AN

OF

AMERICAN ALMANAC

AND

Treasury of Facts,

STATISTICAL, FINANCIAL, AND POLITICAL,

FOR THE YEAR

1878.

EDITED BY

AINSWORTH R. SPOFFORD,

LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS.

NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON:

THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY.

--

1878.

Copyright, 1878, by

THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY.

Manufactured by

S. W. GREEN,

16 & 18 JACOB STREET,

NEW YORK.

THIS volume aims to supply a want long felt for a compact and comprehensive reference book, giving the statistics of all nations, and especially of the United States, at the latest date and at a moderate price.

Other annual publications of great value occupy special fields. The Statesman's Year-Book deals with the political statistics of governments, excluding miscellaneous information; the Almanach de Gotha is a cyclopædia of knowledge regarding the reigning dynasties of the globe; the British Almanac and Whitaker's Almanac are replete with facts respecting Great Britain, paying little attention to other countries. The Tribune, World, and Herald Almanacs have their full tables of elections in detail, touching but lightly upon other than political topics. McPherson's Hand-Books of Politics form an invaluable official record of political votes and movements. Major Poore's admirable Congressional Directory supplies the freshest official lists of Congress and the departments of the government. The Statistician, a comparatively recent candidate for public favor, issued at San Francisco, furnishes a wide range of carefully digested information.

To all these this volume is under obligation, and to official documents and other publications too numerous to name. The Department and Bureau documents of the United States are rich in statistics of the greatest value, but so widely scattered in voluminous records and reports having little permanent interest, and so imperfectly indexed, as to baffle even the inquirer who has them always within reach. To glean the most important and practically useful facts out of the multitudinous reports concerning the Public Lands, the Finances, the Post-office system, the Tariff and Internal Revenue, the Currency, the Patent Office and Pension Bureau, Commerce and Navigation, the Army and Navy, the Reports of the Commissioner of Education, and the statistics of the Census, has been one object of the editor. To select, arrange, and condense the multitude of statistics derived from foreign as well as American sources, presenting them in compact tabular form, so that results may be quickly seized without laborious search, has been the chief aim. The editor's profession has taught