The large increase in the number of Christian Scientists is especially noteworthy. The Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, the Salvation Army, and German Baptists also show an appreciable gain. The strongest denominations numerically are the Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans, in the order named. Details and latest statistics regarding the various denominations may be found under their respective headings.

The distribution of the several sects has largely followed the historic lines of immigration. The Roman Catholics are numerically the strongest in more than half the States, including New England, the far Northwest, and the Pacific divisions; while the Methodists and Baptists are about equally divided in the States south of Mason and Dixon's line. Massachusetts is the leading State of the Congregationalists, New York of the Episcopalians, Pennsylvania of the Presbyterians, North Carolina of the Methodists, and Georgia of the Baptists. See the articles on the various denominations.

EDUCATION. This topic is fully treated under the following headings: NATIONAL EDUCATION, SYSTEMS OF; SCHOOLS; PUBLIC SCHOOLS; COMMON SCHOOLS; GRAMMAR SCHOOLS; EVENING SCHOOLS; UNIVERSITIES; etc.

CHARITIES. The National Government has no department concerned directly with charities, their control being in the hands of the State and municipal governments. Many private organiza

tions and societies are also interested in the subject. See under the several State articles; also the articles on CHARITIES; PAUPERISM; CHARITIES AND CORRECTION, THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF; CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY; etc.

HISTORY. COLONIAL PERIOD. The territory included within the United States of America was originally occupied solely by numerous tribes of Indians. The Northeastern coast was probably visited about the year A.D. 1000 and subsequently by the Northmen (see VINELAND), and other navigators may in the following five centuries have sighted parts of the coast; but the existence of the American continent was unknown to the world at large until after Columbus's discovery in 1492. In 1497 John Cabot reached the coast of America, probably in the neighborhood of Cape Breton. The Portuguese Cortereal explored the coast southward from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in 1500-01, and probably from as early a date as 1504 fishermen from Normandy and Brittany frequented the shores of Newfoundland. In 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon explored a portion of Florida in a romantic search for the fountain of youth; and in 1520 some Spanish vessels from Santo Domingo were driven upon the coast of Carolina. During the following year, through the conquests of Cortés (q.v.) and his followers, Mexico, including the territory later known as Texas, New Mexico, and California, became a province of Spain. In the same decade Verrazano explored the coast between North Caro

lina and Newfoundland and Narvaez made his disastrous expedition to Florida. Ferdinand de Soto in 1539-42 led a Spanish expedition from the coast of Florida westward, discovering the Mississippi River (April, 1541). Simultaneously with this expedition, Coronado's men explored a great part of what is now the Southwestern United States. A Spanish settlement was made at Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1565; and in 158485 Sir Walter Ralegh (q.v.) sent two expeditions to the coast of North Carolina, and attempted to form a settlement on Roanoke Island. None of the settlements attempted during the sixteenth century, however, except Saint Augustine, had any permanence; and it was not until the seventeenth century that the Europeans, and especially the English, devoted their enter prises to colonization rather than to exploration. King James in 1606 granted a charter to a large colonizing corporation which comprised two companies, the London Company, which received certain rights between 34° and 41° north latitude, and the Plymouth Company, which received certain rights between 38° and 45°. The London Company in 1607 founded Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement within the limits of the present United States. Here in 1619 a representative assembly was called, the first in the New World. In 1607, also, two members of the Plymouth Company, Sir Ferdinand Gorges and Sir John Popham, sent out an expedition to the Kennebec, where the settlers experienced a severe winter, and in 1608 abandoned the undertaking. In 1620 certain dissenters who had secured a grant from the London Company landed by mistake farther northward and settled Plymouth. Between these two colonies the Dutch had already established themselves (1613) at New Amsterdam. Quebec was settled in 1608, and a large part of the country on the Great Lakes and on the Mississippi was explored by Nicolet (1634), by Marquette and Joliet (1673), and by La Salle (1682), and settlements were early made by the French at the outposts of Kaskaskia and Arkansas Post, and at Mobile and Vincennes. Thus the beginnings were made of two distinct movements of the incoming population, in the course of one of which the English were to occupy practically the entire Atlantic seaboard of the present United States, excluding Florida, while in the course of the other the French were to establish themselves at strategic points on the two great waterways. The colonizing work of the French was such as to make conspicuous the trading post, the military element, and the bureaucratic class, and to minimize the features of public development, of local political life, and of permanence in method and purpose. The English, on the other hand, brought with them their school, their Church, and their political forms, and founded colonies on lines which were adhered to throughout their later develop ment. (The early history of the various colonies, the union of which formed the United States, will be found under the heads of the different States.) In some of the colonies representative governments were maintained, in which all officers, both executive and judicial, as well as the entire legislature, were chosen by the people. On the other hand, in the royal provinces, such as Virginia and New York, the chief judicial and executive officers, as well as members of the upper

branch of the legislature, were appointees of the Crown, the general population sharing in the provincial government only through the choice of the members of the legislature. This distribution of privilege characterized also the proprietary provinces, such as Maryland, in which, however, appointments were made by the proprietors instead of by the Crown. Thus in the royal and proprietary provinces the ultimate authority was outside of the province, while in charter provinces all authority apparently was within each province, and there was in the scheme by which these provinces were organized no effective means of subordinating their political actions to the power of the central administration except through the alteration or abolition of their charters.

During the colonial period there were several instances of the tendency of the colonies, having very similar institutions and ideals, to act jointly as a confederate body. The first effort at a union of colonies was in 1643, when Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed, under the title of "The United Colonies of New England,' a confederacy, which existed for nearly forty years, for mutual defense against the French, Dutch, and Indians. They also experienced the benefit of united action during the early Indian wars, and again in 1754, the year of the opening of the French and Indian War (q.v.). At that time also, the colonies being strongly advised by the Lords of Trade to unite for general defense, a formal plan for a permanent general government of all the English colonies was drawn up by Benjamin Franklin (q.v.) and presented at the Albany Convention (q.v.); but it was rejected by both the colonies and the Crown.

Although the several colonies were at no time organically connected, except through the King, the basis for union was early laid in the establishment of local governments in which the controlling principles were similar. There appeared also a substantial identity in forms and in practices of local government. This made it natural that occasionally during the colonial period there should appear marked tendencies toward union. In some respects, however, different types of population distinguished the several portions of settled territory, a fact due in some measure to the various classes of people in England from which the immigrants came. Thus during the period between 1620 and 1640 large numbers of dissenters withdrew from England, and the settlements in the north increased in number and population, the main colony of Massachusetts Bay being established in 1628-30, and numerous towns in the neighboring district being soon founded, while settlements were made (1635-36) at Hartford, Wethersfield, Windsor, the three towns which originally constituted the colony of Connecticut, and for the administration of which was adopted in 1639 the first written constitution of representative government. In 1638 the colony of New Haven was established. In this period also the same body of population extended northward into what became New Hampshire, as well as into the northeastern portion of Massachusetts. On the other hand, a representative of the aristocratic class founded the colony of Maryland in 1634. During the period of the Commonwealth in England most

and

of the immigrants were drawn from the Cavalier and Royalist classes, which were then out of power, and by this phase of migration Virginia and Maryland especially profited. Following the Restoration the increased power of the King in colonial politics was illustrated in the grant of the Carolinas to a body of proprietors, and of Pennsylvania to a single proprietor, while in the same period New York, acquired in 1664 by conquest from the Dutch, was organized as a royal province. The administration of New Jersey given over to a body of proprietors, and the various settlements in Rhode Island were organized by charter into a colony. Through out this period there was a steady development of uniformity in the provincial gov ernments. At the basis of it all lay the principles of a democratic or representative government, which were brought to America by the earliest colonists. A representative and popular government was established in Virginia as early as 1619, before the founding of the New England colonies, in which democratic institutions existed from the outset. Coincident with this growth of uniformity, and this preparation for unity in organization as well as in action, appeared indications of divergence in theory as to the proper position of the provinces within the English State. On the one hand, in the instances where even the executive was chosen within the province and where no provision was made for the approval of provincial laws by the King, there appeared substantially independent local autonomy, the prevalence of which type would create a thoroughly decentralized system of government. On the other hand, in the instances where the Governor and all important executive and judicial officers were appointees of the Crown, where the governor's council was chosen by the Crown, and where all provincial laws were subject to the approval of the Crown, there was created a strongly centralized form of imperial government. Both of these types of provincial administration appeared in the colonial period, although they were irreconcilable, and as one form of government recognized privileges which the colonists would not relinquish and which the home Government would not recognize as rights, and as the other form included powers which the colonists claimed were improperly exercised by the King, it was inevitable that the attempt forcibly to harmonize the two systems should create such friction as to foreshadow revolution. Originally, the colonies were regarded as within the King's exclusive jurisdiction, and it was not until the Protectorate and the reign of Charles II. that they were considered as organic portions of the Empire, so as to be governed by Parliament; then Navigation Laws (q.v.) were passed to give British ships a monopoly of commerce, certain articles produced in the colonies were required to be sent to England, and duties were levied on commodities sent from one colony to another. Protests were made against these assumptions; Massachusetts and other provinces asserted their rights of self-government and of exemption from Parliamentary control; and it was not until the English revolution of 1688 that settled and uniform relations with the several colonies were established, and the increased authority of Par

liament, both within the realm and in the colonies, was fully recognized.

The effect of that revolution made more critical the underlying problem of the colonial situation, and gradually made conspicuous the issue whether in the colonies the legislative authority of Parliament was paramount. On the other hand, the revolution had a beneficent effect upon the colonies in terminating unrest and friction, which had characterized the administration of the later Stuarts. Even in Virginia the preva lent discontent had been given violent expression in Bacon's Rebellion (q.v.) in 1676, while in the Northern colonies the many contests over jurisdiction and rights and the arbitrary rule established by Andros (q.v.), who had been appointed Governor of all the colonies north of latitude 41° N., developed a general disaffection among the people to the home Government and culminated in the seizure of Andros and the overthrow of his administration (1689).

In 1713, by the Treaty of Utrecht, England, which had been importing slaves from Africa into its American and West Indian colonies, obtained a monopoly of the slave trade to Spanish America for thirty-three years, and as a result of this arrangement slavery was extended in, and to some extent forced upon, all the American colonies. See SLAVERY.

During much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a general feeling of loyalty toward the mother country. The sons of the more wealthy colonists, especially in the South, were educated in England. English literature was widely read in the colonies; the colonies, though distinct, and differing in origin and character-Puritan in the East, largely Dutch Reformed in New York, Quaker in Pennsylvania, to a considerable extent Catholic in Maryland, and Anglican in Virginia-were yet united by language, blood, and institutions.

These influences toward harmony with the mother country served to obscure, to a considerable degree, the recurrent disputes over charter rights and trade privileges, which continued to prevail in the eighteenth century; and the tendency to union among the several colonies was strengthened by the outbreak of the French and Indian War (q.v.). This was the last in the series of conflicts (see KING WILLIAM'S WAR; QUEEN ANNE'S WAR; and KING GEORGE'S WAR; also see CANADA) which resulted from the respective territorial ambitions in North America of France and Great Britain, and left the latter in undisputed possession of Canada as well as of the territory lying between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. As a result of the termination of this long continued struggle with the French, which was followed by the Pontiac conspiracy of 1763 (see PONTIAC), the colonies, which had naturally borne the brunt

of the various conflicts in America, were relieved of much of their dependence upon the home Government, and were left freer than they had earlier been to look after what they conceived to be their rights and interests. On the other hand. the financial necessities resulting from that war led to measures by the home Government which aroused the colonists, strengthened their feelings of unity among themselves, and lessened their attachment to the English administration. Under such circumstances, the basis of intercolonial