directed the attention of foreign capitalists to our resources,
and gave them the utmost confidence in this new investment field.
Immigration, too, started after the war at a rate hitherto
without parallel in our annals. The Germans who had come in the
years preceding the Civil War had been largely political refugees
and democratic idealists, but now, in much larger numbers, began
the influx of north and south Germans whose dominating motive was
economic. These Germans began to find their way to the farms of
the Mississippi Valley; the Irish began once more to crowd our
cities; the Slavs gravitated towards the mines of Pennsylvania;
the Scandinavians settled whole counties of certain northwestern
States; while the Jews began that conquest of the tailoring
industries that was ultimately to make them the clothiers of a
hundred million people. For this industrial development, America
supplied the land, the resources, and the business leaders, while
Europe furnished the liquid capital and the laborers.

Even more directly did the War stimulate our industrial
development. Perhaps the greatest effect was the way in which it
changed our transportation system. The mere necessity of
constantly transporting hundreds of thousands of troops and war
supplies demanded reconstruction and reequipment on an extensive
scale. The American Civil War was the first great conflict in
which railroads played a conspicuous military part, and their
development during those four years naturally left them in a
strong position to meet the new necessities of peace. One of the
first effects of the War was to close the Mississippi River;
consequently the products of the Western farms had to go east by
railroad, and this fact led to that preeminence of the great
trunk lines which they retain to this day. Almost overnight