whom 1,276,242 were white and 4,697,152 were colored. There is a preponderance of males. The largest towns, with their estimated populations, are Johannesburg, 275,000 and Cape Town, 195,000. The Cape of Good Hope is the most populous province, and Orange Free State, the least.

The last census of occupations showed 342,000 persons engaged in mining; 290,560 in domestic pursuits; 192,424 in agriculture; 143,255 in industry; 81,627 commercial; 59,721 professional; miscellaneous and unspecified, 15,696. Classed as dependents, 492,959. White persons engaged in the government or defence of South Africa, 26,258.

The chief religions represented among the white population were: Dutch churches, 693,898; Anglicans, 255,640; Wesleyans, 80,402; Presbyterians, 58,633; Roman Catholics, 53,793; Jews, 46,919. Among the non-Europeans, the chief religions represented were: Wesleyans, 456,017; Anglicans, 276,849; Dutch churches, 204,702; Lutherans, 195,308; Congregationalists, 173,982.

There are some 5,000 schools for whites and 2,750 schools for colored, with 275,000 white and 190,000 colored pupils, and a combined teaching staff of almost 20,000.

Finance.-Recent annual budgets have been in the neighborhood of $100,000,000. The total gross debt is approximately $850,000,000.

Production.-Recent figures show an annual wheat production of 610,000,000 pounds of wheat and 2,530,000,000 pounds of maize. More than 20,000,000 pounds of butter and 6,000,000 pounds of cheese are produced every year. In a recent year, exports included 115,000,000 pounds of wool, 20,000,000 pounds of mohair, and $11,500,000 worth of hides and skins. The production of ostrich feathers is an portant activity. Cotton-growing is on the increase, a recent crop being above 800,000 pounds; more than 100,000 tons of sugar are produced annually; and the almost 5,000 acres under tea produce annually more than 5,000,000 pounds of green leaf tea.

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lowed by the United States, India and Japan. The exports go chiefly to the United Kingdom, followed by the United States and Japan. In a recent year, the United States imported from British South Africa goods valued at $20,616.766 and exported thither goods valued at $60,939,159.

The railroads are owned by the state, and have a mileage of almost 10,000. There are 2,623 post-offices; 16,000 miles of telegraph line, carrying 54,000 miles of wire; and 3,215 miles of telephone line, with 130,000 miles of wire. Recent maritime statisties show more than 1,000 vessels, of 3,000,000 tons net, entering and clearing in the overseas trade and 1,775 vessels, of more than 2,500,000 tons net, in the coastwise trade.

Union Pacific Railroad, junction of, with Central Pacific, illustration, opposite 3856. (See also Railroads.)

Union Station, Washington, D. C. (See illustration opposite page 5635.)

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Union Veteran Legion.-Organized Pittsburgh, Pa., March 1884, and the National Organization was perfected Nov. 17, 1886. Encampments are now organized in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia, numbering 152 encampments. The membership is over 20,000. To become a member, the applicant must have been an officer, soldier, sailor or marine of the Union army, navy, or marine corps, during the late Civil War, who volunteered prior to July 1, 1873.

United Cigar Stores referred to, 7648. United Confederate Veterans.-An association the objects and purposes of which are set forth in the constitution as finally adopted at the Houston reunion, May 23, 1895. It is a federation of all associations of Confederate veterans, soldiers and sailors. The purposes are the cultivation of ties of friendship between those who have shared common dangers, sufferings, and privations: the encouragement of the writing, by the participants therein, of narratives, episodes, occurrences, etc., of the Civil War; the collection of authentic data for an impartial history, and the preservation of war records; care for needy survivors and their dependents. Membership is by camps, and numbers about 60,000.

United Daughters of the Confederacy. -The United Daughters of the Confederacy was organized at Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 10, 1894. It is composed of the widows, wives, mothers, sisters, and lineal female descendants of men who served the Confederate cause. The objects are to unite, and to cultivate ties of friendship among, such women, to keep unsullied the record of Southern achievements in the Civil War, and to develop Southern character. It has about 100,000 members. United Hatters. (See Loewe vs. Lawlor, et al.)

United Kingdom. (See Great Britain.) United Labor Party.-A local political party organized in New York City in 1886. It nominated Henry George for mayor on a platform based upon his theory that values arising from the growth of society belong to the community as a whole, and that therefore land values should bear the burden of taxation (see Single Tax).

United Mine Workers of America, strike of, denounced, 8797. United Sons of Confederate Veterans. (See Confederate Veterans, United Sons of.)

United States.-The United States is a federal republic consisting of forty-eight states and one federal district, besides the outlying territories of Alaska, Hawail, the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, Guam, Samoa (Tutuila), Wake and other islands, Panama Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands. Continental United States occupies the southern portion of the North American Continent, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in latitude 25°-49° North and longitude 67°-124° 30' West, its northern boundary being Canada and the southern boundary Mexico.

Physical Features.-The coast-line оп both oceans has an estimated length of about 15,610 miles, besides 3,620 miles on the Great Lakes and 5,744 on the Gulf of Mexico. The principal river is the Missis sippi-Missouri, traversing the whole country from north to south, and having a course of 4,500 miles to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, with many large affluents, the chief of which are the Yellowstone, Nebraska, Arkansas, Ohio, and Red Rivers. The rivers flowing into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are comparatively small; among the former may be noticed the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and Savannah; of the latter, the Columbia, Sacramento, and Colorado. The Mobile and Colorado of Texas fall into the Gulf of Mexico, also the Rio Grande, which partly forms the boundary with Mexico. The chain of the Rocky Mountains separates the western portion of the territory from the remainder, all communication being carried on over certain elevated passes, several of which are now traversed by railroads; west of these, bordering the Pacific coast, the Cascade Mountains and Sierra Nevada form the outer edge of a high table-land, consisting in great part of stony and sandy desert, and in which occurs the Great Salt Lake, extending to the Rocky Mountains. Eastward the country is a vast, gently undulating plain, with a general slope southward towards the marshy flats of the Gulf of Mexico, extending to the Atlantic, interrupted only by the Alleghany Mountains, in the eastern states. Nearly the whole of this plain, from the Rocky Mountains to some distance beyond the Mississippi, consists of immense treeless prairies. In the eastern states large forests of valuable timber, as beech, birch, maple, oak, pine, spruce, elm, ash, walnut; and in the south, live-oak, water-oak, magnolia, palmetto, tulip-tree, cypress, etc., still exist, the remnants of the wooded region which formerly extended over all the Atlantic slope, but into which great inroads have been made by the advance of civilization. The Mississippi valley is eminently fertile. The mineral kingdom produces in great abundance iron, copper, lead, zinc, and aluminum; the non-metallic minerals including immense quantities of coal, anthracite, petroleum, stone, cement, phosphite rock, and salt. Precious metals Include gold and silver, raised mainly in Colorado, California, and Alaska (gold), and Colorado, Montana, Utah and Idaho (silver); while precious stones are worked in great variety, including the turquoise, sapphire, tourmaline, and garnet.

History.-United States history may be said to commence with the colonizing expeditions from Europe in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries; for, although Columbus discovered America in the fifteenth century (Oct. 12, 1492), no definite European settlement was attempted until the last quarter of the sixteenth contury, when England, Holland, Sweden, France, and Spain made determined efforts to bring into account the potential wealth of the newly discovered continent. Of these nationalltles the English secured a paramount influence amongst the nations of Europe. In the seventeenth century a chartered company founded Jamestown (1607), and many Royalist settlements were established in the district which had been named Virginia, after Queen Elizabeth, in the previous century. But step by step with the Church and Royalist foundations in the south a similar series of Puritan and Separatist centres was established in the north. The small band of "Pilgrim Fathers" in their 180-ton Mayflower, from Southampton, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620), was soon followed by a stream of well-to-do merchants from Boston, Lincolnshire, and other east coast English towns, and New England became rapidly prosperous. Between these two settlements the Dutch had established themselves in New Netherlands (1621), and the Swedes in New Sweden (1638). Other English foundations were Maryland (1632), Carolina (1663), New York (1664), New Jersey (1665), and Pennsylvania (1681). Georgia (1732) was the last of the English settlements.

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The Spaniards began colonizing with the second voyage of Columbus, but their settlements were mostly in Cuba, Haiti, Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean Sea and in South America. The few colonies planted the main land were never of hardy growth. The discoveries of Cabot and Cartier opened the mouth of the St. Lawrence to French enterprise, and Champlain founded Quebec in 1608. Traversing the Great Lakes Jesuit missionaries and explorers descended the Mississippi River and established posts at St. Paul, Dubuque, Kaskaskia, and St. Louis, finally reaching New Orleans, thereby confirming the claim of France to the whole interior of the country

A continuous struggle was waged between the English and French settlements in America, but until the War of 1754-1763 little part was taken by Great Britain in the actual campaigns. The issue of this war decided the fate of America. The British Government levied an excise tax on many articles in everyday use in the colonies. The colonists resisted in arms, and bloodshed ensued at the first engagement at Lexington, April 19, 1775, and continued until the Capitulation of Yorktown, Oct. 19, 1781, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered with the whole of his forces to General Washington. When peace was concluded, Sept. 3, 1783, between America and Great Britain, no vestige of territory over which the dispute had raged remained under British rule. On July 4, 1776, the delegates of the various American colonies adopted the Declaration of Inde pendence. (See Revolutionary War and the various battles.)

The Declaration of Independence (q. v.) was followed by the framing of a Constitu tion, which was ratified in 1787 to 179C by the thirteen Original States (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island). (See Admission of States.) This Constitntion established a legislature of two houses,