Glances Round the World.

The contempt with which Comte and many other philosophizers have treated the press which tells of the progress of mankind is an example for all good men to avoid. If we recognize the brotherhood of humanity, we cannot be indifferent to the passing lives, the joys and misfortunes of our brothers. Let pedants and philosophasters bury themselves in the writings of the dead, the good man prefers to know something of the living, and he finds it in the daily, weekly, and monthly press.

At our first outward glance, we are struck with the elevation of our standpoint. This great republic has attained an elevation in intelligence, wealth, and power, which enables it to look down on the lands that are overshadowed by the darkness of the past, and to anticipate the time when American pre-eminence shall be universally acknowledged. The condition already attained was eloquently stated by Chauncey M. Depew, in a recent address at New York, which gave a startling view of

AMERICAN PROGRESS.

“Last summer I stood upon the White Hill at Prague, in Bohemia, where the thirty years war began and ended. There is no more suggestive spot in Europe. It recalled a picture of the horrors and desolation of war unequalled in history. The contest began when the continent was dominated by the German empire, and ended with the magnificent creation of Charles V. broken into numberless petty principalities. Like the contest of the 17th century, ours was both a civil and religious war. But the country came out of the conflict not like the old German empire, but a mighty nation.

“Vapid sentimentalists and timid souls deprecate these annual reunions, fearing they may arouse old strifes and sectional animosities. But a war in which 500,000 men were killed, and 2,000,000 were wounded, in which states were devastated and money spent equal to twice England’s gigantic debt, has a meaning, a lesson and results which are to the people a liberal education. We cheerfully admit that the Confederate, equally with the Federal soldier, believed he was fighting for the right, and maintained his faith with a valor which fully sustained the reputation of Americans for courage and constancy. The best and bravest thinkers of the South gladly proclaim that the superb development which has been the outgrowth of their defeat is worth all its losses, its sacrifices, and humiliations.

“In 1860 the developed and assessable property of the United States was valued at $16,000,000,000. One-half of this enormous sum was destroyed by the civil war, and yet so prodigious has been the growth of wealth that the estimate now surpasses the imperial figure of $60,000,000,000, and the growth at the rate of nearly $7,000,000 a day. Our wealth approximates one-half of that of all Europe.

“These unparalleled results can be protected and continued only by the spirit of patriotism. This is a republic, and neither Mammon nor anarchy shall be king. The ranks of anarchy and riot number no Americans.”

We realize more fully the future magnitude of our country, when we look at the wealth of its soil and mines, already developed, and the magnitude of its still untouched resources. According to the estimates of Dr. A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, as laid before the American Statistical Association at their last meeting in the Boston Institute of Technology, the total territory of the United States contains 3,501,409 square miles. Of this entire amount Dr. Hart believes there remains unsold in the hands of the government, public lands amounting to 1,616,101 square miles, or 1,034,330,842 acres, which is almost one-half of our entire territory. Such a realm as we have could comfortably sustain between two and three thousand millions of inhabitants, while the entire population of the globe is at present less than fifteen hundred millions.

Our present population is over 60,000,000, and if it goes on duplicating every thirty years, it will be in 1917, 120,000,000; in 1947, 240,000,000; in 1977, 480,000,000; in 2,007, 960,000,000; in 2,037, 1,920,000,000; 2,067, 3,840,000,000. Thus in 180 years we shall have reached the limit where population, being over 1,000 to the square mile, must emigrate or be arrested by the difficulty of obtaining food, and the absolute necessity of reducing to a small number our stock of horses, cattle, and hogs, that human beings may have food,—vegetarian diet thus becoming a necessity, and bringing with it a great diminution of intemperance, and the crimes produced by the animal passions; for it is well established that vegetarianism restrains intemperance.

BRIGHT PROSPECTS.

Among the bright indications for the future are the increase of industrial education, the beginning of cooperation between capitalists and employes, the increasing intelligence and combined strength of the laboring class, which give assurance of good wages, and the subdivision of the land into smaller farms, which substitutes an independent yeomanry for the landlord and tenant relation. Thus, in the thirteen States, formerly slave-holding, the average size of farms in 1860 was 346 acres, but in 1880 it was 146.

We have vast mineral resources as yet untouched, of coal, iron, and other metals far exceeding all that has yet been reached in the old as well as new regions. The marbles of Inyo, California, are more than twice as strong as the best marbles of Italy.

“Astonishing as the statement may appear,” says the Denver News, “it is nevertheless a fact that there are here, within the borders of Colorado, the wealth in coal of two or even three States like Pennsylvania. For the vast trans-Missouri country, eastward, even to the valley of the Mississippi, Colorado is the great present and future storehouse of the fuel which the demands and necessities of its varied commercial and industrial life will require. Many generations hence, when Colorado shall have become an old State, when the frontier days shall have been forgotten, when gold and silver mining shall have ceased to be profitable, even then will the coal fields of Colorado be yielding their hidden treasures of fuel to supply the demand.”

We have no territory which sanitary science may not render a healthful home, and we have millions of acres of elevated territory, where the highest conditions of human health and happiness may be attained in connection with the highest spiritual development. But these regions are not on the Eastern coast, chilled by the icy currents from the North. “Westward the star of empire wends its way,” and the Pacific Coast is destined to witness the development of the highest civilization on the globe. Of the health and beauty of California all its residents can speak, but physicians can give decisive facts. Dr. King, of Banning, Cal., says, “Out here we scarcely know what storms are. All winter long my front yard has been green and beautiful—roses blooming in January, and callas in March. During three and a half years there have been but two cases of acute disease of the chest within six miles of my office. I do not know of any death having occurred in this village or vicinity from an acute disease, since I came here nearly four years ago.” What are the lauded climates of Italy and Greece compared to such a record as this?

DARK CLOUDS.

But what are the clouds that dim the brightness of our coming glory, and already overshadow us? The greatest of all is the curse of intemperance. Secretary Windom said, in his address at the Cooper Union meeting in New York, (May 25):

“I do not think I overstate the case when I say that the 200,000 saloons in this country have been instrumental in destroying more human life in the last five years than the 2,000,000 of armed men during the four years of the Rebellion. There is an irrepressible conflict upon us. This nation cannot endure half drunk and half sober any more than it could endure half slave and half free.”

Gov. St. John, late candidate for the presidency, said, in his New, York address:

“There are about 215,000 retail liquor houses in this nation. Allowing 20 feet to each, it gives us an unbroken liquor front of about 781 miles. Just think of it! Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of profanity and vulgarity. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of Sabbath-breaking. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of drunkard-making. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of filth, debauchery, anarchy, dynamite and bombs. [Applause]. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of political corruption; seven hundred and eighty-one miles of hot-beds for the propagation of counterfeiters, wife-beaters, gamblers, thieves, and murderers.

“In the High License City of Chicago, in the great Republican State of Illinois, there are, within five blocks of Halstead Street Mission, 325 saloons, 129 bawdy houses, 100 other houses of doubtful repute, theatres, museums and bad hotels, and only two places for the worship of Almighty God. (Cries of ‘Shame!’)”

St. John should have added that intemperance was the most powerful agency for the propagation of intellectual and moral idiocy in offspring.

The increase of insanity in spite of our defective systems of education is universally recognized. The New York Sun says:

“The very rapid increase of insanity in the United States during the last two or three decades continues to be the subject of much discussion among alienists, and all those who are concerned in public charities. That a prime cause of this alarming state of things is the shipment to our shores of the enfeebled and defective of other countries, is now beginning to be understood, and both our own State Board of Charities and the National Conference of Charities and Correction have called on Congress to protect our society against the introduction of these depraved specimens of humanity, who speedily become a charge on the public, or transmit their weakness to their posterity.

“The statistics of insanity show that, in general, the proportion of the insane is greatest in the older States, where the foreign population is most numerous, and it is least where the communities are new, as, for instance, in the pioneer counties of Wisconsin. The South, which has drawn comparatively little from immigration, suffers from insanity to a much less extent than New England and New York; and it is an established fact that the Negro race is much less liable to insanity than the white. The average of insanity in New England is 1 to every 359 of the population; in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 1 to every 424; while in the extreme Southern States the average is only 1 to 935.

“The West, like the South, is more free from insanity than the Northern seaboard States, the average being 1 to every 610 in the interior States, and 1 to 750 for the Northwestern States. In the far Western States and Territories it is only 1 out of 1,263, they being settled by a picked population, whose energy and soundness make them pioneers. It is note-worthy, however, that insanity is as frequent in the Pacific States as in New England, the explanation being that vice and indulgence prevail to an exceptional extent among the population drawn to the Pacific by the mania for gold. The average in Massachusetts, for instance, is 1 to 348; in California 1 to 345. It is also remarkable that the ratio of insanity decreases as we go west and south of New England, as these averages will show: New England, 1 to 359; Middle States, 1 to 424; interior States, 1 to 610; Northwestern States, 1 to 750; Southern States 1 to 629.

“The State where the proportion is highest is Vermont, 1 to 327; and New Hampshire comes next, with 1 to 329. We are at a loss to understand why insanity is so frequent in the District of Columbia, the average given being 1 to 189; but perhaps the large average in Vermont and New Hampshire may, in part, be due to the circumstance that those States receive the refuse of Canadian poor-houses, they having a much better organized system of charitable relief than the Dominion can boast of; and it is undeniable that some of the very worst of our immigration comes from over the Canadian border. That immigration, too, is now great, and there are factory towns in New England where the population is largely made up of French Canadians.”

There is a disturbing element in the influx of a foreign population reared under very unfavorable social conditions. In 1882 the immigration was 800,000. On a single day, in May last, nearly ten thousand arrived in Castle Garden. The steamships are overburdened, and the Cunard and White Star lines employ extra ships to accommodate the emigrants. Oppression in Ireland, and oppression all over Europe, drives the people into emigration; but a large portion of the emigration consists of a substantial population; yet we have enough of the turbulent and debased element to make a serious danger in our large cities, and a formidable competition with native American labor. The more laborers, and the fewer employers, the worse it is for labor. But perhaps American wealth and enterprise will find something satisfactory for all to do.

DEFECTIVE EDUCATION.

But there is nothing more unsatisfactory to the philanthropist than our meagre and inadequate system of education,—a system which aims to cram the memory with acquired knowledge, which does not develop original thought, and which does not elevate the moral nature. Such a system will never elevate society, will never repress any vice or crime, will never make the educated generation any happier for being educated. In short, it utterly fails in that which should be its chief end and aim, and simply leads society on as heretofore in the path of increasing intelligence, increasing misery, increasing crime, increasing insanity. What a commentary on our education and civilization is the common estimate that Europe, now, with the most complete educational system ever known, has 50,000 suicides a year. In this, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin take the lead.

(To be continued.)