Article February 1, 1900 Issue

Miscellany

The population of the United States, which was about 5,000,000 in Washington's time, is now 75,000,000. The largest city in the country then, Philadelphia, had 69,000 inhabitants, while it now has 1,200,000 or 1,400,000. New York, then with 55,000 population, has 3,500,000 to-day. Chicago, then a hunting ground for Indians, with no place on the map until over a fourth of a century after Washington's demise, has more population now than was between the Potomac and the country's southern line at that time. The states of New York and Pennsylvania have each at present many more inhabitants than the entire United States had one hundred years ago, says Leslie's Weekly.

In 1799 the area of the country was 827,000 square miles, while it is now 3,700,000. Its western boundary, which was at the Mississippi then, was long ago advanced to the Pacific, and has now been extened to the Philippines in Asiatic waters. Its southern bounday, which was latitude 31 degrees at that time, the northerly line of the present state of Louisiana, has, in the passing years, taken in Florida, with that territory's former extension to the Mississippi, and reached down to the lower part of the Gulf of Mexico. Its northerly line, then the great lakes, has, in the case of Alaska, been stretched far north of the Arctic circle.

In the year of Washington's death the receipts of the government were $7,000,000 and its expenditures $9,000,000. In the fiscal year 1899 the expenditures were $700,000,000 and the receipts were slightly below that mark. The wealth of the country, which was less than $1,000,000,000 then, or much below that of the single city of New York now, is $90,000,000,000 at the present time.

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