No.

026 8142.5.

A CENTURY OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED

STATES

BY

MARCUS BAKER

THE ANNUAL PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

DELIVERED

APRIL 2, 1898

Men and women occupied with the small and special details of a large and complex work are not well situated for understanding the scope of the large work to which they contribute. The shop girl in Waterbury who spends her days and years in cutting threads on tiny screws may have very limited knowledge and erroneous opinions about the watch industry. The trained arithmetician who spends his months and years in adjusting triangulation or verifying computations does not thereby acquire valuable opinions as to the scope and conduct of a great national survey. In our day many, if not all, branches of human knowledge and activity are widening. As they widen they are specialized. The student of nature, the practitioner of medicine or law, the artisan, each is prone to contract the size of his field of activity, and to study more profoundly some small part of the large subject. Even the farms grow smaller and are better cultivated than formerly. Such subdivision of the field of study and activity into special and smaller fields has for a century at least progressed steadily, and the world has gained thereby. Many have become profoundly learned or highly skilled in some small subject. You will recall the story of the German professor who near the close of a long

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life devoted to the dative case regretted that he had chosen so large a field. "I ought," said he, "to have confined myself to the iota subscript." I will not deny-nay, I am persuaded that the specialization of which I speak is wise, that by it the welfare of the race is promoted. But while this is so, it should ever be borne in mind that specialized knowledge is not a substitute for general knowledge. It is something called for by the increased and increasing sum of human knowledge; but if by it the number of students of larger and unspecialized fields is greatly reduced harm may, indeed must, result.

My purpose, however, is not to call attention to possible perils from undue specialization, for before this audience that is unnecessary. The subject has been discussed and is well understood.

For many years my work has been along geographic lines, and this has led me to select as the theme for this annual address the Geography of the United States; not its mathematical geography, nor its physical geography, nor its political geography, nor its commercial geography, any one of which might be treated with more ease than the general subject. And yet a consideration of the whole field and a picture of the general progress made in the geography of the United States since its creation will, it is hoped, prove profitable-more profitable, indeed, if well done, than a more minute examination of a more limited subject. It is not uncommon when a subject of large scope has been chosen to hear the comment, "He has chosen a large subject;" and sometimes we think we see in this an implied opinion that the speaker shows either unwisdom or audacity in such choice. I will not deny that either or both may be true in this case, but will at once invite you to follow me in a most general review of a century's progress in the diffusion of geographic knowledge in and as to the United States.

It is not to the details or agencies by which our knowledge has been acquired that I would draw attention. This has already been done many times. In the stout and repulsive black

volumes that for years have, from the government printing office, been poured out over the country without stint or price in these are set forth with elaborate minuteness the geographic work done by the United States. The particular fields investigated by boundary surveys, by the Coast Survey, by the General Land Office, by the Lake Survey, by the Pacific Railroad Surveys, by the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, by the Rodgers Exploring Expedition, by the so-called Hayden, Wheeler, and Powell surveys, by the Northern Transcontinental survey, by various State surveys, topographic and geologic, and by the U. S. Geological Survey— all these are duly recorded and published in scores of forbidding black volumes. These volumes record the increase in geographic knowledge, but throw little light on its diffusion. For this we look to the text-books, to public addresses in Congress and out, to newspaper and magazine articles, and to public lectures. These reflect the 'general knowledge of the community as to geography. This phase of the subject shall be our theme.

It is now one hundred and nine years since thirteen sovereign and independent states, loosely bound together in a confederation, agreed to form a "more perfect union." By a narrow majority and after protracted debate they accepted the terms of an instrument which bound them in an indissoluble union. In April, 1789-one hundred and eight years ago-Washington was inaugurated. That we may clearly note our geographic progress since that event let us picture to ourselves in broad outline the geographic environment of that time.

The total area of the original thirteen states was 830,000 square miles, an area a little larger than Alaska. The population was about 4,000,000, or a little more than that of Greater New York today. Of the whole area only about 30 per cent contained any population, and even within this area the people were gathered for the most part in a narrow fringe along the Atlantic seaboard. The largest city was New York, with a population of 33,000-i. e., it was about as large as the

Yonkers or Youngstown of today. Waterbury, Connecticut, with a population of 29,000, is a little larger than was Philadelphia in 1790. Boston contained a population of 18,000; Charleston, South Carolina, 16,000; Baltimore, 13,000, and Salem, Massachusetts, 8,000. After these only thirteen others, all still smaller, find a place in the first census.

Maine was a province of Massachusetts, with a northeastern boundary undefined and awaiting an international boundary conference for its determination. Most of its territory then was, as some still is, barely explored. To the north, then as now, was a British province; to the west and south, Spanish possessions. This phrase Spanish possessions must here be taken in a Pickwickian sense, for these regions owned by Spain were still almost exclusively possessed by the aborigines. Traveling was chiefly done on horseback and by stages. The days of railroads and steamboats were in the future. Even the system of canals and national highways, so much exploited in the early decades of the century, was not yet begun.

Of maps of the region there were several, fairly good for their time. None of them, however, were based on surveys. The maps of Thomas Jefferys, geographer to King George during the revolutionary period, are as a whole the best, and fairly representative of the geographic knowledge then existing. While these maps of Jefferys, as well as others, recorded the best geographic information then extant, it does not appear that the information they contained was widely diffused. General ignorance as to geography must have been great. Noah Webster, the lexicographer, writing in 1840, says of the teaching in the schools when he was a boy :

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"When I was young, or before the Revolution, the books used were chiefly or wholly Dilworth's spelling books, the Psalter, Testament, and Bible. No geography was studied before the publication of Dr. Morse's small books on that subject, about the year 1786 or 1787. * * Except the books above mentioned, no book for reading was used before the publication of the Third Part of my Institutes, in 1785. In some of the early editions of that book I introduced short notices of the geography and history of the United States, and this led to more enlarged descriptions of the country."