Arizona silver belt., 1901-01-10
CENTURY REVIEW
America Has Grown Mighty, While Empires Decayed.
UNITED STATES LUSTY STRIDES.
With a Domain Sweeping From Sea to Sea, Our People Have Grown From Five to Nearly
 Eighty Millions.

William .. Walsh in New York Herald
 If the American of 1901 could by
 any of the feats known to the fairies
 of the good old times transport him
 self to the America of 1891 he would
 hardly be able te realize that he had
 not been spirited of to another planet.
 Not Rip Van Wiukle, who fell asleep in a generation that was hurrahing for King George and woke up in one cheering for George Washington, could have found himself amid stranger or more alien surroundings.
 The national domain would be re- duced to less than a fourth of it's pres ent area. The number of states would be but fifteen, only a few of which would retain their boundaries of to- day. Vast stretches of what is today almost an earthly paradise would be wilderness. A few fishing villages would mark the sites Of what are now magnificent ports, Many of our great SSNf "NoiNhiSst thN oihtSN Would shrink to the dimensions of western frontier posts. The larger number of our new cities, which rival these older ones in wealth and greatness, were not then even names on the map.
 Indeed, hundred miles or So back from the waters of the Atlantic ocean the traveller almost everywhere would have come upon an unbrOken jungle All that vast section of the country drained by the Ohio and the Tennessee was solitude. The country beyond the Mississippi was practically un- known and unexplored.
 POPULATION A CENTURY AGO.
 According to the census of lsOO the United States of America contained population of 5,30S, is3, with an aver age density of l7.3 to the square mile The British Isles in the same Year con tained more than fifteen millions, France more than twenty seven mill ions. Of the seant five millions and a third Of Americans nearly one-liftu were negro slaves. The true political population, therefore, did not number more than four millions and a half, which lefl rather less than one million of able bodied males, on whose shoul- ders fell the burden of continent
 The territory they controlled was in need 1f all their efforts The treaty of peace which granted the independence of the thirteen original colonies SC cured them the possession of about eight hundred and thirty thousand square miles, stretching from the At lantic westward to the Mississippi. and from a line running along the great lakes southward to the thirty first parallel and the southern border of Georgia.
 Of this territory only about 341, ,7j2 square miles were, strictly speaking. included Tn the thirteen original states. Only seven of these, however, had well defined boundaries; the others at this period laid claim to lands since given tO other states. The total set tied area was only about 30j, GOO square miles. The settlements were mainly | in a narrow slip along the Atlantic sea coast.
 A century ago New York held her | claim to commercial and metropolitan honors only by contention. Philadel- | phia, Baltimore, New Orleans and even Charleston represented interests as important as those which centered upon Manhattan island. Cotton, in- deed, was not yet king, but the plan tatlon interests of the south, which were daily increasing in prominence. at Baltimore and Charleston. The great highway Of the Mississippi was already beginning to take the products of the west to New Orleans. challenged New York with her great banking interests, New England with her flourishing West h. ilan trade.
 HOW EXPANSION WAS BEGUN.
 Sc lar back as February. l7gi. con. yress had passed acts admitting two new states, Kentucky and Vermont md so had permanently committed 'he Union to the policy of expansion. But 1t was not until ls03. under Thomas Jefferson, that the actual in- ;rsase of national territory was made ,y what is known as the Louisiana Purchase from France, then under Inc consular government of Napoleon 8ODaparte. Louisiana was the gen. 'rti term given to the French posses ions 'n che United States, and it then Xteuded westward from the Missi. ippi river to the Rocky mountains .nd from the Gulf of MeMco to British America. At subsequent dates other purchases Fere made, Hawaii was annexed and he chances of war threw he Spanish ( 'land4 in the Atlantic and the Pacific i lto the hands of the United States. [ hese include Porto Rico Cham and i