LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 4.8075 Prepared in accordance with the provisions of the Revised Statutes, approved June 23, 1874. SEC. 75. The Joint Committee on Public Printing shall appoint a competent person, who shall edit such portion of the documents accompanying the annual reports of the Departments as they may deem suitable for popular distribution, and prepare an alphabetical index thereto. SEC. 196. The head of each Department, except the Department of Justice, shall furnish to the Congressional Printer copies of the documents usually accompanying his annual report on or before the first day of November in each year, and a copy of his annual report on or before the third Monday of November in each year. SEC. 3798. Of the documents named in this section there shall be printed and bound, in addition to the usual number for Congress, the following numbers of copies, namely: Second. Of the President's message, the annual reports of the Executive Departments, and the abridgment of accompanying documents, unless otherwise ordered by either House, ten thousand copies for the use of the members of the Senate and twentyfive thousand copies for the use of the members of the House of Representatives. MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: In submitting my seventh annual message to Congress, in this cen tennial year of our national existence as a free and independent people, it affords me great pleasure to recur to the advancement that has been made from the time of the colonies, one hundred years ago. We were then a people numbering only three millions. Now we number more than forty millions. Then industries were confined almost exclusively to the tillage of the soil. Now manufactories absorb much of the labor of the country. Our liberties remain unimpaired; the bondmen have been freed from slavery; we have become possessed of the respect, if not the friendship, of all civilized nations. Our progress has been great in all the arts; in science, agriculture, commerce, navigation, mining, mechanics, law, med icine, &c.; and in general education the progress is likewise encour aging. Our thirteen States have become thirty-eight, including Colorado, (which has taken the initiatory steps to become a State,) and eight Territories, including the Indian Territory and Alaska, and excluding Colorado, making a territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the south we have extended to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the west from the Mississippi to the Pacific. One hundred years ago the cotton-gin, the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, the reaping, sewing, and modern printing machines, and numerous other inventions of scarcely less value to our business and happiness, were entirely unknown. In 1776, manufactories scarcely existed even in name in all this vast territory. In 1870, more than two millions of persons were employed in manufactories, producing more than $2,100,000,000 of products in amount annually, nearly equal to our national debt. From nearly the whole of the population of 1776 being engaged in the one occupation of agricul ture, in 1870 so numerous and diversified had become the occupation of our people that less than six millions out of more than forty millions were so engaged. The extraordinary effect produced in our country by a resort to diversified occupations has built a market for the products of fertile lands distant from the seaboard and the markets of the world. The American system of locating various and extensive manufactories next to the plow and the pasture, and adding connecting railroads and steamboats, has produced in our distant interior country a result noticeable by the intelligent portions of all commercial nations. The ingenuity and skill of American mechanics have been demonstrated at home and abroad in a manner most flattering to their pride. But for the extraor dinary genius and ability of our mechanics, the achievements of our agriculturists, manufacturers, and transporters throughout the country would have been impossible of attainment. The progress of the miner has also been great. Of coal our produc tion was small; now many millions of tons' are mined annually. So with iron, which formed scarcely an appreciable part of our products half a century ago, we now produce more than the world consumed at the beginning of our national existence. Lead, zine, and copper, from being articles of import, we may expect to be large exporters of in the near future. The development of gold and silver mines in the United States and Territories has not only been remarkable, but has had a large influence upon the business of all commercial nations. Our merchants in the last hundred years have had a success and have estab lished a reputation for enterprise, sagacity, progress, and integrity unsurpassed by peoples of older nationalities. This "good name" is not confined to their homes, but goes out upon every sea and into every port where commerce enters. With equal pride we can point to our progress in all of the learned professions. As we are now about to enter upon our second centennial-commeneing our manhood as a nation-it is well to look back upon the past and study what will be best to preserve and advance our future greatness. From the fall of Adam for his transgression to the present day, no nation has ever been free from threatened danger to its prosperity and happiness. We should look to the dangers threatening us, and remedy them so far as lies in our power. We are a republic whereof one man is as good as another before the law. Under such a form of government it is of the greatest importance that all should be possessed of education and intelligence enough to cast a vote with a right understanding of its meaning. A large association of ignorant men cannot, for any considerable period, oppose a successful resistance to tyranny and oppression from the educated few, but will inevitably sink into acquiescence to the will of intelligence, whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft. Hence the education of the masses becomes of the first necessity for the preservation of our institutions. They are worth preserving, because they have secured the greatest good to the greatest proportion of the population of any form of government yet devised. All other forms of government approach it just in proportion to the general diffusion of education and independence of thought and action. As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the legislatures o the several States for ratification, making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children in the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions; forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; and prohibiting the granting of any school-funds, or school-taxes, or any part thereof, either by legislative, municipal, or other authority, for the benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, of any religious sect or denomination, or in aid or for the benefit of any other object of any nature or kind whatever. In connection with this important question, I would also call your attention to the importance of correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will probably lead to great trouble in our land before the close of the nineteenth century. It is the accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church-property. In 1850, I believe, the church-property of the United States which paid no tax, municipal or State, amounted to about $83,000,000. In 1860, the amount had doubled; in 1875, it is about $1,000,000,000. By 1900, without check, it is safe to say this property will reach a sum exceeding $3,000,000,000. So vast a sum, receiving all the protection and benefits of government, without bearing its proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same, will not be looked upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the taxes. In a growing country, where real estate enhances so rapidly with time as in the United States, there is scarcely a limit to the wealth that may be acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration without constitutional authority and through blood. I would suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation, exempting only the last resting-place of the dead, and, possibly, with proper restrictions, church-edifices. Our relations with most of the foreign powers continue on a satisfactory and friendly footing. Increased intercourse, the extension of commerce, and the cultivation of mutual interests have steadily improved our relations with the large majority of the powers of the world, rendering practicable the peaceful solution of questions which from time to time necessarily arise, leaving few which demand extended or particular notice. The correspondence of the Department of State with our diplomatic representatives abroad is transmitted herewith. I am happy to announce the passage of an act by the General Cortes of Portugal, proclaimed since the adjournment of Congress, for the abo tition of servitude in the Portuguese colonies. It is to be hoped that such legislation may be another step toward the great consummation to be reached, when no man shall be permitted, directly or indirectly, under any guise, excuse, or form of law, to hold his fellow-man in bondage. I am of opinion also that it is the duty of the United States, as contrib uting toward that end, and required by the spirit of the age in which |