Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/705

 PENNSYLVANIA

641

PENNSYLVANIA

2d, and 3ril of July at Gettysburg by the Union army under General George G. Meade. This battle has been recognized as the most important in the Civil \\a,v, as the success of the Confederate forces would have imperilled Philadelphia and New York and might have led to the final triumph of the Confederacy.

II. Ethnology and Denominational Statistics. — It has been said of Pennsylvania that no other American colony had "such a mixture of languages, nationalities and religions. Dutch, Swedes, English, Germans, Scotch-Irish and Welsh; Quakers, Presby- terians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Reformed, Men- nonites, Tunkers and Moravians all had a share in creating it" (Fisher). The eastern part of the state, especially the counties immediately adjoining Philadel- phia, was settled by a homogeneous population prin- cipally of English descent, though there was a large German community near Philadelphia at German- town. Westward, the County of Lancaster was largely settled by Germans, who brought with them a special knowledge of, and a|3titude for, agriculture, with the result that a naturally rich county became one of the most productive in the United States, especially of tobacco am 1 cereals. There is also a large German popu- lation in Berks County, where a dialect of the German language is very generally spoken. The first German settlements were made by the Tunkers, now known as Dunkers, or Dunkards, between 1720 and 1729. They were followed by the Schwenkfclders, from the Rhine Valley, Alsatia, Suabia, Saxony, and the Palatinate. Members of the Lutheran Reformed Congregations came between 1730 and 1740. The Moravians settled Bethlehem in 1739, and the so-called Scdtcli-Irisli im- migrants from the North of Ireland, settled in Lehigh, Bucks, and Lancaster Counties, and in the Cumber- land Valley, between 1700 and 1750. The Welsh came to Pennsylvania previous to 1682, and were the most numerous class of immigrants up to that date. They were assigned a tract of land west of the Schuylkill River, known as "the Welsh Tract", where to this day their geographical names remain.

In 1906 the population of Pennsylvania was the sec- ond in size among the states of the Union, being esti- mated at 6,928,515. Of these 2,977,022 (or 43 per cent) were church members : 1,717,037 Protestants, and 1,214,734 Catholics. The latest census of Catho- lics (1910) for the entire state shows 1,494,766, of whom 38,235 were coloured. The Protestant denomi- nations in 1906 were divided as follows: Methodists, 363,443; Lutherans, 335,643; Presbyterians, 322,542; Reformed, 181,350; Baptists, 141,694; Episcopalians, 99,021; United Brethren, 55,571; all others, 217,773. The first Protestant Episcopal church (Christ Church) was built in Philadelphia in 1695. Pennsylvania is the second state in the Union in the number of church members and first in the number of church organiza- tions. The value of church property is $173,605,141, being 13 per cent of all the property in the state. Of the entire population in 1906, 57 per cent professed no religion as against 67-2 per cent in 1900. The largest immigration from Ireland to the United States, fol- lowing the famine of 1847-49, added greatly to the Catholic population of Pennsylvania, which has shown a eteady increase. Of recent years missions have been established for the special benefit of the col- oured people of Philadelphia, where two churches are now especially devoted to these missions.

III. Economic Conditions. — A. Population. — The United States Census of 1910 gives the population of Pennsylvania as 7,665,111 fa little more than 181-57 to the square mile). Of this number 1,549,008 be- longed to Philadelphia and .533.905 to Pittsburg. Thus Philadelphia had maintained its position as the third city of the United St.ates in population, while Pittsburg (with the accession of Allegheny, incor- porated with it since the Census of 1900) stood eighth. The Census of 1910 shows an increase of more than

XL— 41

21-62 per cent in the population of the state during the first decade of the twentieth century. The C( nsus report of the foreign-born white and of the coloured population for 1910 (respectively 982,543 and 156,845 in 1900) had not become accessible when this article was prepared. The German and Irish elements ex- ceed by far all other nationalities among the foreign born. In 1910 the largest cities in the state, after Philadelphia and Pittsburg, were Harrisburg, the capital (pop. 64,186), Scranton (129,867), Reading (96,071), Wilkes-Ban-e (67,105), and Johnstown (55,482). Pennsylvania is entitled to thirty-two rep- resentatives in the Congress of the United States and thirty-four votes in the Presidential Electoral College. With the exception of a few cities, the distribution of the population is less dense than in most of the Eastern States. A comparatively small proportion of the pop- ulation is engaged in agriculture, mining, and manu- facturing being the principal industries.

B. Material Resources. — Until 1880 Pennsylvania was pre-eminent as the lumber state, but its activity in this industry has since been far exceeded in the Southern and North-Western States. In 1900 about 2,313,267 million feet of lumber were cut in Pennsyl- vania — about one-half of the output of the State of Michigan. In the last ten years the output has de- creased. The estimated product for the year 1907 amounted to $31,251,817, at the rate of S18.02 per million feet Efforts towards conservation and syste- matic forestry have of late years received considerable impetus. The state is extremely rich in coal, petro- leum, natural gas, iron ore, slate, and limestones. Anthracite coal was discovered in Pennsylvania as early as 1768, and the first regular shipments were made in 1820. The anthracite coal fields in the east- ern portions of the state are about 500 square miles in area, while the bituminous coal and petroleum fields of the western and north-central sections cover about 9000 square miles. The United States Con- servation Commission estimated, in 1910, that there were 117, .593,000,000 tons of coal in Pennsylvania. The total output of bituminous coal in 1907 for the Pennsylvanian mines was 149,759,089 Ameri- can tons (of 2000 lbs. each); of anthracite, 86,279,- 719 Am. tons; so that the state contributed in that year very nearly 50 per cent of the whole output of coal of the United States. In the following year (1908), owing to the general depression in industries, Pennsylvania produced only 118,313,525 tons of bitu- minous coal. The first oil well in Pennsylvania was discovered in 1860, and in the next following thirty years the state produced 1,(K)6, 000,000 barrels of pe- troleum. The state stands first in the jiroduction of coke, the output being normally more than half that of all the United States. The output of pig iron for 1908 was 6,973,621 gross tons, or 43-8 per cent of the entire product of the LTnited States, valued at $110,- 987,346 (about £22,197,468). The first Bessemer steel rails were rolled at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1867. The annual iinidurt of iron and steel manufac- tures is over .$201),1)I),(KI; tlicy cmi.loy .54,000 per- sons, whose earnings anmunt to 134,000,000. Penn- sylvania also stands first in the production of slate and limestone, contributing two-thirds of the whole output of slate of the United States. It ranks third in the production of sandstone. The total value of its out- put of quarried stone in 1908 was $4,000,000.

As a manufacturing state, Pennsylvania stands sec- ond in the ITnited States. In 1904 it had an invested capital of $1,990,836,988 in manufactures, employing 763,282 wage earners receiving $367,900,890 per an- num and producing $1,9.55,551,332 in value of finished goods, including, besides iron and steel, textiles of various kinds, knitted goods, felt, etc. In 1908 there were 3.848 industrial establishments with a total cap- ital of $1,126,406,558, employing 756,600 wage earn- ers, of whom 126,000 were women. This state leads