of their people in that country. As soon as their purpose was accomplished, England and Spain withdrew; but Napoleon III, the ruler of France, overthrew the Republic of Mexico, and set up an empire in its stead. He placed Maximilian, the brother of the emperor of Austria, on the throne, and maintained his authority with French bayonets. This action was a serious violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but with a civil war on its hands, the United States could do nothing at the time but protest. When the war was over in 1865 our government told Napoleon III in the plainest words that the United States would not tolerate a foreign monarchy in Mexico and that he must maintained withdraw his troops from that country. A large army under The Monroe General Sheridan was sent toward the Mexican frontier, and Doctrine Napoleon soon promised to withdraw his forces. When the last French soldiers left Mexico in 1867, the Mexicans promptly captured the Emperor Maximilian and executed him. The same year that the French withdrew from Mexico Russia unexpectedly offered to sell Alaska to the United States, and Secretary Seward promptly accepted the proposition. The Not much was known of this vast northern region at that purchase of time, but it was supposed to be a barren waste of little value except for its fur trade. Some people found fault with the government for buying a "vast area of rocks and ice," but as Russia had been a warm friend of the Union during the Civil Alaska The War there was little serious objection to ratifying the treaty of purchase. In acquiring Alaska we made a better bargain than we knew, for its furs, fish, gold, coal, and timber are worth many times the $7,200,000 which we paid Russia for the country. We have seen how the destroying cruisers built in Alabama and other commerce- inflicted great damage upon American shipping during the The Arbitration Court at Geneva had violated her neutrality in permitting these ships to be built for the South, and insisted that she ought to pay for the damage which they did. For some years the British government refused to listen to this demand, but in 1871 the two nations made a treaty at Washington in which it was agreed that the "Alabama Claims," as they were called, should be submitted to arbitration. A tribunal of five men-one appointed by the United States, one appointed by Great Britain, and one each by Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil, met at Geneva, SwitzerThe Geneva land, and after listening to arguments by both sides decided that Great Britain should pay the United States $15,500,000 award for the losses our ship-owners suffered from the Alabama and other cruisers. This decision was very unpopular in England, but the British government promptly paid the money. By arbitrating the "Alabama Claims," and other disputes then and since, Great Britain and the United States have shown the world that there is a better way than war to settle differences between nations. REFERENCES. Wilson, Division and Reunion; A History of the United States, Vol. V; Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic; Rhodes, History of the United States, Vols. V-VII; Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time; Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress. TOPICAL READINGS. 1. Conditions in the South after the Civil War. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 445-458. 2. The Contrast between Lincoln and Johnson. Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 516-522. 3. The Story of Johnson's Impeachment. Rhodes, History of the United States, VI, 98-157. 4. The Carpetbaggers and the Scalawags in Dixie. Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time, III, 130. 5. Carpetbag Government in South Carolina. Hart,. American History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 497-500. 6. The Ku-Klux Klan. Rhodes, History of the United States, VI, 180-185. 7. The New South. Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time, 747-772. 8. The Liberal Republican Movement. United States, VI, 411-440. Rhodes, History of the 9. The Iniquities of the "Tweed Ring" in New York. Hart, Source Book of American History, 352-355. 10. The Electoral Commission. and Economic, 323-341. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political 11. The French in Mexico. Rhodes, History of the United States, VI, 205-211. 12. The Alabama Case. Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time, 87-95. ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. Novels: Tourgée, A Fool's Errand; Bricks without Straw; Page, Red Rock; Garland, The Return of the Private, (in Main Traveled Roads); Cable, John March, Southerner; Glasgow, The Deliverance; Dixon, The Leopard's Spots: The Clansman. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 1. If there are any old soldiers of the Civil War still living in your community ask one of them to tell you how he was mustered out at the close of the war. Compare the home-coming of the soldiers in 1865 with the return of our men from Europe in 1919. 2. Look up Lincoln's plan for reorganizing the southern states. What was the chief difference between the Lincoln-Johnson plan of reconstruction and the plan enacted by Congress? Which was the wiser plan? Why? 3. What did the thirteenth amendment do for the negro? The fourteenth? The fifteenth? 4. Were the deeds of the Ku-Klux Klan right? Is it ever right to break the law in order to accomplish a good purpose? Why? 5. Why has the South been solid for the Democratic party ever since the Civil War? Has this "Solid South" been a good thing for the nation? Why? 6. In what ways did the abolition of slavery benefit the poor white men of the South? 7. Locate on the map ten important manufacturing cities in the South. What is the chief product made in each of them? 8. Would we have had a right to expel the French troops from Mexico by force? Why? 9. Try to find other instances of the settlement of international disputes by arbitration besides the one described in this chapter. 10. Question for debate: Resolved, That the right to vote ought to be restricted to those citizens who can read and write. CHAPTER XXIV NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING The Age of Machinery.—In an earlier chapter of this book we studied how the Industrial Revolution, as the transition from hand labor to machine production is called, wrought The great changes in our ways of making things and in our mode Industrial Revolution of life. We saw how manufacturing was steadily transferred from the home and the small shop to the factory, how cities grew up around these factories, and how the men engaged in industry began to be divided into capitalists and laborers, each striving for a larger share of what they jointly produced. While these changes in the industrial life of our country began more than a century ago, they have been going on during the last fifty years more rapidly than ever before, and most of the important questions in our later history have grown out of them. purpose An English traveler who visited the United States in 1865 was astonished at the way in which Americans were making machines to do all kinds of work. "We find," he said, "a Machines for machine even to peel apples; another to beat eggs; a third every to clean knives; a fourth to wring clothes." This American spirit of invention has been more active than ever in recent years. It has given us machines to milk cows, to dig ditches, to sweep floors, to record sales, to add columns of figures, and to do a thousand other things which were done by hand in the days of the Civil War. This ever-widening use of machinery is found in every department of our industrial life. For the last half century the invention of new agricultural tools and machines has gradu- Farming ally freed farm life of much of the hard work of earlier days. The progressive farmer now plows his fields with a sulky plow, fertilizes them with the aid of a manure-spreader, plants the seed with a drill, cultivates the growing crops with a riding cultivator, and harvests the grain with a self-binding harvester. The threshing-machine, the cotton-gin, and the corn-husker prepare the various crops for market. The mower, the haytedder, the horse-rake, the hay-loader, and the horse-fork do |