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.