Education Many of our cities and towns maintain night schools in which for life those who must toil during the day may be taught in the evening. In some places the schoolhouses are open in the evenings for social gatherings, concerts, and instructive lectures. Every year more parks and playgrounds are provided for the recreation of the people. Nearly every town has its public library, and our large cities maintain public museums and fine art galleries. In all these ways we are seeking to make the education of our people continue throughout their lives."

Achievements in Literature, Art, and Science. The progress of our country during the later years of its history has not been limited to the upbuilding of our industries and to Our later political, social, and educational reforms. Every year an

men of letters

increasing number of our people devote their lives to literature, science, and the arts. Newspapers and magazines are more numerous and more widely read than ever before, and hundreds of able writers in all branches of literature are pouring forth a constant stream of new books. Perhaps none of these later writers quite equal such men of letters as Emerson, Hawthorne,

and Lowell. But Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and F. Marion Crawford are famous novelists; Walt Whitman and Sidney Lanier are poets of power, and James Whitcomb Riley is popular and widely read; Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is our greatest humorist; John Fiske, John Bach McMaster, and James Ford Rhodes are foremost among our later historians; while Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are almost as well known as writers as they are as statesmen. Our recent achievements in the fine arts have been even

An influential advocate of equal suffrage for women and a great philanthropist who organized the American Red Cross Society.

more notable than our progress in literature. Among many brilliant American painters of the last fifty years, special mention may be made of the great portrait painter, John S. Sargent, The fine arts and of Edwin A. Abbey, whose pictures adorn the walls of the Boston Public Library and of the capitol of Pennsylvania at Harrisburg. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose noble statue of Abraham Lincoln stands at the entrance to Lincoln Park in Chicago, is perhaps first in a little group of great American sculptors.

But since the time of the Civil War most Americans of

Business, invention and

engineering

great ability have devoted their energies to business, or to invention, architecture, or engineering. The Wright brothers, who gave the world the aëroplane, will take their places in history side by side with Fulton and Stephenson. The architects who planned our "skyscraper" buildings, our palatial hotels, and our splendid railroad stations, like the Pennsylvania Station in New York and the Union Station in Washington, are worthy to rank among our greatest artists. The engineers who deepened the channel at the mouth of the Mississippi, who constructed the railroads across the Rocky Mountains, who tunneled the Hudson and built the Brooklyn Bridge, and who dug the Panama Canal are among the greatest benefactors of our people.

REFERENCES.

Paxson, The New Nation; Bassett, A Short History of the United States; Muzzey, An American History; Dewey, National Problems; Latané, America as a World Power; Ogg, National Progress; Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time; Bogart, Economic History of the United States; Pattee, History of American Literature.

TOPICAL READINGS.

1. The Evils of the Spoils System. Sparks, National Development, 154-164.

2. Civil Service Reform. Sparks, National Development, 182-201. 3. Theodore Roosevelt and His Policies. Muzzey, An American History, 593-599.

4. The Great Coal Strike of 1902. Latané, America as a World Power, 310-313.

5. The Reëlection of Roosevelt.

Power, 224-241.

Latané, America as a World

6. The Regulation of the Railroads. Ogg, National Progress, 40-58.

7. The Conservation of Our Resources. Ogg, National Progress, 96-115.

8. The Election of Taft. Ogg, National Progress, 1-18.

9. The Administration of Taft. Bassett, A Short History of the United States, 837-843.

10. The "Muck-Rakers." Paxson, The New Nation, 309-323.

11. The Efforts to Purify Our Politics. Muzzey. An American History, 610-618.

12. The Rise of the Progressives. Paxson, The New Nation, 324-338. 13. The Aims of the Socialists. Muzzey, An American History, 618-620.

14. Woodrow Wilson and His Policies. Muzzey, An American History, I-VIII.

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE.

Novels: Churchill, Coniston; Mr. Crewe's Career; Garland, The Forest Ranger.

Art: Caffin, The Story of American Painting; American Masters of Sculpture.

Biographies: Gilder, Grover Cleveland; Riis, Theodore Roosevelt; Lewis, Life of Theodore Roosevelt; Ford, Woodrow Wilson.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS..

1. Does the spoils system exist in the government of your city, county, or state? Can the government always find the best man for a position by means of competitive examination? Why?

2. Are candidates for office in your state nominated by direct primaries? Ask the voters you know if they think that this method of nomination is a good plan.

3. Why are the people of the western states less afraid than those of the East to try new methods in government? What are the arguments for and against woman suffrage? What cities in your state have the commission or the city manager form of government? How are they pleased with it? 4. What can be said in favor of socialism? What are the objections to

it?

5. In what ways does the business of the country depend upon the railroads? Why is it unwise to permit young children to work in factories? What is done in your home community to prevent accidents?

6. What measures are taken by your local government to protect the health of the people? Can you suggest anything that ought to be done in your part of the country to conserve its natural resources?

7. Was the adoption of the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution wise? Why?

8. What improvements have been made in the schools of your district in the last twenty years? What further improvements ought to be made? 9. What are ideals? What new social ideals are suggested in this chapter?

CHAPTER XXVIII

AMERICANS IN THE MAKING

The "Melting Pot."-The most important work going on in our country throughout its history has been the making of The making Americans of the people who have been constantly coming of Americans to its shores from the Old World. Since early colonial times men and women have been flocking to the New World from every land in Europe, and in our earlier history multitudes of Africans were brought here without their consent. A famous writer once called the United States a "melting pot" into which races from all lands were cast to be fused into one people. With the exception of Indians, all Americans have come out of this “melting pot," for we are all the descendants of immigrants from the Old World. Some of us have had ancestors in America for centuries; others belong to families which came only yesterday; but if we are true Americans we love and serve the United States before any other country.

Our

immigrant ancestors

In one of the early chapters of this book we learned that many European peoples made contributions to the American "melting pot" in the old colonial days. The freedom-loving and home-making English sent the largest number; but the sturdy and enterprising Dutch and Swedes, the intelligent and upright French Huguenots, the plodding and thrifty Germans, and the hardy and aggressive Scotch-Irish, all helped in making the first Americans. Many Irish came to America just before the Revolution, and after that event the number of immigrants from the countries of western Europe grew slowly but steadily until it reached one hundred thousand in a single year for the first time in 1842. Since that date there have been only four years in which less than one hundred thousand foreigners entered our ports. We have already seen how the famine in Ireland in 1846 and the revolution in Germany in 1848 drove many of the sons of those countries to America during the next few years.

The greater part of the Europeans who have come to America since its earliest settlement have been earnest and