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The

wheat, and lumber on the great lakes, by numerous interurban trolley lines, and later by motor trucks which carry freight upon the public highways.

Our Growing Wealth.-The last fifty years have witnessed a marvelous expansion in every line of industry in America. Every section of our country has shared in this growth. The expansion of factories of the eastern and middle states have made more industry goods than ever before. A more diversified industry under a system of free labor has brought prosperity in a flood to the New South. The wheat, corn, hogs, and cattle of the prairie

Our

enormous

wealth

The rate of industrial progress

Courtesy of Anaconda Copper Mining Co.
A Copper Mine in Butte, Montana
America leads the world in the production of copper.

states have been pouring to market in an ever widening stream. The rich mineral resources of the Rocky Mountains have been revealed. Enterprise and industry have changed the Pacific Coast from a region of rough mining camps to a land of fertile grain fields, fruitful orchards, and splendid cities.

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The unparalleled industrial activity and expansion of the last half century have piled up wealth in our country beyond anything ever known before in the history of the world. The United States, "with seven per cent. of the earth's area and six per cent. of its population, produces seventy per cent. of the corn, sixty per cent. of the cotton, thirty-five per cent. of the tobacco, and fifteen per cent. of the cattle. It leads in the production of coal, petroleum, copper, and iron." The total wealth of the country is now more than two hundred billion dollars, and it is growing by many billions every year.

A careful study of the figures opposite will give a vivid impression of the wonderful industrial progress of the United States since the Civil War. In that table the numbers are all millions.

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The progress of the United States in industry and the arts has been shown and wonderfully stimulated by the splendid displays of farm products, machinery, manufacturing goods, World's and the fine arts in the great expositions or world's fairs which Fair have been held at various times since the Civil War. The first of these was the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. Other notable fairs of this kind were the Columbian Exposition or World's Fair at Chicago in 1893, the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St.

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A Scene at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Held in San Francisco, California

Reasons

for our industrial growth

Louis in 1904, the Alaska-Yukon Exposition at Seattle in 1909, and the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915.

The reasons for the rapid industrial development of our country in its later years are not hard to find. The United States is a vast and greatly diversified land. Nature has given it a rich soil, clothed it with splendid forests, and hidden beneath its surface immense supplies of coal, iron, copper, and oil. But the greatest reason for our unparalleled material prosperity is found in the character of the American peoplein their intelligence, energy, inventive genius, daring enterprise, and eager absorption in business.

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When one man performed by hand all the operations necessary to make a pair of shoes. Changes in Our Mode of Life.-The changes in industry during the last half century have influenced our ways of living Our people even more than they have promoted our material progress and

become machine workers

prosperity. In the days when men manufactured goods in their own small shops, each workman who made a pair of shoes, or a wagon, or a watch planned the thing he was to make, fashioned all its parts, and then fitted them together to form the finished product. His daily task made him a more intelligent, thoughtful, and self-reliant man. With the coming of the large factory all this was changed. The use of machinery brought division of labor. The factory worker spends his days in operating a machine which may perform only one small part in turning

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