AMERICAN "TALL TALK."

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1138, 4 October 1880, Page 2

AMERICAN "TALL TALK."

This is a time (says the Boston Post) when as Americans we feel like doing a little boasting. One hundred and four years ago, when we declared ourselves to be a free and independent people, our population was less than 3,000,000 ; today, according to General Walker's rough estimate, it is 48,000,000. Boston was then an insifigificant village, so far. as population was concerned, and New England had but a few scattered schools and two colleges. The entire country had but 37 newspapers, and the best of them were not equal to the worst weeklies published to-day in the bushroom towns of the Rocky Mountainregions. In 1789 we had but 75 post offices. And the mails are carried over 265,000 miles of road at an expense of 32,000 dollars per year. To-day we have 38,000 post offices, and new ones are being established daily ; and the mails are carried over 265,000 miles of postroads at an annual expense of 29,000,000 dollars. We have ]41,629 schoolhouses, 63,082 churches, 792 daily newspapers, and over 9000 periodicals of all kinds. Our farms a re valued at not less than 2,262,803,861 dollars ; our farming implements at 336,879,423, dollars ; and ooru r H ve stock at 1,525,276,457 dollars. Our farm products in a single year have brought us 2,447,538,657 dollars, and in the same time we have paid in farm wages 310,285,285 dollars. Our crops are bountiful, yes, enormous ; and our exports have reached nearly 475,000,000 dollars in a twelvemonth. Our manufactories are prosperous. In cotton goods we challenge the world. In one year our 960 mills turned out cloth enough to encircle the earth twenty times if made into one piece, with still enough left to make every human being a suit of clothes and furnish each with pieces for patching.