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HISTORY 1865-1910] that of Great Britain, having doubled since 1880. The full meaning of the revolution is seen in the fact that by 1907 the

United States produced more pig-iron and steel than Great Britain, Germany and France combined. As a result of the growth of the wheat, lumber and iron-ore production of the North-West, the traffic along the thousand miles of the Great Lakes grew (chiefly after 1890) by leaps, and changed from wooden sailing vessels to steel ships driven by steam. The traffic through the Sault Ste Marie Canal came greatly to exceed that through the Suez Canal.

350. The South shared in these industrial transformations. Not only did white labour produce an increasing proportion of

the cotton crop, which was now extended into the cut-over pine lands, but cheap white labour came from the uplands to cotton mills situated at the water-powers. This, with the abundant supply of raw material, enabled the South to develop cotton manufacture between 1880 and 1890 on a scale that threatened New England's dominance. The southern Appalachians began to yield their treasures of coal and iron; northern Alabama became one of the great centres of the iron industry and the South produced nearly 400,000 tons of pig iron in 1880 and two and a half millions twenty years later. By 1890 the production of coal, iron-ore and pig-iron in this section was as great as that of the United States in 1870. The value of the products of manufacture in the South rose from $338,000,000 in 1880 to $1,184,000,000 in 1900. The exploitation of the long leaf pine forests also attracted Northern capital. Fruit and truck gardening grew rapidly, and the South began to exhibit traits of industrial development familiar in the North and West. Protective tariffs and the interests of capital found recruits in the old-time planting states; but the negro problem continued to hold the South as a whole to the Democratic party.

351. The opportunities opened to capital by these forces of growth in the West and South, as well as the general influence

of an age of machine production, led to transformations in the East which brought new difficulties for political solution. The East began to exhibit characteristics of other long-settled countries where increasing density of population and highly developed industry are accompanied by labour troubles, and where problems of democratic society and government take the form of forcible action or political revolt, in the absence of ample outlets into adjacent areas of cheap lands and new opportunities. To capital the opening resources of the West, and the general national prosperity after 1879, offered such inducements that large scale production by corporations and vast designs became the order of the day. The forces which had exhibited themselves in increased manufacture and railway development between the Civil War and the panic of 1873 now found expression in a general concentration of industries into fewer plants with vastly greater capital and output, in the combination of partnerships into corporations, and of corporations into agreements, pools and trusts to avoid competition and to secure the needed capital and economies for dealing with the new problems of industrial magnitude. Western farming competition led to the actual abandonment of much inferior land in New England and to agricultural disadvantages in the Middle states. As agriculture became less attractive and as industrial demands grew, the urban population of the East increased at the expense of the rural. The numbers of cities of the United States with more than 8000 people nearly doubled between 1880 and 1890; by 1900 the urban population constituted a third of the total, and this phenomenon was especially marked in the North Atlantic division, where by 1900 over half the population was in cities of more than eight thousand inhabitants.

352. In similar fashion concentration of industry in large establishments was in progress. In 1880 nearly two thousand mills were engaged in the woollen industry; in 1890 not many more than thirteen hundred. Even more marked was the change in iron and steel, where large-scale production and concentration of mills began to revolutionize this fundamental

industry, and other lines of production showed the same tendency. The anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, the great resource for the nation, fell into the possession of seven coal-carrying railways which became closely allied in interest. In most of the important industries the tendency of large organizations to subject or drive out the small undertakings became significant. Already the railways to avoid “cut-throat competition” had begun to consolidate their systems by absorption of component lines, to form rate agreements and to “pool” their earnings in given districts. Western agitation had led to reports and bills by committees headed by Western congressmen, such as the report of William Windom, of Minnesota, in 1874, where the construction of Federal lines to regulate rates by competition, was suggested; the report of George W. McCrary of Iowa, whose bill for regulation was passed by the House in 1874 under the stimulus of the Granger movement, but failed in the Senate; that of John H. Reagan, of Texas (1878), whose bill forbidding pooling and compelling publicity of rates by the machinery of the Federal courts, was discussed for several years, but failed to become law; and that of Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, in 1886.

353. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Wabash case, made in that year, reversed the doctrine followed in the case of Munn v. Illinois, and held that the regulative power of the state (even in the absence of Federal legis- state Comlation) was limited to traffic wholly within the '”°"°°A"'° state and not passing from one state to another. The Cullom bill as enacted into the Interstate Commerce Law of the 4th of February 1887, was framed to prevent unjust discrimination's by the railroads between persons, places and co mmodities, the tendency of which was, as the report declared, to foster monopoly. The law forbade discrimination's and pooling, made a higher charge for a short haul than for a long haul over the same road illegal (unless permitted after investigation by the commission), required publicity of rates, and provided for a commission to investigate and fine offenders. But the decisions of the commission were reviewable by the Federal courts and the offender could be coerced, if he refused to obey the commission, only by judicial proceedings. The commission was empowered to provide uniform accounting and to exact annual reports from the roads. The principle settled by the law was an important one, and marked the growing reliance of the former individualistic nation upon Federal regulation to check the progress of economic consolidation and monopoly. But the difficulties by no means disappeared; the Federal judiciary refusing to accept the findings of the commission on questions of fact, retried the cases; and the Supreme Court overruled the commission on fundamental questions, and narrowed the scope of the act by interpretation.

354. Labour exhibited the tendency to combination shown by capital. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, on the

basis of “the individual masses” instead of the trades unions, and professing the principle that “the injury of one is the concern of all,” grew from a membership of about one hundred thousand in 1885 to seven hundred and thirty thousand in 1886. The number of strikes in 1886 was over twice as many as in any previous year. In one of the strikes on the Gould railway system six thousand miles of railway were held up. In New York, Henry George, author of books proposing the single tax on land as a remedy for social ills, ran for mayor of the city and received 68,000 out of 219,000 votes. At the same time socialistic doctrines spread, even among Western farmers. But sympathetic strikes, anarchistic outbreaks, and drastic plans for social change did not appeal to the people as a whole. The Knights of Labor began to split, and the unions, organized as the American Federation of Labor, began to take their place with a less radical membership. President Cleveland broke with precedents in 1886 by sending in the first message on labour, in which he advocated, without success, a labour commission to settle controversies. A national bureau of labour to collect statistics had been established in 1884; state legislation increasingly provided for arbitration of labour disputes, and regulation of factories and child