Book, Where to Emigrate and Why

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Where to Emigrate and Why - Frederick B. Goddard, Peoples Publ. Co., 1869
 
CHAPTER I.
 
        THE PUBLIC DOMAIN of the United States is almost boundless. Its unsold 
acres, exclusive of Alaska, number nearly fifteen hundred millions, as yet 
covered only with the primeval forest, or the wild and wanton vegetation of the 
prairies, "wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves 
his bosom."
        The surface of this vast area is infinitely diversified with rivers and 
lakes, verdant prairies and sandy plains, lofty mountains and extensive valleys, 
and equally varied in its climate and soil, in its resources and range of 
productions. It requires no prophetic inspiration to foretell that thronging 
millions will soon people these broad and fertile acres, or that the future of 
our nation will be the most magnificent of any whose history is recorded.
        With long lines of seacoast on either ocean, our territory lies between, 
upon parallels of latitude which have ever nurtured the most vigorous 
nations—equally removed from the burning heats of the torrid and the rigors of 
the frigid zone—possessing a healthful climate, with mildly alternating seasons, 
which seem to compel exertion only to reward it.
        We have the longest river and the largest lake navigation in the world; 
and from a single line three miles long in 1828, our railroad system has grown 
to a total length of more than forty thousand miles in 1868—nearly sufficient to 
twice engirdle the earth. Our people are unsurpassed in enterprise and 
intelligence, and our benignant Government, which is at once our pride and 
glory, has made our country the hope and refuge of the world.
        Ours is no land of "organized ignorance." Systems of schools, free alike 
to the children of the rich and the poor, pervade nearly every section of the 
country, and from every Town, and village, and hamlet, churches point their 
"taper fingers toward Heaven." Our Constitution guarantees us the two greatest 
rights of manhood: freedom to worship God as we please, and the right to elect 
our own rulers. And the flag we love and revere now equally protects all its 
children, native-born or adopted; our Government having, by recent legislation, 
declared to the nations of the earth that the old feudal doctrine, "once a 
subject, always a subject," must be abandoned, and that she will maintain the 
rights of her naturalized citizens here or in foreign lands, and accord to their 
persons and property the same protection as to her native-born citizens.
        To the natural advantages of our country and to the excellence of its 
institutions, we owe the fact that within a few score years we have grown from 
an English colony to be one of the foremost nations of the earth, numbering 
thirty-five to forty millions of people, of whom it is estimated that the 
emigrants drawn to our land of mingling nationalities since the year 1790, now 
comprise, with their descendants, over twenty millions.
        The Hon. Charles Sumner, a distinguished American statesman, in an 
argument to sustain and extend the rights of the foreign-born among us, thus 
eloquently referred to their claims upon our hospitality and affection:—
        "The history of our country, in its humblest as well as most exalted 
spheres, testifies to the merits of foreigners. Their strong arms have helped 
furrow our broad territory with canals, and stretch in every direction the iron 
rail. They have filled our workshops, navigated our ships, and even tilled our 
fields. Go where you will, among the hardy sons of toil on land or sea, and 
there you will find industrious and faithful foreigners bending their muscles to 
the work. At the bar and in the high places of commerce you will find them. 
Enter the retreats of learning, and there you will find them, too, shedding upon 
our country the glory of science. Nor can any reflection be cast upon foreigners 
claiming hospitality now, which will not glance at once upon the distinguished 
living and the illustrious dead—upon the Irish Montgomery, who perished for us 
at the gates of Quebec; upon Pulaski, the Pole, who perished for us at Savannah; 
upon De Kalb and Steuben, the generous Germans, who aided our weakness by their 
military experience; upon Paul Jones, the Scotchman, who lent his unsurpassed 
courage to the infant thunders of our Navy; also upon those great European 
liberators, Kosciusko, of Poland, and La Fayette, of France, each of whom paid 
his earliest vows to liberty in our cause. Nor should this list be confined to 
military characters, so long as we gratefully cherish the name of Alexander 
Hamilton, who was born in the West Indies, and the name of Albert Gallatin, who 
was born in Switzerland, and never, to the close of his octogenarian career, 
lost the French accent of his boyhood —both of whom rendered civic services 
which may be com­memorated among the victories of peace."
        And now that the unhappy strife which has torn our chastened country is 
ended, we can realize that it has been the seal of our National greatness. In 
its peril we have felt its value, and in battling for its integrity we have 
inspired increased affection for its institutions. It has developed our sinews 
and shown us our strength; and again a
 
"—Land of happy Union! where the East
Smiles on the West in love, and Northern snows 
Melt in the ardor of the genial South !"—
 
we are entering upon a career of prosperity to which even the annals of our own 
country present no parallel.
        It is stated, upon the official authority of Mr. D. A. WELLS, Special 
Commissioner of the Revenue, that "Since the termination of the war more iron 
furnaces have been erected, more pig-iron smelted, more bars rolled, more steel 
made, more coal mined, more lumber sawed and hewed, more vessels built upon our 
inland waters, more houses constructed, more manufactories of different kinds 
started, more cotton spun and woven, more petroleum collected, refined, and 
exported, than in any equal period in the history of the country."
        During the last two years more than six hundred thousand sturdy 
immigrants have landed upon our shores, and there is no ebb to the flowing tide. 
Our land is ringing with the din of her internal improvements; cottages are 
springing up far away to the west upon sunny acres where, but yesterday, roamed 
the Indian and the buffalo. Grand lines of railroad are stretching out across 
the continent―iron monsters resting upon either ocean, swallowing the values of 
one hemisphere to void them upon the other—revealing what our first Great 
Emigrant, Columbus, vainly sought to manifest in the gloom of earlier ages—that 
the shortest way to the Indies was via America.
        When the Pacific Railroad is completed—now almost an accomplished 
fact—New York and San Francisco will be united by a continuous track thirty-four 
hundred miles in length, and the development of those portions of our domain 
which lie upon the "sunset side" of the Mississippi River, must be accelerated 
under its mighty agency in proportion to their increased facilities of access.
        And all we have, and are, or may be, as a nation, we offer to share with 
the struggling millions of the earth.
        Our Homestead Law—one of the most beneficent enactments of any age, or 
country, and one which has done more than any other to honor the American name, 
and make it loved throughout the earth—provides that each male or female 
settler, after five years' occupation, becomes the owner of one hundred and 
sixty acres, on payment of ten dollars and the land officer's fees, providing 
such settler be a citizen of the United States, or has declared an intention to 
become so; and it further provides that no land acquired under the provisions of 
this act shall, in any event, be liable for the payment of any debts contracted 
prior to the issuance of the patent therefor.
        In March last, our House of Representatives passed, with out division, 
the following resolution:‑
         "Resolved, That in order to carry into full and complete effect the 
spirit and policy of the Pre-emption and Homestead laws of the United States, 
the further sales of the agricultural public lands ought to be prohibited by 
law; and that all proposed grants of land to aid in the construction of 
railroads, or for other special objects, should be carefully scrutinized, and 
rigidly subordinated to the paramount purpose of securing homes for the landless 
poor, the actual settlement and tillage of the public domain, and the consequent 
increase of the national wealth."
[Both the Homestead and Pre-emption Laws may be found at length, further on in 
this book.]
        We want yet more people to wake our sleeping wealth; strong-armed men to 
press to the front in our march of civilization, and conquer easy victories with 
the plowshare—to "tickle our prairies with a hoe that they may laugh with a 
harvest." We offer them the greatest boon on earth―Manhood and Independence. As 
one of our most eminent statesmen has nobly said:—
        "There are our broad lands, stretching toward the setting sun; let them 
come and take them. Ourselves the children of the pilgrims of a former 
generation, let us not turn from the pilgrims of the present. Let the home 
founded by our emigrant fathers continue open in its many mansions to the 
emigrants of to-day."
        In our favored land the capitalist may find abundant scope for the 
profitable use of all his resources. Says J. Ross BROWNE, in his recent Report 
upon the Mineral Resources of the Pacific States and Territories: " Explorations 
made by prominent parties during the past year in many parts of the mineral 
regions hitherto unknown, demonstrate the fact that the area of the mineral 
deposit is much larger than was ever before supposed. It is safe to assume that 
of the claims already recorded in settled parts of the country and known to be 
valuable, not more than one in a hundred is being worked; and of those worked, 
perhaps not more than one in fifty pays any thing over expenses, owing to 
mismanagement, inefficient systems of reducing the ores, want of capital, cost 
of transportation, and other causes susceptible of remedy. With such wealth of 
treasure lying dormant, it can not be doubted that by the increased facilities 
for transportation and access to the mines, soon to be furnished by the Pacific 
Railroad and its proposed branches, and the experience in the treatment of ores, 
and the scientific knowledge to be acquired in a national school of mines, the 
yield must eventually increase." And yet, in spite of the drawbacks above 
alluded to, upon the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury at Washington, 
the bullion product of the United States for 1867, was seventy-five millions of 
dollars.
        There are hundreds of railroads yet to be built ; a quartz‑mill or a 
flouring-mill, a saw-mill, or a paper-mill, is or will be wanted in every valley 
from sea to sea, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Saskatchewan; and there is no 
lack of water power to be made available. Let us refer to two prominent 
instances in a single State: "It is said by competent engineers that the Falls 
of St. Anthony alone have an available capacity more than sufficient to drive 
all the twenty-five million spindles, and four thousand mills of England and 
Scotland combined. * * * And this splendid cataract forms the terminus of 
continuous navigation on the Mississippi, and the same waters which lavish on 
the broken ledges of limestone a strength sufficient to weave the garments of 
the world, may receive the staples of its mills almost at their very doors, and 
distribute them to every part of the great Valley of the Mississippi." The Falls 
of the St. Louis River, upon the navigable waters of Lake Superior, are said to 
possess equal hydraulic power, and, situated at the head of navigation of the 
great lakes, where, near the mouth of the St. Louis, must  soon be one of the 
greatest of our inland cities, and the terminus of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad, its advantages are apparent.
        And throughout the South everywhere, are millions of acres of the finest 
cotton, wheat, sugar, and rice lands in the world—many of them fenced and 
improved—that to-day await a purchaser at a price that, a few years hence, will 
be but the simple interest of their current value.
        If past experience be worth any thing—if we may judge from the rapid 
settlement and appreciation in value of the lands of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana 
— surely the lands of the newer States and Territories, with their genial 
climate, great fertility, and vast mineral wealth—under the added stimulus of 
the great railroads opening up to their products the markets of the West as well 
as the East, and a larger national immigration than ever before—can not idly 
linger in their advancement. On the contrary, all reasonable inference tells us 
that they will as far outstrip the older States of the West in rapidity of 
development, as the emigrant of to-day upon the iron horse outrides the pioneers 
of those States moving slowly on in the lumbering wagons of the past.