y sank.
Factories began to run on short time, many closed entirely, many
corporations failed. The peculiarity of this crisis was the slowness
with which it abated. No date indeed can be set as its term, its evil
effects dragging on through years, so that the ill times of 1893-94 may
be regarded as the same fever, intermittent in the meantime.

[1880]

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the material progress of the United
States for the two decades which we are studying was something enormous.
We have no room for details. Our total population by 1880 had swollen to
50,155,783, by 1890 to 62,622,250. The census valuation of our national
wealth, which had been for 1860, $16,159,616,068. was, for 1870,
$30,068,518,507; for 1880, $43,642,000,000; and for 1890,
$65,037,091,197. The per capita wealth was, according to the census of
1860, $514, by that of 1870, $780, by that of 1880, $870, by that of
1890, $1,036. In 1870 the United States was in wealth the third nation
on the globe; in 1880 it had distanced France and stood second. "The
country whose population has been developed within two hundred and
eighty years, does already one-third of the world's mining, one-fourth
of its manufacturing, and one-fifth of its agriculture; and at least
one-sixth of the world's wealth is already concentrated in the strip of
territory in Central North America which is the home of the United
States." These words were written after the census of 1880. Still
stronger ones would have been true in 1895.

CHAPTER IX.

END OF THE PERIOD

[1890]

It is a long way that we have taken the reader, from the days of
Columbus to where we can espy the dawn of the twentieth century. Yet, in
comparison with the times which our narrative has here reached, those of
three decades earlier would seem almost as remote as Columbus's own, so
swiftly did the wheels of progress turn. Everything declared that a new
age had opened. In addition to the signs of this which have been set
down in the preceding chapters, we have only space for the bare mention
of a few others.

In 1888 the United States mails flew from point to point across the
continent with a rapidity which would have astounded people so few years
back as the close of the war. Their distribution effected through the
post-office cars that ran on all the main lines and by immediate
delivery in cities and large towns, was quite as great an improvement as
the speed. The postal-car system had orig