earth. To it may be added the Morse system of telegraphy, the
telephone and phonograph, the electric light and electric motor, and all
that wonderful series of inventions in electrical science which has been
due to American genius.

We cannot begin to name the multitude of inventions in the mechanical
industries which have raised manufacture from an art to a science and
filled the world with the multitude of its products. It will suffice to
name among them the steam hammer, the sewing machine, the cylinder
printing-press, the type-setting machine, the rubber vulcanizer, and the
innumerable improvements in steam engines and labor-saving apparatus of
all kinds. These manufacturing expedients have been equaled in number
and importance by those applied to agriculture, including machines for
plowing, reaping, sowing the seed, threshing the grain, cutting the
grass, and a hundred other valuable processes, which have fairly
revolutionized the art of tilling the earth, and enabled our farmers to
feed not only our own population but to send millions of bushels of
grain annually abroad.

In truth, we have entered here upon an interminable field, so full of
triumphs of invention and ingenuity, and so stupendous in its results,
as to form one of the chief marvels of this wonderful century, and to
place our nation, in the field of human industry and mechanical
achievement, foremost among the nations of the world. Its triumphs have
not been confined to manufacture and agriculture; it has been as active
in commerce, and now stands first in the bulk of its exports and
imports. In every other direction of industry it has been as active, as
in fisheries, in forestry, in great works of engineering, in vast mining
operations; and from the seas, the earth, the mountain sides, our
laborers are wresting annually from nature a stupendous return in
wealth.

Our progress in the industries has been aided and inspired by an equal
progress in educational facilities, and the intellectual development of
our people has kept pace with their material advance. The United States
spends more money for the education of its youth than any other country
in the world, and among her institutions the school-house and the
college stand most prominent. While the lower education has been
abundantly attended to, the higher education has been by no means
neglected, and amply endowed colleges and universities are found in
every State and in almost every city of the