For thirty years we spent, on an average, one million dollars a day in building railroads.—I want you to think what that means. All that money had to be dug out of the ground. It had to be made by raising something or manufacturing something. We did not get it by writing essays on finance, or discussing the silver question. It had to be made with the ax, the plow, the reaper, the mower; in every form of industry; all to produce these splendid results.
We have railroads enough now to make seven tracks around the great globe, and enough left for side tracks. That is what we have done here, in what the European nations are pleased to call "the new world."
I am telling you these things because you may not know them, and I did not know them myself until a few days ago. I am anxious to give away information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other people.
In 1860 the houses in the United States, the cabins on the frontier, the buildings in the cities, were worth six thousand million dollars. Now they are worth over twenty-two thousand million dollars. To talk about figures like these is enough to make a man dizzy.
In 1860 our animals of all kinds, including the Illinois deer—commonly called swine—the oxen and horses, and all others, were worth about one thousand million dollars; now they are worth about four thousand million dollars.
Are we not getting rich? Our national debt today is nothing. It is like a man who owes a cent and has a dollar.
Since 1860 we have been industrious. We have created two million five hundred thousand new farms. Since 1860 we have done a good deal of plowing; there have been a good many tired legs. I have been that way myself. Since 1860 we have put in cultivation two hundred million acres of land. Illinois, the best State in the Union, has thirty-five million acres of land, and yet, since 1860, we have put in cultivation enough land to make six States of the size of Illinois. That will give you some idea of the quantity of work we have done. I will admit I have not done much of it myself, but I am proud of it.
In 1860 we had four million five hundred and sixty-five thousand farmers in this country, whose land and implements were worth over sixteen thousand million dollars. The farmers of this country, on an average, are worth five thousand dollars, and the peasants of the Old World, who cultivate the soil, are not worth, on an average, ten dollars beyond the wants of the moment. The farmers of our country produce, on an average, about one million four hundred thousand dollars' worth of stuff a day.
What else? Have we in other directions kept pace with our physical development? Have we developed the mind? Have we endeavored to develop the brain? Have we endeavored to civilize the heart? I think we have.
We spend more for schools per head than any nation in the world. And the common school is the breath of life.