Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/575

Rh as well that we should have, once in a while, as ardent an admirer and as firm a believer in our political faith as Mr. Carnegie, to recall us to a contemplation of our virtues. Of critics there will always be enough. The following summary of the results achieved by the republic during the first century of its existence well indicates the general tone of the volume:

"1. The majority of the English-speaking race under one republican flag, at peace.

"2. The nation which is pledged by act of both parties to offer amicable arbitration for the settlement of international disputes.

"3. The nation which contains the smallest proportion of illiterates, the largest proportion of those who read and write.

"4. The nation which spends least on war and most upon education; which has the smallest army and navy, in proportion to its population and wealth, of any maritime power in the world.

"5. The nation which provides most generously during their lives for every soldier and sailor injured in its cause, and for their widows and orphans.

"6. The nation in which the rights of the minority and of property are most secure.

"7. The nation whose flag, wherever it floats over sea and land, is the symbol and guarantor of the equality of the citizen.

"8. The nation in whose Constitution no man suggests improvement; whose laws as they stand are satisfactory to all citizens.

"9. The nation which has the ideal second chamber, the most august assembly in the world the American Senate.

"10. The nation whose Supreme Court is the envy of the ex-prime minister of the parent-land.

"11. The nation whose Constitution is 1 the most perfect piece of work ever struck off at one time by the mind and purpose of man, according to the present prime minister of the parent-land.

"12. The nation most profoundly conservative of what is good, yet based upon the political equality of the citizen.

"13. The wealthiest nation in the world.

"4. The nation first in public credit and in payment of debt.

"15. The greatest agricultural nation in the world.

"16. The greatest manufacturing nation in the world.

"17. The greatest mining nation in the world."

history belongs to the "American Commonwealths" series, of which Mr. Horace E. Scudder is the editor, and is presented as a study of American character. That character, earnest, practical, and always self-possessed, is strikingly exemplified in the manner in which a prosperous and advancing State has been organized out of the chaos that prevailed during the earlier years of the California settlement. In studying the subject, the social condition has been throughout of more interest to the author "than the individual men, and the men themselves of more interest than their fortunes, while the purpose to study the national character has never been lost sight of. Through all the complex facts that are here set down in their somewhat confused order, I have felt running the one thread of the process whereby a new and great community first came to a true consciousness of itself. The story begins with the seemingly accidental doings of detached but in the sequel vastly influential individuals, and ends just where the individual ceases to have any great historical significance for California life, and where the community begins to be what it ought to be, viz., all important as against individual doings and interests."

work is the result of ten years' experience in laboratory examination of food materials, along with careful attention to the literature of the subject, both at home and abroad. It makes no claim to originality, but is intended to give useful information in a form adapted to schools and the home—that is, without technicalities or