IMMIGRATION.--This industrial development, in spite of machinery, could not have been so great were it not for the increase in population, wealth, the facilities of transportation, and the great number of workingmen. These were largely immigrants, who came by hundreds of thousands year after year. From about 90,000 in 1862, the number who came each year rose to more than 450,000 in 1873; and then fell to less than 150,000 in 1878. The population of the whole country in 1880 was 50,000,000, of whom more than 6,500,000 were of foreign birth. SUMMARY 1. The discovery of gold and silver near the Rocky Mountains in 1858 and later brought to that region many thousand miners. 2. Their presence in that wild region made local government necessary, and by 1868 seven new territories were formed (Colorado, Dakota, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming), and one of them (Nevada, 1864) was admitted into the Union as a state. 3. Means of communication with California and the far West were improved. First came the Pony Express, then the telegraph, and finally the railroad. 4. The construction of the railroad across the middle of the country was followed by the building of another near the northern border. 5. Railroad building, the Homestead Law, and the success of the Dakota wheat farms, led to the rapid development of the new Northwest. 6. Quite as noticeable is the mechanical and industrial progress of the country, the rise of great corporations, and the flood of immigrants that came to our shores each year. FOOTNOTES [1] For descriptions of the wild life in the new Northwest in the pioneer days read Langford's Vigilante Days and Ways. [2] A large wagon with a white canvas top. [3] A kind of heavy coach, so called because first manufactured at Concord, New Hampshire. [4] When the war opened and Texas seceded, this route was abandoned, and after April, 1861, letters and passengers went from St. Joseph by way of Salt Lake City to California. [5] All letters had to be written on the thinnest paper, and no more than twenty pounds' weight was allowed in each of the two pouches. The trail was infested with "road agents" (robbers), and roving bands of Indians were ever ready to murder and scalp; but in summer and winter, by day and night, over the plains and over the mountains, these brave men made their dangerous rides, carrying no arms save a revolver and a knife. Each letter had to be inclosed in a ten-cent stamped envelope and have on it in addition for each half ounce five one-dollar stamps of the Pony Express Company. The story of the Pony Express is told in Henry _Inman's Great Salt Lake Trail_, Chap. viii.