What Paper Has Helped To Make

Tlic developinent of the products of the printing press, the fbunding of schools and colleges, and the attention of every kind given to the promotion of education and (MiligliK riiiicnt in tliis country, have been on a scale conimensurate with the opening up of our magnitícent natural resources, and the rapid increasc of our population, due to unpreccdented emigration. In 1776 the c-ivilized population of this country numbered ubout 3,000,000, and occupied the thirteen original States ; now, after an iotem] of scarcely more than one hundred years, uur population coiuprises 43,000,000 individuáis soattered over 3,000,000 square miles ciltliis continent, or tbroughout thirtyseven States and nine Territories. Our broad domain, with mighty navigable rivera in its lieart, and with thousands of miles of fertile prairies has become by far the chief agricultural región oi' the world, and the value of our agricultura! production bas now rcaclied the unormous annual aggregato of $2,500,000,000. ( ur mineral reBourcesare also unequalcd. The United States, exclusive oi' Ala.ika, il estiuiated to contain more than 200,000 square miles of workable coal beds, or "eight times as large as the available coal area of all the rest of the worki.' Witbin twenty years California and noighboring Territories have yielded to American cnterpiise not less than one thousand millions of dollars in gold, and yet at the time America was discovcred, Europe contained only sixty millions of this piceious metal. Vast beds of other minera), especially iron, abouud. In the development of manufaetories of all kinds, giant forward strides liave also been made. Of cotton faetones a 'one there are over 1,000 in the cuunlry. Now turn and look at our remarkable literary advancciucnt witbin the same period. At the breaking nut of the Hevolution the colonifts possecsed but nine colleges, among them Yale and Uaivard ; now there are about 300 limilai intitutions in this country ; while the developmeol of the comnion school hystem, from seanty beginningswith few bookR, etc, to the establishment of numerous fine scbool-houses, and the furnishinp of all (bat can íender education easily and cheaply obtainable by the multitude, has been a much greater feature of our progresa. But these eduentional results have been to a great extent made possible by the wonderful achievementsof the modern printing press, which in turn owes a heavy debt to those great itnprovements in our f'acilities for manufacturing paper, that alone have rendered the latter article suflBciently plentiful to meet the enormous demands of the press, and that alone enables us to buy cheap schoolbooks, as well as cheap periodicals of every kind. Our great progresa injoumalism isshown by the fact that in 1775 there were in the United States less thau f'orty newspapers and periodieals whopc aggregate issue for that year compriscd 1,200,000 copies; now the unitcd (ueï-s publishes over 300 daily newspapers, more than 4,000 wecklies, and about 600 monthly publications ; of the dailies that existed in 1870, about 800,000,000 copies were f truck off that year; of the wceklies, about 600,000,000; and of other serial publications, about 100,000,000, amounting in all to 1,500,000,000 copies. And to eum the matter up yet more forcibly, it must be stated that the United States publishe.3 more newspapers, with greater combined ciieulation, tban all the other countries of the world can together boastof having. The history of the Postal Pepartment of the Government presents an interesting feature of our national growth. Shorlly after the close of 1775, it was estimated that there were about 50 post offices in the United States. There is still to be peen in the Postal Department in the city of Washington, a small book containing about fifty sheets of foolscap paper, and in this book the entire accounts of the General Postoffice Department were then kept. In 1789, when the Confederacy was supplanted by the present form of' national government, the nunjber of poet offi" = almnt cpvnrtj-flTo, me annual income from them about $28,000 ; annual expenditures, $32,000: and the combined length ofpostroads reached about 1,900 miles. At the present timo this country contains over 23,000 postoffices, with an aggregate length of post routes of 256,000 miles ; the annual revenueamountsto $23,000,000, andtheannual expenditures to $29,000,000.