These people are glad to come because the workingmen of America receive higher wages than those of any other country, and because in America a man is free to rise to any position that he is fitted to hold. The country is ready to give the education that will prepare her citizens to rise to high positions. It is believed that an educated man is likely to make a better citizen than an ignorant man, and therefore the public schools of the United States are entirely free. Then, too, there are public libraries not only in the cities but in many of the little villages, so that men who are too old to go to school may educate themselves by reading. There is opportunity to use all kinds of knowledge in carrying on the manufactures of the country. Almost everything that used to be made by hand is now made by machinery, and the skill to invent a machine that will work a little better than the one in use is always well rewarded. Knowledge is also needed to develop the mineral wealth of the country. Within the limits of the United States are metals, coal, natural gas, and petroleum, and it is the skill and inventive genius of her citizens that have brought such great wealth to the country from these products. This inventive genius has also given us rapid and cheap transportation. In the old days a man had to make or raise most things for himself. Manufactured articles that could be made very cheaply in one place became exceedingly dear when they had to be carried long distances by wagons over poor roads. Many delicate kinds of fruit would spoil on such long journeys. Now, fruit can be sent from California to Maine in fine condition. Cheap and rapid transportation is a great convenience. Business men need not live in the cities near their offices,--the steam or electric cars will carry them eight or ten miles in the time that it would take to walk one mile. The postal service and the telegraph are sure and rapid. So also is the telephone. No wonder, then, that our commerce has reached the fabulous sum of one billion, five hundred million dollars in one year. What the United States will become tomorrow, will lie in the hands of those who are the children of to-day. LESSON LVII PICTURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY On the southern bank of the James River in Virginia stand the ruins of an old church. Its crumbling tower and broken arch are almost hidden by the tangled vines which cover it. Within the walls of the church-yard may be found a few ancient tombstones overgrown with ivy and long grass. This is all that remains of the first English settlement in America,--the colony of Jamestown, Virginia. This first permanent English settlement in the New World was made in the year 1607, more than a hundred years after the discovery of America by Columbus. Some attempts to colonize had been made by the English before this time. The most important of these was undertaken by the famous but unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh.