The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1900-12-28
FRIDAY, DECEMBER a8, 1900.
A Happy New Year to the readers
and friends of the Chronicle.
a CENTURY OF pRoeREss

The Nineteenth Century has run its
course. 1t was not ended at mid
night on the 31st of December last
year. The emperor Of Germany and
the gifted young president of Wells
lev College are in hopeless minority.
The Pope of Rome, not to speak of
"the bishops and other clergy and
all the common sense people of the
world who perceive that it takes one
hundred years to fill out a century,
have unanimously concluded that the
year 1900 is the last year of the 10Th
century and that this century is there
fore just drawing to close and will
terminate at midnight on Tuesday
next 1t has been century of pro-
gress all along the line, in every de-
partment of human thought and hu-
man action. Look first at it's great
Material and Industrial Progress.
1t is the century of steam and cleo
tricity, of the free press and the free
school. A man, who journeyed from
Rome to London when the century
was twenty five years old travelled in
essentially the same way in which
julius Caesar had traversed the dis
lance between the Eternal City and the
Island of Great Britain eighteen CEN
turtles before. That is to say. he went
by post roads. But now, within the
last two thirds of the present CEN
tury not only has the whole of Eu
rope been bound together with n
mighty network of steel rails, but
our own great country has been girt
from ocean to ocean by magnificent
system Of railways and the iron works
Of Pittsburg are unable to supply the
demand for steel rails. We have built
during the last three quarters of the
century more than $50, 900 miles of rail-
way and during it's last quarter rail
way construction has been carried on
at an average cost of probably one
million dollars per day. Nothing could
more emphatically prove the great
material progress of the century than
this wonderful activity in the con-
struction of railways. 1t is railways
which bring the products of the in
terror to the coast and thus build up
the wealth of the farmer, enabling him
to sell his grain to purchasers through
out the whole world and at the same
time bring to the seaport towns the
boundless wealth of field, forest and
mine that it may be placed in the
holds of innumerable vessels and so
carried over the ocean to far dis
tant lands.
Not alone in the great matters
which concern trad and commerce,
but quite as much in those countless
minor details which relate to the
comforts of every day life, has the
past century been century of adj
vance. The homes of the people are
infinitely more comfortable and con-
venient and healthful than they were
one hundred years ago. Our own
land boasts no lordly castles like
those which look down in Wondering
ruins upon the traveller who sails up
on the historic Rhine; but our land
can point to the homes of men who
have risen from the weaver's loom or
from following the plough to live in
mansions, which, for practical util-
ity of design and thoroughness of me-
chanlcal construction are probably |
far in advance of anything which can
be found in the old world But this
is not our chief distinction. Ii is
found rather in the great number of |
quiet and unpretentious but thorough +
ly comfortable American homes. The
day was in England when tax mp
On windows made the dwellings of
the poor, not only dark ard disagree
able. but loathsome and foul, the nests
and breeding places of disease and
leath, Our own great cities are COM
oelled already to cope with the prob
ems of oyercrowding and of bad hous-
ng of the poor.
But this difficulty is being met and
overcome by those who are we'll pre-
pared by study and experience to
yrapple with it and it is a just boast
hat our land provides larger num-
Der of plain but comfortable dwellings
or independent working people than
my other land under the sun. Here
We may justly notice the great
Educational and social Progress
If the Nineteenth Century.
What Gen. Grant has called the
Most Sanguinary War of Modern
Time" was waged in it's middle years
md it was the great and final contest
N this western world between class
privilege on the one hand and 1.-THE
Man with the Hoe" on the other.
The man with the hoe still tolls.
Only in the sweat of his face shall |
nan eat bread till the end of the
world. More than this "The Man
with the Hoe still suffers injustice
and cruel wrong in countless forms,
but the battle is now losing battle
FOR the privileged class; it's gain
ing battle for 1.-THE Man with the
Hoe " When President Lincoln put
his name 10 the Emancipation Proc
Iamation. the death knell Of privilege
was sounded forever. The battle had |