860:

R B Meats Cattle, Year. Cotton. Stuffs. Tobacco. and Dairy and other i86o 192.0 24.0 160 f69 i~8

1900 242.9 262.7 29.4 f845 436

1905 381.4 107.7 298 200O 46~7

1909 461.9 139.5 368 152.0 2O~8

Classifying imports and domestic exports as of six groups: (I) crude foodstuffs and good animals; (2) foodstuffs partly or wholly prepared; (3) raw materials for use in manufacturing; (4) manufactured articles destined to serve as materials in further processes of manufacture; (5) finished manufactures; (6) miscellaneous productsthe table on p. 645 shows the distribution of imports and exports among these six classes since 182o.i It will be seen from the table that the share of the first two classes in both imports and exports has been relatively constant. On the other hand the great increase of imports of class III., and the great decrease of class V.; and of exports the great increase of those of class IV., and decrease of those of classes III. and V., all reflect the great development of manufactures in modern times. The table also shows the great rapidity of this change in recent years.

Europe takes, of course, a large share of the exports of finished manufacturesa little more than a third of the total in the quinquennial period 1903-1908; but North America takes but very slightly less. On the other hand, above 70% of manufactures destined to serve, as material in further processes of manufacture went, in the same years, to Europe, and from eight- to nine-tenths of the first three classes of exports. After Europe the largest shares of exports are taken by North America, Asia and Oceania, South America and Africa in order. The share of the five continental divisions in 1909 was as follows, respectively: $1,169,672,326; $344,767,613; $113,129,907; $83,509,047 and $17,124,298. The respective shares of the same divisions in the imports of the country were as follows: $763,704,486; $277,863,210; $223,254,724; $193,202,131 and $17,558,029. It will be seen that the commercial1789-1818consult Adam Seyberts Statistical Annals (Philadelphia, 1818), which are based upon official documents, a large part of which are no longer in existence.

All Imports. Percentages by Classes.

Years. ________ ________ ________ ________ ________

I. II. III. IV. V. VI

182t I115 I9~85 364 7.48 56.86 I(

1830 11.77 I539 6-72 8~22 56~97 0~(

1840 1554 15.46 11.71 11.56 45.09 o(

1850 I038 1237 6~75 15.08 54.93 ~

1860 I0~II 15.26 10.48 6.67 56.52 f~(

1870 I2~38 2208 1218 12.51 39.69 I~J

188o 15.01 I7~69 I9~74 I659 29.43 j.~

1890 1628 I6~89 2162 I481 29.23 i~:

1900 11.52 15-65 32.50 15.79 23~90 0.1

1908 12.19 12.31 30.43 I6~43 27.77 o~l 1909 11-67 10.99 35.89 17.48 23.24 0~

interests in South America are relatively small. The shares of the ten nations having the largest part in the trade of the country were as follows in 1909: Imports from Exports to Great Britain 247,474,104 521,281,999

Germany 161,951,673 247,310,084

Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador 88,321,706 f9f,438,400

France 132,069,748 126,361,959

Cuba 107,334,716 48,217,689

Brazil 117,062,725 19,765,836 19,765,836

Holland 30,905,712 89,121,124 89,121,124

Mexico 52,578,454 53,512,947

Japan 68,116,665 23,471,837

Belgium 36,236,568 44,477,380

The leading imports in 1909 were as follows, indicating in each case, when not evidently unnecessary, the value of finished manufactures and of unmanufactured materials: Silk (manufactured, $32,963,162; unmanufactured, $75,512,401); hides and skins, other than fur skins ($103,758,277); sugar and molasses ($91,535,466); fibres, vegetables and textile grasses (manufactured, $33,511,696; unmanufactured, $54,860,698); coffee ($86,524,006); chemicals ($86,401,432); cotton (manufactured, $68,380,780; raw and waste, $1 5,421,854); rubber (manufactured, $1,462,541, unmanufactured, $83,682,013); wool (manufactured, $22,058,712; unmantifactured, $55,530,366); and wood (manufactured, $43,620,591; unmanufactured, $13,584,172). Precious stones ($43,620,591); fruits and nuts; copper, iron and steel; tobacco (leaf $25,897,650; manufactured, $4,138,521); tin; spirits, wines and liquors; oils, paper, works of art, tea and leather ($16,270,406), being the remaining items in excess of $15,000,000 each. The leading exports of domestic merchandise in excess of the same value were the following: cotton ($496,334,448); iron and steel, excluding ores ($157,680,331); meat and dairy products ($151,964,037); petroleum, vegetable and animal oils ($126,350,916); wheat and wheat flour ($100,529,381); copper, excluding ores ($92,584,640); wood ($72,312,880); leather ($47,146,415); tobacco ($41,554,o58);coal($38,44I,518);agricultural implements ($27,327,428); corn and corn meal ($27,062,128); animals ($2i,007,I22); chemicals (.$2o,33o,335); oil-cake ($20,245,818); fruits and nuts ($18,707,670); vehicles ($16,774,036); naval stores ($16,103,076); and paper ($15,280,541).

New York, New Orleans, Boston, Galveston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco and Puget Sound are, in order, the leading customs districts of the country in the value of their imports and exports. Almost one-half of the countrys foreign trade is done through the single port of New York. In 1909 more than eighttenths of all imports of the country entered by, and more than seventenths of all exports went out through, the eight customs districts just named. Savannah and Charleston are other great ports and southern outlets, particularly for cotton.

Of the imports and exports of I 86f two-thirds (in value) were carried in American vessels. By 1864 the proportion had fallen to 27.5%, and except for a temporary slight recovery after the close of the war there has been a steady progress downward since that time, until in 1908 only 9.8% of the commerce of the country was carried on under its own flag. More than half the shipping entering and leaving the ports of the United States in 1908 was British; Germany, the Scandinavian countries, France, Holland and Italy ranking next in order; the United States, although ranking after Great Britain, contributed less than a seventh of the total. The total tonnage entered was 38,539,195 net tons (of 100 cub. ft. each), as compared with 18,010,649 tons in 1880.

Of the total of tonnage entered in 1909, 30,443,695 tons represented seaport entries, the remainder entering across the land frontiers.

The merchant marine of the United States in 1900 totalled 5,164,839 net tons, which was less than that of 1860 (5,353,808), in which year American shipping attained an amount which only in recent years Exports of Domestic Merchandise.

_________ ________ Percentages by Classes.

I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

2 479 19~51 60.46 942 5-66 o~I6

3 4.65 16.32 62.34 7.04 934 0~3I

4 4~09 I4~27 67~6, 4.34 947 022

9 559 14.84 6226 4.49 12.72 0~I0

o 385 I22f 68~3I 3.99 1f~33 0.31

6 ff~I2 I3~53 56.64 3.66 14.96 0~09

4 323o 23~47 28.98 3.52 II~26 0.47

7 f5.62 26~59 36~03 550 15.68 0.58

4 f6~59 23~2I 23.75 If~f5 24.22 1.08

7 10.30 18~Io 30.34 14~23 26~68 0.35

3 6~5 16.76 33-62 14.89 27~52 0~46

has been again reached. In the decline that followed the Civil War an apparent minimum was reached of 4,068,034 tons in 188o; but this does not adequately indicate the depression of the, shipping interest, inasmuch as the aggregate was kept up by the tonnage of vessels engaged in the coasting trade and commerce of the inland waters, from which foreign shipping is by law excluded. The decline of tonnage engaged in ocean traffic was from 2,546,237 net tons in 1860 to 1,352,810 in 1880; and this decline continued in later years. On the other hand the aggregate tonnage of the country has again begun to rise, and in 1908 the total was 7,365,445 net tons, a third of this being on the Great Lakes, and somewhat under one-half on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Of the same total 6,37,865 tons represented the coasting trade, only 930,413 tons being engaged in the foreign trade of the country. New England still supplies a quarter of the shipping annually built along the entire seaboard of the country; but more is yearly built upon the Great Lakes than upon the seaboard.

Internal Commerce: Railways and Canals.Large as has become the foreign commerce of the country, it is small beside the aggregate interior commerce between the states of the Union. The basis of this is necessarily facilities for transportation. At the end of 1908 the railway of the country totalled 232,046 m.more than those of all Europe. The traffic on these, measured in units moved one mile, was 28,797,781,231 passenger-miles, and 214,340,129,523 freight miles. Various systems, with joint or separate outlets from the Pacific coast to the Mississippi Valley, provide for the handling of transcontinental freight. Rivers and canals are relatively much less important to-day than in the middle decades of the I 9th century, before the growth of the railway traffic made small by comparison the movement on the interior watercourses. According to a special report of the department of commerce and labor of 1906, 290 streams are used to a substantial degree for navigation, affording together an aggregate of 2600 m. of 10 ft. navigation, or 5800 m. of 6 ft. navigation at ordinary water. Of the last almost half belongs to the Mississippi river. More than $250,000,000 has been spent by the national government for the improvement of waterways, yet no general system exists, and a large part of this enormous sum has been wasted on unimportant or impossible projects, especially in recent decades, since the river navigation has been a declining interest. 1360 m. of state-owned canals and 632 m. of private canals of some importance were also reported as in operation in 1909. More than an equal length of canal ways (2444 m., costing $80,000,000) was reported as having been abandoned after construction. Of recent years there has been a great revival of interest in the improvement of inland waterways upon systematic plans, which promises better than an earlier period of internal improvements in the first half of the 19th century, the results of which were more or less disastrous for the state and local governments that undertook them, and only less so for the national government. The Erie Canal in New York, the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, and the Sault Ste Marie Canal are the most important in the country.

Coal, iron ore, building materials, lumber, livestock, cotton, fruits, vegetables, tobacco and grain are the great items in the domestic commerce of the country, upon its railways, inland waterways, and in the coasting trade. The magnitude of these items is so great as to defy exact determination; data for the formation of some idea of them can be found in the account of the mineral, forest and agricultural resources of the country. It was estimated by the Bureau of the Census that in 1906 the tonnage of freight moved by American vessels within American waters, excluding harbour traffic, was 177,519,758 short tons (as compared with 1,514,906,985 long tons handled by the railways of the country). Of this total 42.6% was moved on the Great Lakes, and 36~8% on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and waterways.

The Great Lakes are connected by canals with the Atlantic, the St Lawrence river and the Mississippi; the connection with the first being through the Erie Canal, a 7-ft. waterway, and that with the St Lawrence through Canadian canals that afford a 14-ft. navigation.

The connection with the Mississippi is through the drainage-canal of Chicago, and thence into branches of the Mississippi affording as yet even less water than the Atlantic outlet. The commerce on the lakes is largely in grain, coal, iron and lumber. The tonnage of vessels cleared between American ports on the lakes in 1908 wa~ 103,271,885 net tons; the freight they carried came to 80,974,605 long tons, Vessels aggregating 46,751,717 net tons, carrying 57,895,149 tons of freight, valued at $470,141,318, passed through the Sault Ste Marie Canal and 47,621,078 tons of freight were moved through the Detroit river in the same year. In these figures no account is taken of the trade of the Canadian ports on the lakes. Compared with this volume of traffic the 1~Iovement through the Suez Canal is small.

It has been estimated by 0. P. Austin, chief of the national bureau of statistics, using data of 1903, that the internal commerce of the United States exceeds in magnitude the total international commerce of the world., (F. S. P.)

Constitution and Government

I.-Introductory.

§ 1.

Third, an account of the structure and organization of the Federal government considered as the general government of the nation.

As the states are older than the Federal government, and as the latter was, indeed, in many respects modelled upon the scheme of government which already existed in the thirteen original states, it may be convenient to begin with the states and then to proceed to the national government, whose structure is more intricate and will require a fuller explanation.

Before entering, however, on. a description of the state governments, one feature must be noticed which is common both to the states and to the Federation, and gives to the governmental system of both a peculiar character, different from that of the government of Great Britain. This feature is the existence of a supreme instrument of government, a document, enacted by the people, which controls, and cannot be altered by, any or all of the ordinary organs of government. In Great Britain parliament is the supreme power, and can change any of the laws of the country at any moment. In the American Union, and in every state of the Union, there exists a documentary or rigid constitution, creating and defining the powers o~ every authority in the government. It is the expression of the ultimate sovereignty of the people, and its existence gives to the working both of the Federal government and of the several state governments, a certain fixify and uniformity which the European, and especially the British, reader must constantly bear in mind, because under such a constitution every legislative body enjoys far scantier powers than in the United Kingdom and most European countries.

II.-The State Governments.

§ 2.

In every one of the North American colonies there was in operation at that date a system of self-government, in seven colonies under a charter from the Crown. In each there was a governor, with minor executive officers, a legislature, and a judiciary; and although the Crown retained the power of altering the charter, and the British parliament could (in strict legal view) legislate over the head of the colonial legislature so as to abrogate statutes passed by the latter, still in practice each colony was allowed to manage its own affairs and to enact the laws it desired. Thus the people were well accustomed to work their institutions, and when they gained their independence continued to maintain those institutions with comparatively little change. In two colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the colonial charter was substantially maintained as the constitution of the state for many years, in the former case till 1842, in the latter till 1818.

§ 3.

others. Those which were retained have been to some extent diminished by the I4th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, and if the right to secede from the Union ever existed (a point much controverted), it was finally negatived by the Civil War of 186165. Otherwise, however, these attributes survive. The powers of a state are inherent, not delegated, and each retains all such rights and functions of an independent government as it has not, by entering the Union, affirmatively divested itself of in favor of the Federal government. Each has its own documentary constitution; its legislature of two elective houses; its executive, consisting of a governor and other officials; its judiciary, whose decisions are final, except in cases involving Federal law; its system of local government and local taxation; its revenue, system of taxation, and debts; its body of private civil and criminal law and procedure; its rules of citizenship, which may admit persons to be voters in state and national elections under conditions differing from those prevailing in other states.

The rights and functions of a state practically cover the field in which lie most of the relations of private citizens to one another and to the authorities with which they come into contact in daily life. An American. may through a long life never be reminded of the Federal government, except when he votes at Federal elections (once in every two years), lodges a complaint against the post office, or is required -to pay duties of customs or excise. His direct taxes are paid to officials acting under state laws. The state (or a local authority created by the state) registers his birth, appoints his guardian, provides schools for him and pays for them, allots him a share in the property of a parent dying intestate, licences him when he enters a trade (if the trade needs a licence), marries him, divorces him, entertains civi] actions against him, tries and executes him for murder. The police that guard his house, the local boards which care for the poor, control highways, provide water, all derive their powers from the state. Nevertheless the state is (as will be explained later) a slightly declining factor in the public life of the nation, because public interest tends more and more to centre in the Federal or national government.

§ 4.

A state constitution tisually consists of the following parts: A description of the state boundaries (now frequently omitted);

A bill of rights, defining the so-called primordial rights of the citizens to sectirity of life, liberty and property; A declaration and enactment of the frame of state government, i.e. the names, functions and powers of the houses of the legislature, the chief executive officials, and the courts of justice, with provisions regulating the electoral franchise; Provisions creating, or directing the creation of, a system of local government for cities and rural areas; Miscellaneous provisions relating to law and administration, including the militia, revenue and taxation, state prisons and hospitals, agriculture, banking and other corporations, railways, labor questions; Provisions for the amendment of the constitution; A schedule prescribing the method of submitting the draft constitution to the vote of the people, with temporary provisions regulating the mode of tranfition from the old constitutional arrang~ments to the new ones.

The method of amending the constitution varies in detail from state to state, but that most usual is for the legislature to propose amendments, often by a prescribed majority, and for these amendments to be voted on by the people. Such amendments have latterly come to include many matters not strictly constitutional,and so to constitute a species of direct legislation by the people similar in principle to what is called in Switzerland the Referendum. Some states have recently allowed a prescribed number of voters to propose, by what is called the Initiative, amendments which are submitted to the vote of all the citizens without the intervention of the legislature.

Two remarkable changes have passed over the state constitutions. In the earlier days of the republic they were comparatively short and simple instruments, confined to the definition of civic rights and the establishment of a frame of government. They have now become very long and elaborate documents, seven, eight or ten times as long as the Federal Constitution, and containing a vast number of provisions on all sorts of subjects, many of them partaking of the nature of ordinary statutes passed by a legislature rather than safeguards suitable to a fundamental instrument. And secondly, whereas in earlier days the constitutions were seldom changed, they are now frequently recast or amended. Only Maine and Massachusetts and a few of the newer states live under original constitutions, and only Massachusetts is under a constitution older than the i9th century. Some have recast their constitutions seven or eight times. Some provide for the revision of the constitution at stated intervals. Notwithstanding the facility and frequency of amendments, the variations between one constitution and another are less conspicuous than might have been expected. There is, however, a distinction of type and character between those of the western and southern and those of the eastern states, the former being generally more prolix, more prone to go into details, more apt to contain new experiments in legislation.

Comparing the old constitutions with the new ones, it may be said that the note of those enacted in the first thirty or forty years of the republic was their jealousy of executive power and their careful safeguarding of the rights of the citizen; that of the second period, from 1820 to the Civil War (186165), the democratization of the suffrage and of institutions generally; that of the third period (since the war to the present day), a disposition to limit the powers and check the action of the legislature, and to commit power to the hands of the whole people voting at the polls.

§ 5.

Universal manhood suffrage, subject to certain disqualifications (e.g. certain crimes or receipt of poor relief), is the rule in the great majority of states. Certain terms of residence within the United States, in the state, and in the voting district are generally prescribed, the periods varying from state to state. Nine states allow voting rights to aliens who have declared their intention to become citizens, and in some they can as taxpayers vote on financial matters submitted to a special vote. Kansas grants them a full municipal suffrage. Fourteen preScribe some sort of educational qualification. Five states Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Washingtongive the suffrage for all elections to women.i In 1905 women could vote at school elections in twenty-four states. Of late years seven Southern states, beginning with Mississippi (constitution of 1890) and including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana, have so altered their constitutions as to exclude from voting the great bulk of their respective negro populations, by means of educational tests, property qualifications, a combination of both, or by other means, while various ingenious devices have been employed to admit a large part, at least, of the illiterate whites. In 1910 Oklahoma adopted provisions of the same kind. The suffrage for legislature elections generally determines that for all other elections within the state, and as a rule it carries with it eligibility to office. And by the Federal Constitution it is also the suffrage for Federal elections, viz, elections of representatives in Congress and of presidential electors.

Elections are now practically everywhere conducted under that system of secret voting, which is called in America the Australian ballot, and~ which is very similar to that used in the United Kingdom since 1872. There used to be a good deal of fraud practised at elections, including personating and repeating, as well as a good deal of bribery in a few states and in some of the larger cities. Legislation has reduced these evils in recent years; and efforts have been made to prevent the excessive expenditure of money at elections, and the making of contributions to party campaign funds by wealthy corporations who desire to secure some benefit for themselves. Another evil which has not yet been dealt with is the large number of posts for which the voter is expected, at an. election to select the best men. This, of course, does not apply to elections to a legislature; but in city elections, and to some extent in state elections and county elections also, it creates great difficulties, for how is the average citizen. to know (especially in ,a large city) who are the fittest men out of a long list of candidates for perhaps ten or twenty offices, all of which have to be filled by election at the same time? The perception of these difficulties has evoked a movement for what is called a short ballot.

The number of members of the legislative chambers varies from state to state. Delaware with 17 senators and 35 representatives, has the smallest; Minnesota, with 63 senators, has the largest Senate; and New Hampshire (a small state) has, with its 390 representatives, the largest House. The New York houses number 51 and 150 respectively; those of Pennsylvania, 5o and 204; of Illinois, 51 and 153; of Ohio, 34 and 118; of Massachusetts, 40 and 240. In. all states, members of the 1egislature receive a salary, which is the same for both houses, some states fixing an annual sum, but most preferring a per diem rate, while the maximum is generally determined by a limitation on the length of the session.

It has become the wish of the people in most places to have sessions both short and few. Whereas formerly legislatures met annually, regular sessions are now biennial except in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia and South Carolinaall original states. In Alabama the legislature meets regularly once only in four years, though it may be convoked in the interval.

The Senates act as courts for the trial of state officers impeached by the house (in imitation of the British House of Lords and the Federal Senate), and have in some states Powers and the function of confirming or refusing appointments Funcons made by the governor. Otherwise the powers and of the State procedure of the two houses are everywhere sub- ~7iS.~

stantially identical, though it is worth noting that a ures.

whereas every house chooses its own Speaker, the president of possibly in other states also.

the Senate is, in most states, a lieutenant-governor, whom the people have directly elected. Bills may originate in either house, but in about half of the states money bills must originate in the House of Representativesa survival of British custom which has here, where both houses equally represent the people, no functional value. Both houses do most of their work by committees, much after the fashion (to be presently described) of the Federal Congress, and it is in these committees that the form of bills is usually settled and their fate decided. Sometimes, when. a committee is taking evidence on an important question, reporters are present, and the proceedings receive comment in. the newspapers; but in general the proceedings of committees and even debates in the houses are imperfectly reported and excite no great public interest. In all the states except one, viz. North Carolina, bills passed by the two houses must be submitted to the state governor for his approval. Should he return it to the legislature disapproved, it is lost unless repassed over his veto by a majority usually of two-thirds, but sometimes larger, in each house. A good governor is apt to use his veto freelyindeed, a frequent exercise of the power is deemed in many states to be a sort of test of the governors judgment and courage.

Subjects of state legislation may be classified under three heads:

I. Ordinary private law, including property, contracts, torts, family relations, offences, civil and criminal procedure.

2. Administrative law, including the regulation of urban and rural local government, state and local taxation and finance, education, public works, the liquor traffic, vaccination, adulteration, charities, asylums, prisons, the inspection of mines and factories, general laws relating to corporations, railways, labor questions.

3. Matters of a local or special nature, such as bills for chartering and incorporating gas, water, canal, tramway, railway or telephone companies, or for conferring franchises in the nature of monopolies or special privileges upon such companies, or for altering their constitutions, as also for incorporating cities or minor communities and regulating their affairs. Although there usually exist general laws under which corporations or companies (including railway and electric car companies) can be formed, laws which in some states and for some purposes confer a greater freedom of incorporation than the general law allows in the United Kingdom, there is nevertheless a noticeable tendency to come to the legislature for special purposes of this kind.

As respects class I, there is not much change in the law from year to year. The legal profession does not like to see the ordinary and established rules disturbed. Sometimes the laws belonging to this class are codified, or rather consolidated, and then usually by a Ipecial committee of competent lawyers whose work is passed en bloc by the legislature.

As respects class 2, a good many measures are passed, particularly in matters affecting labor, and for the protection of any sections of the population which may be deemed to need protection.

It is, however, in class 3 that the legislatures show most activity, much of it pernicious, because prompted by persons seeking to serve private interests which are often opposed to the interests of the whole community. The great public service corporations have, in particular, frequentiy succeeded in obtaining franchises of large pecuniary value without making any adequate payment therefor. A peculiarly notable form of this special or private bill legislation is that of dealing by special statutes with the governmental forms and details of management of municipalities; and the control exercised by the state legislatures over city governments is not only a most important branch of legislative business, but at the same time a means of power to scheming politicians and of enrichment to greedy ones. This has led in some states to the grant of power to cities to frame their own charters. Speaking generally, it is chiefly in the sphere of special or private legislation that state legislatures have shown their weak side, and incurred, in many states, the distrust of the people.

The members of these bodies belong for the most part, though by no means entirely, and least so in the agricultural states, to the class of professional politicians. They are seldom persons of shining ability or high standing in their communities. Except as a stepping-stone to a seat in Congress or a high executive post, the place is not one which excites the ambition of aspir-ing men. The least respected legislatures are those of the richest and most populous states, such as New York and Pennsylvania, because in such states the opportunities offered to persons devoid of scruple are the largest.

The general decline in the quality of these bodies, and especially their proneness to pass ill-considered or pernicious bills at the instance of private promotors, has led to the restriction in recent years of their powers by the insertion in the state constitutions of many provisions forbidding the enactment of certain classes of measures, and regulating the procedure to be adopted in the passing, either of statutes generally or of particular kinds of statutes. Even these provisions, however, are frequently evaded.

§ 6.

It is the duty of the governor to see that the laws of the state are faithfully administered by all officials, and the judgments of the courts carried out. He has, in most states, the right of reprieving or pardoning offenders, but some recent constitutions place restrictions on this power. He is also commander of the militia or other armed forces of the state, which he can direct to repel in.vasion, or suppress insurrection or riot. He appoints some of the state officials, his nominations usually requiring the concurrence of the state senate; but his patronage is in most states not very largein many it is indeed insignificant because the offices of greatest importance are filled by direct popular election. He has also the almost mechanical function of representing the state for various formal purposes, such as demanding from other states the extradition of offenders, the issuing of writs for the election of members of the legislature and of members of the Federal House of Representatives, and the receiving of reports from various state officials or boards.

Not less important than his directly executive work is the influence which the governor exerts upon state legislation through his possession (in all the states but one) of a Veto power. His right of recommending measures to the legislature (which does not formally include that of framing and presenting bills, but practically permits him to have a bill prepared and use all his influence on its behalf) is of greater value according to the extent to which he leads the public opinion of his state. The legislature need not regard his counsels, but if he is a strong man whom the people trust, it may fear him and comply with his demands. When a commercial crisis occurs much may depend on his initiative. Moreover, his veto is a thing to be reckoned with. It is seldom overridden. by the prescribed majority, especially if the bill against which it is directed be one of a jobbing nature. And as the people look to him to kill bad measures, he is frequently able, if he be a man both strong and upright, to convey intimations to the legislature, or to those who are influential in it, that he will not approve of certain pending measures, or will approve of them only if passed in a form satisfactory to him. The use of this potential authority, which the possession of the veto power gives, has now become one of a governors most important duties.

In New England, and in the greater states generally, the governorship is still a post of dignity, and affords an opportunity for a display of character and talents. During the War of Secession, when each governor was responsible for organizing troops from his state, much turned upon his energy, popularity and loyalty. And in recent years the danger of riots during strikes has, in some states, made it important to have a man of decision and fearlessness in the office which issues orders to the state militia. There has been of late years a revival in the case of some able governors of the old respect for, and deference to, the office.

In thirty-five states there is a lieutenant-governor, elected by popular vote. He is usually president of the state senate, is sometimes a inember of some administrative boards, and steps into the governors place should it become vacant.

Executive councils advising the governor, but not chosen by him, existed under the first constitutions of all the original thirteen states. In New York the council of appointment advised the governor only in regard to appointing officers; and in Georgia there was no executive council after 1789. True executive councils have now disappeared except in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire.

§ 7.

In many states officials may be removed, not only by impeachment, but also sometimes by vote of the legislature, sometimes by the governor on the address of both houses, or by the governor either alone or with the concurrence of the senate; but such removals must be made for specific misconduct.

The extent of direct state administration of public institutions an(l works is very limited, and most of the state bureaus have only a supervision over private enterprises, or over local administrative officers. On this account the subordinate civil service of the state is not large compared with that of either the Federal government or of the large municipalities, and only in a few states does it possess any importance. However, these bureaus are seldom well manned, because salaries and tenure of office are seldom such as to induce able men to offer themselves, while the places are often given as rewards for political service. New York, Massachusetts and a few other states have systems of civil service examinations, similar to those in the Federal administration, which serve to keep certain branches out of politics.

§ 8.

a supreme court or court of appeal; superior courts of record; and local courts, but the particular names and relations of these several tribunals vary greatly from state to state. Most of the original thirteen colonies once possessed also separate courts of chancery; and these were maintained for many years after the separation from Great Britain, and were imitated in several of the earlier among the new states, but special chancery courts now exist only in a few of the states, chiefly in the East and South. In other states the common law judges have also equity jurisdiction; and in four states New York, North Carolina, California and Idahothere has been a complete fusion of law and equity.

In colonial days the superior judges were appointed by the governors, except in Rhode Island and Connecticut, where the legislatures elected them. These precedents were followed in all the revolutionary constitutions, except in Georgia, where election by the people was established. During the democratizing period from 1820 to 1860 the system of popular election was extended, especially in the new states, and at present this system prevails in thirty-six states, including practically all of the new states and five of the original statesNew York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia. Three of the original thirteen have their judges elected by the legislatures, and in five others, together with Maine and Mississippi among the newer states, they are appointed by the governor, subject to the approval of the executive council, the Senate, or (in Connecticut) the General Assembly. Local judges are generally chosen by the voters of the district in which they hold court.

Originally the superior judges were in most states appointed for life and held office during good behaviour, but only three states now retain this system. Eight to ten years is the average term of service; it is longer in New York (14), Maryland (15), and Pennsylvania (21), where alone superior judges are not re-eligible. Salaries, too, are small in most states, often not more than onetenth of what a prominent lawyer can make by private practice.

These three factorspopular election, limited terms and small salarieshave all tended to lower the character of the judiciary; and in not a few states the state judges are men of moderate abilities and limited learning, inferior (and sometimes conspicuously inferior) to the best of the men who practise before them. Nevertheless, in most states the bench is respectable in point of character, while in some it is occasionally adorned by men of the highest eminence. The changes introduced since 1870 have been, on the whole, for the better, though there is still room for further improvement. Corruption seems to be very rare, but instances of subservience to powerful political groups sometimes shake public confidence. Things would doubtless have become worse but for the watchfulness which the bar generally shows in endeavouring to secure the selection of honest and fairly competent men. The administration of civil justice is decidedly better than that of criminal justice. The latter is in many states neither prompt nor certain, offenders frequently escaping through the excessive regard for technicalities even more than through the indulgence of juries and the occasional weakness of judges.

- It must be remembered that the courts of each state form a judicial system, complete in itself, and independent of the Federal courts, and, of course, of other states. There is no appeal from the highest state court, except in those cases where a question of Federal law is involved, for then such cases may be removed, in manner to be explained hereafter, to the Federal courts. And, subject only to this limitation, the jurisdiction of the state courts covers the entire field of civil and criminal law. The existing legal system of all the states, except Louisiana, whose law is based on the Roman, have been built upon the foundation of the principles contained in the common and statute law of England as that law stood in 1776, when the thirteen colonies declared their independence. In the development of the law since that time the courts of one state are not bound either by law or by usage to follow the decisions either of the Federal courts or of the courts of any other state, any more than they would follow English courts, although such decisions are used and discussed as evidence of the common law, and great deference is always shown to the opinions expressed by the Federal courts. In many states the legislatures have taken action in the development of law by adopting statutory codes of procedure, and in some instances have even enacted codes embodying the substance of the common law fused with the statutes. These latter codes have not, however, received the general approval of the legal profession.

It is, of course, to the state courts that the duty belongs of construing the constitution as well as the statutes of the state, and if they find any state law to be inconsistent with the state constitution it is their duty to declare it invalid. It is also the duty of the state court to declare any state law invalid if it is contrary to the Federal constitution or to a Federal statute or treaty. As in the case of the similar power of the Federal judges, this is founded on no special commission, but arises out of the ordinary judicial function of expounding the law and discriminating between the fundamental law and laws of inferior authority (see post, 25).

§ 9.

The second cause is the Civil War of 186f65, which practically negatived the far-reaching claims of state sovereignty and the right of secession made by statesmen of the type of Calhoun, and showed that the nation was really much stronger than any group of states.

The third is the enormous development of swift and cheap communications by land and water, and the growth of commerce and of productive industry, which have brought every part of the country into much closer relations with every other part, and have increased the sense of economic solidarity.

§ 10.

Since the Spanish War of 1898 there have been added to the United States various transmarine dominions, r~one of which has been formed into a state, or is likely to be so formed for a good while to come; and there is also one small piece of original area of the United States, viz, the District of Columbia, which is outside any state, because it contains the national capital. The transmarine dominions are Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Porto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and the Canal Zone on the Isthmus of Panama.

III.-Local Government.

§ 11.

The town, or township, of New England is generally a rural community occupying a comparatively small area, and with a population averaging about 3000, hut ranging from 200 in newly-settled, districts or thinly-peopled hilly districts up to 17,000 in the vicinity of large cities and in manufacturing neighborhoods. Each town is governed by the town meeting, an assembly of all the qualified voters within the limits, which meets at least once a year in the spring, and also at other times when specially summoned. This assembly elects the town officials at the annual meetings, but it is much more than an electoral body. It is also a deliberative assembly and the legislative authority for local matters. It enacts by-laws and ordinances, receives the reports of the local officials, passes their accounts, manages the town property, votes appropriations for each item of expenditure, and authorizes the necessary taxation. Every resident citizen has the right to bring forward and to speak in favor of any proposal. The meeting is presided over by a chairman called the moderator. In rural communities the attendance is usually good, the debates are sensible and practical, and a satisfactory administration is generally secured. But when the town meeting has grown to exceed seven or eight hundred persons, and especially when the farming class of native American stock has been replaced by factory operatives of other nationalities, the institution works far less perfectly.

The town officials consist of the selectmen (usually three, five or seven, sometimes nine), the town clerk, treasurer, assessors, tax collector, school committee men, and the holders of divers minor offices according to local needs. These are elected annually, except that in some cases the selectmen and school committee have a term of several years, one member of each board being elected annually. The selectmen, who receive no regular salary, but may charge for expenses actually incurred, form a sort of directory or executive committee, which manages the ordinary administrative and financial business under such instructions as may have been given by the town meeting.

In the Middle and Western states the township is a more artificial organism than the rural town of New England. In one group of statesPennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Iowawhile the township has more or less power, and there are town officials, there is no town meeting. In another group Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the two Dakotasthe town meeting reappears, though in a less primitive and less perfect form. In the states west of the Alleghanies each township covers an artificial area 6 m. square, and a separate quasi-municipal organization is usually provided for the villages which have grown up in many townships.

The county is to be found in every state of the Union, but its importance varies inversely with the position held in the system of local government by that smaller and older organism, the town. In New England the county was originally an aggregation of towns for judicial purposes, and in that part of the Union it is still in the main a judicial district. There is no general representative council or board, but judicial officers, a sheriff and a clerk, are elected in each county, and also a county treasurer and county commissioners. The latter have the management of county buildings, such as courthouses ar,d prisons, have power to lay out new main highways, to grant licences, and to apportion among the towns and cities the taxation necessary to meet county expenses. Besides these officials there are generally to be found in New England a county school superintendent and an overseer of roads. In the Southern states the county is the local administrative unit, and in addition to its original judicial and financial functions it has now also control over public schools, the care of the poor and the construction and mana,gement of roads. County government is generally vested in a board of county commissioners, elected (in almost every state) by the people, and in various officials also directly elected. In some Southern states some counties have been subdivided into school districts, each of which elects a school committee, and from this nucleus there may possibly develop something resembling the New England town. In those Middle and Western states where the town meeting is not found, the functions and officials of the county tend to resemble those existing in the Southern states, while even in those parts of the west where the town meeting is found the county remains more important than in New England. Thus in many of these states poor relief is a county and not a town charge. In most states county administration belongs to a small board of three commissioners elected for the county at large, but in New York, Michigan, lllinois and Wisconsin there is a larger board of supervisors elected by townships and cities within each county. Although local affairs do nut now enlist, even in New England, so large a measure of interest and public spirit as the town system used to evoke in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut in the thirties, still, broadly speaking, the rural local government of America may be deemed satisfactory. The administration is fairly cheap and fairly efficient, most so, on the whole, in the Northern and Western states, while jobbery and corruption are uncommon. The value of local self-government as a training for the duties of citizenship has been very great, and in many parts of the country, especially where the funds dealt with are small, elections are not fought and offices not distributed upon party lines.

§ 12.

The historical origin of American municipal government is to be found in certain boroughs which had been chartered in the colonial period, after the fashion of English boroughs. These American corporations had the usual English system of borough government, consisting of a mayor, aldermen and councilmen, who carried out the simple administrative and judicial functions needed br the then small communities. The basis for the government of each American city is still a charter, but since the Revolution these charters have been granted by the state legislatures, and are subject to constant change by statute. The charters of cities have shown the same process of increasing length and detailed regulation as the state constitutions; and in details there are many differences between different cities. In some states cities are now permitted to enact their own charters. (See American Commonwealth. chs. Llu.)

As a rule, one finds (I) a mayor, elected directly by the voters within the city, who is the head of the administration; (2) adminis- trative officers or boards, some directly elected by the city voters, others nominated by the mayor or chosen by the council; (3) a council or assembly, consisting sometimes of two, but more frequently of one chamber, elected directly by the city voters; and (4) judges, usually elected by the city voters, but sometimes appointed by the state.

The mayor is by far the most important official in the city government. He is elected usually for two years, but sometimes for one, three or four (in New York his term is now four years). He has almost everywhere a veto on all ordinances passed by the council, modelled on the veto of the Federal president and of a state governor. In many cities he appoints some or all of the heads of the administrative departments, usually with the approval of the council, but in some important cities the mayor has an absolute power of appointment. As the chief executive officer, he preserves the public peace. In practice he is often allowed to exert a certain discretion as to the enforcement of the laws, especially those providing for Sunday closing, and this discretion has sometimes become a source of mischief. He usually receives a considerable salary, varying with the size of the city.

The practical work of municipal administration is carried on by a number of departments, some under single heads, and some under boards or commissions. The number and classification of these departments vary widely in the different cities. The board of, education, which controls the public schools, is usually largely independent of the council, and in some important cities has an independent power of taxation. In Boston, St Louis, Baltimore, and some few other cities, the police board (or commissioner) is appointed by the governor because police matters had been mismanaged by the municipal authorities and occasionally allowed to become a means of extortion and a door to corruption.

The city councils pass local ordinances, vote appropriations, levy taxes and generally exert some control over appointments to administrative positions. The recent tendency has been, however, to decrease the powers of the council and to increase those of the mayor. In some cities the mayor has received an absolute power of appointment; the departments, especially the boards of health, have large ordinance-making powers; statutes passed by the state legislature determine (excepting the states where cities can make their own charters) the principal lines of municipal policy, and the real control over appropriations and taxes is occasionally found vested in a board of estimate, consisting of the mayor, comptroller (the chief financial officer), and a few other administrative officials. In New YOrk City, where the council had lost public confidence, and in some other places, the only important power still possessed by the council is that of granting franchises to street railways, gas companies and the like. In the smaller cities, however, the councils have retained a wider measure of authority. In 1902 the city of Galveston, in Texas, adopted a new form of municipal government by vesting all powers in a commission of five persons, elected by the citizens on a general ticket, one of whom is mayor and head of the commission, while each of the others has charge of a department of municipal administration. A similar plan, differing in some details, was subsequently introduced in the city of Des Moines, in Iowa; and the success which has attended this new departure in both cities has led to its adoption in many others, especially, but not exclusively,in the Western states. In 1910 more than seventy cities were so administered. Under it administration would appear to have become both more pure and more efficient. The functions of city government may be distributed into three groups: (a) Those which are delegated by the state out of its general coercive and administrative powers, including the police power and the granting of licences; (b) those which, though done under general laws, are properly matters of local charge and subject to local regulation, such as education and the relief of the poor; and (c) those which involve no questions of policy, but are of a purely business nature, such as the paving and cleansing of streets, the construction and maintenance of drains, the provision of water, &c.

It is here proper to advert to a remarkable extension of direct popular government which has in recent years been applied both to states and to cities. Several state InWailve, constitutions now contain provisions enabling a Referendum prescribed number (or proportion) of the voters in and Recall. a state or city to submit a proposition to all the registered voters of the state (or city) for their approval. If carried, it takes effect as a law. This is the Initiative. These constitutions also allow a prescribed number of voters to demand that a law passed by the state legislature, or an ordinance passed by the municipal authority, be submitted to all the voters for their approval. If rejected by them, it falls to the ground. This is the Referendum. Some cities also provide in their charters that an official, including the mayor or a member of the council, may be displaced from office if, at a special election held on the demand of a prescribed number of the city voters, he does not receive the largest number of votes cast. This is the Recall. All these three institutions are in operation in some Western states and are spreading to some of the Eastern cities. Their working is observed with lively interest, for they carry the principle of direct popular sovereignty to lengths unprecedented except in Switzerland. But it is not merely to the faith of the Western Americans in the people that their introduction is due. Quite as much must be ascribed to the want of faith in the legislatures of states and cities, which are deemed tao liable to be influenced by selfish corporations.

IV.-The Federal System.

§ 13.

§ 14.

The Constitution is a document of the first importance in the history of the world, because it has not only determined the course of events in the American Republic, but has also influenced, or become a model for, other constitutions, such as those of Switzerland (1848 and 1874), Canada (1867), Australia (1900), besides Mexico and the numerous republics of South and Central America. It was in substance a compromise effected between those who wished for a centralized government and those who desired to leave very wide powers to the component states; and many subsequent difficulties arose from the omission to settle certain, points, and from the somewhat vague language in which other points were referred to. Of these omissions and points left vague, some were inevitable, because an agreement could not have been reached, some were due to the impossibility of foreseeing what difficulties the future would bring with it. But they were, considering the conditions under which the instrument was framed, comparatively few, and the Constitution, when one regards it as a piece of drafting, deserves the admiration which it has received from nearly all American and most foreign critics. It is, on the whole, admirably clear, definite and concise, probably superior in point of technique to all the documents since framed on its model.

As respects substance, the Constitution, being enacted by and expressing the will of the people, who are the ultimate source of political power, is the supreme law of the land over the whole Union, entitled to prevail over all laws passed by Congress, the legislature which it creates, as well as over all >><< state constitutions and all state laws. It can be altered only by the people, in manner to be hereafter mentioned. It is a comparatively short document, and consists of seven articles, subdivided into sections. Art. I. deals with the Federal legislature, its structure and powers, and imposes certain restrictions upon the states. Art. II. provides for the election of an executive head, the president, and assigns certain powers and duties to him. Art. III. treats of the judicial power, defining its range and the mode of its exercise. Arts. IV., V. and VI. contain certain miscellaneous provisions, including those which regulate the mode of amendment. Two alternative methods of proposing amendments and also two of passing them are recognized. They may be proposed either by a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress, or by a convention called by Congress on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states. They may be passed either by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, or by conventions in three-fourths of the states. Congress has in every instance preferred the method of itself proposing amendments and the method of submitting them to the state legislatures for ratification.

The provisions of the Constitution, which is later in date than the creation of the original states, and presupposes the existence and activity of those communities, include two sets of matters, which must be considered separately-(a) the Federal system, i.e. the relations of the national government to the states; and (b) the structure of the national government itself.

§ 15.

In the determination and allotment of the rights and powers of the national government on one side and of the states on the other, a determination which is the foundation of every federal system, the American Constitution proceeds upon these principles:-

1. No powers are expressly allotted to the states, because the states are contemplated as continuing to enjoy those preexisting powers which they have by their own right, and not as devolved upon them by the nation.

2. The powers allotted to the national government are those, and those only, which are required for the purposes of the collective life of the nation, i.e. (a) powers which relate to its action in the international sphere; and (b) powers which can be exercised within the Union more efficiently and more to the benefit of the people by one central government than by a number of separate governments.

3. All powers which are not expressly allotted to the national government are left to the states, unless specially forbidden to be exercised by the latter, i.e. powers not specifically referred to remain with the states, and if the national government wishes to claim any particular power, it must show affirmatively that that power has been granted to it by the Constitution. [This principle has been followed in the Constitution of Australia, but not in that of Canada.]

The powers given to the national government may be described as those which subserve purposes of wmmon national utility.¹ They are the following (see Const. art. I. § 8):-

To impose and collect taxes, which must be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate foreign and inter-state commerce;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization and a uniform bankruptcy law;

To coin money and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To secure exclusive rights for limited time by granting patents and copyrights;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Su reme Court;
To declare war, and regulate captures on knd and water;

To raise and maintain an army and a navy;

To provide for calting out the militia, for organizing and arming them, and for governing such part of them as may be in the actual service of the United States;

To exercise exclusive jurisdiction in the area selected for the seat of the national government and over spots acquired for militarv or naval purpo&s;

To make all laws necessary for carrying out the above powers (including laws punishing such offences as fall within Federal jurisdiction as being transgressions of Federal law);

To pass laws protecting citizens of the United States against injust or discriminating legislation by any state (amendments xiii. and xiv.).

§ 16.

The national government is, however, interdicted from using these powers in certain directions by the following prohibitions (art. 1. § 9, and first ten amendments): It may not suspend the writ of habeas corpus (except in time of war or public danger) or pass a bill of attainder or an ex post facto law; give any state a commercial preference over another; grant any title of nobility; establish or prohibit any religion, or impose any religious test as a condition of holding office; abridge the freedom of speaking or writing, or of public meeting, or of bearing arms; try any person for certain offences except on the presentment of a grand jury, or otherwise than by a jury of his state and district; decide any common law action where the value in dispute exceeds $20 except by a jury.

Although prima facie all powers not given to the national government remain with the states, the latter are debarred from some powers. No state may (art I. § 10, and amendments xiii., xiv. and xv.) make any treaty or alliance; coin money or make anything, save gold and silver coin, a legal tender; pass any bill of attainder or ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; have any but a republican form of government; grant any title of nobility; maintain slavery; abridge the privileges of any citizen of the United States, or deny to him the right of voting on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude; deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.

There are also certain powers which, though not absolutely withdrawn from the states, can be exercised only with the consent of the national legislature, viz. those of laying duties on exports or imports, keeping troops or war-ships in time of peace, entering into agreements with another state or foreign power, engaging in war unless invaded. And it may be added that there are certain powers which, since the do not lie within the province of the national government, and have been refused to the states, are said to be "reserved to the people." This expression means that it is only the people who can confer them and direct them to be exercised. Should the people wish to confer them, they would have to do so by way of amending the Constitution; and herein lies a remarkable difference between the American system on the one hand and those of some European countries on the other, which, although they have created rigid constitutions, do not expressly debar the legislature from using any and every power of government.

§ 17.

The aim of those who framed the Constitution was to avoid friction between the state governments and the Federal government by rendering their respective spheres of action as separate and distinct as possible. They saw that the less contact the less danger of collision. Their wish was to keep the two mechanisms as independent of each other as was compatible with the still higher need of subordinating, for national purposes, the state to the central government.

Nevertheless there are, as was unavoidable, certain points of contact between the two, the chief of which are the following:-

The Constitution requires each state government to direct the choice of, and accredit to the seat of the national government, two senators and so many reptesentatives as the state is (in respect of its population) entitled to send; to provide for the election, meeting and voting of presidential electors in each state, and to transmit their votes to the national capital; to organize and arm the militia forces of the state, which, when duly summoned by the national government for active service, are placed under the command of the president.

Besides these direct services imposed upon the states, each state is of course practically limited in its legislative and executive action by the power of the Federal judiciary (in the exercise of its function of interpreting the Constitution) to declare invalid laws passed or acts done inconsistent with the Federal Constitution, or with statutes passed by the Federal legislature within the scope of its authority under the Constitution.

So, too, when a subject, such as bankruptcy, is one on which a state may legislate in the absence of legislation by Congress, the state law is valid only so long as Congress does not legislate.

Finally, another point of contact exists in the right of a state to call upon the national government to protect it against invasion ,or domestic violence. This right has been several >><< times exerted. The national government is also bound to guarantee to every state a republican form of government. (See American Commonwealth, ch. xxviii.)

§ 18.

It is a fundamental principle of the American system that the national government possesses a direct and immediate authority over all its citizens, quite irrespective of their allegiance and duty to their own state. This authority corresponds to and is coextensive with the sphere of the Federal government. So far as the functions of that government extend, it acts upon the citizens not through the states, but as of its own right and by its own officers. Beyond that sphere its authority stops, and state authority, unless inhibited by the Federal Constitution, begins. But Federal authority is always entitled to prevail, as against a state legislature or officer, in all matters specifically allotted to it; and in these its power of direct action has two great advantages. It makes the citizen recognize his allegiance to the power which represents the unity of the nation; and it avoids the necessity of calling upon the state to enforce obedience to Federal authority, for a state might possibly be weak or dilatory, or even itself inclined to disobedience. Thus the indirect taxes of customs and excise which the Federal government imposes are levied by Federal custom-house collectors and excisemen, and the judgments of Federal courts are carried out by United States marshals distributed over the country. Nothing has done more to give cohesion to the American Federal system than the direct action of the Federal executive and judiciary.

note 74

¹ As to the scheme and working of the Federal government in its relation to the states, see American Commonwealth, chs. xxvii.-xxx.

V.-The Federal Government.

§ 19.

Following what was then deemed a fundamental maxim of political science, they divided the government into three departments, the legislative, the executive and the judicial, and sought to keep each of these as far as possible detached from and independent of the other two.

In 1787 all the states but three had bicameral legislatures-it was therefore natural that the new national government should follow this example, not to add that the division into two branches seems calculated to reduce the chances of reckless haste, and to increase the chances of finding wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. There was, however, another reason. Much controversy had raged over the conflicting principles of the equal representation of states and of representation on the basis of numbers, the larger states advocating the latter, the smaller states the former principle; and those who made themselves champions of the rights of the states professed to dread the tyrannical power which an assembly representing population might exert. The adoption of a bicameral system made it possible to give due recognition to both principles. One house, the Senate, contains the representatives of the states, ~every state sending two; the other, the House of Representatives, contains members elected on a basis of population. The two taken together are called Congress, and form the national legislature of the United States.

§ 20.

districts (the district system). The system of single-member districts now prevails almost everywhere. (Pennsylvania, however, has two representatives elected at large from the entire state, and there have been other similar instances.) The number of members in the house was originally 65, but it has steadily increased until, in. December 1910, there were 398. Besides the full members, each of the Territories is allowed to send a delegate, who has, however, no vote. The electoral franchise on which the house is elected is for each state the same as that by which, under the provisions of the state constitution, the members of the more numerous branch of the state legislature are chosen. Originally franchises varied much in different states, but for many years prior to 1890 what was practically manhood suffrage prevailed in nearly all of. the states. In. that year and since, not a few of the southern states have introduced restrictions which tend to exclude the bulk of the colored population (see ante, 5). It has already been observed that paupers and convicted criminals are excluded in many states, illiterates in some states. Every membet must reside in. the state which sends him, and custom, rarell~ broken, requires that he should reside even in the district which he represents. This habit restricts the field of choice and has operated unfavourably on the political life of the nation.

The House of Representatives is chosen for two years, the terms of all the members expiring together. The election of a new house takes place in November1 of the even years (i.e. 1910, 1912, &c.). Members enter on. their term of service in i the March following, but the first regular session. does not begin until the following December, or more than a year after the election. In fact, the old house holds its second regular session of three months after the new house has been elected. The rules are very complicated, and considerably limit the power of debate. A remedy against obstruction has been. found in. a system of closure called the previous question. Speeches are limited to one hour, and may be confined in committee of the whole house to five minutes. There is comparatively little good debating in the European sense of the term, and this is due partly to the great size of the hail, partly to the system of legislation by committees.

The organization of the house is entirely different from that of the British House of Commons or of most assemblies on the European continent. The ministers of the pre- The sideht do not sit, and since there are thus no officials Committee to undertake the leadership of the majority and System.

conduct business, legislative work is shaped and directed by a number of committees in. each house. Every bill when introduced is referred to some committee, and each bill comes up for consideration by the whole house on the report of the committee which has dealt with it. There were in 1910 62 regular or standing committees in the House of Representatives, each consisting of from 3 to 20 members. The most important committees are the following: ways and means, rules, elections, appropriations (with several committees for different branches of public expenditure), rivers and harbours, banking and currency, and foreign. affairs. Each committee has complete control of all bills referred to it, and nmn.eteen-twentieths of the bills introduced meet their death by the failure of the committee to take action on them. The bills taken up for action are debated and freely amended by the committees, and sometimes public hearings are held. The committees on the expenditure of the various government departments conduct minute investigations into the administration of each. A bill, as finally agreed on by a committee, is reported to the house, and when taken up for action the fate of most bills is decided by an hours discussion, opened by the member of the committee making the report. The - In June in Oregon; in Septerober in Maine ant1, Vermont.

more important measures, including taxation and appropriation bills, receive genuine discussion by the house at large, through special orders submitted by the committee on rules. Of the enormous number of bills brought in very few pass.

The unifying force of this complicated system of committee legislation is the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Like the Speaker of the British House of Commons, ~ he is primarily the presiding official, but the character of his office has become different from that of the impartial moderator of the British house. The American Speaker, who of course has a vote like other members, always belongs to the party which commands a majority, and is, indeed, virtually the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives. He resembles in some respects a European prime minister, and is second only to the president in political importance. His power is derived from three main sources. He appoints the members of nearly all committees, he chooses the chairman of each, and he directs the reference of bills to the various committees. Of the committee on rules, which practically determines the order in which important measures come before the house, he was formerly chairman, and he had the power of appointing the committee; but on the 19th of March 1910, the house passed a resolution which increased the membership of this committee from 5 to lo, excluded the Speaker, and transferred the appointments to the house. As presiding officer the Speaker exercises a right of discrimination between members rising to speak in debate, and can thus advance or retard the progress of a measure. He is elected by the House of Representatives at its first session for the whole Congress, and his election is regularly carried by a strict party vote.

§ 21.

There has long been a demand for an amendment to the Constitution which should vest the election of senators in the peoples of the several states, and more than one-half of the state legislatures have at one time or another passed resolutions in favor of the change. Within the last few years the object desired has been practically attained in a few states by provisions they have introduced for taking a popular vote as to the person whom the legislature ought to elect, the latter being expected to defer to the popular will.

The vice-president of the United States is ex officio presiding officer of the Senate, and this is his only active function in the government. He has, however, no vote in the Senate, except a casting vote when the numbers are equally divided, and his authority on questions of order is very limited.

The methods of procedure in the Senate are somewhat different from those in the House of Representatives. There is a similar committee system, but the Senate committees and their chairmen are chosen, not by the presiding officer, but by the Senate itself voting by ballot. Practically they are selected by caucuses of the majority and minority parties. The Senate rules have no provision for the closure of debate, nor any limitation on the length either of a debate or of a speech. For the consideration of some classes of business the Senate goes into executive or secret session, although what is done at this session usually leaks out, and finds its way to the public through the press.

The functions of the Senate fall into three classeslegislative, executive and judicial. In legislative matters its powers are identical with those of the House of Representatives, with the single restriction that bills for raising revenue must originate in the popular assembly. In practice, too, the Senate is at least as influential in legislation as the House. Disagreements, which are frequent, are usually settled in conference, and in these the Senate is apt to get the better of its antagonist. Serious deadlocks are of comparatively rare occurrence.

The executive functions of the Senate are: (I) To approve or disapprove the presidents nominations of Federal officers, including judges, ministers of state and ambassadors; (2) to approve, by a majority of two-thirds of those present, of treaties submitted by the president. Through the latter power the Senate secures a general control over foreign policy. Its approval is necessary to any important action, and in general the president finds it advisable to keep the leaders of the senatorial majority, and in particular the Senate committee on foreign relations, informed of pending negotiations. Foreign governments often complain of this power of the Senate, because it prevents them from being able to rely upon the carrying out of arrangments they have made with the executive; but as the president is not responsible to Congress and is irremovable (except by impeachment) during his term of office, there would be objections to giving him an. unqualified treaty-making authority. Through the power of confirming or rejecting the presidents nominations to office, the senators of the presidents party are able to influence a large amount of patronage. This sort of dual control works with less friction and delay than might have been expected, but better appointments would probably be secured if responsibility were more fully and more clearly fixed on the president alone, though there would no doubt be a risk that the president might make a serious error.

The judicial function of the Senate is to sit as a high court for the trial of persons impeached by the House of Representatives, a vote of two-thirds of those present being needed for conviction. There have been eight cases of impeachment. The most important was that of President Johnson, whose conviction failed by one vote35 to 19. Five of the other seven cases also ended in acquittal, one for want of jurisdiction,1 and one by the resignation of the official before the impeachment was preferred in the Senate. Two Federal judges were many years ago thus deprived of office, impeachment being the only process by which a Federal judge can be removed.

§ 22.

The scope of Congressional legislation has been indicated in the list given of the powers of the national government - 1 This case was that of the impeachment of a senator, and the failure to convict arose from the fact that some of the senators at the time held the now generally accepted opinion that a member of Congress is not subject to impeachment.

(see ante, 15). The most important measures are those dealing with the revenues and appropriations; and the procedure on these matters is slightly different from that on other bills. The secretary of the treasury sends annually to Congress a report containing a statement of the national income and expenditure and of the condition of the public debt, together with remarks on the system of taxation and suggestions for its improvement. He also sends what is called his annual letter, enclosing the estimates, framed by the various departments, of the sums needed for the public service of the United States during the coming year. With this the action of the executive ceases, and the matter passes into the hands of Congress.

Revenue bills for imposing or continuing the various customs duties and internal taxes are prepared by the House committee on ways and means, whose chairman is always a leading man in the majority party. The report presented by the secretary of the treasury has been referred to this committee, but the latter does not necessarily in any way regard that report. Neither does it proceed on estimates of the sums needed to maintain the public service, for, in the first place, it does not know what appropriations will be proposed by the spending committees; and in the second place, a primary object of the customs duties has been for many years past, not the raising of revenue, but the protection of American industries by subjecting foreign imports to a very high tariff. Regular appropriation bills down to 1883 were all passed by the House committee on appropriations, but in that year a new committeeon rivers and harboursreceived a large field of expenditure; and in 1886 certain other supply bills were referretl to sundry standing committees. These various appropriation committees start from, but are not restricted by and do not in fact adopt, the estimates of the secretary of the treasury. Large changes are made both by way of increasing and reducing his estimates.

The financial bills are discussed, as fully as the pressure of work permits, in committee of the whole House. Fresh items of appropriations are often added, and changes are made in revenue bills in the interest of particular purposes or localities. If the Senate is controlled by the same party as the House, it is likely to secure the acceptance of many of its amendments. The majorities in the two houses then labor together to satisfy what they believe to be the wishes of their party. Important legislation is almost impossible when one of the houses is controlled by one party and the other house by the other.

When finally adopted by the House, the bills go to the Senate and are forthwith referred to the committee on finance or to that on appropriations. The Senate committees amend freely both classes of bills, and further changes may be made by the Senate itself. When the bills go back to the House that body usually rejects the amendments: the Senate declines to recede, and a conference committee is appointed by which a compromise is arranged, usually hastily and in secret, often including entirely new items, and this compromise is accepted with little or no discussion., generally at the end of the session.

Thus it comes that comparatively slight use is made of the experience of the permanent financial officials in the framing of revenue-raising and appropriation bills. There is little relation between the amounts proposed to be spent in any one year and the amounts proposed to be raised, and there is a strong tendency to deplete the public treasury through special grants secured by individual members. These defects have long been felt, but Congress is not disposed either to admit officials to attend its sittings or to modify the methods to which it has grown accustomed. A tariff commission was, however, created by statute in 1909, the reports of which may have some influence on the framing of tariffs in future.

§ 23.

The Constitution djrects each state to choose a number of presidential electors equal to the number of its representatives in Congress (both senators and members of the House of Th Representatives). Members of Congress and holders of Federal offices are ineligible as electors. These electors (in 1908, 483) meet in each state on the second ege. Monday in January, and give their votes in writing for the president and vice-president. The votes are transmitted to Washington, and there opened by the president of the Senate, in the presence of both houses of Congress, and counted. A majority of the whole number of electors is necessary to elect. If no person have such majority, the president is chosen by the House of Representatives voting by states, and the vice-president is chosen by the Senate. This plan of creating an electoral college to select the president was expected to secure the choice by the best citizens of each state, in a tranquil and deliberate way, of the man whom they in their unfettered discretion should deem fittest to be the chief magistrate of the Union. In fact, however, the electors exercise no discretion, and are chosen under a pledge to vote for a particular candidate. Each party during the summer preceding a presidential election holds a huge party meeting, called a national convention, which nominates candidates for president and vice-president. (See post, 33.) Candidates for the office of elector are also nominated by party conventions, and the persons who are in each state chosen to be electorsthey are chosen by a strict party voteare expected to vote, and do in point of fact vote, for the presidential candidates named by their respective parties at the national conventions. The Constitution leaves the method of choosing electors to each state, but by universal custom they are now everywhere elected by popular vote, and all the electors for each state are voted for on a general ticket. In the early days the electors were chosen in many states by the legislatures, but by 1832 South Carolina was the only state retaining this method, and in 1868 she also dropped it. Some states also, for a time, chose electors by districts, but by 1832 all had adopted the general ticket system. Michigan, however, in the election of 1892 reverted to the district system, thereby dividing its electoral vote. Thus the election is virtually an electiov by states, and the struggle concentrates itself in the large states, where the great parties are often nearly equally divided, e.g. the party which carries New York by even a small majority gains all the 39 electoral votes of that state. The polling for electors takes place early in November on the same day over the whole union, and when the result is known the contest is over, because the subsequent meeting and voting of the electors is a mere matter of form. Nevertheless, the system here described, being an election by states, is not the same thing as a general popular vote over the union, for it sometimes happens that a person is chosen president who has received a minority of the popular vote cast.

The Constitution requires the president to be a native-born citizen of the United States, not under thirty-five years of age, and for fourteen years resident in the United States. There is no legal limitation to his re-eligibility any number of times; but tradition, dating from the refusal of George Washington to be rioniinated for a third term, has virtually established the rule that no person shall be president for more than two continuous terms, If the president dies, the vice-president steps into his place; and if the latter also dies in office, the succession passes to the secretary of state.f The president receives a salary of $75,000 a year, besides $25,000 a year for travelling expenses, and has an official residence called the Executive Mansion, or more familiarly the White House.

Functions of the President.These may be grouped into three classes: those which (I) relate to foreign affairs; (2) concern legislation; (3) relate to domestic administration.

The president appoints ambassadors and ministers to foreign countries, and receives those sent by foreign countries to the United States. He has, through his secretary of state, immediate direction of all negotiations with such countries, and an unfettered initiative in all foreign affairs. He does not, however, enjoy a free hand in finally determining the foreign policy of the government. Treaties require the approval of two-thirds of the Senate, and the foreign affairs committee of that body is usually kept informed of the negotiations which are being conducted by the executive. The power to declare war formally belongs to Congress; but the executive may, without an act of Congress, virtually engage in hostilities and thus bring about a state of war, as happened in 184546, when war broke out with Mexico.

As respects legislation, the position of the president is in marked contrast to that of the British crown. While nearly all important measures are brought into parliament by the ministers of the sovereign, and nominally under his instructions, the American president cannot introduce bills either directly or through his the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of war, the attorneygeneral, the postmaster-general, the secretary of the navy, the secretary of the interiorthis order to apply only to such officers as shall have been appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate. .. and such as are eligible to the office of president. .

and not under impeachment ministers. All that the Constitution permits him to do in this direction is to inform Congress of the state of the nation and to recommend the measures which he deems to be necessary. This latter function is discharged by written messages addressed by the president to Congress, the message sent at the beginning of each session being usually the most important; but the suggestions made in these messages do not necessarily or directly induce legislation, although it is open to him to submit a bill or have one drafted by a minister presented to Congress through a member.

More constantly effective is the presidents part in the last stage of legislation. His so-called veto-power permits him to return to Congress, within ten days after its passage, any bill of which he may disapprove, and, unless this bill re-passes both houses by a two-thirds vote, it does not become law. Most presidents have made use of the veto power sparingly. Jackson, however, as well as Tyler, Johnson and especially Cleveland, employed it pretty boldly. Most of Johnsons vetoes were promptly overruled by the large majority opposed to him in both houses, but the vetoes of all the other presidents have generally prevented the enactment of the bills of which they disapproved.

The domestic executive authority of the president in time of peace is small, because by far the larger part of law and administration belongs to the state and local governments, while the Federal administration is regulated by statutes which leave little discretion to the executive. The power of making appointments to the administrative service would invest him with a vast influence but for the constitutional requirement of securing the consent of the Senate to the more important appointments made. The president is given a free hand in choosing his cabinet ministers; but for most other appointments, whether or not they are by law in his sole gift, the senators belonging to the presidents party have practically controlled the selections for offices lying within their respective states, and a nomination made by the president against the will of the senator concerned will generally be disapproved by the Senate. The members of the presidents party in the House also demand a share in the bestowal of offices as a price for their co-operation in those matters wherein the executive may find it necessary to have legislative aid. Nevertheless, the distribution of offices under the so-called spoils system remains the most important ordinary function of the president, and the influence he exerts over Congress and legislation is due mainly to his patronage.

In time of war or of public disturbance, however, the domestic authority of the president expands rapidly. This was markedly the case during the Civil War. As commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and as charged with the faithful execution of all laws, he is likely to assume, and would indeed he expected to assume, all the powers which the emergency requires. In ordinary times the president may be almost compared to the managing clerk in a large business establishment, whose chief function is to select his subordinates, the policy of the concern being in the hands of the board of directors. But when foreign affairs reach a critical stage, or when disorders within the Union require Federal intervention, immense responsibility is then thrown on one who is both commander-inchief of the army and the head of the civil executive. In no European country is there any personage to whom the president can be said to correspond. He may have to exert more authority, even if he enjoys less dignity, than a European king. He has powers which are in ordinary times narrower than those of a European prime minister; but these powers are more secure, for instead of depending on the pleasure of a parliamentary majority, they run on to the end of his term. Although he is always elected as a party candidate, he generally receives, if he shows tact and dignity, abundant respect and deference from all citizens, and is able to exert influence beyond the strict limits of his legal power.

The only way of removing the, president from office is by impeachment, an institution borrowed from Great Britain, where it had not become obsolete at the time when the United States constitution was adopted. The House of Representatives may impeach the president. The Senate tries him, and a two-thirds majority is required for conviction. Andrew Johnson is the only president who has been impeached.

§ 24.

The final decision on all questions rest with the president, who is solely and personally responsible. Moreover, the members 01 the cabinet are excluded from Congress, and are entirely independent of that body, so that an American. cabinet has little to do in the way of devising parliamentary tactics, or of preparing bills, or of discussing problems of foreign policy. It is not a government, as Europeans understand the term, but a group of heads of departments, whom their chief, though he usually consults them separately, often finds it useful to bring together for a talk about current politics and the course proper for the administration to take in them, or in order to settle some administrative question which lies on the borderland between the provinces of two ministers.

The principal administrative departments are those already named, whose beads form the presidents cabinet. The most important are the state and treasury departments.

The former has the conduct of foreign affairs and Administrainterests, and directs the diplomatic service, but is live Depart. obliged to keep in touch with the Senate, because ments.

treaties require the consent of the latter. It also has charge of the great seal of the United States, keeps the archives, publishes the statutes of Congress and controls the consular service.

The two main functions of the treasury department are the administration of the government revenues and expenditures, and of the banking and currency laws. The secretary has, however, a smaller range of action than a finance minister in European countries, for, as he is excluded from Congress, he has nothing directly to do with the imposition of taxes, and very little with the appropriations for government expenditure.

The department of the interior is less important than in France or Italy, since the principal functions which there belong to it lie, in the United States, within the field of state powers. In the United States the principal matters in this department are the management of the public lands, the conduct of Indian affairs, the issue of patents, the administration of pension laws, of the national census and of the geological survey, and the collection of educational information.

The department of war controls the formerly very small, but now largely increased, army of the United States; and its corps of engineers execute the river and harbour improvements ordered by Congress. The navy department has charge of the dockyards and vessels of war; and the post office department directs the postal system, including the railway mail service. The department of agriculture includes the weather bureau, the bureau of animal industry and other bureaus which conduct investigations and experiments. The attorney-general is the legal adviser of the president, public prosecutor and standing counsel for the United States, and also has general oversight of the Federal judicial administration, especially of the prosecuting officers called district attorneys and of the executive court officers called marshals.

The department of commerce and labor controls the bureaus which deal with the mercantile marine, the lighthouse and lifesaving service, commercial statistics, immigration, and the coast and geodetic survey, and the census is also under its charge.

Two commissions not connected with any of the above departments deserve some notice. The inter-state commerce commission, established by statutein 1887, is a semi-judicial, semi-administrative board of five members, with limited powers of control over interstate railway transportation. The chief duty is to prevent discriminations in freight rates and secret rebates from the published list of charges. Its powers have been much extended by subsequent acts, especially that of 1910. The civil service commission, established in 1883, conducts competitive examinations for appointments to subordinafe positions under all of the administrative departments. Some 235,000 posts have now been placed under civil service rules and withdrawn from the category of spoils.

§ 25.

The Supreme Court is created by the Constitution, and consisted in 1910 of nine judges, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They hold office during good behaviour, i.e. are removable only by impeachment, thus having a tenure even more secure than that of English judges. The court sits at Washington from October to July in every year. The sessions of the court are held in the Capitol. A rule requiring the presence of six judges to pronounce a decision prevents the division of the court into two or more benches; and while this secures a thorough consideration of every case, it also retards the despatch of business. Every case is discussed twice by the whole body, once to ascertain the view of the majority, which is then directed to be set forth in a written opinion; then again when the written opinion, prepared by one of the judges, is submitted for criticism and adoption by the court as its judgment.

The other Federal courts have been created by Congress under a power in the Constitution to establish inferior courts. The circuit courts consist of twenty-nine circuit judges, acting iji nine judicial circuits, while to each circuit there is also allotted one of the justices of the Supreme Court. The judges of each circuit, acting with or without the justice of the Supreme Court for the circuit, constitute a circuit court of appeals, established to relieve the Supreme Court. Some cases may, however, be appealed to the Supreme Court from the circuit court of appeals, and others directly from the lower courts. The district courts are now eighty in number, each having usually a single justice, rarely two. There is also a special tribunal called the court of claims, which deals with the claims of private persons against the Federal government. It is not strictly a part of the general judicial system, but is a creation of Congress designed to relieve that body of a part of its own labors. A customs court of five judges was created by an act of 1909 for the hearing of cases relating to the tariff.

The jurisdiction of the Federal courts extends only to those cases in which the Constitution makes Federal law applicable. All other cases are left to the state courts, from which there is no appeal to the Federal courts, unless where some specific point arises which is affected by the Federal Constitution or a Federal law. The classes of cases dealt with by the Federal courts are as follows:

1. Cases in law and equity arising under the Constitution, the laws of the United States and treaties made under their authority; 2. Cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; 3. Cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; 4. Controversies to which the United States shall be a party; 5. Controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizens of another state, between citizens of different states, between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state or the citizens, thereof and foreign states, citizens or subjects (Const. art. iii. 2). Part of this jurisdiction has, however, been withdrawn by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution, which declares that the judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.

The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is original in cases affecting ambassadors, and wherever a state is a party; in other cases it is appellate. In some matters the jurisdiction of the Federal courts is exclusive; in others it is concurrent with that of the state courts.

As it frequently happens that cases come before state courts in which questions of Federal law arise, a provision has been made whereby due respect for the latter is secured by giving the party to a suit who relies upon Federal law, and whose contention is overruled by a state court, the right of having the suit removed to a Federal court. The Judiciary Act of 1789 (as amended by subsequent legislation) provides for the appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States of a final judgment or decree in any suit rendered in the highest court of a state in which a decision in the suit could be had where is drawn in question the validity of a treaty or statute for an authority exercised under the United States, and the decision is against their validity; or where is drawn in question the validity of a statute of, or an authority exercised under, any state, on the ground of their being repugnant to the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States, and the decision is in favor of their validity; or where any title, right, privilege or immunity is claimed under the Constitution, or any treaty or statute of, or commission held or authority exercised under the United States, and the decision is against the title, right, privilege or immunity specially set up or claimed by either party under the Constitution, treaty, statute, commission or authority. If the decision of the state court is in favor of the right claimed under Federal law or against the validity or applicability of the state law set up, there is no ground for appeal, because the applicability or authority of Federal law in the particular case could receive no further protection from a Federal court than has in fact been given by the state court.

The power exercised by the Supreme Court in declaring statutes of Congress or of state legislatures (or acts of the executive) to be invalid because inconsistent with the Federal Constitution, has been deemed by many Europeans a peculiar and striking feature of the American system. There is, however, nothing novel or mysterious about it. As the Federal Constitution, which emanates directly from the people, is the supreme law of the land everywhere, any statute passed by any lower authority (whether the Federal Congress or a state legislature) which contravenes the Constitution must necessarily be invalid in point of law, just as in. the United Kingdom a railway bye-law which contravened an act of parliament would be invalid. Now, the functions of judicial tribunals of all courts alike, whether Federal or state, whether superior or inferioris to interpret the law, and if any tribunal finds a congressional statute or state statute inconsistent with the Constitution, the tribunal is obliged to hold such statute invalid. A tribunal does this not because it has any right or power of its own in the matter, but because the people have, in enacting the Constitution as a supreme law, declared that all other laws inconsistent with it are ipso jure void. When a tribunal has ascertained that an inferior law is thus inconsistent, that inferior law is therewith, so far as inconsistent, to be deemed void. The tribunal does not enter any conflict with the legislature or executive. All it does is to declare that a conflict exists between two laws of different degrees of authority, whence it necessarily follows that the weaker law is extinct. This duty of interpretation belongs to all tribunals, but as constitutional cases are, if originating in a lower court, usually carried by appeal to the Supreme Court, men have grown accustomed to talk of the Supreme Court as in a special sense the guardian of the Constitution.

The Federal courts never deliver an opinion on any constitutional question unless or until that question is brought before them in the form of a lawsuit. A judgment of the Supreme Court is only a judgment on the particular case before it, and does not prevent a similar question being raised again in another lawsuit, though of course this seldom happens, because it may be assumed that the court will adhere to its former opinion. There have, however, been instances in which the court has virtually changed its view on a constitutional question, and it is understood to be entitled so to do.

§ 26.

with the tacit recognition of the courts and the people, through which the sphere of the national government has been enlarged. The purchase of Louisiana from France by President Jefferson is an instance. It may indeed be said that the Constitut ion as it now stands is the result of a long process of development; and that process is still going on. In 1901 the Supreme Court delivered several judgments in cases arising out of the annexation of Porto Rico, which handled, though they did not fully settle, divers points of novelty and of importance, and still more recently questions of great intricacy affecting the respective legislative rights of the Federal and the state governments have come before it.

§ 27.

It may be added that in. respect of one matter assigned by the Constitution to the states a momentous change has taken place since the enactment of the Constitution. This matter is the electoral franchise in Federal elections. In 1789 property qualifications were general, but now in all the northern and western states these have been long since abolished, and the electoral suffrage is practically manhood suffrage. In Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Washington universal adult suffrage prevails. Down till 1890 manhood suffrage had prevailed in all the Southern states also (as to some Southern states now see ante, 5). As the electoral suffrage for state legislature elections is also that for Federal elections (including the election of presidential electors), the working of the Federal Constitution has thus been affected without any change in the Constitution itself.

§ 28.

§ 29.

a. The legislature and the executive are independent and disjoin.ed. The executive does not depend upon the General legislature, but holds its powers by a direct commis- charaeterof sion from the people. No member of the execu- the Frame of tive sits in the legislature, nor can the legislature ~I~JCiJ~ eject any one from office save by impeachment.

Li. Both the legislature and the executive sit for fixed terms.

c. No method is provided for getting rid of deadlocks, either between the legislature and the executive or between the two branches of the legislature. Should action be needed which cannot be legally taken without the concurrence of these different authorities, and should they be unable to concur, the legal situation must remain in statu quo until by a new election the people have changed one or more of the conflicting authorities, and so brought them into harmony.

d. The judiciary holds a place of high importance, because it is the proper interpreter of the will of the people expressed in the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, which the people have enacted.

It will be noted that the structure of the Federal Government is less democratic than. that of the state governments. The only posts in the former conferred by popular election. are those of the president and the members of the legislature, and while the two houses are a check on each other, the president is a check upon both.

The defects which have been remarked in this system are, broadly speaking, the following: There is a danger that prompt action, needed in. the interests of the nation, may fail to be taken owing to a deadlock between legislature and executive, or between the two branches of the legislature. There may be a difficulty in fixing responsibility upon any person, or small group of persons; because cases may arise in which the executive, being unable to act without the concurrence of the legislature, can hardly be blamed for failing to act, while yet it is unable to relieve itself by resigning; while on. the other hand the legislaturewhich consists of two bodies, each of them numerous, and in neither of which are there recognized leaderscontains no person on whom responsibility can be fixed. On the other hand, the characteristic merits of the system may be summed up as consisting in the safeguards it provides against the undue predominance of any one power or person in the government, and therewith against any risk there may be that the president should become a despot, and in the full opportunities it secures for the due consideration of all important measures. It is a system amply provided with checks and balances; it recognizes and enforces the principle of popular sovereignty, while subjecting that principle to many checks in practice; and it is well calculated to maintain unchanged the relation of its component parts each to the other. There has been, in point of fact, no permanent shifting of weight or strength from any one organ of government to any other. At some particular epoch the president has seemed to be gaining upon Congress, at other epochs Congress has seemed to be gaining upon the president. Much depends on the personal qualities of the president and his power of inspiring the people with trust in his courage and his uprightness. When he possesses that power he may overawe Congress, and make them follow, even reluctantly, in the path he points out. Now and then the Senate has been more influential than the House, now and then it has fallen back, at least so far as the confidence of the people in it is concerned. The part played by the judiciary has at some moments been of special importance, while at others it has been little noticed. But, taking the history of the republic as a whole, that equilibrium between the several organs of the government which the Constitution was intended to secure has been substantially maintained.

VI.-The Party System.

§ 30.

stant influence upon their minds. Party organizations have in the United States a wide range of action, for they exist to accomplish five purposes. Three of these are pursued in other countries also. These three are: first, to influence governmental~ policy; secondly, to form opinion; and thirdly, to win elections. But the two others are almost (if now not quite) peculiar to the United States, viz, to select candidates for office and to procure places of emolument for party workers. The selecting by a party of its candidates, instead of allowing candidates to start on their own account, is a universal practice in the United States, and rests upon the notion. that the supreme authority and incessant activity of the people must extend not only to the choice of officials by vote, but even to the selection of those for whom votes shall be cast. So the practice of securing places for persons who have served the party, in however humble a capacity, has sprung from the maxim that in the strife of politics the spoils belong to the victors, and has furnished a motive of incomparable and ever-present activity ever since the administration (1829-1837) of President Andrew Jackson. It is chiefly through these two practices that the party organizations have grown so powerful, and have been developed into an extremely complicated system of machinery, firm yet flexible, delicate yet quickly set up, and capable of working efficiently in the newest and roughest communities.

§ 31.

The Democratic party began to form for itself a regular organization in the presidency (1829-1837) of Andrew Jackson, and the process seems to have been first seriously undertaken in New York state. The Whigs did the same; and when the Republicans organized themselves, shortly after the fall of the Whigs, they created a party machinery on lines resembling those which their predecessors had struck out. The establishment of the system in its general form may be dated from before the Civil War, but it has since been perfected in its details.

§ 32.

The permanent organization consists of a system of committees, one for each of the more important election areas. There is a committee for every city, every county, and every congressional district, and in some states even for every township and every state legislature district. There is, of course, a committee for every state, and at the head of the whole stands .a national committee for the whole Union, whose special function it is to make arrangements for the conduct of party work at a presidential election. Thus the country from ocean to ocean is covered by a network of committees1 each having a sphere of action corresponding to some election area, whether a Federal area or a state area. Each committee is independent and responsible so far as regards the local work to be done in connection with the election in its own area, but is subordinate to the party committees above it as respects work, to be done in its own locality for the general purposes of the party. The ordinary duties of these committees are to raise and spend money for electioneering and otherwise in the interests of the party, to organize meetings, to look after the press, to attend to the admission of immigrants or new-comers as voters; and generally to attract and enrol recruits in the party forces. At election times they also direct and superintend the work of bringing up voters to the polls and of watching the taking and counting of the votes; but in this work they are often aided or superseded by specially appointed temporary bodies called campaign committees, These party committees are permanent, and though the membership is renewed every year, the same men usually continue to serve. The chairman in particular is generally reappointed, and is often, in a populous area, a person of great and perhaps autocratic power, who has large funds at his disposal and a regular army of workers under his orders.

The other and parallel branch of the party organization consists of the bodies whose function it is to nominate party candidates for elective posts, whether legislative or Pa,aty Noni. executive. (It must be remembered that many mating executive state, county and city officers are chosen Conven.. by direct popular vote.) These bodies are meetings tions. of the members of the party resident in each election area. In the smallest areas, such as the township or city ward, the meeting is composed of all the recognized members of the party who are entitled to vote, and it is then called a primary. In the larger election areas, such as a county or city, the number of voters who would be entitled to be present renders it impossible to admit all, so the nominating meetings in these areas are composed of delegates elected in the various primaries included in the area, and the meeting is called a nominating convention. This is the rule, but in some parts of the South and West nominations for members of the state legislature and county officials, and even for members of Congress, are made by primary assemblies meeting over the entire area, which all the party voters are entitled to attend. Where candidates are to be nominated for a state election, the number of delegates from primaries would be too large, so the state nominating convention is composed of delegates chosen at representative conventions held in. smaller areas.

Every registered voter belonging to the party in the local election area for which party candidates are to be nominated is presumably entitled to vote in the primary. In rural districts little difficulty arises, because it is known what citizens belong to each party; but in cities, and especially in large cities, where men do not know their neighbors by sight, it becomes necessary to have regular lists of the party voters entitled to attend a primary; and these lists are either prepared and kept by the local party committee, or are settled by the votes of the persons previously on the party rolls. The composition of these lists is of course a serious matter, because the primary is the foundation of the whole party edifice. Accordingly, those who control the local organizations usually take pains to keep on the lists all the voters whom they can trust, and are apt to keep off those whom they think likely to show a dangerous independence. By their constant activity ~n this direction, and by their influence over the pliable members of the party, they are generally able to have a primary subservient to their will, which is ready to nominate those whom they may suggest as suitable candidates, and to choose as delegates to the conventions persons on whom they can rely. In this way a few leaders may sometimes be able to obtain control of the nominating machinery of a city, or even of a state, for the local committees usually obey instructions received from the committees above them. (See, as to the details of party machinery, American Commonwealth, chs. lix.-lxiv., M. Ostrogorski on Democracy in England and America, and Professor Jesse Macy on Party Organizalion and Machinery, 1904.)

The great importance of these nominating bodies lies not only in the fact that there are an enormous number of state, county and city offices (including judicial offices) filled by direct popular election, but also in the fact that in the United States a candidate has scarcely any chance of being elected unless he is regularly nominated by his party, that is to say, by the recognised primary or convention. To control the primary or the convention (as the case may be) of the party which is strongest in any given area is therefore, in ninetynine cases out of a hundred, to control the election itself, so far as the party is concerned, and in many places one party has a permanent majority.

As the desire to dominate primaries was found to lead to many abuses, both in the way of manipulating the lists of party voters and in the unfair management of the primary meetings themselves, a movement was started for reforming the system, which, beginning soon after 1890, gathered so much support that now in the large majority of the states laws have been enacted for regulating the proceedings at primary nomination meetings. These laws vary greatly in their details from state to state, but they all aim at enabling the voters to exercise a free and unfettered voice in the selection of their candidates, and they have created a regular system of elections of candidates preliminary to the election of office-holders from among the candidates. In most states the voter is required, when he obtains his ballot at the primary election, to declare to which party he belongs, but sometimes the primary is open and he may vote for any one of the persons who are put forward as desiring to be selected as candidates. The laws usually contain provisions punishing fraud or bribery practised at a primary, similar to those which apply to the subsequent elections to office. Although political parties were originally mere private organizations, little objection seems to have been felt to giving them statutory recognition and placing the proceedings at them under full official control.

§ 33.

When the national convention has been duly organized by the appointment of committees and of a chairman, its first business is to discuss and adopt a series of resolutions (prepared by the committee on resolutions, but subject to amendment by the convention. as a whole), which, taken together, embody the views, programme and policy of the party, and constitute what is called its platform for the ensuing election. This declaration of principles and plans is sometimes of importance, not only as an appeal to the people in respect of the past services and merits of the party, but as pledging them to the measures they are to introduce and push forward if they win the election. It then proceeds to receive the nomination of various aspirants to the position of party candidate for the presidency. The roll of states is called alphabetically, and each state, as reached in the roll, is entitled to present a candidate. Thereafter a vote is taken between the several aspirants. The -roll of states is again called, and the chairman of each state delegation announces the vote of the state. In Democratic conventions a state delegation, when instructed by the state convention to cast its whole vote solid for the particular aspirant favored by the majority of the delegation, must do so (this is called the unit rule); in the conventions of the other parties individual delegates may vote as they please. If one aspirant has obtained on the first roll-call an absolute majority of the whole number of delegates votingor, in Democratic conventions, a majority of two-thirds of those votinghe is held to have been duly chosen, and the choice is then made unanimous. If, however, no one obtains the requisite majority, the roll is again called until some one competitor secures the requisite number of votes. Sometimes one or two votings are sufficient, but sometimes the process has to be repeated many timesit may even continue for several daysbefore a result is reached. Where this happens there is much room for the display of tactical skill by the party managers in persuading delegates who favor one of the less prominent aspirants to transfer their votes to the person who seems most likely to unite the party.

When one aspirant has been duly selected as the party candidate for the presidency, the convention proceeds to choose in the same way a person to be candidate for the vicepresidency. This is a much simpler matter, because the post is much less sought after, and it is usually despatched with ease and promptitude. The two nominees are then deemed to be the candidates of the whole party, entitled to the support, at the ensuing election, of the party organizations and of all sound party men throughout the Union, and the convention thereupon dissolves.

§ 34.

§ 35.

Bibliography.

The chief source for each state is the Revised Statutes, General Laws or Code, including the Constitution. There are two official compilations of the State Constitutions, one edited by B. P. Poore (2 vols., Washington, 1877) and one edited by F. N. Thorpe (7 vols., ibid., 1909). T. M. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations which rest upon the Legislative Power of the States of the A merican Union (6th ad., Boston, 1890) is one of the most useful secondary works. In Handbooks of American Government, edited by L. B. Evans, there is a study of the government of New York by W. C. Morey (New York, 1902), of Ohio by W. I-I. Siebert (1904), of Illinois by E. B. Greene (1904), of Maine by William MacDonald (1902), of Michigan by W. W. Cook (1905), of Minnesota by F. L. McVey (1901) and of Indiana by E. W. Kemp (1904). See also Lincoln Steffens, The Struggle for Self-Government; being an attempt to trace American Political Corruption to its Sources in Six States of the United States (New York, 1906). The American Political Science Review (Baltimore, 1907 sqq.) is especially useful for a comparative study of the state governments. For a study of the branches of government, Federal as well as state, see \V. W. Willoughby, The American Constitutional System (New York, 1904); Emlin McClain, Constitutional Law in the United States (ibid., ioo5); P. S. Reinsch, American Legislatures and Legislative Methods (ibid., 1907); J. H. Finley and J. F. Sanderson, The American Executive and Executive Methods (ibid., 1908); W. F. Willoughby, Territories and Dependencies (ibid., 1905) and S. E. Baldwin, The American Judiciary (ibid., 1905). Local Government: The sources are the state constitutions, state laws and town and county reports and records. The best secondary works are J. A. Fairlies Local Government in Towns, Counties and Villages (New York, 1906); and G. E. Howards Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of the United States (Baltimore, 1889) is of use, although the authors theories, are questionable. Government of Cities: The principal source is the city charters. For a digest of some of these see Digest of City Charters, together with other Statutory and Constitutional Provisions relating to Cities, prepared for the Chicago Charter Convention by A. R. Hatton (Chicago, 1906). There is much useful material in Municipal Affairs, 6 vols., and vol. v. contains A Bibliography of Municipal Problems and City Conditions. See also Proceedings of the National Conference for Good City Government (Philadelphia, 1894). Among numerous good secondary works are F. J. Goodnows Municipal Government (New York, 1909), City Government in the United States (ibid., 1904); Municipal Problems (ibid., 1897) and Municipal Home Rule (ibid., 1895); J. A. Fairlie, Municipal Administration (ibid., I90I); D. F. Wilcox, The American City: A Problem -in Democracy (ibid., 1904); and Great Cities in America: Their Problems and Government (ibid., 1910); H, E. Dem~ng, The Government of American Cities (ibid., 1~o~); Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (ibid., 1904); F. C. Howe, The City, the Hope of Democracy (ibid., 1905); and Charles Zueblin, American Municipal Progress (ibid., 1902). The Federal Government: For a study of the constitution see the Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States of America,1786-1870(5 vols., Washington, 1894-1905); Jonathan Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, &c. (2nd ed., 5 vols., Philadelphia, 1888); The Federalist, edited by H. C. Lodge (New York, 1889) or by P. L. Ford (ibid., 1898); Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, Published during its Discussion by the People (Brooklyn, I888), edited by P. L. Ford; Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (5th ad., 2 vols., Boston, 1891); James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (14th ad., 4 vols., ibid.. 1896);

J. I. C. Flare, American Constitutional Law, (2 vols., ibid., 1889); E. G. Elliott, Biographical Story of the Constitution (New York, 1910); Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (ibid., rev. ed., 1908); and especially important are the decision of the United States Supreme Court, known by the name of the reporter until 1874A. J. Dallas (1790-1800), Wm. Cranch (1801-1815), Henry Wheaton (1816-1827), Richard Peters (1828-1842), B. C. Howard (1843-1860), J. S. Black (1861-1862) and J. W. Wallace (1863f 874)and published under the title of the United States Reports after 1874. The best collection of Cases on Constitutional Law is by J. B. Thayer (2 vols., Cambridge, 1894-1895). The United States Statutes at Large are published in 35 vols. (Boston and Washington, 1845I9o9), and there is an annotated edition of the Federal Statutes compiled under the supervision of W. M. McKinney and C. C. Moore (New York, 1903-1909). J.D.Richardson compiled the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789 1897 (10 vols., Washington, 1896-1899). The best account of the presidential elections is in Edward Stanwoods History of the Presidency (Boston, 1898). For the executive departments the Annual Reports of each and numerous executive documents are useful. Some of the more important secondary works on special topics are:

Mary P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (New York, new ed., 1910); H. B. Fuller, Speakers of the House (Boston, 1909); J. A. Fairlie, National Administration of the United States (New York, 1907); L. G. McConachie, Congressional Committees: a Study of the Origins and Development of our National and Local Legislative Methods (ibid., 1898); Woodrow Wilson, Col1gres.,ional Governinent: a Study in American Politics (15th ed., Boston, 1900); Jesse Macy, Party Organization and Machinery (New York, 1904); M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (ibid., 2 vols., 1902; the second volume, revised and enlarged, was published in 1910 as Democracy and the Party System in the United States); J. A. Woodburn, American Politics: Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States (ibid., 1903); Lucy M. Salmon, History of the Appointing Power of the President, in American Historical Association Papers, vol. i. (ibid., 1886); C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and Patronage (ibid., 1905); W. W. Willoughby, The Supreme Court of the United States: its History and Influence in our Constitutional System, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, vol. vii. (Baltimore, 1890); F. A. Cleveland, Growth of Democracy in the United States: or the Evolution of Popular Cooperation in Government and its Results (Chicago, 1898); J. A. Smith, The Spirit of American Government: A Study of the Constitution, its Origin, Influence and Relation to Democracy (New York, 1907); Albert Shaw, Political Problems in American Development (New York, (1907); D. R. Dewey, National Problems (ibid., 1907).

Finance

The taxing powers within the United States are as follows:-

a. The national government, whose revenue powers are only limited by: (a) the provision of the constitution which prohibits all duties on exports, and (b) the provision that all direct taxes must be levied in proportion to populationa provision which deprives direct taxes of nearly all their efficiency for revenue purposes.

b. The several states, whose revenue powers are only limited by: (a) restrictions in their respective constitutions, and (b) the general principle that those powers must not be exercised in such a way as to contravene laws of the United States, or to destroy sources of the national revenue, although a state may prohibit within its borders the sale of liquors, from taxes upon which the Unit~d States Treasury derives a considerable part of its receipts.

c. Within each state powers of taxation, to a determinate or to an indeterminate extent, as the case may be, are by the constitution and laws of the state conferred, almost always for strictly defined purposes, (1) upon counties, (2) upon cities, boroughs and incorporate villages, and (3) in nearly all the states, though in widely varying degrees, upon the primary geographical divisions of counties, such as the town of New England and the township of the Middle and Western states.

The revenues of the several states, and of minor governmental areas within them, are mainly derived from a general property tax, laid directly upon realty and personalty. More than 82% of the tax revenues of state and local governments were thus derived in 1902. The average real rate of assessment was $0.72 in 1880 and $074 in 1902. The details of this system, which has no other refuge in the civilized world save partially in Switzerland, are remarkable for a most extraordinary diversity in the manner of collection, which practically becomes, however, self-assessment, and an equally extraordinary and general evidence of the crudity and inadequacy of the system, which has been the target of state tax reports throughout the Union for half a century. Nevertheless,only recently have other sources of revenue been largely developed, and the general property tax to a degree abandoned. Thus an inheritance tax was first adopted by Pennsylvania in 1826, yet sixty years later only two states were taxing collateral inheritances. In 1907 there were 34 such, and 19 of these were taxing direct inheritances as well. This is a modern democratic tax, and there are similar tendencies in other taxes. Business taxes are fast increasing, and many special property taxes, these two classes yielding in 1902 7.24% of state and local revenues. The taxation of corporations is recent and rapidly increasing. The same is true of habitation taxes. A beginning has been made with income taxes. Finally, the strain upon municipal finances incident to a realization of civic improvements has called attention to intangible wealth: street railways are no longer taxed as scrap iron but as working systems, with due attention to their franchises; and there is a beginning of the doctrine that the increase in value of unimproved realty constitutes income that should be taxed. The same conditions have made of importance general theories, such as the single tax theory of Henry George, for taxing landed values. All these tendencies, although strongest in municipal finances, are general.

Restrictions upon the taxing power, and unwise classifications of property for taxation purposes, embodied without good understanding in state constitutions, have been a primary obstacle to the development of sound systems of taxation in the several states. A lack of interstate cumity, and double taxation of certain classes of property, have also offered difficulties. The progress toward better conditions has, however, been in late years rapid.

A similar restriction placed by the Constitution (art. I, 2) upon the power of the Federal government to lay direct taxes has been interpreted by the Supreme Court, by a bare majority, in such a way as to make very difficult, if not impossible, the imposition of an income tax (although, it may be added, such taxes had been unanimously held constitutional by the court in earlier decisions, which rested in turn upon interpretations of the constitutional provision just referred to given by the court when it counted among its members justices who had been members of the convention that framed the constitution).

The entire Federal system is the result, partly of constitutional provisions, partly of experience. The Federal authority naturally resorted first to customs duties upon foreign commerce, because in this field it had exclusive authority. It adopted next excise duties on articles produced or consumed within the country, notably liquors and tobacco. These two species of indirect taxes have from the beginning been the main sources of national revenue. At three periods, namely 1800-1802,1814-1817and 1863-1871, direct taxes have contributed considerable amounts to the revenue. These taxes included in the last periodthat of the Civil Warincome and legacy taxes, taxes on commercial transactions, and taxes on persons and property. At times also the proceeds of the sales of public lands have formed an important element of the receipts of government, although it has been the accepted policy to sell such lands to actual settlers at rates so low as to be inconsistent with the object or attainment (relatively) of revenue. Indeed, under the homestead law, large portions of the public domain have been given away to settlers (see Homestead and Exemption Laws), while even larger amounts have been alienated in aid of schools, public improvements, &c., so that the portion sold has not been a third of the total amount alienated. It is possible, however, that the growing consciousness of the necessity of conserving the national resources may lead to a much greater income in the future from the small amounts still remaining in the hands of the national government. In 1908 there still remained unappropriated and unsurveyed, according to the General Land Office, 754,895,296 acres. Of these, 387,000,000 acres were still open to entry, but most of this vast extent consisted, in the opinion of the National Conservation Commission of 1908, of lands either arid or otherwise unsuited for settlement. There were also, in July 1908, about 235,000,000 acres of national forests~ parks and other reservations for public use.

Customs duties have been found to be in general the most cheaply collected, the least conspicuous, and least annoying of all taxes. They have, however, never been a stable source of revenue, even during periods when the tariff was constant; and compared with th steady returns shown by the selected articles of the British tariff list this instability has been most extraordinary. Very often their income has been far above the amount needed for all disbursements of the government. In times of war they have of course fallen to a minimum. Thus, in the period 1791 to 1811 their ratio to total government expenditure ranged from 41.6 to 189.6%; during the years 1812-1817, from 17.2 in 1814, when war finances reached their weakest point, to 131 ~4% in 1817, showing how rapid was their response under the return of peace; in the period1817-1859from 29-9% in the crisis year of 1837 to 158.9%; in the period1860-1869from 6.5% in 1865, when the governments bonds fell in price to $50.93 per hundred and the war policy of loans was most desperate, tO 84.1%; in the years 1870I 893 from 5f.4 to 85%; and, finally, in the years 1893f 909, from 36.9% (in 1898) to 52.7%.

Of the total imports of 1909 47.4%, of a value of $699,799,771, entered duty free. More than half of these were crude materials for manufactures. The total imports per capita and the duty collected upon them per capita have been as follows since f 885, taking every fifth year: f885$IO32 and $3.17; I89o$I2~35 and $362; I895$fo61 and $2.17; I900$fo88 and $3.01; 19o5$1308 and $3.f1~ 19o8$1357 and $3.24.

The attempts of the Federalist party to create a system of internal taxation was a leading cause of its downfall. During the years in which it was in power little more than a tenth of the national revenue ~as derived from excises, yet they became a national political issue, and the Whisky Rebellion shows how little they were fitted to the nation at that time. The excise system disappeared with the incoming of the Democratic party in I 801. As a temporary necessity such taxes were again resorted to during the war of 1812, and again during the Civil War. In the latter period the excise proved of great richness, and quickly responsive in its returns; whereas the Customs were inelastic so long as the war continued. After the war a system of internal revenue was therefore continued.

Of recent years the growing stringency of both national and local finances by enormously increased disbursements has made important the question of the relation of national with state and local taxation. The customs revenue, in its form of high protection, has always had against it a strong free trade sentiment, generally unorganized, and this seems to be growing. The internal revenue is affected by the remarkable spread of the prohibition movement. A considerable and growing public sentiment in favor of the use of the taxing power for the regulation of wealth taken from society demands the introduction into the Federal system of income and inheritance taxes. The lastinasmuch as an income tax that i~ constitutional can perhaps not be framedis the only promising source that can give the addition to the Federal revenues that must be needed in case the customs or the excise revenues are reduced.

From 1860 to 1870 the population increased 22.6%, and the net ordinary expenditures of government, not including payments on the national debt, rose 173%; from 1870 to 1900 the corresponding figures (using the official estimated population) were 129% and 408%. The aggregate net ordinary receipts into the United States treasury, from I 791 to the 30th of June 1885, were as follows, in millions of dollars: from customs, 5642; from internal revenue, 3449; from direct taxes, 28; from public lands, 241; from miscellaneous sources, 578; total, 9938. The corresponding figures for the years froni 1886 to the 30th of June 1909 were as follows, respectively:

5403; 4618; O~I42; 121; 969.

The expenditures of the government increased steadily per capita up to the opening of the Civil War. The ease with which money was acquired in the war period, the acquiescence of the people, and the influences of extravagance and corruption engendered by the war, opened, at the return of peace, a period of extravagant expenditure that has continued with progressive increase down to the present. A phenomenal growth of both customs and excise revenue has made such expenditures easy. From 1791 to 1886 the aggregate net ordinary expenditures of the governmentthese expenditures being exclusive of payments on account of principal and interest of the public debtwere as follows, in millions of dollars: for the army, 4563; navy, 1106; military pensions, ~oo; miscellaneous, 2168; total 8737. The corresponding figures for the period 1887 (June 30)

to 1908 (June 30) were: 2003; 1219; 2884; 2790; total 8896.

The average yearly ordinary receipts of the decade 1900-1909, distributed by source, was as follows: from customs, $280,728,741.30; from excise, $257,477,356.45; from miscellaneous sources, $48,736,721.89; total ordinary revenue, $586,942,919.64 or per capita; revenue from sale of Panama bonds, $8,730,959.48; from premiums exclusive of Panama bonds, $397,894.20. The average yearly disbursements during the decade, distributed according to object, were as Tollows: for civil list and miscellaneous objects, $143,697,123.09; army, $130,416,902.62; navy, $96,722,000.90; military pensions, $144,856,529.16; Indians, $12,966,563.00; on account of debt, $25,632,072.60; total, $586,942,920.

In 1909 the ordinary receipts were $637,773,165, or $7.17 per capita; and the ordinary disbursements $670,507,889, or $754 per capita. The revenues of all the states, counties, cities and other local governments, plus those of the national government, aggregated in 1879 only $584,980,614.

Since 1870 the national census office has determined several times the aggregate indebtedness of the national, state and other local governments. The results are stated below, for 1870 and 1902, in round millions of dollars. Sinking funds are deducted.

* Included in 1870 in the preceding category.

The national government set out in 1790 with a revolutionary debt of about 75 millions of dollars. This debt continued, slightly increased but without any very important change, until 18o6, when a reduction began, continuing until 1812, when the debt was about 45 millions. The then ensuing war with England carried the debt up to 127 millions in f816. This was reduced to 96 millions in 1819, to 84 millions in 1825 and to 24 millions in 1832, and in the three years following was extinguished. The crisis of 1837, and the financial difficulties ensuing, created indebtedness, fluctuating in amount, which at the beginning of the war with Mexico was about 16 millions. At the conclusion of peace the debt had risen to 63 millions, near which point it remained until about 1852, from which time successive reductions brought it down to 28 millions in 1857. The financial crisis of that year caused an increase, which continued until the imminence of the Civil War, when it rose from 65 millions in 186o to 91 millions in 1861, to 514 in 1862, to 1120 in 1863, to 1816 in 1864, to 2681 in June, and its maximum (2846 millions) in August 1865. These figures are of gross indebtedness. The amount of the debt per capita of population, less cash in the treasury, was $15-63 in f800; it fell to $0.21 in 1840; rose again, and in 1865 reached a maximum of $7698; since when it had fallen by the 30th of June 1908 to $1076. The amount of the debt outstanding, minus gold and silver certificates and Treasury notes offset by cash in the Treasury, was $1,295,147,432.04 on the 1st of November 1909. Of this amount $913,317,490 was bearing interest.

Army

The regular army has always been small, and in time of war reliance has been upon volunteer forces (see Army). This was truer of the Civil War than of the War of Independence or the war with Mexico. In the last the numbers of militia and volunteers was but little more than twice, and in the second little more than equal to the number of regulars engaged; while in the Civil War the proportion was as one to twenty. Again, the number of regular troops engaged in the War of Independence (namely, 130,711 men enlisted) was greater, absolutely, than that engaged in the Civil War (126,587). Finally, it is interesting to note that in 1799, when war seemed probable with France, the army was organized with a force of 52,766 men, and during the second war with Great Britain the number was made 57,351 in 1813 and 62,674 in 1814; while the organized strength under the law of 1861, which was in force throughout the Civil War, was only 39,273 men. Small as the regular force has always been, its organization has been altered some two score of times in all.

The law for its organization in force in 1910 provides that the total enlisted strength shall not at any one time exceed ioo,ooo. The full active force of the present organization is as follows: 15 regiments of cavalry, with 765 officers and 13,155 enlisted men; 6 regiments of field artillery, with 236 officers and 5220 enlisted men; 30 regiments of infantry, with 1530 officers and 26,731 enlisted men; 3 battalions of engineers, with 2002 enlisted men, commanded by officers detailed from the corps of engineers; a special regiment of infantry for Porto Rico, with 31 officers and 576 enlisted men; a provisional force of 50 companies of native scouts in the Philippines, with 178 officers and 5731 enlisted men; staff men, service school detachments, the military academy at West Point, Indian scouts, &c, totalling 11,777 enlisted men. The total number of conirnissioned officers, staff and line, on the active list, is 4209 (including 219 first lieutenants of the medical reserve corps on active duty). The total enlisted strength, staff and line, is 78,782, exclusive of the hospital corps and the provisional force. (See also Navy and Navies.)

(F. S. P.)

History

A.-Beginnings of Self-government, 1578-1690.

B.-Development of Imperial Control, 1606-1760.

C.-The Struggle with the French, 1690-1760.

D.-The Colonial Revolt, 1763-1776.

E.-The Struggle to Maintain Independence, 1776-1783.

F.-The Struggle for National Government, 1783-1789.

G.-The Development of Democracy, 1789-1801.

H.-Democracy and Nationality, 1801-1829.

I.-Industrial Development and Sectional Divergence, 1829-1850.

J.-Tendencies to Disunion, 1850-1861.

K.-The Civil War, 1861-1865.

L.-History, 1865-1910.

Categories: U-UZZ