The nineteenth century was a period of dramatic population growth in the United States. In 1800 scarcely five million people resided in the fifteen states. By 1900 the populace had increased fifteenfold, and settlement stretched from the Atlantic coast westward to the shores of the Pacific Ocean (Century of Population Growth, 1909).
Notes from Plattsburgh, New York, midwestern and western United States, islands of the Pacific Ocean, and Manila, June 9 - August 4, 1905