74. The first census of the United States was taken in 1790, and showed a population of a little less than four millons.1 The most populous State was Virginia. After that came Pennsylvania, then North Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, South Carolina, and Connecticut. The four millions, of whom a little more than one fifth were slaves, occupied a belt of country which lay chiefly between the Alleghanies and the sea. The most thickly settled parts were along river courses and about commodious harbors. So close to the seacoast did most of the people live, that the center of population was twenty-three miles east of Baltimore. In all this Atlantic territory there were but five towns which had a population of more than ten thousand. They were Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston, and Baltimore.

75. The Chief Industries. By far the greatest number of people dwelt on their farms, and lived by what they raised from the soil. They had no labor-saving machines, but on the banks of streams they had mills for grinding corn or sawing lumber. The farmer at the North plowed his field with a horse or ox plow, dropped his seed by hand, and used the hoe and 1 The census of 1890 showed a population of over sixty-two millions.

rake. When harvest time came, he cut his grass with a scythe, reaped his grain with a sickle, and threshed it with a flail. Sometimes, if he had a large crop, he used his horses to tread out the grain.

The planter at the South raised tobacco in a field until he had drawn all the life out of the soil. Then he left the ruined land and planted another field. He raised rice in the marsh land. He found that cotton would grow well, but to get it ready for spinning was slow work. The Northern farmer also planted cotton; but he found it would not grow well, and so he gave up trying to raise it.

76. The Cotton Gin. The cotton plant is a native of India. It has pods, which open when ripe and show a soft, downy substance containing seeds. The woolly fiber is separated from the seeds, and then is ready to be cleaned and carded for spinning and weaving. But the work of separating the fiber by hand is so slow that a laborer can prepare only a single pound a day. While, therefore, the planter was shipping large cargoes of tobacco and rice, he sent but little cotton. In 1792 only about a hundred and forty thousand pounds of cotton were exported from the entire South.

1 If you imagine the surface of the United States a flat board balanced on a pole, and the people distributed over it where they live, the center of gravity would correspond with the points marked.

Three years later, over six million pounds were exported. This sudden increase was due to the ingenuity of one man, Eli Whitney,' who invented the cotton gin. It was not a very complicated machine,

and it was adopted at once wherever cotton was raised. The planters now planted more fields and imported more slaves. It was not long before cotton became the chief crop of the South. It was easily planted and picked by the slaves. The cotton gin got it ready to be made into bales, and then it was sent out of

the country.

Eli Whitney.

cotton which they raise. When England began to get control of India, English merchants brought the cotton to England

1 Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765. During the war for independence he was engaged in making nails, which in those days were wrought singly by hand. He worked his way through Yale College, graduating in 1792, and then went to Georgia to teach. The widow of General Greene gave him a home, and he was so clever in contrivances in her house, that when some friends were complaining that there was no profit in raising the best cotton, owing to the great difficulty of separating the fiber from the seed, she advised them to apply to Whitney. He had never seen any cotton seed or raw cotton and had to make the tools and to draw the wire with which he experimented, but after several months' labor he produced the gin. Afterward he returned to the North and engaged in the manufacture of firearms near New Haven. His buildings became the models upon which the National armories were afterward built. He died at New Haven, January 8,

and set Englishmen at work spinning and weaving it. At first they worked by hand, as the people of India did; but soon they invented machines and built factories. The application of steam to machinery increased enormously the manufacturing interest in England.

In the Southern States of the Union the slaves were not trained to work which required skill. Thus, while a little cotton was spun or woven by hand for coarser clothes used on the plantations, the greater part was sent to England to be made up into cloth. Then English merchants sold this cloth in the United States. In the Northern States almost everybody worked with his hands. The men on the farms made and mended tools and built buildings. The women spun and wove chiefly flax and wool.

So it came about that when New England ships sailed to Southern ports, they brought some of the cotton back to the North. The English manufacturers wished to retain the business in their own hands. But it was not long before Americans were making machinery like that in use in England. The first machinery capable of spinning cotton yarn, equal to that made in England, was set up by Samuel Slater, at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790.

78. Other Manufacturing. Besides the crops which the farms and plantations yielded, there were forests, which gave wood for building and for fuel. Beneath the ground was a rich store of iron, lead, coal, and other minerals. Very little was yet known of all this hidden wealth, and there were very few contrivances for turning the ore into manufactured articles. The laws of Great Britain had required the people of the colonies to send their iron ore to England. The war put an end to this, and people set up iron works in the districts in which the ore was found. These works began to multiply, but the best articles still came from England.

79. Education and Religion. The people were still poor, but they began to plan for schools for their children, and even for new colleges. In 1789 Massachusetts made attendance upon

school compulsory, and before the end of the century several academies had been founded in that and other New England States. In 1795, Governor Clinton, of New York, recommended the legislature to establish common schools throughout the State. It was many years, however, before there was anything like a public-school system throughout the country. The care of the public schools is one of the great duties of the separate States. The general government has little to do in this respect.

1783.

There was very little paper made in the country, and books were dear. Schoolbooks were few in number; but a young schoolmaster, Noah Webster, had just made a speller, and was at work upon a dictionary. There were only three or four public libraries in the entire country, and but forty-three newspapers, in 1783.

Before

There were churches in all the older communities. the war for independence some of these had been partly supported by the government. But when the State governments were formed, and when the Federal Constitution was adopted, taxes for the support of ministers were abolished in most of the States. It was provided in the Constitution that " no religious tests should ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States." The first amendment to the Constitution also had the words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."1

The churches were supported by the free-will offerings of the people who attended them. But the people believed so firmly that religion and education are necessary to freedom, that they laid no taxes upon property devoted to religious and charitable purposes, nor upon property used for schools and colleges. This separation of the churches from the State was one of the greatest points of difference between the New

1 The State of Virginia was the first to abolish religious tests. Madison was most influential in bringing this about, as also in extending the principle to the Federal Constitution.