MCKINLEY'S SECOND TERM.

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than any man that ever lived. These include his contri- CHAP. butions to the scheme of electric lighting, a part of the telephone, the phonograph, the kinetoscope, and, what seems most wonderful of all, sextuplex telegraphy—the sending of six messages on one wire at the same time. After all these achievements, with the inventor still in vigorous manhood, and spending his days in his laboratory, no one can tell what new thing will issue from it

next.

Keeping an even step with the development of labor-saving machinery, the business development of the country, in manufactures and commerce, has astonished the world, especially in these latter years. It was an old proverb that blood could not be had from a stone; but Americans showed that at least oil may be taken from a rock, and in such enormous quantities as to kill the whale-fishery and illuminate at trifling expense the lonely cabins on the farthest frontiers. The commerce that passes the Strait of Detroit is greater than that of the Suez Canal, and the power of Niagara has been harnessed like a well-broken horse and carried many miles on simple wires. The Falls of St. Anthony, which not many years ago were but a picturesque subject for wandering artists, are now grinding wheat to feed the nations; while the great stock-yards of Chicago furnish the meat that in movable refrigerators goes to the ends of the world. And in 1901 John Pierpont Morgan, an American financier, grandson and namesake of an American poet, organized and brought into being the greatest business concern that ever existed-the United States Steel Corporation-which has a capital of more than a thousand million dollars. In the first six months of that year the railroads of the United States increased their earnings by nearly seventy million dollars. The output of steel rails that year was nearly three million tons, and of pig-iron more than sixteen million tons. The total

CHAP. capitalization of new industrial enterprises incorporated in that year was nearly three thousand million dollars. The wheat yield was six hundred and forty-five million bushels, and the corn crop more than twice as much. More than two hundred million dollars have been expended on irrigation works for the reclamation of arid. lands. The value of the merchandise exported exceeded the value of the imports by more than five hundred million dollars; and the number of immigrants that came to our shores was nearly half a million.

Such was the condition of our country, and such its vast and varied interests, when the youngest of our Presidents was suddenly called to the chief-magistracy. His first annual message made a most gratifying presentment of the condition and prospects of the Union. After paying a glowing tribute to the character of President McKinley, he discussed the danger from anarchists that come to us among the least desirable of the foreign immigrants, and said: "I earnestly recommend to the Congress that in the exercise of its wise discretion it should take into consideration the coming to this country of anarchists, or persons professing principles hostile to all government and justifying the murder of those placed in authority. Such individuals as those who not long ago gathered in open meeting to glorify the murder of King Humbert of Italy perpetrate a crime, and the law should insure their rigorous punishment. They and those like them should be kept out of this country; and if found here they should be promptly deported to the country whence they came; and far-reaching provision should be made for the punishment of those who stay. No matter calls more urgently for the wisest thought of the Congress."

He dwelt upon the fact that business confidence had been restored in the past five years and a period of abounding prosperity had begun, and then proceeded