The Story of Our Country / Every Child Can Read

by Unknown

Let us put the thought of war out of our minds, and go on to see what took place under the blessed reign of peace. The first thing of which I shall tell you was one of the most wonderful of all. You know how the telegraph wires spread over the country until they were many thousands of miles in length. In the next chapter you may read how the electric telegraph was invented. In the year after the war ended a still greater thing was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the ocean from Europe to America. This had been done before, but it had proved a failure. The new cable was a success, and since then a man in London has been able to talk with a man in New York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the click of the telegraph instrument.

The year after that a great addition was made to the United States. There was a large region in the north, known as Russian America, which Russia offered to sell to this country for seven million dollars. Many people talked about this as some of their forefathers had talked about the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson. They said that it was a land of ice and snow which Russia wanted to get rid of, and that it would be of no use to anybody. But it was bought for all that, and it has proven a very good bargain.

This country we now call Alaska. We get there all the sealskins from which the rich and warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most of the canned salmon, which some of you think very good food, come from Alaska. That country is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that is not all, for it is rich in gold. Millions of dollars worth of gold are obtained there every year. It has been something like California, whose gold was not found till Americans got there to dig.

These are not the only things that took place in the years after the war. Railroads were being built in all directions. East and west, north and south, they went, and travel became easier than it had been before. The greatest thing done in this way was the building of a railroad across the mountains and the plains to San Francisco, on the far Pacific coast, three thousand miles away from the Atlantic shores. Before that time men who wanted to go to California had to drag along over thousands of miles in slow wagon trains and spend weeks and months on the road. Now they could go there in less than a week. It was the longest railroad that the world had ever seen, up to that time.

While all this was going on, people were coming to this country in great multitudes, crossing the ocean to find new homes in our happy land. They did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in former times, but were brought here in swift steamships, that crossed the seas almost as fast as the iron horse crossed the land. All these new people went to work, some in the cities and some in the country, and they all helped to make our nation rich and powerful.

But you must not think that everything went well, and that we had no dark days. Every country has its troubles, even in times of peace. War is not the only trouble. Great fires break out, storms sweep over the land, earthquakes shake down cities, and many other disasters take place. Of all these things, fire, when it gets beyond control, is the most terrible; and it is of a frightful fire that I wish to speak.

About the year 1831 a small fort stood near the shore of Lake Michigan, and around this a few pioneer families had built their homes, which were only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years afterwards, the fort and the huts had long been gone and a large city stood at that place. Its growth had been wonderful. Only forty years old and already it was one of the great cities of the country. This was the famous city of Chicago, which has grown more rapidly than any other great city ever known.

One night in October a dreadful thing took place in this city. A cow kicked over a lamp in a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and in a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The people ran for water, but they were too slow, and in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames. You may think that this was not of much account, but there happened to be a gale of wind, and soon great blazing fragments were flying through the air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not long before there was a terrible fire over almost the entire city.

Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, and the fire spread until it looked as if the whole great city would be burnt to ashes. For two days it kept on burning until the richest part of the city had gone up in smoke and flame. Many people were burned to death in the streets and two hundred million dollars worth of property was destroyed. It was the most frightful fire of modern times. But Americans do not stop for fire or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer than before, and it is now one of the greatest cities, not only of this country, but of the world.

This was not the only disaster which came upon the country. In 1886 there was a frightful earthquake in South Carolina, that shook down a great part of the city of Charleston. And in 1889 there was a terrible flood that swept away the young city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and drowned more than two thousand people. And there were tornadoes, or wind storms, in the west that blew down whole towns as you might blow down a house of cardboard with your breath. And there were great strikes and riots that were almost like war, and various other troubles. But all these could not stop the growth of the country. Every year it became richer. New people came, new factories were built, new fields were farmed, and the United States seemed like a great hive of industry, and its people like so many bees, working away, day by day, and gathering wealth as bees gather honey.