Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

2 AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
In a reverse invasion that had been going on for a century, immigra-
tion had swollen the population to 76 million, more than two-thirds of the
increase occurring since 1850. Although concentrated in the East, fully a
quarter of the population had spread across the Midwest, clustered in Texas,
and settled along the Pacific coast. Gold miners, oil prospectors, home-
steaders, ranchers, and builders of railroads and cities had followed the
course of empire westward, urged on by the growing financial power of the
bankers and industrialists in the East. And with the splendid prizes of the
recent Spanish-American War, the United States had at last become a world
power, complete with an oversea empire.
The little war with Spain from May to August 1898 freed Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and the Philippines. Cuba, returned by our troops to the revolu-
tionists who had called for help against Spanish oppression, became a
protectorate in all but name; Puerto Rico was made an outright protectorate,
as was Guam, ceded to us at the peace table. But the Philippines, destined for
self-government, but then coveted by Germany and Japan and eyed with
concern by England, France, and Russia, we decided to annex. Soon our
burgeoning industry would be glad of those 7 million customers, and beyond
them the teeming millions of China. Our share in that great market in the
Orient was assured through Secretary of State John Hay's announcement of
the Open-Door policy, in a note sent in 1899 to the major European powers.
That same year the Hawaiian Islands came under our wing, gaining terri-
torial status the next year, and in 1900 Samoa was thrust upon us by her
island king, made uneasy by the European warships roaming the Pacific.
The new sense of power was flaunted at the Pan-American Exposition
that opened in Buffalo in May 1901 to proclaim the coming of age of the
Western Hemisphere. The great fireworks display that closed each day of the
fair ended with an emblematic pageant entitled "Our Empire," dramatizing
in patriotic pyrotechnics our winning of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
Philippines.
Looking back as the new year came in, all America acclaimed the
century of science and invention to which it was heir. In the past 30 years
alone the steam engine had changed the Nation from an agricultural to an
industrial economy, turning the wheels of factories, farm machinery, loco-
motives, and electric dynamos. The original 13½ miles of railroad track
built in 1830 between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills, Md., now sprawled
across almost 200,000 miles of the Nation, and a new high-speed train was
making the trip between New York and Chicago in an incredible 20 hours.
The character of the Nation's waterfront was also changing under
the force of steam. Two-thirds of the ships built in 1900 were still sailing
vessels or auxiliaries—barks, schooners, sioops, canal boats, and barges—
but that year also saw 19 side-wheelers, 117 stern-wheelers, and 216 propeller-
driven ships built for the lake, river, and coastal traffic.