SOMETHING TO BLOW ABOUT.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2045, 13 September 1880, Page 3

SOMETHING TO BLOW ABOUT.

This is a time (says tho Boston “Post”) when, as Americans, we feel like doing a little boasting. One hundred and four years ago, when vre declared ourselves to be a free and independent people, our population was less than three millions. To - day, according to General Walker’s rough estimate, it is 48,000,000. Boston was then an insignificant village, so far as population was concerned, and Now England had but a few scattered schools and two colleges. The entire country had but 37 newspapers, and the beet of them were not equal to tho worst weeklies published to-day in tho mushroom towns of tho Rocky Mountain regions. In 1789 we had but 75 postoffices, and the mails were carried on horseback over 1900 miles of road, at an expense of 32,000d015. per year. To-day we have 38,000 post offices—and now ones are being established daily—and tho mails are carried over 265,000 miles of postroads, at an annual expense of 29,000,000 dels. We have nearly a quarter of a million miles of telegraph wire. Wo have 141,629 sohoolhousos, 63,082 churches, 793 daily newspapers, and over 9000 periodicals of all kinds. Our farms are valued at not less than 9 262,803,861d015., our farming implements at 336,879,423d015., and our live stock at 1,525,276,457d015. Our farm products in a single year have brought us 2,447,538,658d015., and in tho same time wo have paid, in farm wages, 310,286,285d015. Our crops aro bountiful, yes, enormous, and our exports have reached nearly 475,000,000d015. in a twelvemonth. Our manufactories are prosperous. In cotton goods we challenge the world. In one year our 960 mills turned out cloth enough to encircle the earth twenty times, if made into one piece, with still enough left to make every human being a suit of clothes, and furnish each with pieces for patching.