Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/264

252 were rendered despondent, hopeless, and desperate by what they saw around them. Men do not fight in mobs and destroy churches and houses and form themselves into complicated secret orders for nothing. Whatever we may think of their mistakes of policy and rashness, there is no question that the native Americans received a severe shock, not only to their sentiments and feelings, but to their opinions and principles. The nation that they supposed was their own seemed to be given over to others. Their high patriotism, their pride and interest in their country were wounded and hurt. Nor was the wound any the less severe because the majority of those who received it were of the class in life that is not trained to express its feelings in writing.

What else was there in the general condition of affairs in the United States between the years 1830 and 1860 which would cause the rate of native growth to decrease? It could not possibly have been the growth of luxurious habits of living. There were none at that time. Any we possess have been acquired within the last twenty years, and most of them within the last ten years. The country at that period, so far as concerned room for development, was as new as it had been in 1750. Our people still lived in a fringe along the Atlantic seaboard. The buffaloes were ranging the prairies east of the Mississippi. The whole valley of that river was practically unsettled. The West was a great unknown. There was no crowding; and as for opportunities, they were greater than ever before. The arts of life and the comfort and health of living were all improving. Manufacturing industries were springing up. Commerce was increasing, new inventions were being perfected, occupations were becoming more numerous and varied, the people were happy, prosperous, jubilant in their successful nationality, and in 1830 railroads began. All things which enable population to increase were present, and population had been increasing rapidly until suddenly, coincident with the great increase in immigration, the rate fell, and has been falling ever since.

From that period down to the present hour all the facilities of business have improved, new occupations have been created, the medical and surgical sciences have improved, their improvement is more generally distributed, sanitary conditions are better, and as a consequence the average human life has been lengthened by two years.

After the civil war came to an end in 1865 the same condition existed. The West was still unsettled. The Union Pacific Railroad was not finished until 1869. The next ten years, with increasing facilities for reaching all parts of the country, gave the grandest opportunity for rapid growth that was ever known. Yet not only the rate of the native whites kept falling, but the rate of the