The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-01-07
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.

New York World.
 The American of today can scarcely imagine the America of a century ago. The country had still twenty-two years to wait for the railroad and seventeen fer the Erie Canal. Civilization, such as 1t was, crept slowly westward in Conestoga wagons. The cotton gin and the moving machine were yet to revolutionize rural industry and in eff feet to fight the civil war-the former by giving the South great staple ex- port, the latter by releasing the men of the North from the back breaking bondage of the scythe to fight. The telegraph and telephone were un- dreamed of.
 In little things less thought about the good old times' were lacking. There were no matches. There were no cooking ranges. Coal was not used as fuel There was neither electric light nor gas nor petroleum. The creamery" and neigh borhood cheese factory, the greatest triumph of CO., operation in the New World, had not relieved farm women from the killing toll of the dairy. Women, too, were chief sufferers in, that warm under clothing and rubber shoes were un- known.
 The general health was bad to an ex- tent now hard to realize. Every fifth AdOC HI oOthG LOWH HS WdS QiLkGQ WlIn smallpox. Consumption, less common in the log cabin, had come in as a scourge with the sawmill and the tight board house which excluded air Cholera from the East and yellow jack from the South were long to cause in the chief towns panics So great that there were not wagons enough to carry away the fugitives Sewers and sani- tation were unthought of; typhoid germs were drawn from putrid wells in the old oaken bucket, and the people were decimated by strange, unknown distempers fer which the medical men of the backwoods could find no better name than the inscrutable decree of the Almighty.
 New Years of 1908 found the nation at bay before it's greatest dangers since the constitution was framed. Its com merce was ruined. Its existence was menaced. It's flag was shamed!
 Replying to British and French az gressions, which left no port to which an American ship might safely ply. Congress had on December 22 given the country the Christmas present of an embargo which was to keep ships rot ting at their wharves and cut Ameri- can commerce in 1898 from $110. .000, 900 to $22,00O,000. The British ship Leop- ard had in the previous summer halted the American Chesapeake at sea, and. after a sharp little battle. taken off four seamen claimed for the King; and the people had swallowed the insult. Aaron Burr had just been acquitted of treason by what many called a trick. Faith in the republic was weak.
 The population was 1000, ,000, des- perately pocr and largely uliterate. The great Louisiana purchase of 1903 had given it space to grow, but there were more Indians than white men west If the Mississippi. The people were thin ly scattered about the thirteen original States The Federal revenue was $16,- O00 900.
 Today we are a nation of s8. .000, 000 souls. including the insular possessions The foreign commerce of 1908 will probably be 160 times as large as that Cf 1908. The public revenue will he more than forty times as great. Tn spite of the financial panic the condi- ton of the people is inoOmparably bet ter than 1t was 100 years ago.
 And with the world abroad we are al such high noon of cloudless peace backed by such amplitude of latent power, that our entire fleet can sail for the Pacific and leave the Eastern coast for months unguarded yet un. alarmed