Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/464

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  • burgh contributed $250,000 to restore so far

as possible the material portion of the loss.

Pittsburgh has thus passed through many battles, trials, afflictions and adversities, and has grown in the strength of giants until it now embraces in the limits of the county a population of over one million. The tax valuation of her property is $554,000,000. Her share is more than one half of the whole production in the United States of steel, steel rails, coke, oil, plate glass, glassware, harness-leather and iron pipe. She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. She has 2500 mills and factories, with an annual product worth $250,000,000, and a pay-roll of $75,000,000. Her electric street-railway system multiplies itself through her streets for 250 miles. Natural-gas fuel is conveyed into her mills and houses through 1000 miles of iron pipe. Her output of coke makes one train ten miles long every day throughout the year. Her tonnage by river and rail exceeds the tonnage by river and rail of any other city in the world; it is equal to one half the combined tonnage of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Her rail tonnage is three times as large as that of New York or Chicago, double