Excerpt from The German Element in the United States With Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence, Vol. 1 of 2 The obstructions in the path of a final solution of the questions proposed in the second part are even more seri ous than in the historical outline. The economic history of the United States has not been written, though steps are now being taken toward an ultimate accomplishment of that gigantic task. The volumes on manufactures in the Census Reports occasionally furnish a few meagre de tails, but the history of none of our great American in dustries has been made available. Each chapter, therefore, has furnished an entirely new field for investigation, and difficulties of a different kind. The plan of questioning experts, or representatives of a particular industry, has frequently been resorted to by the writer, as, e. G., in the departments of viticulture, lithography, and the manu facture of agricultural machinery. The writer has thus frequently gained information not accessible in books. Because of these peculiar difficulties, the second part of the work is necessarily more tentative than the first, pos sessing the faults of pioneer work, yet for that very rea son the more fascinating to the writer, and, it is believed, the more suggestive to the reader. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.