when twenty-five good crops of wheat can be raised from the same land except by rotation and skilful husbandry. The amazing heritage of wealth in the rich soil must be hoarded. Pork, corn, wheat, cotton, sugar, steel rails, reapers, wagons, shelf hardware, and shingles will take care of themselves in the West. But will the Mississippi Valley take its place among the great intellectual communities of the world? . . . . . . if popular education, intelligence, and natural keenness make up civilization, the West is a highly civilized community; and there are many reasons for supposing that it has the conditions for a broader intellectual growth. First of all, it is freer than any other great area of the earth's surface from the trammels of an official religion; several of the coast colonies had established churches, but not one community in the Mississippi Valley except Louisiana. . . . . . . the district schools in the West are probably as good as those in the remote parts of New England; and the great city systems are, upon the whole, superior to those of the East. . . . . . When it comes to universities, the average provision in the West is excellent, and most of the newer States have a general system of complete government education, for the State universities have direct relations with the public schools, and are superior in equipment and prestige to the denominational colleges. . The difficulty about intellectual life in the Mississippi Valley is not so much a lack of interest in the things of the mind as a lack of local traditions. . . . How can there be traditions in a city like Minneapolis, where not one adult in twenty was born in the place or perhaps in the State? The North and Northwest are now undergoing a tremendous social change through the renting of great farms to new-comers, while the owners live in villages or towns. This means that the children will not know "the old place," and the grandchildren will have not so much as a myth of the old oaken bucket. Even in old cities like Albany and Baltimore it is hard to build up a civic sentiment a sense of gratitude to ancestors and responsibility to posterity. Perhaps as population becomes more stable this feeling will grow up in the West, but it is hard to realize the effect upon a community of such rapid changes of life that not one child in twenty will live in the house of his grandfather. Of the continued material wealth of the Mississippi Valley there is no reason to doubt, and a political structure designed for small agricultural communities has somehow proved at least moderately successful for 669 large States containing great cities. But for ages to come the principal output and wealth of the Mississippi Valley must be agricultural; and the greatest danger is a separation of interest between the tiller of the soil (allied, perhaps, with the workman at the forge) on the one side, and the capitalist and the professional and business man on the other side. At present the social forces are well balanced, and immigration has not brought the great dangers usually ascribed to it; but if the farms are to fall into the hands of a rent-paying peasantry, and the owners are not to live in the midst of that peasantry and to share their interests, as do the land-owners in European countries, then the Mississippi Valley may yet see social contests which will make the French Revolution seem mild. The two bases of the present happiness and prosperity of that great region are first, the intelligence, honesty, and orderliness of the average man, and secondly, the belief that the farmer and the wage-earner get a fair share of the output. Albert Bushnell Hart, The Future of the Mississippi Valley, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1900 (New York, etc.), C, 418-424 passim. GENERAL INDEX TO THE FOUR VOLUMES [The names of the authors of extracts are in Boldface. The titles of the pieces are in Abolitionists, arguments of a New Eng- Adams, Abigail, Letters, ii, 20, 554, iii, 333; A WOMAN AT THE FRONT, ii, 550-554; ii. 15. Adams, C. F. Jr., Richard Henry Dana, iv, A SELECTMAN, 220-223; THE FIRST Adams, Nehemiah, A NORTHERN APOLO- Adams, William, British envoy, iii, 426-429. Alabama, Confederate cruiser, combat with Alaska, ukase on the waters of, iii, 487-489; Albany, town of, i, 542; RECORDS OF A CITY Alexander I, Czar, THE RUSSIAN UKASE ON ALASKAN WATERS, iii, 487-489. - Allibone, S. Austin, Critical Dictionary, i, Allied Sovereigns, THE HOLY ALLIANCE, Almanac, Poor Richard's, extract, ii, 263- 266, title-page, 264; Ames's, 266–272. Alsop, George, Province of Maryland, i, 14, Amadas, Philip, voyage to Virginia, i, 89. financial state in 1781, 594-603; people American Annual Cyclopædia, iv, 6. American Anti-Slavery Society, iii, 608. American Historical Review, ii, 32, 530, 582, American Museum, iii, 37, 239. American Philosophical Society, Transac American State Papers, iii, 10; Foreign Re- Ames, Nathaniel, A YEAR OF A COLLEGE Amistad case, iii, 626-629. Anburey, Thomas, Travels, ii, 18, 20. Andover (Mass.), life at, iii, 509-512. Andrews, John, THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY, |