nuous line of rails ran
from New York City to the Mississippi River. Traveling was still
uncomfortable according to our ideas. The cars were rudely made and
jolted horribly. One train ran only a comparatively short distance. Then
the traveler had to alight, get something to eat, and see his baggage
placed on another train. Still, with all its discomforts, traveling in
the worst of cars was better than traveling in the old stagecoaches.
Many more steamboats were used, especially on the Great Lakes and the
Western rivers.

[Illustration: HORACE GREELEY]

[Sidenote: Schools.]

[Sidenote: Newspapers.]

[Sidenote: Horace Greeley.]

367. Education.--The last thirty years had also been years of
progress in learning. Many colleges were founded, especially in the
Northwest. There was still no institution which deserved the name of
university. But more attention was being paid to the sciences and to the
education of men for the professions of law and medicine. The newspapers
also took on their modern form. The _New York Herald_, founded in 1835,
was the first real newspaper. But the _New York Tribune_, edited by
Horace Greeley, had more influence than any other paper in the country.
Greeley was odd in many ways, but he was one of the ablest men of the
time. He called for a liberal policy in the distribution of the public
lands and was forever saying, "Go West, young man, go West." The
magazines were now very much better than in former years, and America's
foremost writers were doing some of their best work.

[Illustration: THE FIRST SEWING MACHINE.]

[Sidenote: The telegraph.]

[Sidenote: The Howe sewing machine.]

[Sidenote: Agriculture machinery.]

[Sidenote: Stagnation in the South.]

368. Progress of Invention.--The electric telegraph was now in
common use. It enabled the newspapers to tell the people what was going
on as they never had done before. Perhaps the invention that did as much
as any one thing to make life easier was the sewing machine. Elias Howe
was the first man to make a really practicable sewing machine. Other
inventors improved upon it, and also made machines to sew other things
than cloth, as leather. Agricultural machinery was now in common use.
The horse reaper had been much improved, and countless machines had been
invented to make agricultural labor more easy and economical. Hundreds
of homely articles, as friction matches and rubber shoes, came into use
in these years. In short, the thirt