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From: Bisker <ta...@sh...> - 2009-08-19 06:39:47
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Iasm in a new phase. Marching men passed through the street. There were shouts, torches, many speeches on America's greatness. Mrs. Clayton came to Chicago before the election and was all delight over the new life which had come to her. The pulsations of great vitality in the rapidly growing nation were well exemplified in Chicago's development. The country was bursting with commercial expansion; it was lusty with the infusion of strong blood from Europe. Nearly a million Irishmen and Germans had been added to the population since 1840. Illinois, as a garden spot, had received her share of these virile stocks. The iron production, which was in a primitive stage when I arrived in America, had now grown to be a great industry. There was anthracite coal, which was first mined in Pennsylvania in 1814 on a very inconsiderable scale; and now the output was more than five million tons a year. It was supplanting wood in the making of steam. The Chippewas had ceded their copper lands on the south shore of Lake Superior, and the mining and manufacture of copper had become an extensive industry. Gold was taken in large quantities from the Appalachians. There were about five thousand miles of railroad in the country as compared with the some |