Chatham died in Kent, May 11, 1778. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a statue was erected to his memory. See his Life by F. Thackeray.
Pitt, William, second son of the great Earl of Chatham, was born on May 28, 1759, in Kent, while his father was in the house of commons and the most honored man in England. Owing to ill-health he was educated at home, his father carefully superintending his studies and training him in those lines which would best fit him for a brilliant career in Parliament. To this was due that wonderful command of choice and accurate English which Pitt possessed above all the orators of his time. He entered Parliament, Jan. 23, 1781, and his first speech made a great impression. Burke said: “He is not a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.” A member of the opposition said to Fox: “Pitt will be one of the first men in Parliament.” Fox replied: “He already is the first.” Although but 23 and poor, he refused the office of vice-treasurer of Ireland, saying he would accept nothing but a seat in the cabinet. Although this speech caused wide-eyed astonishment at the time, three months later he was in the cabinet as chancellor of the exchequer. A year later George III urged him to act as premier and choose his associates, but with rare judgment and self-restraint Pitt declined the dazzling offer. However, on the speedy fall of the coalition ministry then formed, with Fox and North as joint secretaries of state, the king arbitrarily appointed Pitt chancellor of the exchequer and first lord of the treasury. The best judges in the political world then considered his position hopeless, and foretold a briefer ministry than even the last three had been. He was opposed by North, Sheridan and Burke, who united against him, but his dauntless courage, skill and firmness won, and on March 25, 1784, Parliament was dissolved and Pitt, only 25 years of age, was elected minister. He was one of England's most powerful premiers, and held sway for 20 years. (See England and France). He died at Putney, Jan. 23, 1806, and was buried beside his father in Westminster Abbey. See biography by Lord Stanhope and Pitt, in the Twelve English Statesmen Series, by Lord Rosebery.
Pitts′burg, Kans., a city and railroad center in Crawford County, southeastern Kansas, 50 miles east of Independence. It is on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé; Kansas City Southern; Missouri Pacific; and St. Louis and San Francisco railroads. In the vicinity are rich coal-lands and mineral deposits, coal-mines and zinc-works. There are good schools, churches, banks and a state normal school in which manual training is a prominent feature. Population 14,755.
Pittsburgh, Pa. The junction of two navigable rivers, to form a third, with its outlet in a distant ocean, gave to the site of the ninth city in population of the United States, commercial advantages from the earliest days of settlement beyond the Alleghenies. Enormous manufacturing industries and trade originating in the locality were forced upon it by the lavish hand with which nature had deeply underlaid the surrounding hills with iron, coal, petroleum and natural gas.
The site of Pittsburgh is one of the greatest beauty with its bluff-bordered streams and distantly circling heights. No smoke marred this sylvan paradise when the French came from Canada, in 1753, and built Ft. Duquesne on The Point. At the close of the French and Indian War the British rebuilt the demolished fortress and named it Fort Pitt in honor of the Earl of Chatham, their brilliant statesman and orator. To the south Mount Washington and Duquesne Heights look down on the city to remind us that here the father of our country was initiated in the business of war; and 12 miles away, on the field of a famous defeat to British arms, stands the steel-manufacturing town of Braddock. With the opening of Kentucky and Ohio to settlement Pittsburgh rapidly developed into a frontier trading-post. It was incorporated as a village in 1794 and as a city in 1816. In 1845, when it had a population of 30,000, it was destroyed by fire.
A bird's-eye view of Pittsburgh with its population of over 500,000, would show the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio as a Y-shaped channel outlined for 20 miles on both banks with columns of smoke from factory-chimneys by day and with flame by night. Mills, docks, warehouses and tall, grimy tenements are wedged in the upper triangle, and have burst across the numerously bridged currents into Allegheny and other cities. The dense mass is gridironed with railroads, and the streams are covered with processions of funereal iron-ore and coal barges. Factory operatives and many others must live under this perpetual pall of the Smoky City, but all who can escape it at night have fled to the eastern hills, where they have set beautiful residences, public buildings, churches and schools along broad boulevards and landscape parks. Pittsburgh has money to pay for anything it wants. The steel-industry alone is said to have made 2,000 millionaires. Coal, coke, oil-fields and gas-wells have made others. There are locomotive and car-works, glass-furnaces and brass-foundries, paper-mills, salt and chemical works, plants for making electrical supplies and for many by-products of the steel-mills and oil-refineries to swell the streams of gold that
