the United States requires that the people shall be counted once in each ten years, in order that it may be determined how many representatives each state shall have in the House of Representatives; and for this purpose Congress ordered the first census to be taken in 1790.  It then appeared that, excluding Indians, there were living in the eleven United States 3,380,000 human beings, or less than half the number of people who now live in the single state of New York.

%187.  How the People were scattered.%—­More were in the Southern than in the Eastern States.  Virginia, then the most populous, contained one fifth.  Pennsylvania had a ninth, while in the five states of Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were almost one half of the English-speaking people of the United States.  These were the planting states, and, populous as they were, they had but two cities—­Baltimore and Charleston.  Savannah, Wilmington, Alexandria, Norfolk, and Richmond were small towns.  Not one had 8000 people in it.  Indeed, the inhabitants of the six largest cities of the country (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and Salem) taken together were but 131,000.

[Illustration:  DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES FIRST CENSUS, 1790/]

[Illustration:  Boston in 1790[1]]

[Footnote 1:  From the Massachusetts Magazine, November, 1790.]

%188.  The Cities.%—­And how different these cities were from those of our day!  What a strange world Washington would find himself in if he could come back and walk along the streets of the great city which now stands on the banks of the Potomac and bears his name!  He never in his life saw a flagstone sidewalk, nor an asphalted street, nor a pane of glass six feet square.  He never heard a factory whistle; he never saw a building ten stories high, nor an elevator, nor a gas jet, nor an electric light; he never saw a hot-air furnace, nor entered a room warmed by steam.

In the windows of shop after shop would be scores of articles familiar enough to us, but so unknown to him that he could not even name them.  He never saw a sewing machine, nor a revolver, nor a rubber coat, nor a rubber shoe, nor a steel pen, nor a piece of blotting paper, nor an envelope, nor a postage stamp, nor a typewriter.  He never struck a match, nor sent a telegram, nor spoke through a telephone, nor touched an electric bell.  He never saw a railroad, though he had seen a rude form of steamboat.  He never saw a horse car, nor an omnibus, nor a trolley car, nor a ferryboat.  Fancy him boarding a street car to take a ride.  He would probably pay his fare with a “nickel.”  But the “nickel” is a coin he never saw.  Fancy him trying to understand the advertisements that would meet his eye as he took his seat!  Fancy him staring from the window at a fence bright with theatrical posters, or at a man rushing by on a bicycle!

[Illustration:  Philadelphia in 1800 (Arch Street)]