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English and American andiences— First Night of a New Piece — Play- going made Easy — Mr. Edwin Booth and other Eminent Actors — Miss Clara Morris — ^French, English, and American Art — The late Mr. Sothem's Last Reception in London— A Tragic Ballad — The late Mr. Henry J. Montague — The Englishman Abroad— "Wanted a Dramatist"— The Author of « Home Sweet Home "— American Dramatists — Lack of Earnestness in Modem Playrights — London Society and the French Stage . • PP* 1 — ^"^ n.— "LANDS OF PLENTY." " To the West" — The Attractions of Kansas- Land Giants — Topeka — A City Directory with a Humorous Preface — The Story of a New Cily — How to "Settle" — Stock Baising — Arizona — ^Emigration to Minnesota — Information for Intending Settlers — Official Facts and Fignres — Canada's New Land of Promise, Mani- toba pp. 88— 64 m.— CANADA AND THE UNION. Roman Catholicism in Quebec — American Influences in Canada — Independence or Annexation — British Knle— Fifteen hundred Lakes and Bivers — ^English Statesmen on Canada's Position — Mr. Bright'sviewof Canadian Duties — The United States seeking Reciprocal Tariffs with the Dominion . . • pp> 66—86 IV.— ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. A World in Arms— Exports and Imports — The ancient God of Protec- tion— Overtrading — Obstructive Working-men — America sends J IV Cutlery to Europe — Emigration — America in the future threatens to overshadow JiUglish supremacy — The Claims of Reciprocity — A Sheffield Opinion — Protectionist America . . pp. 87—130 v.— AMERICAN OPINIONS OF ENGLISH FREE TRADE. " I guess them's Our Hogs " — American and P^nglish Farmers — A Policy of Sentiment — America strong enough to reduce her Tariffs — English Colonies and the Trade in Cereals — England in the Old Days — No Mr. Gladstone in America to cheapen Wines— "Lunatics I" — Theory and Practice . . . pp. 131 — 192 VL— CROSSING THE FERRY. On board the "Arizona " — An Ugly Companion on the Deep — Tra- velling with a Hurricane — Atlantic Storms — Naval Hotels — Wonders of the Sea — What London looks like after Absence and Travel — Strangers in the Metropolis — A Busy City — A Rising against the Fogs — An English Spring as a set-off against an American Autumn — London in the Spring time — Circe at Piccadilly pp. 193 — ^214 VIL— HOME AGAIN. Massachusetts on the Fog — The Irish Question and English Peculiar- ities—The Difference between *' Booking" and " Taking a Ticket" — English and American Police — " Put Yourself in His Place " — English and American uailways — The Homes of the Two Coun- tries — Mr. Edwin Booth and Mr. Henry Irving — The Old and New Princess's Theatres — Booth's " Richelieu " — Mr. Irving and American Artists — Booth and Irving at the Lyceum — Booth's Reminiscences of Management — A Story from behind the Scenes — A Plea for T»'*"rnational Amity — Finis . . pp. 215—256 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. I. THE STAGE. English and American audiences — First Night of a New Piece — Play- going made Easy — Mr. Edwin Booth and other Eminent Actors — Miss Clara Morris — French, English, and American Art — The late Mr. Sothern's Last Reception in London — A Tragic Ballad — The late Mr. Henry J. Montague— The Englishman Abroad — *' Wanted a Dramatist "—The Author of " Home Sweet Home "— American Dramatists — Lack of Earnestness in Modem Plajrrights — London Society and the French Stage. American audiences differ greatly from English au- diences. They are more unsophisticated. They often appeared to me to be more easily pleased. They cer- tainly behave better. They arc more respectful to the actors. However bad the play they never hiss. There is no pit in an American house. The entire floor, from the entrance to the orchestra, is occupied by what in England would be a stall audience. There is no " gallery," and there are no " gods." The house is not " dressed" from an English point of view; that is, there are no feminine chests exposed to draughts and opera- VOL. II. B TO-DAY IN AMKRICA. glasses, no men in swallow-tailed coats and white ties. An English audience, therefore, looks more imposing, but not more comfortable. The American audience at night is dressed something after the manner of the English at a morning performance. It is well dressed in all parts of the theatre ; the people in the upper seats wear clothes as good as those in the lower, and behave as well. On the first night of a new piece there are no running comments on the play. If the spectators do not like the play, they do not go to see it any more ; if it is particularly bad they leave before the last act. But they make no noisy protests. Joining issue with the man- agerial judgment, they are dignified and quiet. The success or failure of a play is not left long in doubt; though, from the general and national habit of going to the theatre, a failure at some houses will yield almost as much money as a so-called success at some of the London theatres. , - First-night audiences in New York are very odd : it is as if they were actuated now and then by the spirit and impulse of one man. I went to the first night of a comedy. Everybody knew the play was a failure, yet everybody on this occasion stayed to the last, and called for a speech from the author. The curtain went up on all the company. The artists were applauded, the author made a speech. The audience, with a broad genial smile on its face — the smile as of one person — clapped its hands THE 8TA0E. a and went out afterwards, never to return. On the next night the theatre was empty. There is often a singular unanimity in the actions of an American crowd. The theatre being a national amusement, playhouses are made easy of access. Evening dress not a necessity, gentlemen "down town " (in the city) can meet their wives at a restaurant, dine, and walk into the playhouse after- wards, without any fuss. Thousands of persons go to the theatre by tram-car. It is not necessary to make a serious fixture of an engagement to go to the theatre. You can go on the shortest notice — drop in on your way home. If the play you wish to see is a very great success, there are speculators who buy up good seats, and you can be sure of getting what you require for a small premium from these persons in the neighbourhood of the entrance. Despite her popularity and the large sums of money she drew, there were "choice seats" to be had in this way even to see Mademoiselle Bernhardt. The moment you enter an American theatre with your numbered ticket you are free of the house. There are programmes lying in trays at the door. You pick one up as you go in. Nobody bores you for your cloak or hat. You are not worried for fees of any kind. Refreshment vendors are not continually at your elbow. You have come to see the play, not to be annoyed by licensed plunderers who have bought from the manager the right to tax your patience and your pocket. b2 iiiir TO-DAY IN AMEUICA. II. Tho New York stage may be taken as representative, from an art point of view, of the American stage generally. Each great city, particularly as you go West, professes only to be guided by its own judgment ; but, as a rule, New York largely influences the theatrical taste of the other States. Moreover, most of the New York actors have been endorsed in turn by the other cities. There are many excellent artists on the New York stage. Mr. Edwin Booth has done much to main- tain the standard of taste in regard to the legitimate drama. Booth's Theatre is a handsome and elegantly- proportioned house. In the direction in which Mr. Irving is working in the English metropolis, Mr. Booth has already laboured in New York, so far as Shakespeare is concerned. The American tragedian has not the versatility of Irving, some of whose admirers prefer his comedy to his tragedy ; others preferring his melodrama to both. WMle Irving has covered the entire ground of play-acting in his varied representations, in his produc- tion of new works, and in his revival of old ones, Mr. Booth has confined himself to established classic roles. Pie is a great actor, and artistically his career has not- been unlike that of Mr. Irving, inasmuch as he has been both severely criticised and enthusiastically praised by the press, and he has harsh detractors as well as enthu- siastic and devoted admirers. Fortunate artistically. THE STAGE. 5 Mr. Booth has not boon lucky financially. The temperament of the artist is strong in him ; he is not a business man. He has probably earned as much money as any living actor, and lost no doubt a great deal more. He is the fourth son of the Booth who was contemporary with Edmund Kean. He was born in Maryland, November 13th, 1833 ; made his debut at Boston, 1849; went to California as a stock actor; in 1854 he *' starred" in Australia; and later, in partnership with his brother- in-law, John S. Clarke, he bought the Philadelphia Theatre, and at the same time had a share in the Winter Garden Theatre of New York. In 1861 he made a tour in England, and in 1867 the destruction of the Winter Garden bv fire involved him in serious losses. Never- theless, he built Booth's Theatre, at a cost of a million and a quarter of dollars, and in the end was practically ruined. The inscrutable demon of Finance would not work well in harness with Idealism. To make matters worse, the actor had his arm smashed in a carriage accident. He was broken physically and commercially. But he is a brave man. He soon set out to earn emancipation from debt, and in three years paid off all his liabilities. To-d?y he is acting once more in England, and among those who have received him with friendly and cordial greeting is Mr. Henry Irving. Mr. McCulloch, Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Keene are the other leading tragedians of America. They are both 6 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. move popular in the other great cities than in New York, though Mr. McCulloch in his last engagement in New York seems to have made a sudden and tremendous stride in public favour. His •' Virginius " is an eminently interesting performance, and was hailed as a revelation by some of the best New York critics, and notably by Mr. William Winter. Mr. McCulloch has a fine robust appearance, and revives in the memories of old playgoers the best characteristics of Edwin Forrest. He dresses with artistic taste and discernment. His last tour through the States was a " dramatic progress." Enthu- siastic crowds welcomed him everywhere. Personally and socially, he is one of the most popular artists in America. On the night when I sailed for England, I saw him in one of the gentler scenes of " Virginius," and was touched by his artistic calmness and repose. Conscious that my time was short (for my barque was by the shore, and my mind was chiefly with my baggage, which was in charge of "van-demons" and "baggage- smashers"), I was hardly in the humour for critical observation. It was McCuUoch's birthday. His friends knew it ; and this, as well as his return to New York for a short season, brought out the sympathetic recogni- tion of his admirers. Great floral trophies were handed to him from various parts of the house, and he received ' an ovation of which any artist might well fec4 proud. The audience were far more excited and enthusiastic THE STAGE. 7 than they were on the first night of Sarah Bcrnhardt's appearance at a neighbouring house. If, like our own, the American stage were not handi- capped with the " star" system, New York and London would have no cause to envy Paris, where they do not suffer from the splitting-up of high-class companies into star leaders of inferior organizations. Imagine the strength and perfection of a company in one theatre consisting of Booth, McCulloch, Jefferson, Leicester Wallack, Gilbert, Fisher, Charles Thome, Raymond, Florence, Lewis, Clara Morris, Fanny Davenport, Maud Harrison, Rose Etynge, Genevieve Ward, Mrs. Ponisi, Sara Jewett, Miss Claxton, Mrs. C. H. Gilbert, and Miss Rehan. What would the Comedie Fran9aisc be in comparison with such a company ? Similarly, what would it be against u company including Irving, Terriss, Brooke, Bancroft, Neville, Vezin, Ryder, Warner, Conway, Cecil, James, Thorne, Wyndham, Toole, Terry, Coghlan, and Ellen Terry, Mrs. Kendall, Mrs. Bancroft, Lydia Foote, Miss Amy Roselle, Miss Eastlake, Miss Hollings- head. Miss Illington, Miss Larkin, Miss Bishop, Miss Farren, and Mrs. Vezin? i III. In my reminiscences of the American stage two women make a special impression upon me, one as the finished artist, the other as the promising comedienne. 8 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. M The first is Clara Morris, the second Miss Rehan, a stock actress at Mr. Daly's Theatre. Miss Rehan has the vigour and brightness of Nellie Farren, with more delicacy of finesse and a higher sense of genuine comedy ; Clara Morris has no counterpart on the English stage, nor on the French. She is of native growth. She has the fervour of a Southern nature with the naturalness of a born actress. It was no mere affectation that drew fvom Sarah Bernhardt an outburst of admiration as she sat for the first time in a New York theatre witnessing the performance of an American actress. Mademoiselle Bernhardt herself is eminently natural. That she is so, is the great secret of her success. Clara Morris is natural. Her own personality is in every character she plays; but it is lost in the part. It is her own heart and feelings that are at work, her own sense of injury and wrong for the time being, her own joy and sorrow, infused into the character she is impersonating. She has that electrical power which dominates an audience, takes possession of it, plays on it as if it were an instru- ment. So long as she is on the stage the audience has no wandering thoughts, it is wholly engrossed in her, as she is in the action of the drama and the motive for passion which holds her. It has often been said that Clara Morris would not be successful on the English stage because she has " a Western intonation," otherwise an " American accent," as it is called in England. My THE STAGE. 9 own opinion is that her emotional power, the vigour and truthfulness of her art, would obliterate all thoughts of accent in any audience, just a? Salvini's genius has proved too much even for the incongruity, not to say absurdity, of playing Shakespeare in kalian, supported by a company of English-speaking actors. My friend Mr. Joseph Cowen has the Northumbrian accent. Years pgo at a public meeting in the North I sat near a bishop while Mr. Cowen was proposing a resolution. " Who is that man ? " asked his lordship as the first few rugged tonrs and single words fell from the orator's lips. Pre- sently his inquiry changed to *' Who is that eloquent speaker ? " Mr. Charles Thome, Mr. Steele Mackaye, Mr. Ray- mond, and the Florences, have made successful appear- ances in London. Miss Morris. Miss Davenport, Miss Kelian, ]\Iiss Jewett, Miss Claxton, Mrs. Gilbert, and many other notable lights of the American stage, have not yet been seen here. Unfortunately for the reputa- tion of American dramatic art, the native plays which have been brought to England have been inferior ones. ]\Ir. Rankin travelled with the best American melo- drama, "The Danitcs," which has been seen in England, and he had some excellent actors in his company. But England has yet to see a thoroughly representative troupe of American comedians. The Union Square Theatre has a very excellent company. I saw " Daniel 10 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Rochat" there, admirably represented. Apart from a somewhat risky incident which an English gallery would be inclined to laugh at — the scene where the husband visits his wife at night, and offers, there and then, to go through the clerical ceremony upon which she insists, and refusing which she has left him — there is no reason why the work should not prove a great success in London. Miss Jewett is the leading actress at the Union Square, Mr. Charles Thome the leading man. The company in- cludes a remarkable character -actor in Mr. Stoddard (who is not unlike Mr. Odell when Mr. Odell is in earnest), and Mr. John Parselle, an Anglo-American who has the dignity and presence of an English come- dian of the old school. IV. It cannot be said that artistically the New York stage at the present moment is equal to our own. But morally it has a higher tone, and is in more complete harmony with the decencies of social and domestic life. There is no theatre in New York as handsome as Her Majesty's, or as well conducted as the Lyceum; while on the other hand there is not a theatre in Europe which combines so many novelties and excellences of construction and arrangement as Mr. Steele Mackaye's little house near Madison Square. Since I first visited the United States, two distin- THE STAGE. 11 guished representatives of the drama in America — Mr. John Brougham and Mr. Sothern — the one an Irish- man, the other an Englishman — have died. Mr. J. Brandon Matthews, writing of the Transatlantic stage in Sribner^s Magazine, says: " Acting was the first art in which America was able to hold hei own, or even make headway, in any contest in comparison with tlie more mature life of Evrope. There are as good actors in America as in France, or Germany, or England. Since the success of Miss Cushman in 1845, and of Mr. Jefferson in 1865, the quality of the best American dramatic art has not been doubtful. Some of the most popular and skilful of the favourites of the British public have received their professional training on the American side of the Atlantic. Foremost among these is Mr. Sothern." This is rather the reverse of the true position; and one may say so with all respect. The best American method is clearly the outcome of English training and English tradition. America necessarily built up her theatre on British foundations. The comedy-house of New York (Waliack's) is even to-day essentially an English theatre, with an English company. The late Mr. John Brougham, in discussing this very subject with me, found satisfaction in the reflection that the tone of the American stage is British rather than French; and, for my part, I think our cousins may congratulate themselves that it is so. 12 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. el i tt ! The influence of French art upon our own stage is by no means an unmixed good. Mr. Matthews says: "You may see just as bad acting in Paris as in New York " — and I will venture to add "just as good acting too.'* But I did not see in New York a company as eflicient as that of the London Haymarket. My experience of the Continental stage is not extensive; but neither in France, nor Holland, nor Germany have I seen anything to excel the comedy representations at the Prince of Wales's, under the late management of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, and in no country more artistic stage-pictures than those of the Lyceum, under the management of Mr. Henry Irving. London has much to learn from New York in the construction and management of theatres, but nothing as yet in regard to the business of the stage or the art of acting. It is possible that in the future London may occasionally sit at the feet of New York and Boston. Our cousins are making progress in every branch of art; and, as acting is with them the most popular of the arts, there is every reason why it should become the most efEcient. London is ready to be instructed; and, seeing how abjectly she is content to accept the haughty snubs of France (as well she may, since her dramatists have settled down into mere translators of her plays), there is no reason why she should be ashamed to learn anything that New York can teach her. At present the Empire THE STAGE. 13 City and the Athens of the States can only leach us the utilitarian lessons of the builder, the machinist, and the manager. But these are well worthy of study and con- sideration ; and the day may come when the art-laurels of London will not be secure, for there may be a future in which actor-managers with cultured instincts, like Irving, Booth, Hare, and Bancroft, will find their reward at the hands of New York and Boston audiences. At present the variety-show class of entertainment, with some honourable exceptions, is supreme in the United States, and the condition of the stage is not one for con- gratulation. This is the verdict of leading actors and critics. But ten or a dozen years ago America could hardly engrave a wood-block ; she now leads the world in the smaller class of book and magazine illustrations. There are indications of a bright future for theatrical art in America. Progress in any direction, when it sets in earnestly, is very rapid on the other side of the At- lantic. V. Mr. Stephen Heller, a remarkable artist in his way outside "".heatres, and a great friend of Sothern's, died shortly before the famous comedian. The double demise fbrcibly recalls to me Sothern's " reception " at his chambers in Vere Street. It has become historic. Death and the public chronicles have made it ko. 14 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. I I-: Several journals, English and American, had reports of it at the time. One of these was written at Sothern's personal request, he was so pleased with the success of the party. There is therefore no breach of good manners in printing these reminiscences of the event. It was Sothern's last social gathering ; and within the two years that have elapsed, the host, his friend Heller, and his guests Mr. George Grossmith, Mr. Lionel Lawson, and Mr. John Clarke, have died. It was a Sunday reception. The weather was most unpropitious. It rained in torrents, it hailed ice in lumps, it lightened, it thundered ; but all the same, Sunday found Mr. Sothern's rooms thronged with interesting and distinguished men. I remember among these Mr. W. S. Gilbert, the dramatist; Mr. Lewis Wingfield, who used to write sparkling dramatic notices in " The Globe " under the signature of " Whitetyghe," and whose recent novel had proved a great success; Mr. Joseph Knight, the genial critic of ** The Athenaeum " and " Sunday Times"; Mr. Clement Scott, the dramatic pen of" The Telegraph " ; Mr. Bancroft, the accomplished conductor of the Prince of Wales's Theatre, and husband of Marie Wilton, the leading comedy actress of the English stage ; Mr. George Grossmith, '* the humorist lecturer " who read " Dickens" better than any •' reciter" I ever heard. Presently, when the storm cleared off, and the sun came out bright and hot, these gentlemen were joined by THE STAGE. 15 Lord Londesborough, " my noble partner " of the Boucicaultian days at Covent Garden; Mr. Levy and Mr. Lionel Lawson, proprietors of " The Telegraph " ; Mr. Howe, of the Haymarket Theatre; " Johnny Clarke," the English low comedian; and many other equally representative men, who came in and went out from one in the day to seven or eight at night. A breakfast of well-chosen viands was spread " all over the place/' and a more attractive menu could hardly have been devised even at Delmonico's. The rooms were daintily furnished. Bric>a-brac, pictures, books. South American birds, exotic plants; and, pervading the rooms, the genial presence of the actor playing the part of host with the tact of a diplomatist and the hearty bonhomie of a kindly and good fellow. It was a delightful meet- ing in every way. The right men came together. They never lacked topics of conversation. Everybody had something to say to everybody else. A piece of news or a witty remark met you at every point. It was a touch- ing incident when a well-known provincial journalist and art-critic, who had physically broken down some years ago, was led in, blind, and placed in a chair. This was " Joe Nightingale," of Liverpool, around whom came Howard Paul, Sothern, Grossmith, Heller, and a host of others, to shake his hand. It was only a gather- ing of men, this party at Sothern's. The tender influ- ences of woman were absent, but there was not wanting 16 TODAY IN AMERICA. romance enough for a score of dramas if you had hunted up the details. Mr. Robertson, the manager of the Aquarium, was there. Robertson built the Vaudeville and Court Theatres, and is the author of the Westmin- ster Aquarium. Chevalier WhikoiF too. This *' butterfly of society" is surely a modern " Rip Van Winkle." He knew men who seemed to me to have been dead for cen- turies. An intimate friend of the late H. L. Bateman, he looked just as young as he did twenty years ago. " Hush I " says Sothern. " Gentlemen, Mr. Heller has consented to sing us * Sam Hall.' When first I heard this song I thought it was funny; the second time I thought it was sad and tragic." And so it is. " Sam Hall " is one of the most dra- matic of songs. In the time of the London night- houses a famous free-and-easy vocalist used to sing it in the early hours of morning at Evans's. It delineates the fears, passions, and depravity of a wretched man con- demned to be hanged, and going through the last sad minutes of the fatal hour. He is supposed to be looking through the grating of his prison and apostrophising the crowd that is waiting to see him " turned off." Sothern himself could sing the ditty with wonderful effect; but Heller at the piano gave it with a grim dramatic humour that was strangely impressive. In his hands it was a sort of wild recitative, accompanied with musical language •hat seemed to repeat the doleful story. Sam Hall is a THE STAGE. 17 degraded, uneducated, miserable ruffian ; and the objec- tion to the song for a mixed audience is, after all, only in the realistic imprecation that closes each verse. In Charles Reade's version of " Foul Play," at the Olympic, the audience was at first shocked and then impressed at a dying sailor urged by the heroine to forgive a comrade who had wronged him, exclaiming, " Yes, I forgive him; his eyes I " This was repeated every night as long as the piece was played ; it was a bit of realism upon which Mr. Reade insisted. It is this same impreca- tion that makes " Sam Hall " difficult in general society, but Heller had a way of slurring over the words so as to make them comparatively unobtrusive. The song begins something in this way : " My name it is Sam Hall, I've mnrdered great and small; Bat DOW I pay for all." [Here occurs the "optical imprecation" referred to above.] A doleful strain the music, a weird melody, full of wailing that grips you. The crowd repeats some of the lines in an awe-inspiring chorus. '* But now he pays for all." You can hear them chant it in a hushed way, anticipating the show. Heller's moaning chords in minor keys, and his hushed hoarse voice, realised the whispering of the surging crowd collected to see Sam Hall die. At last come the closing lines: VOL. II. 18 TO-DAY IN AMERICA, •• But now i go apHtairn, And there ends all my cares; Kind friends, gire me your prayers- All yonr cnrsed prayers." [Closing line as before.} The admiring, half-stricken wonder and horror of the crowd breaks out, following Heller's eloquent fingers on the piano. "All your cursed prayers I " he repeated in a low voice, and there was a sobbing cry of a savage agony in those last words that haunted one long afiter they were drowned by the applause of Heller's appreciative audience. 1 fear I shall fail to convey to the reader a complete idea of the weird dramatic force of this strange song; if I succeed, then the realism of it will be forgiven in the awful picture of the murderer's last moments, when thousands of degraded men and women found a savage delight at the foot of the gallows. " The Ingoldsby Legends '' and the works of Jerrold and Dickens did a great deal towards the abolition of public executions. The ballad of ** Sam Hall " is a reminiscence of the days of " Tom and Jerry," the Fleet Prison, oil-lamps, and ancient watchmen. TI. Leaving Sothern in the midst of his admiring friends^ with the wail of this wretched Sam Hall in my mind, I encountered a local antiquary who had followed me out. THE STAGE. 10 " Startling ballad that 1 " he remarked. " It is, indeed ; it has made me feel miserable." "An appropriate spot for such a song!** said the shrivelled, gray - haired, starchy - looking gentleman. *' Oxford Street was the way to Tyburn. Scores of un- fortunate wretches have passed through it on the road to death. The place of execution for criminals convicted in the county of Middlesex was formerly situated in this parish, at the west end of this very street." " Let us talk of the gallows," I said, smiling. " Tyburn Tree was not far from where we are standing." " You don't say so? " *' Yes, I assure you we are on classic ground. In 1626, Queen Henrietta Maria did penance under the gallows at Tyburn, and in 1628 Felton, who stabbed the Duke of Buckingham, was executed here. I have a bit of the old gallows in my possession." He took me to his house close by, and showed me this treasure, together with a bit of the tanned skin of a malefactor who had been gibbeted not very far from the scene of Sothem's party. " Dr. Dodd was hanged in this parish for forgery, and so was the infamous Catherine Hayes, who lived in the parish, and murdered her husband in a house two or three streets from here. She was sentenced to be hanged, and then her body was to be burned. The C2 20 TO-DAY IN AMERICA, '!; ill murder was of such an atrocious character that the mob fell upon the executioner, lighted the fire before she was hanged, and literally burned her alive. Will you take a glass of wine?" ** No, thank you; I must be going." *' I thought you wanted to talk about Tyburn. I am compiling a history of the subject. You could not have fallen in with a man who knows more about it. When Tyburn ceased to be the place of execution, in 1783, the gallows was bought by a carpenter, who converted it into stands for beer-butts at a public-house in Adam Street, close by here. In 1758, when Dr. Hennessy was to be executed for high treason, a reprieve came at the last moment, and the mob was so disgusted that those who had paid for seats on "the grand stand ** created a riot, and one man was killed. A felon named Eyland was the last person hanged in this neigh- bourhood. His crime was forgery. We were a blood- thirsty lot in those days. On June 23, 1784, when they transferred the business to Newgate, fifteen persons were hanged there with ^ the new drop,' which worked so well that in December, 1785, they executed ninety-six persons." My antiquarian friend seemed to revel in these inci- dents ; I spare him the mention of his name. If he had lived in the days of Sam Hall he would have been one of the gloating crowd; in the time of Hennessy he would THE STAGE. 21 have rioted in disgust when the reprieve came. I could not drink his wine; it would have choked me. I slipped out while he was looking for a piece of the chain used on a gibbet at Hampstead. I went back to Vere Street, and found a tenor singer telling the vocal b ry of his love for " Pretty Sally." It v/as a comfort to feel that I was out of the immediate control of the antiquary who had taken me at my word and talked of the gallows and of kindred horrors. But not all my tenor friend's rhapsodies about Sally, nor all Sothern's dry champagne, would drive Sam Hall out of my mind. His last moments would make a grim scene for an opera ! The gallows, the prison-cell, the face at the bars, the awful mocking crowd, the arrival of the sheriffs, the going upstaii-s, that awful ballad (with a suitable orchestral accompaniment), and the sad, weird, savage chorus of the London crowd ! VII. When one begins to think of the actors and artists who are gone, one is surprised and saddened at their number. During my first visit to New York Mr. Henry «f. Montague was in the enjoyment of a rare popu- larity. Socially and publicly he had a position that was unique in the history of the stage. I was often asked on my return home to explain this, and it was continually quoted by captious critics as evidence of a primitive 22 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. condition of tnste and experience in American audiences. Soon afterwards poor Montague died, and he was buried with something like national honours, and mourned with a general and sincere sorrow. This young actor's career may be studied with profit by the struggling beginners on the stage of to-day, and it has other international lessons that are not without point. It is as difficult for the average London playgoers to realise the high position which the late Henry J. Montague reached in America, as it is to understand by what special merit he was enabled to achieve the topmost height of popularity in the critical city of New York. In London he was little more than a clever walkin*; gentleman. He had a growing circle of admirers it is true, and many friends. By these however he was only counted a refined and promising actor ©flight comedy. He was handsome. He made love with an earnest politeness becoming a trae gentleman. He had an educated voice and manner. If his impersonations were sometimes wanting in force, they never lacked earnest- ness. A rare quality earnestness, it is absolutely neces- sary to success in any walk of life. IMckens said there was no substitute for it, and h«» knew. Irving *s earnest- ness often wholly conquers studied and premeditated detraction. It is his honesty of purpose as much as hia undoubted power and personal magnetism that has sur- THE STAOE. 23 rounded him with cultured friends and placed his name side by side with the greatest of English actors. Mon- tague had sufficient of this fine quality to win the confidence and respect of an audience, but not enough to be aggressive in his domination of its feelings. He might lead it, he could not drive it, he could not hold" it without its own consent and desire. A great artist plays upon his audience, sounding its deepest notes, probing the very heart of its mystery. Montague had this power only in a minor degree. He possessed the best character- istics of an actor, but .they were not accentuated by physical power. His desire on and off the stage was rather to conciliate criticism than to challenge it. He had what phrenologists call the organ of " a desire to please " largely developed. He liked to be liked. He had not the courage of conscious power which prompts genius to aim at the conquest of public opinion, that fickle tyrant which the English press leads hither and thither, not by a silken thread, but as a bear is lead, sometimes with a muzzle, always in a halter. He was the sort of artist, as we remember him in London, who fears to ruffle critical susceptibilities. Genial, amiable, sensitive, he was as careful to avoid opposition on the stage as he was at his club, and his " desire to please '* led him into promises and responsibilities of courtesy which he soraotimes found it so difficult to redeem. 24 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. I He was in short the kind of man who is known as a good fellow, and in art he might be called the ideal walking gentleman of the Robertson School of Comedy. America was just the country to bring out all the better qualities of a nature such as this; just the country to develope any latent power which might have remained dormant in London. The real equality which obtains in New York society would give strength to the tender impulses of Montague's disposition. Free from the blighting influences of lordly patrons who too often narrow the aspirations of young actors, leading them to lavish upon the hollow shrine of society time and talents which belong to art, Montague would not fail to gain courage in the island city. His gentleness, his hand- some face, his suavity of manner, would be sure to win him friends. That he went to America unheralded was in his favour. It is a mistake to think that ''prelimi- nary pufTs " are necessary to secure a successful debut in the United States. They have a habit of judging men and things on their merits, our cousins of America, and they offer to actors fair, not to say generous, oppor- tunities of demonstrating their powers. Though they have not yet learnt the civilised practice of hissing an artist or a pluy, they know how to show tlieir disappro- bation by rows of empty benches, and they have a wealth of applause and support for an entertainment THE STAGE. 25 wliich they like. Montague was fortunate in the theatre where he appeared and in the parts he played. He pleased the New York people. They liked his appear- ance, he realised their ideal of a gentleman, his elocution betrayed no objectionable mannerism, and his method recommended itself to them by its modesty and intelli- gence. The press treated him with marked considera- tion, and he became a favourite at the clubs and in social circles. Thus encouraged the young actor no doubt found the love for his art lifted into a higher range of hope and effort by the successful practice of it among sympa- thising spectators. Then an Englishman I fancy tries more than ever he tried before to be at his best when before the public of another country. Like Professor Doyle*s private of the Buffs, he feels it incumbent upon him to uphold the British name. Montague had every inducement of interest, necessity, and kindly encouragement to put out all his strength, and prompted by generous applause he attempted higher flights than he would have dared to venture upon in London. If he failed in his assumptions of classic roles that were beyond his powers, he was commended for his industry and not snubbed for his temerity as he might have been in London. He dared do all ho could in America, and the result was that he reached furtiier and climbed higher than ever he might have hoped to do in the older country. 26 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ii I i Then it must not be forgotten that he had been in America several years before his position was thoroughly established. It is only reasonable to credit him with progress in his profession during that period. He had undoubtedly advanced. When I saw him in New York, his style had greatly matured. He made his effects with more finish than hitherto. The confidence of success had given more robustness to his creations. They were less dependent upon accuracy of dress and pose of figure than heretofore. There was more spontaneity in his style. He had a firmer grasp of his work. He had a command of the pardonable tricks of the art, its technicalities, its mechanism in fact, for there is no art without them ; and in his case there had not been time for the practice of these subtleties to degenerate into staginess. Young as he was, he had possibly achieved the height of his knowledge and his power, when he died, admired and beloved by troops of friends, men and women. A colder social atmosphere than New York would have chilled his ambition at the outset ; rough treatment would have broken him. If New York society could be typified hy a big, strong, generous man, it might be said that this consciousness of power made it a pleasant tusk to foster and help the amiable, gentlemanlike, pleasant actor. No artist ever received, from first to last, more hospitable treatment than Ame- rica bestowed upon Montague; and in his death it THE STAGE. 27 almost seems as if the nation itself found a cause of sorrow. The papers recorded his death in universal terms of regret. The manner of it was attended with aifecting pathos ; and what is more sad than to die young in the midst of prosperity, on the high road to fame and wealth ? The press of San Francisco and New York rivalled each other in reports of the funeral arrangements. It was like reading of the obsequies of a prince, some of these accounts of the last ceremonies attending the re- mains of the young Englishman. England surely owes an especial debt to our cousins over the water in regard to this touching solicitude for its young artist, who left us to better his fortunes, landing in a strange city un- heralded, almost unknown, and having left the friends of his youth three thousand miles behind him. His last words, " It is no use — God bless you all !" are a pathetic tribute to the affection of his new friends, and they were the keynote to a generous and a grateful heart. VIII. In England as well as America it is said we still want a dramatist. I onlv knew of two American dramatists who can be said to make a living by their plays. These are Mr. Bronson Howard and Mr. Fred Marsden. It may be said that in London the professed dramatists who devote themselves solely to tha work of play-writing are Mr. Byron, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Albery, and Mr. Paul 1:1 ii i' i ^ ill .Jili ! 28 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Merritt, though large sums of money have rewarded the dramatic fame of Mr. Charles Reade, Mr. F. C. Burnand, Mr. Wilkie Collins, and the late Mr. Tom Taylor. In America Mr. Fred Marsden supplies •' star pieces " to " star actresses." He has also written a comedy of considerable merit called " Clouds," which was originally produced at the Park Theatre, New York. Mr. Bronson Howard's best work is " The Banker's Daughter," which was successful in London under the title of "The Old Love and the New." Mr. Steele Mackaye and Mr. Augustin Day combine theatrical management with authorship. Mr. Hunnion of Chicago lias made a creditable mark as a translator and adapter. Mr. Clemens and Mr. Dudley \Va»ner (an essayist as graceful as Lamb and far more humorous) have found a large pecuniary reward in their joint dramatisation of the former author's " Gilded A ge." Mr. Steele Mackaye has paid for the building of Madison Square Theatre out of the profits of *' Hazel Kirke." Excellent work has also been done for the stage by F. G. Maeder, T. B. Mac- Donough, Leicester Vernon, J. C. De Leon, A. C. Wheeler, A. E. Lancaster, B. E. Woolf, A. R. Cazauran, Leonard Grovcr, and W. 1). Howells. There are other writers who may be entitled to mention, but I do not know of one who stands out simply as a dranmtic author entitled to rank on the score of original work with Talfourd, Lytton, Jerrold, Planche, Byron, Gilbert, THE STAGE. 29 Collins, Albery, Reade, or Wills. It must, however, be remembered that several of them are eminent in other fields of literature, in fiction, poetry, and journalism. Neither in London nor in New York are there many authors wlio can afford to run the risks of delay and failure that belong to the service of the dramatic muse. I have not ventured to class Mr. Dion Boucicault. He should be regarded, I presume, as an Anglo-American author. His *' London Assurance," " The Colleen Bawn," *' Rip Van Winkle," " Corsican Brothers," and other works, are fully entitled to their large measure of success. The native drama of the United States has a history which is not without points of interest. The first American play was written and produced about a hundred years ago at New York. It was called *' The Prince of Farthia," and the author was Thomas Godfrey. But Mr. William Dunlop has been called " the father of the American drama." He flourished about 1787, and he is credited with some dozen or fifteen pieces, the best of which is a comedy called *' The Father of an Only Child." Mr. John Burk wrote a successful and profitable play called " Bunker Hill." He had an accomplished contemporary in Charles Jared Ingersoll, author of** Edwy and Elgiva " and '* Julian the Apostate." But it was not until 1809 that a dramatist of real power and practical skill appeared, and this was John Howard Payne, an actor of brilliant talent, and a librettist and 30 TO-l>AT IN AMERICA. dramatic author of distinguished merit. " Brutus " was one of his first and best works. Among his others American critics mention with commendation, " The Italian Bride," " Charles II." " Paoli," " Clari," " Mazeppa,'' and •• Love in Humble Life." " These and other productions of his pen," writes one of his friends, "had a longer or a shorter life on the stage, and their pecuniary returns kept him for most of the time during nineteen years' residence abroad far above the feeling of want. But there were times when he was reduced so low that he was even obliged to take the position of master of the clacquers at the Drury Lane Theatre to obtain a subsistence. During one of these seasons of want, while living in Paris, he wrote *' Sweet Home." The popularity of this sweetest of songs will always preserve Payne's memory green; his " Brutus," which has good acting qualities, still holds the stage. Payne died in 1852. The Tile Club of New York (previously mentioned in these volumes) hunted up the house in which Payne was bom. It is at Easthampton on the Eastern Coast, not far from New York. They sketched the old place, and the chronicler of their doings says of the scene of the poet's early home, that " not the Warwickshire landscape, not that enchanted sketch from Stratford to Shottery, which was Shakespeare's lover's walk, is more pastorally lovely." THE STAGE. 31 Following Payne the dramatist next in importance was James V. Barker, who adopted the story of Pocahontas under the title of '* The Indian Princess." Mr. M. Noah, however, was a far more popular writer for the statue than Mr. Barker. He was an author of great versatility, and I have heard men of discriminating judgment talk of him and his work with admiration. •' The Fortress of Sirento," »♦ Paul and Alexis," " She Would be a Soldier," " The Siege of Tripoli," and " The Grecian Captive," were amun^ his best works. Mr. Carr, Samuel Chapman, and Charles Breck, were dramatic authors of the Noah period, about 1815. Later, Mr. Charles P. Clinch, author of *' The Spy," •' The Avenger's Vow,*' and "The Expelled Collegians," took a high position. Then came James A. Hillhouse and James Kirke Paulding, the first a poet the second a comedy writer, and author of " The Lion of the West." N. H. Bannister wrote a melodrama, entitled "Putnam," which ran for a hundred nights at the old Bowery theatre. Mr. Forrest, the famous tragedian, paid John Augustus Stone five hundred dollars for a piece called " Metamora." Half a century ago a hundred pounds was, no doubt, looked upon as liberal payment for a play. A comedy, held in high esteem in the history of the American stage of the last half century, is " The Wag of Maine," by Cornelius A. Logan. James H. Kennett, of New Or- leans, Caroline Lee Hentz, Samuel Woodworth, F. C. 32 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. Wemyss, were names honourably known in dramatic literature. Robert F. Conrad, of Philadelphia, obtained a wide popularity for ** Jack Cade ** and " Aylmer," the former fuminhing Edwin Forrest with one of his strongest parts. " Nick of the Woods" was a novel by Robert M. Bird, a dramatist, and the play of third-rate melodramatic theatres in the English provinces is a stage version of this American novel. " Fashion," p. comedy by Anna Cora Mowatt, was played with success both in New York and London five and- thirty years ago. Nathaniel P. Willis wrote several creditable plays. About the year 1850 John Brougham gave a fillip to dramatic writing in New York. J. Leicester Wallack produced "Fortunes of War'* about this time, and J. Pray a tragedy called " Poetus Coeccina," H. 0. Prudey " Nature's Nobleman," George H. Baker " Leo- nora di Guzman." Then came a succession of pieces of moderate merit by Julia Ward Howe, E. G. P. Wilkins, G. H. Miles. The War was the real tragedy that followed the mimic scenes invented by these industrious authors; and it is questionable whether the art of dramatic writing has made very much progress since : it certainly has not when cpmpared with the twenty years before the War. IX. It is not a little singular, it may be thought in America, in face of the names of living, as well as THE 8TA0E. S8 deceaseil) authors whom I have mentioned, and admit- ting the fact of other writers for the stage springing up, that it should be said that England still wants a dra- matist. It is said and often said by critics, by managers and by the public. The men who think they can supply the demand languish for the chance to show their powers; so they say at least Even Mr. Charles Reade recently appealed by public advertisement inviting managers to give '^ Dora " a fair trial. Fancy Reade and Tennyson literally going a-begging! ** Dora" is an excellent work, I believe. When it was originally played it was ruined by bad stage management. Mr. Reade has revised it, and he feels certain of its ultimate success. It lies upon the shelf, as do many other works, while managers try experiments. They prefer to produce adaptations of French successes. Their position is no doubt difEcult and delicate, for they occasionally make conspicuous failures with original pieces; but, as a rule, they do not spend, in time or money, upon native works anything like that which they lavish upon adaptations. The truth is the managers of to-day are fearful of trusting to their own judgment in the selection or production of plays. The London successes are mostly made with pieces that have been often rejected, and are finally brought out as forlorn hopes. This was notably so with Wills's " Jane Shore," at the Princess's, and with *' The Bells," at the Lyceum. VOL. II. D 34 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. ; : 1 One of the great drawbacks of the age in regard to dramatic work is a want of earnestness, which indeed obtains to a large extent in literature also. Society is satirical; it scoffs at love-making; it no longer believes in virtue. Love-matches are left to the unsophisticated provincials, or to the middle and lower classes. Women talk slang. Commercial honour is no longer absolutely necessary to commercial fame. Circe drives in the park, and princes attend her receptions. The manners of the age are loose. Sons who are educated beyond their trading fathers look down upon the old people. A young man inclined to be soberly religious is gibed by his acquaint- ances. Dramatists, it is to be feared, work down to this degenerate epoch ; and, when they somehow or other tumble upon a theme in which heart and soul and real flesh-and-blood manliness have to be portrayed, their low standards of humanity are so fixed and firm that they can- not rise to the nobler instincts of true men and women. I believe that more than one of our dramatic authors would be positively ashamed if they found themselves moved into writing a good, honest, heartfelt line of pure, self-sacri- ficing love. They evidently do not believe in it, or they have worked in the grooves of farce and burlesque so long that their fancies are out of gear for the common-place impulses which actuate real heroes and genuine martyrs. This want of earnestness is also apparent in modern acting. Artists are afraid to accentuate their feelings. THE STAGE. 35 lest they should be charged with ranting. They resist the impulse to give full force to a fine poetic line when they get one, for fear it should be thought they believe in it. Therefore we have a crowd of well-dressed men and women moving about on the stage just as you see them in the streets and at home, without the smallest effort at idealism. Cynicism is the order of the day. When a loving Scotch laddie in " Engaged " sold his simple Scotch lassie to u rich Englishman for a five- pound note everybody in the theatre screamed with laughter. In literature the same tendency to a vulgar realism is equally noticeable — a readiness to scoff at the higher virtues, a general doubting of noble motives, and a sort of instinctive horror of eloquence. To be earnest, eloquent, poci % is "to gush,'' and to be branded as a "gusher" is to be ticketed as a fool. It is as if the selfish men of the world had entered into a conspiracy against the good and had obtained power. And yet every now and then some big arrogant genius, full of human strength and earnestness, comes to the front and shakes this degenerate world of London, wets its eye, and fires its heart, just as Salvini did in " Othello," as Elizabeth Thomson did in " The Roll Call," as Joseph Cowen did in the House of Commons when he spoke words of eloquence and power that made every Russo- phile of them feel for a moment the passion of patriotism. A philosopher in morals might easily trace a good d2 36 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. deal of the degeneracy of London society to the stage. Nothing sinks so deep into the national heart as the lessons of the drama. What has the stage heen teaching in England for years past? It has drawn its principal lessons from France. They are subversive of all that ia holy and pure in the relationship of the sexes. They teach, as morality, the righteousness of dishonouring a married man. A cuckold in the French drama is the butt of everybody in the play. In the good old English drama the wronged husband had the deep sympathy of the audience, and his vengeance, when it came, was the denouement of the story. The luxurious aspect of French vice has been incorporated upon the new-born cynicism of English dramatic work. Even the grandeur of '^ Patrie " lies in the patriotic husband condoning the dishonour of his wife. When the Franco-English play is earnest, its earnestness has a morbid and unwholesome direction.* When it is funny it is nasty. Things are * Mr. Swinburne, in the new nnmber of the Fortnightly Review, describes M. Zola as the owl-eyed head of the sect of bestialists in whose itoaes stinks are as sweet odoors, and whose ears find harmony in echoes too horrible for hell. Those who hare witnessed the deatn < scene of the heroine in the dramatized version of " Nana " will not be disposed to quarrel with the yigonr of Mr. Swinburne's inrectire. It is described by one who witnessed it as a ghastly and revolting exhibi' tion: "Nana comes forth en chemise from her bed and reveals the ravages of the disease over her fac^, smirched over with pustules. Her death agonies were far more horrible than those of Mile. Croisette in the ' Sphinx ' or of Adrienne Lecouvreur." — Pall Mall Gazette. THE STAOE. 37 said and done now on the stage which, twenty years ago, would have brought an audience upon the boards with the seats in their hands to " club " the offenders. ** La Marjolaine," which had a long run at the Royalty, presented to the public a married woman undressing in her bed-chamber, while a member of a society of men fiwom to undo ** woman, wife or maid," was watching her from a chest in which he had been secretly conveyed into the room. Great earnest men in Europe saw in the fall of France before the Germans the punishment of a second Sodom and Gomorrah. The simile was far fetched, and France ought not to be answerable for the sins of Paris. The industry and thrift of the people have been splendidly manifested in striking exhibitions of patriotism on many occasions since the war. But it is nevertheless a sad and humiliating face for our French neighbours to reflect upon, that the most appalling orgies which go on to-day in the stews of New York and London are the inventions of, and are presided over by, the houris of la belle France. 38 II. " LANDS OF PLENTY." " To the West "—The Attractions of Kansas— Land G iants— Topefca— A City Directory with a Hnmorous Preface — The Story of a New City — How to " Settle " — Stock Raising— Arizona — Emigration to Minnesota — Information for Intending Settlers — Official Facts and Figares — Canada's New Land of Promise, Manitoba. I. " Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," was, as everybody knows, Horace Greeley's standing advice, no matter what the young man wanted. " To the West " was the popular song in hard times when I was a boy. Mr. Henry KusscU made a fortune by singing it. Thousands of English people emancipated themselves from the galling chains of poverty by acting upon the vocal suggestions. Some came home again disappointed, as they do to-day; but as a rule the industrious emigrant finds that there is a place in the world for him. Once again let me repeat the advice of the famous journalist and the popular song-writer, " Go West." Not you who have carriages and horses, and balances at your banks. Not you who have pleasant homes slumbering among ancestral trees. Not you who command Pacto- LANDS OP PLENTY. 39 Han streams flowing from golden reservoirs made by commercial fathers. You who can live comfortably and without fear of the future, stay in England. There is no country that has a more equable climate, no country where the grass is so green, no country where home life is so sweet and pure ; nowhere else can you get so much enjoyment out of existence if you know how to order your time and your desires. But you poor, you who see ahead no change for the better; you who stand by the roadside to be splashed by the high-mettled steeds of Dives; you toilers and moilers, who know what it is to earn a pittance by " the sweat of your brows;" you honest poor, who know all about the bitterness of the labour that is done under the sun — Go to the West! Not you who are sots and drunkards; not you miserable wives who drive men to gin and children to the kennel ; you are better oflf' in England, where national charities will foster your folly and the workhouse degrade your declining years. "To the West!" There is wealth for everybody yonder, under blue skies and laws that are a premium to strength and labour. You may not stand on the dignity of a dead ancestor there; you must answer for yourself. It is not " What are you; who was your father?" there; it is " What can you do?" If you can say, "I have a little money and I can work as well,*' so much the better. The independence of " a little money " brings 40 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. the wealthy future nearer, that is all; for the wealthy future is a certainty to every young, honest, intelligent, and industrious man in the West. And when I say the West I do not only refer to the mining and agricultural states of America, but to *' the lands of plenty " in our own America, in British North America; for we still divide with our cousins of the United States the possession of the New World. II. Let me collate a few facts about the districts where the prospects of becoming rich are greatest. First we will keep our eye on the United States and the American flag. Kansas for the agriculturist has many attractions. It is the exact centre of the American Union. It is a country of rolling prairie and splendid rivers. The soil is a rich black loam that needs no artificial aid for profit- able working. In modem days it was the Indian's hunting-ground. To-day it is a land of emigrant homes and homesteads, of prosperous towns, railways, schools, and churches. Though I obtain most of my information and statistics from a pamphlet written and compiled with the express intention of promoting emigration, and, therefore, in Sjome respects a little highly coloured, I have taken some pains to verify the figures. The author is a journalist on The Chicago Times, and eminently qualified for the position of " guide, philosopher, and LANDS OF PLENTY. 41 friend," in the exploitery of the new districts of the great West. The following details will be interesting as supplementing the notes which appear in my first chapter of the present work. "Kansas," says my Chicago authority, " lies between the thirty -seventh and the fortieth parallels, the district which, the world round, controls the destinies of the globe, and the time will come when the state will be the powerful centre of the most powerful nation on earth. In 1790 the centre of population of the United States was in Maryland on the thirty-ninth parallel, and at every new census it has moved westward very nearly along that line, until now it is just west of Cincinnati, and on its way to Kansas. The thirty-ninth parallel, which has been the thread upon which, as upon the necklace of the world, have been suspended the jewels of wealth, culture, plenty, luxury, and refinement, passes directly through the southern portion of the state, through the fertile Arkansas valley." * This is the only ♦ There is a matter, howeyer, that does not enter into the writer's description of Kansas, and concerning which it is necessary that the intending emigrant should be informed. The authority in question only deals with the fertile districts of Kansas. Now the western portion of Kansas belongs to what is called the alkali region, where nothing can be gro^n except with the assistance of irrigation, which is a difficult and expensive work. There are a few streams here and there by the sides of which there are " good bottom lands " for grazing purposes, but the ordinary stretches of land in the western part of Kansas are useless. The same may be said for vast portions of Colorado. 42 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. outburst of descriptive eloquence which the writer allows himself, and 1 give him, the English reader, the benefit of it, in full. The following table shows the progress of population, property, and taxation in Kansas : — Year. Popnla- tion. Per cent, of in. create. Taxable property. Percent, of in- crease. Taxes for State purposes. State i taxes per State debt capita. , 1 State debt per capita. 1865 135,807 — dots. 36,136.000 — dolB. 316,756 dots. 1 60 dels. 455,275 dels. 3 35 1870 364,399 168 92,000,000 154-67 809,620 2 33 1,343.375 3 68 1875 531.156 45 131,544,000 38-11 739,365 1 37 1,386,775 2 61 1877 650,000 23 137,480,000 13-11 7.^6,137 1 16 1,236,900 1 91 1878 708,497 9 138,698,810 •89 762,843 1 08 1,181,976 1 67 1879 849,978 19 144,803,673 4-43 942,046 1 11 1,181.976 1 39 The climate is far more genial than in the Eastern States. The temperature does not rush to the usual American extremes. During the year 1879 the mean temperature was 54*67°. The highest temperature was 99*5°, on August 4th; and the lowest was 16° below zero on January 4th, making the range for the year 115*5°. The mean temperature of the winter months was 27'93°, which was 1*94° below the average winter temperature; of the spring, it was 58*04, which was 4*83° above the average; of the summer 76*05°, which is 4*7° below the average; and of the autumn, 56*71°, which was 3*9° above the average. LAKDS OP PLENTY. 43 The principal inhabitants are Germans, Irish, English, Welsh, Scotch : at all events they led the rest five years ago when the population was 528,349. To-day it is 849,978. Kansas City in less than a decade has in- creased from 500 inhabitants to 65,000. Its yearly receipts of wheat from the surrounding districts are 2,000,000 bushels, of corn 5,000,000, and other cereals 1,000,000 bushels. Its annual receipts of wool are 20,000,000 lbs. ; of coal, 200,000 tons; of hogs, 500,000 head. Then there are other flourishing cities, Atchison, Topeka, Emporia, Florence, Newtown, Hutchinson, and a score or two villages or Jinks between the larger places, each village growing up into a town. Taking the industries of the whole of Kansas, we arrive at the following startling results. The total acreage of all crops since 1860 has increased from a crop of 271,663 bushels to a million odd in 1870, four millions odd in 1875, and so on to 7,769,926 in 1879. For the seven years from 1872 to 1878 the average yield per acre of winter wheat was 16*66 bushels and of spring wheat 12*70, for 1879 the average yields were 11*55 bushels of winter and 7*25 bushels of spring wheat per acre. III. Now in Kansas there are thousands of acres open to settlement for those who have a small capital; while II 44 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ; there are continual opportunities for the labourer and the domestic servant to get employment. If I were a poor, unprotected woman, or a strong young unendowed female, with no other prospect than service or marriage, I would go to the West by the next steamer. For £200 you can buy 160 acres of land on a system of repayment over a number of years. You must be careful how and of whom you buy, but a man does not want his *' wits about him" in America any more than he does at home. Kansas is teeming with natural wealth. They who are steady and wise and brave can gather it. Stock-raising is one of its great sources of wealth, as it is also in New Mexico and Colorado, both " lands of plenty " for the sober, industrious, and brave. Topeka is the leading city in Kansas and capital of the state. It has a population of 16,000. It has a "City Directory," which has, of course, a prefatorial history of the capital. The native penchant for humorous writing in America does not even stop in presence of "the muse of history." The following is the story of Topeka, which introduces the prosaic facts and figures of the City Di- rectory : " Topeka was born of poor but honest parents (Giles and HoUiday); and she sits upon the banks of the Kaw, the empress of that or any other navigable water that leaves the soil of Kansas. She commands the whole internal maritime trade of our state. Her future is se- LAMD8 OF PLENTY. 45 cure, as the judge said when he sentenced the man to the penitentiary for life. Lawrence has recently stolen a bridge from Babcock, and its citizens are rapidly wear- ing it out in travelling over it, and trying to get through their noggins the spirit of public enterprise which spans our turbulent currents with magnificent structures free to all. We have a free bridge at Topeka that was paid for. We have also a lunatic asylum. Here resides the governor; and also his recently-appointed military staff; as, also, their new clothes; and which are ornamented with more genuine metal, distributed around promiscu- ous like, than a brass kettle. Here they investigate our senators. " Atchison has published the statement that it has built six hundred houses the last year. Thank fortune, it is our last say. We have had a thousand built if we have had one; and our opportunities and resources for count- ing, in that number, newly weather-boarded cabins on the Missouri bottoms, are vastly inferior to that of our neighbour. The federal courthouse is in process of erec- tion, at a cost none of us can guess at, or approximate, or wish to limit. It will be sandwiched between one- dollar-a-day hotels for the especial convenience of Ele- venworth patronage. Topeka has stores until you get tired of looking at them, and customers to buy every- thing they have got. She has the capitol. She has the legislatuie, or did last winter, on the capitol appropria- 46 TO-UAY IN AMKUICA. I :i tion. She lias the Santa Fe railroad, the big boss thinj^ of the West. She will have in the next two years direct communication with Popocatapctl and Chimborazo. She has the lunatic asylum. Hotels without number, where you pay for all you get. It will have the state fair next year, at which, if there are any faft horses, they will be under the surveillance of Brother Monjeau, and who will make that feature so unobjectionable that even the puri- tans of Lawrence will visit it. We have machine shops, railroad shops, and the finest printing offices in the West. " We have the scarlatina, typhoid, and other game in its season; we have two shows, first-class moral enter- tainments, stopping over with us this winter. We have, in connection therewith, a full menagerie, lions, bears, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, jackasses, hyenas, the what is it, and the what not else, all under one canvas, and at one price, and which will be, we hope, a greater source of profit to our people than any equally moral poliiical investigation. We have a straw lumber manufactory, where was made the first lumber out of straw that was ever produced. We have the huge, monstrous rolling- mills yet waiting for work. We have also some fellows here who would like to get us to put our foot into it and vote for street horse cars, to disfigure our boulevards and avenues, and crowd and hamper our already over- burdened streets. We have a gem of a library that no citizen should fail to foster and patronise. We have LANDS OF PLENTY. 47 some mcmlxirH in the city council who stood against the appropriation to make it free, who deserve and will receive, we hope and pray, a speedy retiracy at the hands of their constituency. We have half-a-dozen loan offices, which, in the aggregate, loan $3,000,000 yearly, and through whose humane and philanthropic endea- vours each Haw in every title to real estate in Kansas will be ascertained and made known. We have Bethany College, where himdreds and hundreds of fair-haired, beautiful girls arc becoming fitted for their stations as the coming women of Kansas. We have Washburn College, and, goodness alive! the free public schools f They are on this corner and on that ; they are here and there and everywhere ! And then the children I A bee- hive struck with a club is not half so numerous. They are our only natural sources of in-rease; other than them, we are largely compelled to obtain the balance of our population from abroad. We spend ^10,000 a-year for new school-books, with four book agents to hear from. There are more babies bom in Topeka than any other town in Kansas; and there is more raw bird's eye whittled up into diapers, by a thousand yards, than in all of Atchison, Lawrence, or Elevenworth. This much for statistics; and in this connection you may go to almost any portion of the west — Kansas, Colorado, or New Mexico — and as you behold the mother applying the corrective slipper to the wayward child, exposed to !! 48 TO-DAY IM AMERICA. 'ii!l raising. The stock-raising interest predominates in those counties where the law does not exist. Here the fanner can combine the profitable business of stock-raising with his farming. The exten- sive stock-raiser has no advantage here. The unim-. proved lands are free to all for grazing purposes. The poor man's cow or the rich man's herd has equal and free access to the rich nutritious grass that annually covers the fertile prairies." New Mexico offers advantages to the emigrant in the way of land grants; but the country has not those ^' settled and protectant " attractions which appeal to the English agriculturist. Arizona, on the other hand, is a line territory for the seekers after homes in the West. It is 325 miles square, and contains 113,916 square miles, or 72,906,240 acres. Its valleys are washed by the Colorado, Chiquito, Diamond, and Gila rivers. Its mountains rise to the stupendous altitude of 11,000 feet. A fair climate, said by travellers with whom I have conversed to be neither extremely hot nor excessively cold at any time, fertile lands, and settled towns. Arizona has also a busy mining region; but, if mining be your idea of getting wealth, Colorado is the modern Peru, the new California. Boulder county alone produces £200,000 a-year of gold and silver. Gilpin county during twenty years has produced £6,000,000 worth of gold, and silver, and copper. 54 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Leadville, a mining town, has grown from a population of a mere handful of people in 1876 to 40,000. In 1879 the Leadville mines yielded 122,483 tons of ore, representing a total value of £2,225)409. In nineteen years Lake county has produced £3,000,000 worth of mineral wealth, chiefly gold and silver; and right through this rocky mountain region settlements are springing up with wonderful rapidity, making fresh openings for the employment of labour and the general occupation of workmen of all kinds, diggers, delvers, traders, and skilled men. In these mining regions one or more persons may " locate " a claim free, equalling 1,600 feet in length along the vein or lode, and not extending over 300 feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the surface. There are certain easy regula- tions to be observed, and the property belongs to the locators and claimants who can register and possess it. Arizona is 325 miles square, and contains 113,916 square miles, or 72,906,240 acres, being as large as New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Dela^ ware combined. The mountain ranges run north-west and south-east, except the Mogollon mountains, which run east and west. The highest peak is the San Fran- cisco, 11,000 feet. The Colorado river, formed by the union of the Green and the Grand in southern Utah, runs along the western border for more than five hundred miles, being joined by the Chiquito, Diamond, and Gila. LANDS OP PLENTY. 55 In the northern part of the territory the Colorado flows through awful canons^ whose walls rise to the perpen- dicular height of 6,000 and 7,000 feet. The territory is divided into seven counties, Apache, Yavapai, Maricopa, Peral, Puma, Yuma, and Mojave. The climate is mild, and the temperature is marked by extremes of neither heat nor cold. The valle3r8 of the uplands and the alluvial bottom lands of the southern part of the terri- tory are quite fertile, and, upon irrigation, the land is very productive. In the mountains and other arid sections a great deal of cactus grows, and a group of it is sometimes called an '* Arizona bouquet.'^ The finances are in an excellent condition. The Navajo Indians, on their reservation in the north-eastern part of the terri- tory and the north-western part of New Mexico, are well behaved, and do a good business raising sheep and wool, I have before me the Consular reports of the United States Congress to the year 1880. Mr. Hoppin, writing from the Legation in London to Mr. Evarts, dwells upon the fact that the depression of trade and industry in England have turned the attention of a class of people in the United Kingdom " who have not heretofore entertained such ideas to the advantage of emigrating to the United States." These people are not mere day labourers but " well informed respectable persons, many of them in possession of a little money which they are 56 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. willing to invest in the United States.** They, however, seek for information, "and particularly they ask for pamphlets on stock-farming in Nebraska, Colorado, Cali- fornia, and Texas," with details of expenses, climate, and other matters. With a passing allusion to the importance to America of emigration, he suggests that the Government of Washington should undertake the compiling and publication of pamphlets which shall fully answer the questions of intending emigrants. " It is remarkable,** he writes, " how ignorant even the educated classes in this country are of the geography, history, and the agricultural, industrial, and vital statistics of the United States, and how few books can be found within the reach of persons intending to emigrate which will satisfy their reasonable curiosity in respect to routes, building of houses, the locality of unimproved lands,*' &c. Some of the States have anticipated the action of Government in this respect, notably in Texas, Missouri, Winsconsin, Florida, and Virginia; and the first-men- tioned State is duly represented in London. There are numerous agencies, as I have said before, throughout Great Britain for the promotion of emigration, and the intending emigrant should consult his parish parson, or priest, or minister, or some local journalist, in regard to the particular part of the world which may best suit his requirements. Recently Mr. C. C. Andrews, late United States LANDS OP PLENTY. 57 Minister at Stockholm, wrote to the London Times setting forth many interesting facts in regard to Minne- sota, and the extensive ** wheat belt " beyond, and the way to obtain land on the cheapest terms for immediate occupation and cultivation. The leading points of this valuable contribution to a most important subject may be briefly summed up. The figures save also as a check upon the less authorised ones in regard to Arizona. " The advantage of acquiring land under the homestead law of the United States is the cheapness by which it can be thus obtained. Under this law the land must be taken in contiguous 'government subdivisions' of 40 acres each. The minimum quantity which a person can take is 40 acres, unless the tract happens to be fractional from adjoining a body of water that has been meaadered in the public survey, in which case a smaller tract may be taken; 40, 80, 120, or 160 acres may be taken at the person's option. It is usual for a settler to take 160 acres for his homestead, because the cost of obtaining such a quantity is but a trifle more than for obtaining 40 or even 80 acres. The only money which a person has to pay in acquiring a homestead is 35 (£1 Os. 6^d.)^ to the government if the tract be 80 acres or less, or if it exceeds 80 acres HO (£2 la. l^c?.), and H (16*. 5^^.) to the register and receiver of the land office ($2 to each) at the date of the * entry ' of tlie homestead tract on the 68 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. records of the ofSce, and a like sum of $4 to those officers at the date of final proof, making in all for a maximum tract of 160 acres the sum of $18 (or £3 13«. U^d. English money). Beside, the register and receiver are allowed jointly to receive at the rate of 15 cents per 100 words for testimony reduced by them to writing, con- sisting of the homestead applicant's own affidavit and the depositions of two witnesses showing his compliance with the homestead law. This is offered at the end of the five years' occupancy, is called the * final proof,' and the fees which the land officers receive for such service amount to about $2.25 (9s. Sd.) The whole amount of money, therefore, from first to last, that the homestead settler would be required to pay at the government office would be about $20.25 (£4 Ss. 2d.) All foreigners, except the Chinese, who are not eligible to citizenship, can take the benefit of the homestead law. But, before a foreigner can proceed in the matter, he must have duly made his declaration of intention to become a citizen of the United States. ** A person having made entry of his homestead tract at the land office of the district in which the land is situated, is required, in order to hold it, to commence improvements upon it in good faith as soon as he reason- ably can, and to reside upon it. He is not permitted to leave it for more than six months at a time ; but there is LANDS OP PLENTY. 59 no specified value of improvements required to be made. Everything depends on the circumstances and facts show- ing the party's good faith. " Whether a settler obtains an ordinary or a first-rate tract of land depends on his enterprise. If he will go a little farther upon the frontier than those who have pre- ceded him, he has a wider field for selection. For those who will make careful search there are yet in all frontier States and Territories very many excellent tracts, whether of woodland or prairie, that are open to homestead settle- ment and not many miles distant from railroads. Besides the lands belonging to the United States there are in Minnesota several million acres of good land belonging to the different railroad companies, and which they are ready to sell at an average price of about $5 (£l Oa. 6^d.) per acre. If one buys railroad land, he can naturally accommodate himself better in respect of being near older settlements. " Assuming that a person is in possession of 160 acres of prairie land, which, in its original state, is ready for the breaking -plough, and purposes cultivating 100 acres in wheat, what expense must he incur in order to proceed with his work to the best advantage ? The breaking is usually done in the months of May and June, and would cost $2.50 per acre (or say £50) for breaking the 100 acres. As the seed cannot be put in till the following spring, no further expense will be required for the first 60 TO DAY IN AMERICA. year unless it bo in the erection of buildings. The next year, then, he will need to buy a harrow costing $14 {£2 17«. 6d.),& pair of horses for $250 (£51 7a. 5d.), a pair of harnesses, $28 (£5 I 5a. \d.)\ 125 bushels of seed wheat, $125 {£25 13«. 8rf.); a roller, $12.50 (£2 12«.); a seed-sowing machine, $65 (£13 7/». Id.) — which will sow ten acres a day ; a harvester machine, $150 (£30 16». 5c?.) — which, with two men to ride and bind, will cut ten acres a day; a double wagon, $60 (j£12 6«. 7^.); a cross plough, $18 (£3 13«. Ud.); and buildings $1,000, or (say) £200, making altogether £398 9s. Sd. There will, of course, be some additional items- for labour, subsistence, and for a few small tools. If the land has been taken under the homestead law, the outlay for that, as we have seen, will have been but a trifle. The crop should yield at least 15 bushels to the acre, and it might reach 25 bushels to the acre. " In case, however, one practises a diversified agriculture, which has advantages over exclusive wheat-raising, crops of hemp, maize, potatoes, and the like could be grown on land the same season it is broken. The abundance of natural meadows renders the dairy, stock-raising, also wool-growing (peculiarly favoured by the dryness of the atmosphere), profitable branches of agriculture. H^^n- raising, bee-keeping, &c., are also remunerative. " The European who settles in the North-West can very soon acquire as independent a standing politically, and, LANDH OF PLKNTY. 61 if hu is well behaved, eocially, as if his ancestors had come over in the Ma^^flowcr. Such a peisoii, being a male and 21 years of age, and having resided in the United States one year, and in this State four months, .can enjoy the privilege of voting at any public election in this State, provided he has duly declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States. He thus becomes also eligible to any office in the State from constable up to governor. Pie exercises his politicil privileges with perfect freedom and security, and without the slightest manifestations of jealousy or ill-will on the part of any native American. Two or three foreigners usually hold State offices in this and other of our north- western States; quite a number are returned to every legislature ; and they are largely represented in the well- paid county offices of trust. The United States granted to Minnesota when she was organized as a Territory two sections of land, being 1,280 acres, in every township, in aid of common schools. These lands are sold at auction from time to time, but not under five dollars per acre ; and the permanent fund arising from them thus far amounts to $4,000,000, and will eventually amount to $12,000,000. The interest from this fund is annually allotted to the di£ferent districts in proportion to the number of children therein of school age. The school fund has hitherto been faithfully administered, and com- mon schools sustained, principally by local taxation are. 62 TO DAY IN AMERICA. as a rule, well maintained. There are in this young State three well-equipped normal schools for the training of teachers, a State university also well-sustained, and a flourishing college. There is one State superintendent of public schools and a superintendent for every county." V. There are lands of promise and of plenty in our Canadian colony which are lying waiting for the plough, the axe, and the pick. Mr. Hepple Hall issued a volume about these the other day, and he is deservedly sarcastic on the ignorance of English people in regard to their superior prosperity. One cannot help feeling that mmisters of state often know too little about the Empire of which this island of Great Britain is but the headquarters. Mr. Hall says that hitherto we have known more of the North German Ocean or the Mediterranean than we have known of the North Atlantic or the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Yet Canada has more imposing scenery than is possessed by Switzerland or Italy; and to-day Ontario, Manitoba, North-West Territory, and British Columbia, are the best fields open to the settler in the Dominion. He says they are positive " lands of plenty," and so far as the outlook beyond Quebec goes I can fully endorse his declaration. Here there are " wild lands " which can be purchased at a nominal price, and free grants can also be obtained; and here is an advantage LANDS OF PLENTY. 63 put forward by Mr. Hall : ** The English emigrant who selects as his home the eastern townships or land north of the Ottawa, will find himself in the midst of his own countrymen, and in sections of Canada which in every respect are unsurpassed on the continent of America." But Manitoba, the youngest province of the Canadian group, is the province to which all eyes are turning. The extension of the American and Dominion Kailways to its borders is the principal cause of its sudden rise as a field attractive alike to the capitalist and the poor emigrant. Its population is 50,000, over 20,000 whites, 10,000 Indians, 10,000 French, English half-breds, and Scotch, and 8,000 Russian Mennonites, and 1,000 Ice- landers and Scandinavians. The Russians are hardy, honest, industrious settlers, possessing 10,000 acres of well cultivated land, and are distributed through fifty villages. Winnipeg is the favourite point of settlement, and it is predicted that it will one day be the centre of British bread- stuff production, just as London is already the centre of British consumption. Here in this glorious wheat • producing country the Dominions Lands Act provides that free grants of land to the extent of 160 acres be made to every head of a family, male or female, and a further grant of 160 acres to every child, boy or girl, on their attaining the age of 18, on simple and easy conditions, the object of the Government being to establish a population of permanent settlers on the land. 64 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. People from all parts of the world are going thither but not in great numbers. There is plenty of room in this and other favourable farming and mining districts of Canada to take all our poor surplus populations of England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, and give then., a chance of happiness and fortune. There are several societies for ast^isting emigrants, and free passes as well as free lands can be obtained. There are thousands of men and women in England who have no prospect before them but an ill-fed life of drudgery, and thousands who must faint and starve on the highway. In heaven's name if they have no "look-out" here, it cannot be much of a risk to go to the lands of promise beyond the sea, which may turn out to be real lands of plenty. There is wealth for everybody in the English-speaking countries of the world if every- body would not insist upon elbowing each other to death in the smallest corner of Great Britain's vast empire. 65 III. CANADA AND THE UNION. Roman Catholicism iu Qnebec— American Inflnences in Canada — Independence or Annexation— British Bnle — Fifteen hundred Lakes and Rivers — English Statesmen on Canada's Position — Mr. Bright's view of Canadian Dnties— The United States seeking Reciprocal Tariffs with the Dominion. I. If the late Mr. Whalley had paid a visit to Quebec, he might have found food for a whole session of Pro- testant orations. Even an English statesman of broad and enlightened views could not feel flattered while contemplating the conditions under which the British flag floats over that historic city. The ultra-Protestants of the English Parliament excite themselves to madness at the unpretentious but certain progress of Roman Catholicism in the mother country, where it makes no show of power and aflects no desire to be aggressive. They should live in Quebec, where the authority of the Crown cc ve's the ecclesiastical government of a priesthood not less powerful than that of Spain. Under no check of superior authority, with a large majority in numbers, and possessing, as Church lands or private property, the best part of the city, the Roman Catholics have no VOL. IL P 66 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. reason to disguise their hand, and they do not. Quebec is crowded with their churches and convents. Their religious processions are on a scale of magnificence that equals the clerical pageantry of the Roman Catholic countries of Europe. The host is elevated in the streets and the people fall down on their knees in the roadways, Nearly every second store or shop is devoted to the sale of biblical pictures, images, and tracts. The priests promenade the city with the firm tread of possession. Local advertisements for servants stipulate that the applicants must be Catholics. They are founded on the now happily extinct and vulgar English insult, ** No Irish need apply." Juries are packed in the interest of Catholic criminals. Protestantism is not only in a minority but it has to meet an active and trained majority. In the suburbs the roadside cross meets your eye almost as frequently as in the Catholic districts of Belgium, France, and Italy. No theatre is allowed to flourish in the atmosphere that enshrouds the Gray nunnery, the Black nunnery, and the Ursuline convent; but that which is called in England " the social evil " flaunts gaily in the streets, and holds high carnival even in its own special temple between Quebec and the Indian village of Lorette. This chapter is not a theological treatise. It attacks no article of faith. I have great respect for the learning and pious devotion of the Catholic priesthood, and they CANADA AND THE UNION. 67 hare an honourable and a romantic record In the early history of Canada. But these pioneers and founders of a new France in the wilderness no longer train men to be industrious and robust. Their teaching takes self- reliance and enterprise out of the colonist. They culti- vate sentiment, they appeal to feeling alone ; while the freedom of Protestantism strengthens the reason, is muscular in its education, and fosters that self-reliance which makes men, builds up colonies, and cements and *' grouts in " the foundations of states. I have recently visited the leading cities of the New World, and I write this paper under the shadow of the old Jesuit college of the oldest and most picturesque settlement of the Ameri- can continent. It is here that the enterprise of the New World should be an example of energy and fortitude, struggling against climate, advancing with the general progress of Christendom. The example of enterprise and labour is wanting. In the most important of Cana- dian cities and under the most stringent of Catholic rule the world stands where it did a hundred years ago. Quebec has every natural advantage (with the one drawback of a hard winter) to make a city great. For nine months in the year it has sufficient water-power to drive ten thousand mills. It has at its command forests of timber which have not yet echoed to the stroke of the woodman's axe. It has the most magnificent river of North America at its doors and the Grand Tr ink Raii- F 2 68 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. way on its opposite shore. It has lakes and streams that water fertile plains and valleys. But while Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa advance in commercial importance, while Toronto plans new suburbs and boulevards, while Montreal vies with New York and the Old W6rld in magnificent buildings, Quebec stands still and moulders. A few years ago some thousands of people were rendered houseless by a terrific conflagration almost in the heart of the city. The fire was fed by streets of wooden houses. A law is passed that wooden structures shall not succeed the flimsy shells that are gone. Fire and law in many cities of the New World build up real stone buildings on the ruins of the forest-built huts. But not in Quebec. The houses which are growing up on the blackened ruins are no better than wood. They are timber shanties in disguise, faced with a single brick. No building of importance is projected in the devastated quarter. The great fire of Quebec is no pioneer of architecture or sanitary reform. The fire of London was a blessing to posterity. New York has built palatial avenues on the wrecks of her wooden houses. Chicago rose again from the flames, and challenges the world for the splendour and perfection of her public and private edifices. Quebec simply reconstructs on the old lines, and does not even regard the safety of the city in her reconstruction. Lord Duflerin pressed his Government to grant money for the purpose of building wharves and CANADA AND THE UNION. 69 quays, to promote the trade of the city ; but a community that does not help itself can hardly hope that the Government will show any special alacrity in pushing its interests. •* Half-a-dozen English capitalists," I said to a pro- minent trader, '* could make Quebec one of the most prosperous cities on this side of the Atlantic." *• The English won't settle here," he replied, ** they come, capitalist and labourer, but they do not stay; they go either to the States or to the moro English districts of Canada. There is no chance here unless you are a French Canadian or an earnest Catholic. The language of the city is French, the instincts of the people are alien to the Anglo-Saxon." " What will happen, then?" " Nothing. We shall go on as we are. This place has moved backward since Great Britain withdrew her troops, and I suppose it will smoulder on until the day of judgment." My friend is wrong. Canada has a destiny to fulfil, in the glory of which no single city can be left out. Her lakes and rivers, her hills and dales, her vast spaces, her natural advantages, point to a future of crowded cities busy with trade, to a future of high farming, and of residential palaces on the margins of lakes which still mirror the lovely foliage and the tangled under- growth of uncleared forests. Europe has some forty / 70 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. sovereign states. At least thirty of them even now con- tain less population than can be counted in the United British North American provinces. Lovell's Gazetteer of this wonderful region contains descriptions of over 6,000 cities, towns, and villages, and the names, locali- ties, and extent of 1,500 lakes and rivers. It is a guide to the sea-side resorts that fringe the line of the '* Inter- colonial'* railway; it gives us topographical glimpses of Gasp^ and Labradoi , notes on the gold-mines and coal- fields of Nova Scotia and British Columbia; it takes us to the salmon rivers of the Lower St. Lawrence and New Brunswick, and gives us statistics of the fisheries of Newfoundland and Cape Breton; it pilots us to the fair and fertile plains of Prince Edward Island, the youngest daughter of the Dominion, and promises stores of wealth in the copper and silver mines of Lakes Huron and Superior. It is only a formal gazetteer; but, reading between the lines, the book is a romance. The earliest settlement attempted at Quebec was in 1608. Only 269 years have therefore gone by between the period when the first settler pitched his tent in Canada, and to-day, when Queen Victoria exercises her royal authority over the biggest and broadest colony in the world, inhabited by four millions of people, confederated under the title of the Dominion of Canada, which covers more than four millions of geographical square miles, extending from the Atlantic on the east to the shores of the North Pacific CANADA AND THE UNION. 71 on the west. Its extreme breadth on the parallel of 49° north latitude is 3,066 geographical miles, and the greatest depth from the most southern point of the pro- vince of Ontario to Smith's Sound in the Polar regions rather more than 2,150 miles. Even when the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada comprised her entire terri- tory it was said of Canada, that, with the exception of coal and a few of the less important metals, she contained within herself a supply of all the most useful minerals sufficient for home use and for an extensive commerce. Since those days, in her growth from two provinces into a confederation of provinces, Canada has acquired the gold and coal mines of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the enormous coal area of the north-west. In nine- tenths of the territory included within the limits of the Dominion the mineral treasures have not been explored, but evidence of their vastness is not wanting. Nova Scotia has coal enough to supply the marine of the whole world. Along the line of the American coast from the Isthmus of Panama to Behring's Island, a distance of 3,000 miles, few harbours equal, and none are superior, to those found in British Columbia, giving natural outlets for the minerals of Vancouver's Island and Sas- katchewan. The regions extending from Lake Superior to the Pacific, averaging 600 miles in width by 2,000 in length, are peculiarly adapted for agriculture. This splendid country of British Columbia offers every variety 72 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. of soil and climate, and is capable of supporting]; a greater number of the human race than is contained in France and Germany combined. " It revels," says Mr. Crossby, ** in the enjoyment of a Devonshire temperature; while, up to sixty degrees of north latitude, the seasons, owing to the warm winds of the Pacific, are more genial than those of Sweden and Norway." This magnificent coun- try, watered by majestic streams, stored with mineral treasures, is a very paradise, but at present a "lone land," as it has been well described, awaiting the settler and the colonist. The steamer and the rail must ere long carry willing and worthy tenants to the vast wastes of plains and rivers, adding to the strength and greatness of the Dominion, which must one day stand in the front rank of wealth and power. Will this come about under the British flag or under the republican laws of the United States? As an Eng- lishman, I am free to confess that my pride would be hurt to see Canada made a state of the Union. If I were a Canadian influenced by the eternal laws of progress I should desire that closer intimacy with the States which only comes with amalgamation. No natural boundary separates the two countries. In the winter Canada is dependent upon the United States to give her commerce an outlet. Every day the influence of America mani- fests itself on the life of the Dominion. The English monetary system is abolished^ and cocktails have become CANADA AND THE UNION. 73 a national institution. If Toronto takes its fashions from England, Quebec and Montreal look to America and France for la mode. The Canadian railroads find their termini in American cities. Nearly all the lumber ope- rations of the country are in the hands of Americans, to yrhose enterprise Canada is mainly indebted for the deve- lopment of her mineral wealth. Wall Street holds the financial barometer of the Dominion. The removal of all Excise and Customs restrictions between the two coun- tries would give Canada a leap upwards that would astonish the whole world. It is plain that in the course of time Canada will be- come independent or part and parcel of the United States. In either case England would settle down to a calm recognition of the situation. Already the British Government has offered the Dominion her independence, and for some years past the policy of Downing Street has evinced a looking forward to the inevitable separa- tion. The Canadians who favour secession from England, as a rule, have not the courage of their opinions. They are ready to go alone if England will guarantee their inde- pendence. In time of war they feel that some day they may have to fight a foreign foe of England, simply be- cause they are an English colony. They think the mother country should fortify them against such a con- tingency. They hesitate about declaring their indepen- V 74 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. denoe, having the fear of America before their eyet. Not that they would hesitate to place confidence in the integrity of the government at Washington, but they are nervous that they might have a good deal of trouble with those miscellaneous organisations which are possible in a country made up of so many different elements, not the least important of which is that of Fenianism. But even this difficulty has to be solved ; and, if I have rightly gauged the political atmosphere of the Dominion, Canada is gradually sliding into that comer which meant a choice of two things, absorption by the United States or independence. II. At present the British rule is an anomaly. England gives but little, and receives nothing in return. It would be better to give more, and claim the reward of protec- tion and material help. The French Canadians say they do not progress in wealth and importance because they are under an alien flag. While the priest dominates the upper town of Quebec, and the people speak a foreign tongue, our brothers of Ireland, in the lower parts of the city, paint their houses green, and exhibit mottoes inten- tionally offensive to the Saxon conqueror. While the British flag floats over the citadel, the English Church is r&viled by the Franco-Canadian and the English Govern- ment is hated by the Irish settler. CANADA AND THE UNION. 7$ At Toronto and in the other commercial centres shrewd colonists say that they labour under a disadvantagCi because with all their boasted freedom they are, after all, only tacked on to Britannia's apronstrings, and that whenever they have a difficulty with America the English Government sacrifices them to British interests. The fisheries question is a perpetual grievance; and social Canada complains of the withdrawal of the British troops, more particularly from Quebec and Montreal. Politicians think England does not care for Canada, and they do not forget that the Dominion has been referred to in the Imperial Parliament as a burden. ** What I want the Canadians to understand," said Mr. Roebuck, not many years ago, in the House of Commons, " and what I want our Government to make them understand, is that we do not care a farthing about the adherence of Canada to England. We have never drawn from our colonies anything like tribute. Other nations do ; we do not. The only chance of benefit we ever expected from our colonies was perfect freedom of trade, and the Canadians have put twenty per cent, upon the introduction of English manufactures." In this same debate Sir George Cornewall Lewis said he looked forward without apprehension, but without regret, to the time when Canada might become an independent State ; but he thought it behoved England not to cast Canada loose or send her adrift before she had acquired 76 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. Mil 'M ! M i i M sufficient strength to assert her own independence. The remarks of Mr. Disraeli on that occasion are in keeping with his views of British Imperialism as recently set forth with so much eloquence on the Eastern Question: **I cannot contemplate with the same feeling as the Secretary of State a separation taking place between this country and Canada. I think that a great empire founded on sound principles of freedom and equality is as conducive to the spirit and power of the community, and as valuable as commercial prosperity or military force." Lord Palmerston agreed with Mr. Disraeli ; but The Times attacked the colony with a rough vigour that has still led a rauKlirg wound in the colonial heart. The occasion of these remarks was the possibility of England going to war with America over the Slidell and Mason affair. All that is forgotten now in England; but Canada has a longer memory for things that more immediately concern her welfare, and her public men are continually talking of the future of the Dominion, Some of them are firm in their belief that the v/elfaT** of Canada will only be maintained by remaining an integral portion of the British Empire; but others see their country's reward in perfect freedom, or annexation to the United States. Still at the bottom of all thought and speculation as to the future there is a strong layer of old English sentiment. Outside tht province of Quebec the great pioneers of ill CANADA AND THE UNION. 77 Canada, the English and the Scotch, look across the hroad waters of the Atlantic and tliink of home. They feel proud of the flag which is not only to them a national symbol, but a link between the far-off settlement and the churchyard where their forefathers sleep beyond the sea. Year by year, however, this impulse of patriotism is being transferred to the adopted land ; and unless the natural association and miiuence of her great neighbour sucks her up like a sponge, absorbs her as the larger flood absorbs the smaller, Canada must ere long govern herself entirely under her own flag, stimulated by the music of her own hymn, and made strong by those dangers and sacrifices which belong to the common growth of great and independent nations. There was something almost pathetic in Toronto's recent offer to England of a battery of artillery for service in the East. Canada thinks she sees much trouble ahea,d for England, and she offers to the mother country her money and her blood. America has sufficient on her hands just now in the management of her own vabt and growing population. Her ambition finds* its outlook in the West. She never coveted Canada ; and she would care less than ever at this moment to have such an additional responsibility thrust upon her as the great British colony would be. It is sutlicient for the Government of Washington to consolidate the Union; to weld together the factions of North and South ; to 78 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. work out the great problem of races which she has tried to solve on the field and in the Senate; and to bring into social, political, and commercial harmony the varied and contrary forces of that grand Republic which is a glory and an honour to the English-speaking people of the world. Now is the time for Canada to emulate the example of America, warned by her mistakes, encouraged by her wisdom ; or to lay in the foundations of her new life on the model of our English constitution, which combines republican freedom with monarchical strength and dignity. Let the Dominion take a king from the English princes, and join the great family of nations. ii li i HI. Let me recall a visit to the English House of Com- mons on a night upon v/hich Canada's attitude towards the Home Government and our possible attitude towards her is significantly illustrated. It is early in the Session of 1879. Mr. John Bright is to ask an important ques- tion. A Speaker's pass gives me a good place in the gallery. Presently the fine, white-haired old man rises. He wants to know if the Secretary of State for the Colo- nies can lay upon the table a, copy of the new tariff now before the Canadian Parliament ; if any communication has taken place between Her Majesty's Government and the Governor- General or Government of Canada on the subject of the proposed increased customs and protective 1^ n r 'S CANADA AND THE UNION. 79 duties in Canada; whether it is intended to represent to the Canadian Goyernment the impolicy of a war of tariffs between different portions of the Empire ; and whether it is true that the ** instructions" to Lord Lome omitted, for the first time, the clause requiring that Bills imposing differential duties should be reserved for Her Majesty's approval. He speaks in a conversational tone, and hardly seems to have been on his legs a minute, when Sir M. Hicks- Beach answers him. A summary of the proposed tariff has been received by cable ; he will lay it on the table of the House. It came on the 11th March. With it he was informed that the tariff was to be brought be- fore the Dominion Parliament on the 14th. He tele- graphed to Lord Lome to the effect that Her Majesty's Government regretted to observe that the general effect of the tariff was to increase duties already high, but deemed that the fiscal policy of Canada rested, subject to treaty obligations, with the Dominion Legislature. " The Canadian Government are, of course, fully aware of the financial policy of this country," he continues, ** and I may state, though I cannot speak positively until I have seen the actual tariff, that it contains no principles which have not been already sanctioned by the Canadian Legislature. There was, in the years 1876 and 1877, a considerable amount of correspondence between my pre- decessor and the Dominion Government with reapect to the instructions which should be issued to Lord Dufferin's 80 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. lit successor. Those instructions were then thoroughly re- vised and that clause struck out which specified certain classes of Bills that should necessarily be reserved for the decision of the Government here, among them being Bills imposing differential duties. As the right honour- able gentleman is aware, the Government then in office in Canada were free traders, and, therefore, I think it is clear that that could not have been done with any special reference to a protectionist policy." There is a short pause, and John Bright rises again. This is what he says: — Ferhapa I may be allowed to ask a qnestiou which I ought to have asked at the mument the right honourable gentleman sat down. It is whether it is understood that, notwithstanding the omission of the clause to which rny question referred in the instructions to the GoTemor- General, in case any proposition to enact differential duties is made by the Canadian Government, it will be submitted to the Government here before it is allowed to come into force. And I may ask further, whether he is aware of any case now pending in which the Government of Canada is engaged in negociations with some foreign Government with a view to proposing differentid duties in order to increase the commerce between Canada and that countrj'? If the right honourable gentleman has not heard ot it, of course ho cannot give a reply. " I am not a'ware of any negociations goinf» on at the present time," said Sir M. Hicks-Beach; "and with regard to the first question I can only refer the right honourable gentleman to the telegram which I sent to Canada, quoted by me just now." That " foreign Government," to which Mr. Bright CANADA AND THE UNION. 81 referred is America, and The Daihf News, in an editorial article upon these questions and answers, says the United States deal harshly in the fiscal sense with Canada, chiefly because they wish to prevent the possibility of British goods getting cheaply in through the Dominion. The writer further says that Canada is apparently not quite certain whether to proclaim a war of tariffs with the American S^tes or to go into a sort of Customs union with them. But there is one thing which the News thinks Canada is qrite settled about, that is, to act with an absolute indiflerence to any interests or inclinations or principles of England. This in spite of what " we do for the Dominion," and The Daily News is eloquent upon the obligations Canada is under to Great Britain. But the leading organ of the Liberal party is evidently at variance with Mr. John Bright's views of the situation. The great free trader would clearly exercise an Imperial control over the colony. He would not have objection- able tariffs endorsed by the mother-country. He would exercise the Imperial veto. He would say : " Your prin- ciples are opposed to the fundamental laws of British trade and coinmerce. You shall not do this thing, which injures us, and flies in the faco of our dearest wishes and our most cherished principles." Mr. John Bright, with all his Radicalism, has a touch of the Crom- well spifit in him. If he were president of a British republic he would stand no nonsense from British colo- VOL. II. O 82 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. nies, Avhich ask all and give nothing ; which will not even defend themselves; which take the maternal blood and money, and favour every commercial ship that swims in preference to those which fly the British flag. At least so say and feel a large number of English traders. The Daily Newa^ however, would not think of any interference by the Crown with the decisions of the Canadian Legislature. The bare idea of the English Government overriding the decisions of a great Colonial Parliament is repugnant to the News. Whatever fiscal policy Canada sets her heart on, she must be allowed to adopt. But the Liberal organ warns Canada that, while it is the cordial desire of the vast majority of English- men to have the bond of relationship between England and Canada always maintained, such connection must be kept by virtue of some cohesive power a little stronger than mere sentiment. The News thinks it quite possible that a time may come when the question will be raised whether we shall permit the Canadians to put upon the mother-country all the responsibilities and obligations of continued union, and leave to Canada the right of doing as she pleases at England's risk ; for it must not be forgotten that Great Britain holds itself absolutely responsible for Canada's protection and defence againsc all foreign countries. * CANADA AND THE UNION. 83 IV. With the apparent failure of an incomplete free trade rankling in their minds, with every nation laising its tariff against England, and with Canada once more raising the standard of protection against the Mother Country, the Liberal party feel very bitter about certain Canadian tariffs, and if John Bright ruled the destinies of the Empire he would evidently deal roughly with Canada for her obstinacy and ingratitude. It must be confessed that England is suffering con- siderably in the interest of the distant portions of her Empire. The Cape is a heavy tax of blood and cash. Our Indian frontier is an expensive business. Canada's battery of artillery in case of war with Russia; what would it have been worth ? Mrs. Partington's mop against the ocean. The truth is, the best interests of Canada are bound up with the United States, except, perhaps, in the Utopian event of a confederation of England and her Colonies for commercial purposes, involving a mutual free trade with mutual protective tariffs against all other countries. The latest news of this new year of 1881, in regard to the trade of America with Canada, is tc the effect that a joint resolution is pending in Congress providing for the appointment of three commissioners, to confer with a similar body to be appointed by the British g2 84 TO-DAY IN AMEUICA. Government, lor the purpose of* ascertaining on what basis an arrangement for reciprocal trade between the United States and the Canadian Provinces can be established. Petitions in favour of this resolution are to be circulated for signature in all the principal cities of the North Atlantic coast, and those located near the Canada border. " While the proposition," says Tlie New York Times ^ " is one for inquiry only as to what can be done in the direction of reciprocity, the motive for its support is a conviction that a policy of reciprocal trade is desirable for this country. Of this we entertain no doubt, and probably the object can be promoted only by some such international conference as is proposed. Whatever may be said of our general policy in regard to trade with foreign countries, it is certainly an anomaly that we should endeavour to keep up a rigid tariff barrier between ourselves and the strip of country that extends along our northern border. We are in no need of protection against the competition of Canada, whereas we are favourably situated for an interchange of com- modities with the Provinces which would be mutually profitable. It is a little strange that while no one questions the advantages which result from freedom of intercourse between the various sections of our own country, with their varying products and industries, it should be sup- posed that no gain would come from its extension, even in a modified form, to the territory north of us which is CANADA AND THE UNION. 85 separated from our own domain chiefly by imaginary line?." It has often occurred to me as a fact which is a good deal overlooked in international discussions of tariffs, that the United States enjoys the advantages of Free Trade over all her own vast area of country from New York to San Francisco; and in this respect, with varying agricultural, manufacturing, and mineral States within the Union, each producing interchangeable commodi- ties, America is in a far better position than England for maintaining a system of protection as against other nations. Since the abrogation by the United States of the old reciprocity treaty with Canada, the trade with America has considerably decreased, though the Union sells more to Canada than it buys from the Dominion. But the most recent Canadian statistics show that her general trade has improved under the influence of the extension of those protective tariffs, the proposal of which elicited the indignant protests of Mr. Bright in the Session of 1879. It cannot be doubted that the present " War of Tariffs " between the United States and Canada is a bad thing for both countries. The fault, it is authoritatively said, docs not lie with Canada; and indeed the commercial history of the United States gives ample proof of a certain narrow- ness of vision in regard to the markets that lie close to their own borders, at their very doors one may say. The New York Times was awakened to an acute sense of I'll" M IRS ' !l TO-DAT IN AMERICA. this weakness. " Canada, Mexico, and the Central and South American States, ought to find in the United States the best market for their products, and in return to obtain mainly from them their supplies of foreign commodities. That their dealings should be more largely with Europe is an anomaly for which our short-sighted policy on commercial matters is responsible." One day, when the American press begins to write in this strain as regards its trade dealings with England, there will be legitimate hope for a real revival of ^ur manufactures. It is a serious fear among the practical authorities of the North of England, that, when the Republic is ready to adopt the broad principles of Free Trade, England may find that her former business has drifted into so many fresh channels that she will be in no position to take advantage of a fair competition and an honourable reciprocity, the absence of which between England and the world at large is exhausting British capital and sending British skilled labour to other lands. 87 IV. ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. A World in Arms — Exports and Imports — Tho ancient God of Protcc. tion— Overtrading — Obstmctive Working-men — America sends Cutlery to France — Emigration — America in the fnture threatens to overshadow English supremacy — The Claims of Reciprocity — A Sheffield Opinion— Protectionist America. A strange darkness appears to have fallen upon the earth. Progress halts in her onward march. Civilisation pauses. Despite philosophy, Europe falls behind the simple laws of ethics. Notwithstanding the priest, she lags in the rear of the sublime teachings of Christianity. Bad harvests and bad advisers have driven Ireland to the very borders of insurrection. England is on the war-path in South Africa. The friends of progress believe that out of this evil will come good. At present the evil is omnipotent. Liberty is crucified in Germany. Freedom groans on the rack in Russia. The track of war in Turkey is still black with a great desola- tion. In the name of Liberty Prussia has enchained Germany. Socialism is attacked with the weapons which Bomba used in Italy. Prince Bismarck has IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1^ 14s IIM IIIII15 i^' IIM 2.2 12.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ^ 6" - ► Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 4^ i/.A 88 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. revived in the Fatherland the tjrrannical devices of Europe's darkest days. Berlin is practically under mar- tial law. You cannot say your soul is your own in the capital of the great and enlightened German nation. New prisoners daily enter the political gaols. In St. Petersburg and Moscow police officials rival the deeds of their predecessors in the days before Nicholas. The late Czar, having wiped out the benignant memories of abolished serfdom by reviving the cruelties of Siberia, has fallen a victim to the barbarous action of Nihilism. Yet the weary march to the Siberian hell upon earth goes on day and night. The victims are young and old, gentle and simple, men and women, university students, persons of distinction, the lowly and the great. They are happiest who fall by the way and feed the wolves. Tt is better, this speedy death, than to drag on to the icy regions only to drop at last upon ground already con- secrated to thousands of martyrs whose blood cries in vain to heaven. Progress! Christianity I France in- creases her armaments, her heart beating with the hope of one day winning back her annexed provinces. Italy makes big guns. Greece rests upon her drawn sword. Bulgaria is a bloodhound held in the leash by Russia until it suits the new Czar to let her loose upon Turkey. England is building new war-ships and torpedo-boats. "Peace with honour," truly. But " Peace " with arras ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 89 in both her hands; " Honour " fortified with eighty-ton guns and floating batteries. With sword and rifle and warship in the ascendant as arguments and details of international controversy, it is not surprising that Europe should tighten the bonds of Protection. Prince Bismarck lays his iron hand upon the foreign trader, and, strange to say, in direct sympathy with his views, Switzerland, the model state, raises its tariffs too. Prince Gortsohakofif and his imperial masters keep the work of Protection going in Russia, taking frequent new departures with a view of crippling Eng- land. France subsidises her sugar trade, and ruins the refiners of T^ristol and London. Spain puts up her tariffs against ^'v! -at Britain; and America, not yet certain whether her time for free commerce has come, keeps her Customs guards firmly at their posts. The United States stands, morally and commercially, on different ground from that of European states. A new country, she has had her industries to create and main- tain ; and if the consumer has suffered he has had the happy consciousness that he has paid toll on foreign commodities for the sake of the future prosperity and greatness of his country. This is an argument which root-and-branch free-traders will not allow, but it is a very good argument, nevertheless, like many others that do not come within the strict ken of modern political 90 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. economists. Standing erect, though sorrowful and per- plexed, in a world bristling with protective tariffs, Eng- land still holds by the principles of Gobden and the Manchester school. How long she will continue to do so depends upon how much more suffering she has to undergo. The country is passing through strange and bewildering times. On the war-path at the further out- posts of the empire, uncertain how soon the roar of the guns may come nearer home, there is a suspicion of a strain upon the Constitution which alarms nervous people. " Imperialism," however, is a mere party phan- tom. Mr. Gladstone put goggle eyes and grinning teeth into the thing to frighten us, and has been forced by Mr. Parnell and his friends to erect barriers against freedom of debate in Parliament, to dream of which would have cost Imperial Beaconsfield his premiership at any period of his reign. There is a stern reality, however, in the danger that threatens us from the worship of the false god Protec- tion by our neighbours and customers. The hope that our adoration of the true commercial deity. Free-trade, would convert the nations, was apparently never further from realisation, and there is reason to fear that the missionaries themselves may be converted back again to the old mercantile faith. Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Russia, cannot come under the increasing shadow of Protection without affecting England, staunch ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 91 free-trader though she be. Indeed, there is iready an outspoken call for the dethroned monarch. The leading manufacturers of the North want him. Every trade that suffers cries aloud for him. The working classes are worshippers of Protection. Traders of all grades want the old god set up again. It is called by various names. Some speak of it as " Reciprocity " ; others as "Self-defence"; some call it "Expediency"; others a . "Check upon foreign competition." "Without it," *^"^ _ said a London manufacturer to me, " England will go to the wall; it ig all very well to say that it is better that we, the producers, should suffer than you, the con- sumers; but what is to become of us as a manufacturing nation? What is to become of our mills, our machinery, our workshops?" I suggested emigration for the work- men, and the transference of capital to more favoured countries. " Yes," he replied, " you may think that remark a clever bit of cynicism; but it hits the point; you have pointed out too keenly the only remedy I can ses. Lord Derby advises the operatives to emigrate; he says nothing about the employer. You are right; we must go too; and unless things change very quickly you will find this firm with a new address, and it will be somewhere in America, where iron and coal are boundless, where labour is no dearer than it is here, where the resources of the earth are illimitable, and where capital is a bigger power than it i&' at present in 92 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Ill England." A merchant in Mark Lane, whom I met shortly afterwards, looked at things from a diflferent point of view. ** The depression is now over : it was exaggerated," he said ; " look at the trade returns for the pa it quarter, and you will see a great improvement. Now ril tell you what will happen. We shall frighten America into reducing her tariffs. She can't prosper unless we prosper, and she can't do much better than she is doing without free trade. Look at England ; we have suffiered a frightful depression; so has all the world: trade is not good anywhere in Europe, and that is why all these silly foreigners are increasing their protective duties. "Well, what is the result? Look at our own country, I repeat; cheap food, cheap bread, cheap cloth- ing, moderate taxes. The great bulk of the people are not suffering any more than the middle and upper classes can relieve them from. Look at other countries. A few refiners are ruined at Bristol because of the French sugar bounties; but you and I get cheap sugar. Some of our farmers and bloated landlords are worried about their rents; but bread is cheap, and meat is not dear. Where should we be with a heavy duty on wheat and beef, upon all the products that America is sending us? 1 tell you America is no better off than we are, and never will be until she embraces free trade ; and then the two countries will leap into prosperity together and * wipe the eye * of Europe." England's commercial decline. 93 A melancholy feature of the public utterances of public men, in regard to the universal attack on our commercial supremacy, is the evident nervousness of statesmen in discussing the subject. They are afraid to look the difficulty straight in the eye. Sir Stafford Northcote, while he stands firmly by free trade, when he visited the Midlands during the recent great com- mercial distress, hesitated to enter fully into the question of our trade disabilities, the disputes between capital and labour, and the reason why we are falling back in our competition with other states in manufactures which we once monopolised. My friend in the City, whom I have just quoted, will find that the last returns of exports from the United States is the largest in her history, while our return of imports is the largest in ours; two facts signi- ficant enough to make the most sanguine Englishman pause. Lord Derby, addressing the members of the Working Men's Club at Rochdale, had no new sug- gestions to make in regard to the causes of our com- mercial decay. We have overtraded; we have tried to get rich too quickly; we have lent our surplus moneys to foreigners who don't pay ; Honduras, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, have gulled us ; we have lent hundreds of millions sterling to states that will never return tho money; and the unsettled condition of Europe is dead against a revival of trade. " Until we can have some evidence that peace will be kept in Europe it is idle to 94 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. I i expect that trade will revive." Lord Derby Beemed to be more hopeful of the revival of commerce than he did of the maintenance of peace. It is a notable fact that no statesman lectures his constituents upon leading questions without references to America ; and when comparisons of wages, climate, resources have to be made, no public speaker omits to go for his best illus- trations to the United States. Lord Derby does not hesitate to express his opinion " that in this little land of ours we are getting packed too close, and that we have suffered from the stoppage of emigration during the past few years. So long as there are two working men for one job, no laws will ever prevent one of them from being badly off." Trite and true, your Lordship, and the remedy of emigration is a rough-and-ready one. ** The Americans have their troubles as well as we; but with their boundless soil th.^ are rapidly accumulating capital, and with their exceptional energy they are sure to rally before long ; indeed, I believe the rally has already begun. There are children living who will probably see the United States numbering 200,000,000 inhabitants, and I don't think there is any subject to which leaders of working men can more usefully turn their attention than the supplying to those who want it here accurate and trustworthy intelligence as to their chances beyond the Atlantic, either north or south of the Canadian boundary line. We shall always have men enough left ENGLAND 8 COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 9J at home ; and even if emigration were to go the length of checking the increase here, which it almost certainly will not, surely it is better to have 35,000,000 of human beings leading useful and intelligent lives, rather than 40,000,000 struggling painfully for a bare subsistence." Why are we to go and try our fortunes in America? If men will only look into it honestly and fearlessly, without caring what a Liberal thinks of his views, unconcerned as to the opinions of Conservatism, free altogether from political bias, he will find that the causes of our trouble are briefly these: manufacturers over- stocked themselves, regardless of increasing competition at home and abroad ; trades unions have destroyed the friendly relations that used to exist between capital and labour, which are necessary to successful commerce; we have taught the world to make the things we used to make for it, and the world is manufacturing for itself; to try and fight the high protective tariffs of other nations, we have sold inferior articles and discredited our goods; we have put honest English names on the worthless productions of continental manufacturers for the sake of an ill-gotten profit; a general policy of dis- honesty has crept into our trading; while our workmen have been out on strike commerce has drifted to other centres and remained there ; some of our special trades have been utterly and completely destroyed by the new protective tariffs of countries which had created the very 96 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. ill! industries they have killed ; and we have, for the time being, broken down under the competition which we have ourselves promoted and fostered. The everlasting expectation of a great war has more or less paralysed enterprise ; but the causes of our commercial decline lie far deeper than the shallow pretence of interested poli- ticians, that it is caused by the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield. What has the Eastern Question or the Afghan war to do with the cruel tyranny of trades unions? How could the occupation of Candahar affect the destruction of a British trade by an aggressive foreign tariff which shuts it out of a particular market ? What has the Berlin Treaty to do with the industrial progress and inventive power of America, which is selling cheaper longcloths and better ironmongery in England than we can make on the spot ? What has foreign politics to do with loaded cottons, with trade outrages, with the local details of the working of labour clubs ? The truth is, the British working man has been pampered to his own destruction by weak philanthropists and by designing poli- ticians. Both the great parties in the state have rivalled each other in bidding for his vote. In Parliament and out of Parliament the working man has been flattered, and his path smoothed. He has been told so often that he is the bone and sinew of the land, the most virtuous and industrious of toilers, the only means of employing capital, the pivot on which our entire commercial and KNOLAND'8 COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 97 social system works, that he has come to believe the world cannot go on without him. He has come to the conclusion that there are no working men but those who carry shovels and pickaxes, who stand by the lathe, who hammer on the anvil, who watch the iiying shuttle, who dig and delve and hew and saw ; and that mills are built and mining shafts sunk in his interests; that being built and sunk they shall be compelled to work according to his rules and on his terms ; that neither the machinery nor his fellow-men shall do more than a certain amount of work; that they shall only move during a certain number of hours ; that the skilled mechanic shall not be allowed to earn more than the inferior workman ; that he shall bo turned off and on at the will of a trade- uuion; that the employer may be a Free-trader, but the employed a Protectionist; that the master shall be a mere thing to pay wages, and the man the regulator of the amount to be paid. II. Recently at Sheffield a new invention in connection with the manufacture of carriage springs was tabooed by the trade. The machine had to be sent to Belgium, and the springs are now imported. A Sheffield manufacturer recently called his foremen together and showed them a large contract which had been offered to him at ten per cent, higher terms than the estimate of a German con- VOL. II. H 98 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. tractor. At this price the English maker would lose twenty per cent, owing to the difference of wages. He was willing to lose ten per cent, for the sake of keeping a special department at work. He invited his men to share the loss with him and keep the trade. They refused. The business has gone to Germany ; the English workmen are on half-time. Recently, in the midst of, the colliery depression in the North, the Londonderry pits received a large order. The managers invited the men to work overtime on ^* pay-day " to complete the contract. They refused. A Sheffield grinder, a few weeks ago, worked beyond the union hours; the next day his apparatus, stones, and straps were destroyed. The spirit of Broadhead still lives in the Midlands. Even the old ignorant opposition to machinery has not died out. A few months ago Stephen Gambril forfeited his life on the scaffold to restrain the working of a steam plough. The tragedies of English trade disputes, even since the days when Charlotte Bronte wrote, would make a volume as terrible as the current romances of love and jealousy. All honour to honest labour I It is the strength and glory of a nation. But fustian and corduroy are wrong in thinking they have a monopoly tf the fidfilment of ** the primal curse," which has been " sofiened into mercy " by present rewards and hopes of future blessings. ** Two men I honour, and no third," says Carlyle. " First, the England's commercial decline. toil-worn craftsman ; " second, the '^ inspired thinker, who conquers heaven for us. If the poor and humble toil that we may have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return that he may have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality?" Then the mer- chant, the master-builder, the banker, the clerk, the artist; shall not these be considered in the general system of our social economy? Judged by his acts, the British working-man says not. The enterprising capitalists who have put all their fortunes into those splendid mills in the North, are they not to reckon in the scheme of industry? When they have for years been giving out their money and racking their brains to keep their hands employed even at a loss, are the men to make no sacrifices when the hard times come, and the master is in danger of bankruptcy and ruin? The trades unions say " No," and the men *' turn-out " to complete the masters* dis- comfiture and their own. Thousands of honest toilers would say " Yes " if their individual desires were con- sulted, but they have built up a tyranny of their own. They are puppets in the hands of vast trade conspiracies, which vainly seek to check the world's advance. The inventor, the capitalist, the skilled mechanic who hopes to raise himself to the dignity of em- ployer, will carry their brains, their money, their labour to other countries. Already many of them have done so. What is the result? We are beaten in h2 100 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. our own marketb. France opens ironmongery stores in Birmingham. Belgium sends manufactured iron to the North. Germany takes away from us contracts for loco- motive engines. America exports cutlery to Sheffield and electro-plate to Birmingham. Our London shops are full of foreign goods. It is but the thin end of the wedge in some cases; but it will be driven home while the English working-man is disputing with his master. It will be driven home while questions of capital and labour make themselves more paramount than inter- national policy. Ministers sit down to think about the operations of hostile tariffs, to hammer out sound opinions relating to the working of a one-sided Free Trade, to con- sider how best to meet " the wave of Protection '* which is flowing over Europe, and they find the subject hampered with local disputes, clogged with bitter feuds at home between capital and labour, clouded with sophistical questions of rates of wages, working-hours, trade-union laws, and a host of artificial troubles which so be-fog the issues of the great national question that the mind is paralysed ; and even statesmen of the calibre of Lord Derby can only hope the trouble will pass, and, until it does, advise us to get out of a country where there are too many of us to earn a living. Emigration is a blessing to England and a boon to other countries; but we should go forth with money in England's commercial decline. 101 our hands, with willing hearts, cheerful, and carrying with us the happy experience of our skill and labour; not as paupers, not as beggars and outcasts ; for there can be no need of that when we have mills and factories and workshops and mines sufficient to occupy every unemployed hand in the kingdom, if the local disputes between labour and capital could be settled; "and skill enough to maintain our commercial supremacy, too," say the manufacturers, *' if certain disabilities of tariffs and duties were ameliorated." This is a question which I propose to illustrate with the practical evidence of practical men and notable facts for and against Free Trade; premising, however, in the meantime that the decay of English commerce is no alarmist cry. It has set in, like a dry rot. It is not an evil of the moment. It has been coming on for years. It threatens to go on, and the hour has arrived when it behoves every man to make personal sacrifices in the interest of his country. The darkest feature of the situation seems to be in the determined resistance of the working classes to admit the necessity of reduced wages. The British workman on strike, while his master is only trying to keep his factory open for their mutual benefit in the hope of better times, is a picture of folly, not to say ingratitude, which one can only contemplate with wonder and amazement. The English mechanic in his insular nride and strength cannot realise to-day that he 102 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. i; :!, : has any compeer in his own line under the sun. His con • tempt of foreigners is proverbial, and it was at one time excusable through the English workman's triumphs over every other working people. All trades have legends of the ease with which he has beaten the foreigner whenever they have come into competition. The English workman has been all over the Continent making railways, putting up machinery, and building ships. Wherever you travel you find traces of his skill and genius, his industry, and his powers. But the world does not stand still. It learns, it applies its knowledge. It is no longer dependent on England. It can make machines and work them without the aid of the Englishman. Times have changed. When I was a boy English engineers and mechanics were continually being sent for by foreign governments and companies to erect machines and preside over foreign works. Foreigners come to England now on similar missions. It was a Frenchman who (under the direction of Mr. Macdonald, the able chief in The Times office) recently showed me the working of the electric light in that famous establishment. It is chiefly *' foreigners " who are manipulating this new light in London. The City is full of Germans. They are a colony at Bradford. But the British mechanic does not learn; and, when the supreme hour of trial comes, he is helped by public subscriptions to weather the storm at home, or he is £NOLAND*S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 103 assisted to carry his experience and his labour to other lands. When the capitalist imitates him and does likewise, England will become a resi ^ntial country, and London the pawnshop of the world. Our manu- facturing districts will decay like those out-of-the- way old towns that lived on the coaches of former days, and the commercial supremacy of England will be " as dead as a doornail," a thing to write about and look back upon with wonder and with regret IIL It is in this direction that we appear to be drifting. Mr. Gladstone thinks America will take our old place in the world's business. The United States is already shutting out our wares by tariffs and home enterprise. France and other continental nations are beating us in open competition at our very doors. If we would not realise for our children the picture I have suggested, we must no longer trifle with the situation, but look it in the face. If free trade pure and simple has done its work for us, and is impeded by the hostility of the whole world, we must take what good we can get out of a modification of its principles. " All or none " is a foolish cry ; and it is ridiculous to ignore in our commercial studies the possibility that England, having reached the height of her prosperity, begins like the classic nations to descend the hill. Playfair has an apt illustration in which he 104 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. discusses the mighty events that have removed wealth and commerce from the Euphrates and the Nile, to the Thames and the Texel. The sun rises, and the seasons return to the plains of Egypt as they did three thousand years ago ; the principles of vegetation have not altered ; the subordinate animals do not refuse to assist man in his labour and supply him with food. It is not nature that is less bountiful, and man has more knowledge and more power than ever he had ; " but it is not the man of Syria or of Egypt that has more knowledge or move power. There he has suffered his race to decay, and, along with himself, his works have degenerated." May it not be that the present falling back of English trade, the universal distress, the hopeless prospect in the future, the failing banks, the dishonest financiers, the growing wealth of lav^yera, the increase in the consumption of luxuries, the profligacy of our cities, the conspiracies of labour in the interest of idleness, the loading of our cottons, the inferiority of our once splendid hardware and cutlery, the divisions in our councils, the selfish partisan- ship of our statesmen, and the legalisation of Exchange gambling, are all details in the general aspect of a great nation that is suffering its race to decay and its works to degenerate ? If this view of the situation would only take hold of the public mind, it might lead to reforma- tion in a race famous for its native vigour, its broad- mindedness, its patriotism, and its historic triumphs over England's commercial decline. 105 difficulties. Look, in comparatively modern days, from what a height the Dutch have fallen. Except that the distance from Europe places America at a disadvantage in the race, there is something not unlike the English competition with the Dutch in the old days in America's competition with England in the new. First, there were fisheries questions, including English jealousies, which resulted in the revocation of Dutch licences to fish in English waters ; then there was the whaling business ; and next the fight for the carrying trade of the seas ; and it may be mentioned as an argument for the Protec- tionists that Cromwell crushed foreign competition and the Dutch carrying trade by imposing heavy customs upon foreign produce, and making the employment of British-built vessels compulsory. Then the Dutch, just as England has done, went into stock -jobbing and foreign loans. In the year 1700 the Dutch were the bankers of Europe. They had claims upon foreign debtors to the amount of 3,000,000,000 guilders. At the height of their prosperity their decline began. During the wars with France and Spain, Holland lost much of her trade to France, and England progressed in industrial work and commerce. England presently competed with the Dutch for their trade with other countries, just as America is now entering the race with England. First we got hold of the Dutch trade with Russia ; then we secured most of her Swedish and Danish trade ; then we 106 TO-DAY IN AMEBICA. imposed fierce duties on foreign fabrics and shut out Dutch linens ; we fought her for the commerce of the Mediterranean. France and England beat the Dutch in their competition for the Indian trade. Oriental linen came to Europe and still more reduced the demand for Dutch. The West Indies yielded to English and French enterprise, sugar, co£fee, and spices overtopping the Dutch imports from Java. The Dutch did not retaliate with heavy duties ; neither will the English. Holland continued to be rich on account of her accumulated wealth ; England will never be poor. Where is Holland now? This comparison might be followed up, if not profitably, at least as suggestive of interesting parallels between the competition of America and England ; and the idea is not far-fetched, for even in the days referred to the United States was a factor in the world's com- mercial contests. She appeared as a rival to Holland, sending to Spain, Portugal, and Italy, in exchange for the commodities of those countries, great store of fish and flour. Whatever England's future may be, she is at the moment passing through a supreme crisis, or rather she is in the midst of great national troubles. How she will get through them depends as much on the mutual for- bearance of masters and men as upon the wisdom of our statesmen. But we shall not promote a beneficial change in our prospects by refusing to inquire impar- ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 107 tially into the arguments and opinions of those who claim that a modification of our present practice of free trade is one of the essentials to an extension of a profit- able commerce with the world. Some of the soundest heads in the North are in favour of a duty on certain classes of imports; in the South there is an increasing demand for an inquiry into the present operation of foreign tariffs, and the prospects of continued free-trade at home in the face of rising protective duties abroad. To turn a deaf ear to these views, or to answer them with stereotyped maxims in political economy, is not the way to get at the bottom of the causes of the present crisis. In theory, with the consumer as the only person entitled to consideration, free-trade is the perfection of commercial policy. In theory a republic is the best and purest system of government; England prefers a mo- narcliy nevertheless, and we have shown to the world how perfect and free a constitution can be formed and worked by a wise and judicious adaptation and amalga- mation of that which is good in the two most opposite methods. Since even now we levy heavy tolls upon cer- tain commodities, thus discounting somewhat the full operation of free-trade principles ; since Mr. Cobden himself acknowledged the importance, if not the neces- sity, of reciprocity by his negociation of the French treaties ; since chambers of commerce throughout the country alternately coax and bully foreign governments 108 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ; i :i : in the everlasting struggle of British enterprise against foreign tariffs, surely some concession may be made to those who, while they acknowledge the theoretical truths of free-trade, deny that it can live without compromise in a ring of protection. It is a beautiful plant in a bed of thorns. Of late the weeds have grown apace, and they threaten to choke the good seed ; shall we not con- sider how we may protect it? Shall we refuse to listen to those who have watched over it, and who depend for sustenance upon the fruit thereof? IV. Until I had conversed freely with business men in- terested in the trade of Sheffield, I did not fully realise the importance of the change which is taking place in the commercial condition and trading prospects of England. I had visited Birmingham. The Midland capital had not hesitated to say that her export trade with the United States is practically dead ; that the leading American merchant there, who used to export hardware to the States, now imports similar goods to England ; that America even sends electro-plate to Bir- mingham, which also supports a French ironmongery store; but there was a certain amount of hopefulness in the tone of some of the local manufacturers, that seemed to leave room for discounting the gloom of others. Bir- mingham does not rely upon any particular trade. She 1 England's commercial decline. 109 has so many strings to her industrial bovir that one might be forgiven for thinking she exaggerated her woes. Then, on the day of my visit, sho looked bright and busy. The sun was shining on the hardware city, the streets were clean, the burgesses were active in the election of town councillors, lines of carriages were " setting down " at a morning concert ; there were picture exhibitions and tea meetings; builders plying their trade on new public works; at night the theatres were crowded, and electric lamps illuminated the front of Curzon Hall. But Sheffield ! I entered it amid a downfall of rain. ^Nothing could be more depressing than the railway entrance to this famous centre of British industry. This is not the fault of the Midland Railway Company, which has a fine station here, but the railway runs into the town at its busiest and blackest end. Flash of furnace, clash of hammer, cloud of smoke. This is your welcome. The roar and tramp of trade is the music of Sheffield, and it comes to you through a pall of smoke. Now and then, when the wind is brisk and the weather fine, there is a blue sky to be seen even here, and on autumn evenings fine studies of cloud-land and distant hills. The smoke of the great factories makes a background for picturesque effects of the sun. Turner might have conjured grandeur out of such scenes. But on the day of my visit it was darkness. At the hotel dinner the guests talked of depressed trade. silent and spontaneous. There England's commeucial decline. 113 Has been no agitation, no action of the platform, of the press. The dumb instincts of the people — instincts, mark you, often wiser than the finely-spun systems of the philosophers — arc in revolt against a state of things which is felt to be unjust, and which operates like a hostile blockade. With this dissatisfaction 1 have a certain sympathy. I do not believe that England is powerless to help herself in the matter. England is the greatest and richest of buyers, and where is the great buyer whose practical displeasure is regarded by the sellers with indifference? Her market is indispensable to more than one of the nations which have been experi- menting upon her forbearance. The Freie-traders of France, Germany, and the Southern States, earnestly advise England to desist from giving their Protectionists the aid, comfort, and encouragement involved in the assurance that, do what they may, England will never retaliate. They strenuously entreat England to threaten retaliation, and they do so in the confident assurance that the mere threat would immensely strengthen their hands. There you see we have a direct issue between our own Free-traders and those of America and the Continent. Whom shall we believe? For my part, I am inclined to believe the Free-traders outside. They are on the ground, they understand what they have to contend with, they know much that we cannot know, VOL. II. 1 ii 114 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. and, as I neither doubt their sincerity nor question their intelligence, I cannot disregard their counsels.' " " You nearly surprised the Telegraph into a confession of the failure of Free-trade," said my host for the time being, '' though I imagine Mr. Leng would hardly let himself be persuaded that we ought to protect even our staple commodities. But mark me, the day is not far distant when leaders of the country like Mr. Leng will be found swelling the ranks of Protectionists ; and once a man of courage and power comes to the front in Parliament to advocate the Christian maxim, * Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,* Free- trade, as it stands, is doomed." ** What is your opinion?" " That we should at once meet Spain and Italy with heavy duties, and tell the United States frankly that we must, in self-defence, tax her manufactures and put a duty on her corn." When I left this gentleman I tested his views by figures which I compiled with some care from the Board of Trade Returns of such articles as would affect Sheffield trade. I found startling proofs of the steady reduction of exports in the class of manufactures in which Sheffield excels. The returns are for Great Britain, but they bear particularly on this great centre of industry: ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. na Exports. 1873. 1873. 1874. 1875. 1876. 1877.* Hardware and cutlery . . . £ 5,089,481 £ 4,938,637 £ 4,403,399 £ 4,364,331 £ 3,483,386 £ 3,335,837 Steel, anwrottght Tons. 44,000 Tons. 39,000 Tons. 31,000 Tons. 39,000 Tons 3S,0OU Tons. 34,403 Railway iron . . 945,000 786,000 783,000 545,000 414,000 Total iron and steel, wronght and unwronght 3,383,000 3,967,000 3,487,000 3,458,000 3,334,000 Couple with these figures the fact that France, Bel- gium, Germany, America now export to England goods which compete with our home manufactures, and the statistics become still more impressive. In illustration of the influence of American industry upon the trade of puch towns as Sheffield, I take simply two years of busi- ness. In 1876 Great Britain exported to the United States only £350,809 worth of hardware and cutlery ; in 1877 this Avas reduced to ^£324,126. In 1876 j£83,107 were the figures for armour-plates, and £52,651 * This investigation was made in 1878. Trade in some respects has revived in varions departments since then, but not sufficiently to influ- ence the principles and general facts herein displayed and their bearing upon the changing commercial relations of England and foreign coun- tries. For example, the hardware and cutlery exports for 1878 were £3,297,937; for 1879, £3,028,271. The exports of nnwrought eteel were, for 1878, £24,131; for 1879, £31,061; railway iron, for 1878, £439,392; for 1879, £463,878. The total iron and steel wrought and unwrought for 1878, £2,296,860; for 1879, £2,883,484. The total increase is made up chiefly by the exportation of unmanufactured iron, namely, from £947,827 in 1875 to £1,223,436 in 1879. The Board ot Trade returns for 1879 and 1880 have no material bearing upon the other figures relating to Sheffield; and the latest revenue returns, according to Mr. Gladstone, do not show that substantial advance in English prosperity which some writers have claimed for them. i2 ll 116 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. for 1877. Cast or wrought iron in 1876, £87,846 ; in 1877, £52,558. In tin plates there was however an increase, namely: 1876, £1,937,203, and in 1877, £2,074,785. Pig-iron was not seriously affected, 1876 showing £171,331 ; 1877, £144,081 ; and bar-iron had gone up from £28,326 (1876) to £56,950 in 1877, which increase and the improving position of pig-iron bear remarkably on Mr. Leng's view, that the United States, as well as other countries, is using England as the mere labourer, the digger and delver, though Ame- rica, it should not be forgotten, has all the mineral trea- sures she can desire in her own country; and, unless trade recovers in England, British capital will go to the other side in much greater force than hitherto, and British labour will naturally follow the trade. The day is possibly not far distant when the United States will not want our raw material ; they have found coal and iron in close proximity, and Yorkshire ironmasters are erecting smelting furnaces on the spot. The total quan- tity of iron and steel exported in 1877 was 2,344,651 tons as against 2,224,470 in 1876, the respective values being £20,094,562 and £20,737,410.* Steam-engines used to enter largely into our trade with the United States. Neither in 1876 nor 1877 did Great Britain send a single engine across the Atlantic to her once libe- ral customer. Iron rails and steel rails also once repre- * The general importH for 1880 show an increase of 14*1 per cent, oyer 1879, and the exports an increase of 160 per cent. England's commercial decline. 117 sented a large trade. In 1876 England sent no steel rails to America; in 1877 she only sent £2,833 worth. In 1876 America took from us iron rails to the value of jei,422, and in 1877 the trade jumped up to £10,301, an amount as insignificant compared with the past as that of 1876 by the side of 1877. But let us take a more than local glance at the changes in English exports to the United States, put the figures into dollars, and go over a wider period. Mr. Frederic Brittain, a distin- guished Sheffielder, who has written and spoken much upon the subject,* will help us. The following are his figures for a period of ten years : 1867. 1872. 1878. Dollars. 2,282,000 1876. Clocks, watched, and materials Dollars. 2,588,000 Dollars. 3,886,000 Dollars. 1,456,000 Clothing, including hosiery . 3,2M,000 1 9,370,000 7,456,000 7,081,000 Cotton manufactures 29,817,000 j 29,865,000 22,709,000 18,042,000 Earthenware and china . 6,309,000 1 6,270,000 4,303,000 4,304,000 Manufacture of flax 20,464,000 I 21,220,000 16,602,000 14,446,000 Glass and glass wares 3,996,000 5,834,000 6,805,000 4306,000 Iron— bar, rod, hoop, &c. 5,325,000 ' 5,814,000 1,764,000 1,584.000 Iron— pig .... 1331,000 1 5,122,000 1,457,000 1,918,000 Iron— railroad bars . 3,403,000 1 16,778,000 69,000 6,000 Iron— sheet, old and scrap, an- chors, hardware, &c. 4,594 000 1 15,239,000 2,296,000 1,486,000 Silk manufacturers . 18,357,000 36,341,000 24,295,000 23,668,000 Steel 3.269,000 4,033,000 2,539,000 1,808,000 Cutlery and manufactures of steel 6,917,000 ' 8,891,000 6,131,000 5,363,000 Woollen carpets 3,851,000 6,727,000 2,643,000 1,621,000 Worsted and dress goods 19,397,000 20,439,000 19,769,000 14,216,000 Other manufactares of wool . 21,509,000 : 25,583,000 22^)02,000 I7,472/X)0 Total .... 146,846,000 ! 218,402,000 142,711,000 119,177,000 Steel railway bars . • • i 6,277,000 2,863,000 314,000 Total .... 146,846,000 ! 224,679,000 146,674,000 119,491,000 to:: 118 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. I In an Interview which Mr. Brittain gave to a local journalist on my behalf, he dwelt upon these figures as demonstrating with strong conclusiveness how enor- mously manufacturing has lately been developed in the United States. The table shows that the value of the imports of these principal manufactured articles fell from $146,846,000 in 1867 to $119,177,000 in 1876, notwithstanding the enormous increase of popu- lation during that period. But the most remarkable decline has occurred since 1872. In that year the imports of the same articles, with the addition of steel rails, amounted to $224,679,000, and in 1876 to $119,491,000. Questioned further on the immediate aspect of American competition with England, Mr. Brittain, in spite of the gloomy outlook, appeared to think generally that the imports of American hardware and cutlery into England are greatly exaggerated ; that, indeed, these imports are at present hardly worth consideration. He believed the United States to be more hampered and menaced by dissensions between masters and men than England, and that Great Britain has most to fear in Americans competition for the trade of our English colonies, Canada more particularly, the proximity of which, combined with the advantages of a common tongue and the fiscal facilities of trade with the Dominion, render her peculiarly susceptible of American influence. Recently, at Sheffield, Mr. Mundella, in a ENOLAMD*S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 119 speech, insinuated that America is bent, if not on a policy of Free-trade, at least on important modifications of her fiscal laws. This Mr. Brittain regards as " the roseate sophistry of a vain politician/' I should have stated that Mr. Brittain was one of the committee of the British Associated Chambers of Com- merce who were deputed to investigate the condition of French industries, in connection with the renewal of the commercial treaty negociations. Mr. Brittain represented the iron and hardware trades. In this capicity he made a report to the Chambers of Commerce. Since then he has extended his inquiries, and published a very valuable brochure on British Trade and Foreign Competitionf which he has been good enough to send to me, and from which I propose to condense some points of interest bearing upon the great trade questions which are now agitating nearly all civilised countries. He was told, when he visited France, that, on account of the war with Germany, French manufacturers had been com- pelled to seek fresh markets, and that they had dis- covered it was possible to compete with England upon neutral territory. He ascertained that foreign houses were buying from France, Germany, Belgium, and other countries goods which they formerly bought from England. He found that the official returns of exports of the French Government indicated an increase, which established the veracity of the statements that had 120 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. been made to him ; and on the other hand he saw that the English returns of the an' lal statement of trade showed a corresponding decline in British exports. This led him to believe that there had been a considerable displacement of trade, and that foreign countries are supplying what England used to supply. Subsequent investigation has abundantly confirmed this.* Now, in ♦ Though an npward movement in trade has been noticed, and the revenue returns have proved eminently satisfactory to the Government for the past year, the following figures will show that nothing has occurred during the years 1878 and 1879 to materially change the calculations and consequent inference made in this chapter. The total imports for 1875 were £373,939,677, and they have varied but little since. In 1879 they were £362,991 ,875. In 1875 our exports were £281,612,323, and they have fallen an average of about £30,000,000 a year to £248,783,364 in 1879. Tke Econirmist, of Dec. 11, 1880, has the following notes on the financial and commercial history of 1880, which justify the maintenance of the figures already quoted as unchanged, so far as they illustrate the condition of British trade and commerce: " The very considerable improvement and general rise of prices which marked the close of 1879 and the first three months of 1880 was not maintained during the summer of the year. It is now clear that, stimulated by the sudden and large American demand, first for iron and steel, and then for other commodities, which appeared after Sept. 1879, there arose, in nearly all the considerable markets in this country, a violent speculative fever. Thousands of persons who had no knowledge of business became buyers of commodities for present, and still more for future, delivery, in the expectation that a continued rise of price would enable them to pocket a large margin of ' difference ' with little or no real outlay of capital. The operation was of course overdone, as nearly all wild operations of the kind always are; and ended in producing severe losses in numerous quarters, and a relapse of prices, which even in the early weeks of 1881 has not been corrected." y ENGLAND S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 121 making an inquiry into the conditions of the commerce and manufactures of the country, Mr. Brittain remarks that it is exceedingly important to distinguish between England's position as capitalist and her position as manufacturer and exporter. In recent controversies many statements have been made to prove how wealthy England is. It is possible that not a single writer has erred in these estimates on the side of exaggeration. To give more than an idea of the wealth accumulated in Great Britain during the last thirty-eight years would be impossible. In 1840 the construction of railways was beginning. In 1876 the total capital paid up (shares, loans, &c.) of the railways of Great Britain and Ireland was £544,831,000. In 1840 the merchant navy belonging to Great Britain consisted of sailing vessels of a tonnage of 2,680,000 tons and steam vessels of 87,000 tons. In 1876 it had risen to a tonnage of 4,126,000 of sailing vessels and 1,870,000 of steam vessels. The immense factories, mills, and works, with their costly machinery, the docks, bridges, telegraphic and public works, the dwellinghouses and their furniture, the gas and waterworks with their mains and property of all descriptions, represent a prodigious capital, a large pro- portion of which has been saved since 1840. " A great part of this property may be considered an enormous engine for the production of further wealth. Not only has this great saving been effected, but during the period « 122 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. referred to taxation has been mitigated, and the comfort and well-being of the people, particularly the poor, have been greatly promoted." The difference of the condi- tions of life in England to-day from those which existed thirty-eight years ago is shown by the quantities of cer- tain articles of food retained for home consumption per head of the total population of the United Kingdom then and now. For example : 1840. 1876. Pounds. Pounds. Butter 105 5-54 Cheese 092 503 Raw Sugar 16-20 5016 Tea . 1-22 450 Currants and Raisins 1-46 4-73 Rice . 0-90 10-27 Many writers on trade are apt to allow a survey of past prosperity to blind them to the first symptoms of the decay of that trade from which it has been to a great extent derived. They make the mistake of regarding income derived from capital as revenue resulting from commercial transactions. England's commercial start in the world, her merchant navy, her colonies, gave her an advantage over all rivals. She is like an old-established house with a large capital competing with young houses without capital. These advantages may be neutralised if they conceal from view the first indications of in- dustrial decay. That it has set in is a general opinion ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 123 in Sheffield ; and Mr. Brittain does not disguise his fears that British supremacy is being shaken to its founda* tions, though he discusses the situation with the philo- sophic calmness of a statesman. There are authorities, on the other hand, who point to '* wars and rumouis of wars " as the causes of depressed trade. The Franco- German war, the Servian war, and the Russo- Turkish conflict, had their blighting influences no doubt ; but to whatever extent these and other general causes may have contributed to paralyse our commerce, a compari- son of the trade returns of exports of foreign countries with those of England show that one of the chief reasons for the present anxiety is that Great Britain is exposed to a foreign competition which has been recently and rapidly developed. Then, England is not in the same position as the United States and some other countries, which produce food in sufficient quantities for the supply of their own wants and leave an immense surplus for export. To them manufacturing is only subsidiary ; to England it is all - important. When English exports amounted to £256,000,000 the nation was prosperous. With exports at £198,000,000 come poverty and misery. It is to the colonies that the only hopeful writers on trade look for the future great markets for English goods. The health and vigour of the colonial trade has helped to conceal from super- ficial observers the very serious inroads which competi- 124 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. tlon has made into British foreign trade. Exports to the colonies rose from £60,000,000 in 1872 to £66,000,000 in 1878, while those to foreign countries fell from £195,000,000 to £126,000,000 in the same time. The United States compete with England in the colonies upon far more equal terms than any country in Europe ; and America is quick to utilise her advantages. The exports from the United States to all parts rose from $392,771,768 in 1870 to 3835,793,924 in 1880, the highest total in the history of the States. I notice in a recent number of TJie British Trade Journal a "rebuke to croakers" in these words: ** People who are losing their heads and wagging their tongues inordinately about the terrible encroachments of American competition — citing more particularly the growing popularity of American hardwares in the markets of the world — may be usefully reminded of the fact, that whereas in a recent year the value of hardware goods exported from the United States was $16,200,000 (£3,240,000), British exports of the same class of wares aggregate annually about £30,000,000." Encouraging figures in their way; but does The British Trade Journal see nothing significant in the fact that America, who used to buy her hardware in England, now not only makes enough for home consumption, but has to spare for sale :.. Europe? It should also consider this: until recently the United States was an immense purchaser of all kinds England's cummercial decline. 125 Lie of British manufttctures, while she is now not only u competitor in her own, but in neutral and British markets. Hitherto American exports of manufactured articles have not been important ; *' but," says Mr. Brittain emphatically, '^ those who know the excellence of some of the productions of the United States will recognise in her a formidable antagonist in her infancy* * The Nerp York Herald of a recent date says: " We now have the 1880 censos returns of silk manafactnrers in the United States, ((iven in the preliminary report of Mr. William C. Wyckoff, the special agent. The exhibit shows a bright prosperity in this department of indostrial activity, while a comparison with the censns figures of 1870 reveals a rise in the American silk industry, which is as striking as it is gratifying. In 1870 the value of all products of silk establishments in the United States was 12,000,000 dols. In 1880 finished goods to the amount of 34,000,000 dols. were produced, while the gross value of all products was 41,000,000 dols. During this period the capital invested in the business was increased from 6,000,000 dols. to 19,000,000 dols., and the value of materials used in a year from less than 8,000,000 dols. to more than 22,000,000 dols. These figures show that the in- dustry has trebled in ten years. The enlargement of proiluctivo capacity seems to have been even greater. Since 1870 the factories have increased in number from 80 to 383, looms from 1,500 to 8,000, hands employed from 6,600 to 31,300, and the amount of wages paid during the year from 2,000,000 dols. to 9,000,000 dols. Another notice- able feature of the report just issued is, that several States which did not appear in the returns of 1870 arc now represented as having silk factories. These are Maine, Rhode Island, California, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri. But, while silk is manufactured in fifteen States, the industry is as yet practically confined to New Jersey (where its greatest development has taken place). New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. If the rapid strides of progress we are making in this department shall be kept up, how long will it be till the looms of Lyons need weave no more silks for American wear ? " 126 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. In 1808 the value of the saws, files, and tools exported from the United States was $5,088; in 1877 it had risen to $757,321. The value of the clocks exported rose from $536,700 in 1868 to $1,025,000 in 1877. In 1870 America had 157,310 looms at work in her cotton fac- tories ; to-day (1881) she has 230,223. One of the alarming conditions of American competition, which Birmingham men referred to during my visit to that town, was the trade with Canada. Sheffield also did not forget it ; and Mr. Brittain supplies me with some valuable statistics. In the fiscal year of 1867-8 the imports into Canada from the United States amounted to $28,053,000. Since then they have steadily increased, reaching, in 1876-7, $51,312,000. Meanwhile, the ex- ports of British goods to Canada rapidly declined. The values of goods entered for consumption into Canada from Great Britain have been : 1873, $68,522,000; 1874, $63,076,000; 1875, $60,347,000; 1876, $40,743,000. While the United States continue to send increased supplies to Canada, the exports from Canada to the States decrease, falling from $42,072,000 in 1873 to $29,916,000 in 1876. With this competition, and the growing tendency of continental nations to increase their Customs tariffs, Free-traders in England begin to find men falling away from their ranks, though Professor Fawcett's latest work in support of it, from a theoretical point of viewj is almost unanswerable. There is hardly, ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 127 however, any country with which England's exchange of merchandise is so disproportionate as the United States; but no one would think of imposing heavy duties upon raw cotton, wheat, and bacon, because Eng- lish manufactures are taxed on the other side. " Some writers believe that we might meet the difficulty by what is known as Reciprocity ; that is to say, by imposing retaliatory duties upon the manufactures of those nations which tax ours, while we admitted those of more liberal nations upon better terms. It would be possible for Great Britain to inflict prodigious injury upon other nations by hostile tariffs; but it is not probable that such measures would produce a good result. If, for example, we imposed heavy duties upon French goods, while identical articles of Belgian manufacture were admitted free, a surreptitious trade would spring up which we should be powerless to suppress. There is great difficulty in applying differential duties." So there is; and it will go hard with England before she gives up the practice of free trade; and it will go hard with us; for, while we chivalrously maintain it, the world has entered upon a period of transition, during which nearly all the nations of Europe are making alterations in their tariffs, and every alteration promises to be especially unfavourable to England. 128 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. r I VI. in the meantime one of our greatest difficulties is to be found in the ostrich policy which refuses to recognise the fact that the character of our competition has entirely changed. While America, taking lessons out of our experience, has been fostering her manufactures and im- proving her processes by an almost feverish activity in the adoption of new ideas, we have been too often con- tent with old methods and antiquated machinery. There was a time when we could sell anything we made. Then we had not a single competitor in some of our busiest industries. We pursue the old arrogant system of business as if we still enjoyed the old monopoly. America sent Sheffield an order for axes *' as per sample." A pattern was handed to the foreman of the local shop, with instructions to reproduce it in fulfilment of the order. Presently he came into the counting-house with the information that the men refused to make that kind of axe. The pattern they had always worked from was good enough, they declared. They would not make the new shape, anyhow. An American Consul tells me that a Glasgow furrier objected to place further back the car-laps of some iuiitation fur caps he was making for a Montreal firm, " because his workmen had never done them that way before." AH the important England's commercial decline. 129 improvements in machining daily newspapers have had to be made and tested surreptitiously. Masons have refused to work stone that has not been purchased at a local quarry. When Butler & Co., a firm of wrought- iron bridge builders in the North, determined to reduce wages, the men in conference refused the reduction, but offered to drive five more bolts per hour than formerly ; a gross confession that the men had wilfully done much less work than they could. Any man who has had plumbers, painters, or carpenters at work in his house must have come to the conclusion that their chief desire is to do as little work as possible in the longest possible time. Said a distinguished American, writing home to a friend, aghast at the obstinate way in which we resist new ideas : " If you want to know why inventors are more imerous in America than they are here, come and live six months in England. If you wish to know how it feels to be brimful of ideas, and yet be unable to have one of them executed, come to England. If you wish to know how it feels to have to wait for a month to have the simplest thing made and then to be charged a man's wages for two months, come to England. You will here be unable to see the interior of a workshop, or to come into direct contact with your workmen, who labour in the ruts worn down by their predecessors. They cannot calculate the work of any new design without the most laborious oversight from the inventor. vol. II. X 130 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Their masters, instead of encouraging invention, do all they can to stop it, and charge exorbitantly for experi- mental work. Everything is done to obstruct an inventor ; and you have to wait so long for the simplest thing that your ideas cool, and you live in a constant state of irritation at your inability to do anything." This is the experience of a practical and clever man, who is taking out some new patents in England. Our patent laws require readjustment. Some improvements have been made since Dickens wrote about them. A poor man who is a professed inventor is still, however, looked upon as a sort of romantic idiot, just as professed free-traders look at men who question the continued efficacy of the policy in the present altered state of European competi- tion as doits who wish to revive the brass-button and port- wine school of Toryism. The English free-trader of to-day, who refuses to discuss the question, reminds my American friend of the dying gambler, who, having ruined himself by following a certain method of play, exclaimed, with his last breath, " The system is right, nevertheless!" 131 V. - AMERICAN OPINIONS OF ENGLISH FREE TRADE. "I guess them's Our Hogs" — American and EnglisL Farmers — A Policy of Sentiment — America strong enough to reduce her Tariffs — English Colonies and the Trade in Cereals — England in the Old Days — NoJ Mr. Gladstone in America to cheapen Wines — " Lunatics! " — Theory and Practice. I. " Boy," said a New York, traveller to a Yankoe strip- ling who was sunning himself on a country fence, "boy, the hogs are getting into your potatoes." " Well, I guess them's our hogs," replied the boy, grinning. " But see, they'll spoil your whole crop of potatoes." ** Well, I guess they are our tatars too," retorted the youngster, without stirring. This seems to be the back- bone of Mr. " John B. Wise's " answer to the Cobden Club tract entitled The Western Farmer of America. The Cobden Club is an association of free-traders. It counts 200 Members of Parliament among its members, and several of the Ministers of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. The very essence of Liberalism would seem to be dicta- tion, and free trade is the backbone of the Liberal party. It is true a large number of Conservatives are free-traders ; k2 132 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. but not in the aggressive spirit of the Cobden Gub, which sends its arrogant missives to all the countries of the earth, forgetful of the proverb that ** what is one man's drink is another man's poison." ** Jonathan B. Wise" is the nom de plume of Dr. John L. Hayes, of Cambridge, Mass., and he has hit the Cobden Club very hard in his demonstrations of the difference between the position of the American farmer and the English farmer. There is unquestionably a good deal of meddling impertinence in the Cobden Club's voluntary advice to Western farmers ** to give their support to no candidate for the House of Repre- sentatives who does not pledge himself if elected to vote for a reduction of five per cent, every successive year on the import duties till the whole are abolished." Nobody doubts that the time has arrived when certain tariffs can be reduced, but the time will never arrive when any country, much less America, will accept with patience the dictatorial interference of the Cobden Club. If England was not compelled by her isolated position to depend upon foreign food-stuffs for her existence, she would have long since kicked Cobdenites out of all authority; for the action of free trade has utterly de- stroyed some of her best industries, and the increasing tariffs of Germany, Italy, France, and other governments is gradually turning her manufactures out of many European markets. To try and compete with America, AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 133 in America, and to equalise prices as against high tariffs in other lands, English manufacturers have made "shoddy" goods, and so the country sustains a double blow. The worst of John Bull is his extremes. Given a principle accepted ; in carrying it out ho '* goes the whole hog.** His proper course to-day and for years past would be found in a modification of free trade comportable with existing circumstances. He shouM have admitted food free always and have taxed luxuries. He should have fought ** bounties " with " Customs tariffs." Then he would not have had to lament the annihilation of his silk and other kindred manufactures and the ruin of his sugar trade. If all the rest of the world positively refuses to accept his views, Mr. Bull's proper course is surely to fit them to the necessity of the times ; not to stand and *' bully creation " because creation will not dance to his pipe. Free trade is a fine thing in theory. Protection for new countries with industries to build up is equally fine in practice. A reasonable and expedient combination of the two is the "happy moan" which governments quite as enlightened as that of England recognise ; and I am glad to see that America does not allow the Cobden Club to indulge its penchant for '* warning " and " cautioning " the Universe without a reply. The story of the boy and " our hogs '* is quite answer enough even without being backed by argument; though Mr. Wise has propounded some unanswerable 184 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ** points " in defence of the Western farmer to the policy of the government at Washington. Dr. Hayes's pamphlet was handed to me with copies of three " Bulletins of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers," which contain important and valuable essays in defence of protective tariifs. These subjects are of intense interest to both countries ; and, so soon as England can find a little rest from foreign politics and colonial troubles to consider them, a new movement will crop up in favour of a revision of the present regulations. Not that there is any prospect of a reversal of the policy of free-trade, but the arguments pro and con must always have considerable value in the United States, where free-trade is pretty certain to become one day a burning question. The English proposition to America is a trifle one-sided, not to say childish : '* You farm and we will manufacture; you send us corn and beef, and we will send you clothing and knives and forks." America has a laudable ambition to be something more than a mere tiller of the soil; and one of these days, if their cousins in the old country are not careful, they will find that free-trade has reduced the people to be mere ** diggers and delvers in the bowels of the earth " ; for England is emptying her iron mines into the lap of Belgium and France (not to mention America and other countries), and receiving her own raw material manufactured into iron goods of all kinds, which in her own markets AMERICANA ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 135 undersell her own manufactures. It is a fact that hundreds of Englishmen earn their livelihood by getting iron ore and smelting it into bars for continental work- men (" artists in metals," compared to the English miners) to manufacture into useful and ornamental arti- cles for English markets. It is just as well to remind American Protectionists that there are thousands of intel- lectual men in England who are anti-freetraders, and who see in the Cobden Club the " dry rot " of a great and glorious country. At the same time wise and thoughtful men see the faults of both extremes, rigid protection and severe free-trade. There is a " law of expediency " represented in the axiom of *' cutting your coat according to your cloth," which both sides are too apt to ignore. 11. Recently, at Bradford in Yorkshire, ray business being to gauge its commercial condition and prospects, and gather information as to the effect of foreign competition (American more particularly) on the local mills, I lost no time in using my introduction to the chief merchant in the town dealing principally with the United States. A frank outspoken Englishman, I had no difficulty in at once eliciting his testimony upon the state of trade in Bradford, and his views concerning the policy which should be pursued to restore its waning prosperity. 136 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. I venture to reproduce, if not the exact words, at least the spirit, of our interview : — " You want to know what I think about the commer- cial relations of England and America. Well, I wish we had to fight on more equal terms, that's all." " You think the United States selfish in her tariffs, probably? But you were not always free-traders in Bradford." '* I wish we were not now. Free trade is ruining us. Americans have a right to stick up their duties; I don't complain of that. What I want is for us to do the same. I want to meet them on equal terms. Protection for protection, free-trade for free-trade. There is not a merchant anywhere who has a higher opinion of America than I have. That is the reason I do not think we can hold our own on the present conditions." '' Yet your house has the reputation of flourishing?" '* And 80 it is, but only by dint of personal attention and everlasting energy. My profits have not decreased during the depression of the last few years. Why? I make my money out of specialties. But that means a continual strain on inventive power, and how long it may be successful I can't say. Let me give you some examples of the changes which have taken place in my establishment. We used, in the fall, to do a large trade in 7^ Coburgs, 30,000 to 40,000 pieces; we don't do 1000 now. Once we had a fine business in low muslin- AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 137 dolaincs. We sent them to America by the shipload ; not a yard of it goes out now. Then we did a great deal in what is called * low figures,' at from 4d. to 5d» per yard. These goods commanded a business all the year round. I don't suppose 5000 pieces a year go out now, all told. As for staple goods, our business is not worth talking of. We make a hit every now and then in specialties which America has not got, and which there is no time to imitate to keep pace with fashion. But of course everybody can't live on specialties. There are splendid mills in Bradford at this moment that I would not have at a gift, if I was compelled to work them. There is a lot of money in this place, and many of our capitalists and manufacturers can afford, year after year, to lose large sums in the hope that better times arc coming; but the better times may be too long postponed, and men do not care to go on for ever sinking money and waiting. So far as I am concerned, the year my business does not pay I go out of it. Free-trade is, no doubt, a good thing if you can get plenty of it ; but a free-trade that hampers my goods for export with heavy duties that my competitor is free from is rather a one- sided business. It is all very well to say we are suffering from bad harvests and Indian famines; but I fail to sec how they bear upon the fact that America and other countries are invading our foreign trade. The United States are making goods for themselves which we used 138 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. to sell them, and they are also exporting to our home markets. I don't complain of that. Americans are of the same stock as ourselves. I would like to see them prosperous. But the time has arrived when they should meet us on equal terms ; and, if they won't, I am for having our Government equalise the competition by duties on England's staple manufactures." These political views of the American merchant — men in the North are American or Indian merchants, accord- ing to the country with which they trade — are not shared in by the leading Liberals of Bradford ; and there are also Conservatives who still remain staunch Free-traders. The local Chamber of Commerce is very pronounced in its free-trade principles. It was only the other day that Mr. Bright unveiled a statue of Cobden at Bradford, upon which occasion the council of the Chamber pre- sented an address to Mr. Bright, in which they said: " Mainly to you, and to the great and good man whose memory we are met to honour, it is that England owes the repeal of the Corn- laws, which conferred on her toiling millions the boon of untaxed bread. The great measure was followed by a treaty with which the name of Cobden will ever be associated. By it the barriers were for ever thrown down which, until then, had closed France and other countries against British fabrics, as if their importation was an evil to be guarded against by the whole power of the State. Thanks to the teaching AMEBICAN8 ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 139 of experience, those even who formeriy were strongly opposed to free-trade are now compelled to admit that a less restricted interchange of commodities has already benefited the importing as much as the exporting countries. We may therefore hope that before long all civilized nations will recognize the truth that the interests of the producers and consumers, as well as those of employer and employed, can alone be permanently secured by the unreserved application of free-trade principles to international commerce/' If this hope could be realised, I suppose the lion would lie down with the lamb, and all would be peace and good- will. I shall not stop to consider how free-trade, pure and simple, would affect struggling countries in their efforts to establish manufacturing industries. But it is pretty clear that the philanthropical hopes of the Bradford Chamber are a long way from fulfilment. The very report of the Chamber, in which the address to Mr. John Bright is printed, is full of complaints about foreign tariffs, and at the same time shows how earnestly and energetically the Chamber works in trying to in- fluence those foreign governments which persist in managing their own affairs in their own way. The Franco-Italian treaty is discussed ; and the council hopes it will be able to enforce a consideration of the claims of the Bradford worsted district. " The council, and indeed the whole country, were amazed and irritated » 140 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. when it became known that the Spanish Government had issued a tariff by which all countries, except England, France, and the United States, were to enjoy much lower duties than those three countries, under the pretext that Spain did not there enjoy the most-favoured-nation treatment." Then, again, says the Bradford Chamber : " Even free-trade Switzer- land, which owes all her industrial prosperity to her export trade, has not resisted the universal mania for imposing higher duties on the importation of textiles." Here is their view of the state of affairs in the United States: " Although," says the Bradford Council, " there is no tariff treaty between this country and the United States, yet it appears that the highly protective tariff of that country has produced its necessary result of im- poverishing this country, and destroying the export trade, without, apparently, being accompanied by the enrichment of the monopolists. There appears to be in the United States a spreading desire for removing these shackles off her industry, and signs are everywhere apparent of the principle of free-trade being adopted daily by increasing numbers." This is hardly the case. The signs are rather to the contrary ; and I may mention in this place, without any disrespect to the earnest upholders of free-trade, that, as a rule, they show a tendency to shirk facts, and put a false colour upon figures that tell against them. The AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FUEE TRADE. 141 addresses which they publish, the letters they print, the speeches they make, indicate a stronger effort to maintain their arguments than to arrive at the truth. Like the police with a pet theory concerning some particular crime, they arc apt to put aside evidence which is un- favourable to the one idea; and in doing so they some- times sacrifice truth on the broad altar of error. Let me instance a case in point. There arc two gentlemen at Bradford who are respectively authorities on the great question of the day. Mr. Behrens is a free-trader in practice and in theory (I found no protectionists even in Bradford who were not willing to have free- trade the law of the whole world) ; and Mr. T. H. Mitchell is in favour of the enforcement of certain retaliatory tariffs against protectionist competitors, which is, I take it, the meaning of reciprocity. Now Mr. Behrens, in support of his arguments against any change in the present trading regulations, stated that the English imports of foreign manufactured goods in 1877 amounted only to £34,000,000. Whereupon Mr. Mitchell compiles from the Blue-book (and I have carefully revised his abstract) the following interesting details, which not only put Mr. Behrens out of court, but show us exactly where the industrial shoe pinches : 142 TO-DAY IN AMEBICi IMPOBTB OF MANUFACTUBBD ABTICLKS FOB 1877. Arms, ammnnition, &c 222,905 Works of art 120,820 Beads 70,616 Books 167,293 Bronze 86,765 Caoatchonc inanufactnres 86,676 Chemical mannfactores 1,056,466 Porcelain ware 279,888 Clocks 513,387 Cable yam 642,048 Cork mannfactnres 491,503 Hosiery . 1,278,496 Earthenware 85,231 Embroidery and needlework .... 84,609 Mannfactnres of farinaceous substances . 500,077 Artificial flowers 588,828 Yam stocks 16,039 Mannfactnres of hair 116,510 Hats and bonnets 216,581 Iron and steel 2,845,872 Lace . 521,384 Other mannfactnres 19,124 Leather manufactures and gloves . . . 2,246,348 Linen yam and manufactures .... 675,401 Manufactured metal 80,281 Musical instraments 615,702 FaiDl»rB' colours 759,662 Paper 1,283,465 Perfumery 104,894 Pictures, photographs, &c 644,675 Prints 50,809 Silks, veWets, &c 12,969,496 Manufactures of skins and furs .... 160,102 Manufactures of stone and marble 636,503 Stationery 100,212 AMERICANS ON EN0LI8H FBEE TRADE. 143 A Toys 444,829 Watches 504,164 Yarn and inaiiafad;ure9 of wool .... 6,989,666 Zinc manof actures 416,135 Mannfactnres of fnmitnre and veneers . 489,455 Mannfactnres of tobacco and snnff . . . 329,278 Mannfactnres of gold 105,2.^2 Fittings and joiners' work 120,624 Confectionery 373,970 Bnttons and stnda 569,698 Candles 478,669 Unennmerated manufactures .... 6,748,663 Cotton, yam, and mannfactnres .... 866,108 £47,463,227 Importation of Abticles pabtlt Mamufaotubed and of DOUBTFUL Classification. £ Copper, nnwronght and part wrought . . . 2,888,371 Drugs 481,601 Dyestufih 658,885 Hides tanned 2,029,602 Hides curried and japanned .... 797,662 Hides enamelled 126,668 Chemical or perfumed oil 237,484 Dressed and tanned goat-skins .... 643,867 Sheep and lambs'-skins . . . . . 356,298 Tin, in bars or slabs 961,398 Pig and sheet lead 2,016,803 Wood, planed and dressed 12,406,729 Stoves 738,928 Refined sugar 6,794,232 Cheese 4,771,393 Butter 9,643,332 £44,451,943 144 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. Let it be noted that we make all these things in England, and that we used to export many of them to the very countries which are now selling them to us. Whether such facts tell for or against the practice of English free-trade or not, it is folly to ignore them. The area of political discussion is something like Mark Twain's mountain, where the cold is so intense that you can't speak the truth there. There is a sentiment, too, in the faith of free-traders which even carries away the judgment of John Bright himself. I hope to say this with all respect for the reputation of the most successful politician of our time. But in a letter which he has written to a citizen of Bradford he sajrs he is not afraid that the ** heresy or lunacy '* of ** reciprocity " will '* make much way among the working classes." Surely Mr. Bright ought to know that the working classes are protectionists, root and branch, tooth and nail. In every action of their lives, public and private, they are protectionists. There is no port-wine Tory, even in caricature, so severe a protectionist as your British working man. His trades union is the very heart and soul of protection. His shop regulations are as far from the principles of free-trade as Mr. Bright from argument when he calls those who differ from him lunatics. This everlasting toadying to the working man has ruined many honest and worthy toilers. It has placed them in the hands of professional agitators. It has created a AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 145 self-elected tyranny over skilled labour. It has brought about a rule of King Stork. It has levelled skill and industry down to incompetency and idleness. It has made Mr. Eccles a possibility and Mr. Broadhead a reality. It has handicapped British industry in a race in which it already carried weight ; and, before we get back again anywhere near to the place we have lost, it will put the working classes on a level, in hours and wages, with the toilers of the Continent, and drive millions of them to seek a living in other lands. There is another point in Mr. Bright*s letter which is not ingenious. He says: ** The 'distress' in the country was ten times greater in the period from 1839 to 1842 than it has been from 1877 to the present time, or than it is at this moment, although in the former period we bad protection as much as Parliament and the law could give. But this argument is weakened when, on the other hand, Mr. Bright is reminded that in the period from 1847 to 1851, when Protection was dead and buried, there was even more distress than ever. Government had to lend Scotland and Ireland £8,000,000 to relieve the poor. One in seven of the population received extraneous help. We are only, in 1881, just at the end of the latest Irish famine. It is as absurd to credit all our prosperity to free trade as it is to say that all our present trouble arises from the want of protection. The VOL. II. L 77" 146 TO-DAY IN AMEUICA. arrogance of the free trader who flings the epithets '* simpleton " and " lunatic '* in the teeth of men who unostentatiously ask for " Reciprocity " is only equalled by the utter weakness of his one great argument. " Look at the success of free trade," he says. *' It has done everything both for consumer and producer: it has advanced our manufactures; it has increased wages, cheapened bread ; it has made the country rich ; it has pushed trade to an increase beyond all competitors." We are in the habit of accepting this without inquiry ; and it rarely occurs to an opponent even to venture a suggestion that education, political freedom, increase of population, inventive genius, the progress of science, the development of steam power, railway accommodation, steam shipping, and the world's general advance, have also had something to do with England's prosperity. The truth is, we are all free traders in theory, and nobody cared to question the proud authors of its acceptation in England when they attributed every blessing under heaven to free trade. But this popular fiction is exposed statistically by a writer in Blackwood^ who shows that between 1850 and 1873, while British trade (counting exports and imports) rose from £186,000,000 to £570,000,000, Protectionist France went up from £74,000,000 to £291,000,000. During the same period the trade of the United States ('* the most protected of countries ") rose from £60,000,000 to AMERICANS ON EN0LI8H FREE TRADE. 147 ar to £235,000,000. During the time of these advances France had her great war with (Germany, America her internecine strife of North against South, and in the latter encounter England obtained many special and exclusive trading advantages. Now if Mr. Bright and his friends claim that British trade progress was the result of free trade, the " lunatics " and " simpletons," who ask if it is really true, have a right to say that *He greater commercial strides made by France and the United States were due to protection. There is an impatience of argument in the Bright school which has borne down all opposition at home, but which has not influenced the foreigner or the colonist, both of whom, so far from helping the Manchester party to fulfil its prophecy that all other countries would eventually imitate the example of England, are increasing their protective duties. From this standpoint Mr. Bright, were he inclined to compromise with " reciprocity," might say that free trade is now unfairly handicapped; that the evident disadvantages under which certain industries are suffering demand investigation; but this would be to discredit the time when he preached cheap bread, and had a large loaf carried before him to the meetings at Durham, where he quoted the Com Law rhymes, and made the multitude alternately weep and cheer under the influence of his eloquence. One almost envies the men who had the privilege of listening to him l2 U8 TO-t>AY IN AMERICA. in those days of his strength. It is a pity he cannot be prevailed upon to visit America, where he is so much admired. They are naturally eloquent, our cousins of the United States; but John Bright has a congue unmatched for its cunning sweetness and its manly strength. It would be as well for him if he were not entrapped into letter-writing. He thinks better on his legs than through his pen. He has lived long enough to show that he is not a writer, nor a statesman ; but he is the most successful politician of his time, and probably the greatest orator that ever dominated the passions of a crowd or took prisoner the reason of a multitude. •Expediency, I expect, is not in his vocabulary. It is, nevertheless, open to question whether the thing that is good for a nation at one period may not be bad for it at another. The points which free traders, who refuse inquiry into the present condition of things, persistently ignore are : the gradual falling off of our exports, and the equally certain and steady rise of our imports, coupled with the improved manufacturing methods of other countries, which for the first time in the history of English industrial supremacy have shown that they can make tho very goods, upon which we pride ourselves, better and cheaper than we do — I do not say than we can. The duties of the two periods before and after protec- tion was not aggravated by the fact that the world had AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 149 shown itself capable of manufacturing for itself; nor had the foreigner, while shutting us out of his ports, come into our own with competing wares. The situation to-day has no parallel in the past, and the difficulties of it are not to be pooh-poohed.* If England is to become a mere residential country, then the fate of our mills and factories is of no great moment; but, if we are to main- tain our position as a great manufacturing nation, the traders who pay taxes at home and duties abroad should be heard and legislated for when they :,ay, ** Place the foreigner on an equality with us in our home markets at least." This seems to me to be as far as *' the simple- tons" go at present. Their first request is only for official inquiry into the entire question. That they are * One part of Mr. Gladstone's Budget speech is likely to be of permanent interest. The parallel which he drew as to the relative progress of public wealth, population, and expenditure in recent years, compared with former periods, is calculated to arrest attention, if not by the force with which it is drawn, at least by the authority of the speaker. To have a financier of Mr. Gladstone's authority asserting as a fact that public wealth is not advancing as formerly, and that public expenditure is growing faster, is something entirely unexpected, and different from the general notions of our national progress which are current Mr. Gladstone's statements were briefly as follows: — In the sixteen years from 1842 to 1858 the population increased l-3d. per cent, per annum, the revenue 1} per cent, per annum, and the expenditure 2^ per cent, per annum. In the following fourteen years, 1859 to 1873, population increased 1 per cent, per annum, revenue 3 per cent, per annum, and expenditure 1 l-3d. per cent, per annum. But since 1873 the sun of our prosperity has let ^The Timet, April 6, 1881. ]50 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. entitled to this, and possibly to much more, is shown by the figures previously quoted. In further illustration of the justice of their demands, I propose to instance an interview with Mr. Shepard, the American consul at Bradford. He received me with the frank courtesy which invariably characterises officials of the United States. Charged with all kinds of in- formation belonging to his department, I found him better informed than most of the gentlemen I had met in the Midlands, so far as the trading relations of America and England are concerned. It will be con- venient to publish the result of my inquiries in the shape of question and answer, having received the consul's permission to do so. Q. As to the trade of Bradford, what is its position and prospects ? A. It is gravely depressed — I am speaking of exports — and there are no signs that it is likely to recover. The English policy of philanthropy seems to me to be proving unsuccessful. There should be secrets in all trades. England has not thought so. She has shown every stranger everjrthing. The world has learned in English shops and factories. England has appeared to have thought the capacity of her workmen, the power of her machinery, the ingenuity of her inventors, and her general wealth, sufficient to defy competition. But the world advances. Moreover, England has made vast AMERICAKS ON fiNOLISH FBEE TRADE. 151 preparations for increasing trade, and put up more machinery than she can use. As for Bradford, a great deal of her trade has gone never to return, though necessarily there will always he a vast industrial life in the town and neighbourhood. Q. It has often occurred to me that there is an under- current of sentiment in regard to our enthusiasm about free trade ; and your phrase, ** The English policy of philanthropy," borders on the same idea. We are proud of our enlightenment, proud to stand before the world the only nation that has the courage of its opinions; and our success hitherto has no doubt been a high moral justification. A. No doubt I think I put it more liberally when I call it a policy of philanthropy. Q. It is the habit of an Englishman to underrate his country, the privilege of a foreigner to be complimentary. The Bradford Chamber of Commerce believes that there is a great free-trade community growing up in America. Is that so ? A. I do not know; but I think the time has arrived when the United States may safely and profitably lower her duties on many classes of English goods. Q. What are the articles of trade in exported goods from the Bradford Consular District to the United States? A. They are very numerous. They include buntings. 158 TODAY IN AMERICA. card clothing, carpets and mats, China grass, cotton and worsted warps, cotton goods, cured sheepskins, glass, hair, iron and steel, leather, linen, machinery, roller- cloth, sewing-cotton, shawls, silk-work, dry-salters' goods, stuff goods, velvets, wool, woollen goods, worsted and cotton, worsted goods, and yarns. For the quarter ending September 1878, as compared with that of 1877, there is a decrease in exports of these goods of 916,173. Q. Can you give me the totals for a number of years past in English sovereigns ? A. Yes } here they are for eleven years : From To Oct. 1, Sept. 30, 1867 1868 1868 1869 1869 1870 1870 1871 1871 1872 1872 1873 1873 1874 1874 1875 1875 1876 1876 1877 1877 1878 £ ». d. 1,769,764 8 2 2,670,482 3 11 2,866,315 14 5 3,240,561 1 6 3,687,269 1 11 3,267,574 6 8 2,844,512 8 1 2,409,790 7 4 1,479,150 1 8 1,463,128 17 4 1,140,024 2 Q. These are startling figures ; and it appears to me that, without looking to other displacements of Bradford trade, they are sufficient to account for much of the cur- rent distress.* And now, will you kindly tell me in * Worsteds, alpacas, silks (the former more particalarly), are among the chief trades of Bradford. The following figures will tell their own AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 153 what way you conceive America will further promote her trading on this side ? A. There is still a wide field for ngricultural imple- ments and mechanics' tools, which are more and more liked in England. We ought to do a trade in American choice woods. The black walnut- wood, properly intro- duced, would speedily grow in favour here. I think we could face competition between American lumber and Norwegian woods, which find such a constant market in England. Watches, butter, cheese, beef — we are doing all we can in that way. Dried and preserved fruits is a trade which ought to be greatly increased : the exports to England are already large; but this trade is quite in its infancy. Q. Have you any plan for extending the sale of American goods? It seems to me that the manufactures of the States are, afler all, comparatively little known. story. The import* of silks were £12,264,532 in 1875, and they have maintained these figures, the returns for 1879 being £12,841,918. The exports were in 1875, £1,734,519 ; and they have gradually fallen to £1,697,209. Even the little trade the trench Treaty left us is gradually falling away. In 1875 we ivipm-ted £4,308,357 woollen manufactures. This has gradually increased to £5,637,675 in 1879. In 1875 we exported woollen manufactures, £21,659,325. This business has gone down year by year to £15,861,166 in 1879. Bradford seems especially fated to snfFer from French treaties. The proposed change from ad valorem to specific duties in the new tariff will handicap the cheap alpaca and woollen trades to the extent of an added 15 per cent. 154 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. A. The same idea has occurred to me; and I have proposed that several leading United States merchants and manufacturers should combine, and pay the expenses of a clever reliable man to travel continually from one end of England to the other, introducing and making known to dealers the various American articles which are cheaper and better than the same or similar things in England ; a vast increase would immediately take place in sales. Though our exports arc rising, our manufactures are not sufficiently known. As this knowledge grows, the sale of American manufactures in England will increase. Q. Do you find any prejudice against American goods ? A. A little here and there ; but it is dying out daily, and my experience is that there is a genuine kindly feeling for America on the part of the English people. Q. Now, in regard to free trade, which once more threatens to become the burning question of the day in England, if not also a subject of first-class importance in the United States, what are your views as an American? A, I have no hesitation in saying that I think America is strong enough to make a considerable revision of ^^or tariff. Q. Upon what goods more particularly? A, On the raw material of woollen manufactures, in- cluding dye-stuffs such as are not made in the United AMERICANS ON ENOLlSn FREE TRADE. 155 States. I would abolish those duties altogether. It would enable the American manufacturer to compete with England in foreign markets, and render a protec- tive duty on worsted and all woollen goods unnecessary. A simple ad valorem duty might be retained for the purposes of revenue. Q. Have you said this in your reports to Washington? A. I have, with all respect, of course, to the superior wisdom of my Government Trade, I hold, must to a certain extent be reciprocal ; and it is only natural that England should the more freely buy our goods as we become more profitable to her. If it is a fact that Ame- rica is suffering from superabundance rather than poverty her greatest boon would be increased facilities for selling her surplus products in foreign countries. I recently put a series of questions to the Tariff Committee of the Brad- ford Chamber of Commerce which bear upon these ques- tions, and I transmitted the answers in a special report to Washington, [without further comment than an in- dorsement of the honesty and honourable position of the gentlemen who answered them. They are all more or less free-trade arguments; and, without committing our- selves in support of them or against them, you may like to examine the documents. ■ _».- ,.^ 156 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. III. I did so, and with the following results. Mr. Jacob Beherens, Chairman of the Chamber, is of opinion that "a revival of mutually advantageous interchange of com- modities is not to be expected while a prohibitory tariff prevents commercial enterprise from fulfilling its legiti- mate functions ; but commercial enterprise on both sides of the Atlantic will certainly be ready to step in the moment that legislation shall give free scope to the mer- chants' operations. It is well understood that England levies no duties upon either the raw or the manufactured produce of the United States, and is willing to buy her raw cotton or bacon, as well as her shirtings, watches, locomotives, or sewing-machines, provided they are as cheap or cheaper than they can produce at home."' The present exports to the United States consist in a great measure of fancy articles worn by the rich, who look more to fashion than to price, and of light and high- priced cloths, which are subject to varying duties at from 60 to 100 per cent. "Woollens intended for the great mass of the people are taxed so highly that they are virtually excluded. Thus a superfine black broad- cloth may possibly be bought in New York at not more than double its price in Europe; while a good quality of black pilot, worth Is. Sd. per yard, cannot be sold to the American labourer at less than four to five times the AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 157 price at which an operative in England may procure that good, useful, and warm material for his coat. It may safely be assumed that the law-making powers never con- templated such conseqrcnccs when they framed the pre- sent tariff, and yet the above is merely an example among many, and an illustration of its practical results." On Bradford dress-goods the general American duty charges vary from 60 to 80 per cent. In many cases the exigencies of the tariff, which in buntings reaches 125 per cent., are met by the manufacture of inferior goods. Touching heavy woollen goods, the Chairman of the Chamber goes on to say that the duty on every kind of cloth is uniformly 50 cents per pound weight, and 35 per cent, of the value; and, taking the average value of mixed woollens at Is. 4d. per pound, the duty amounts to 156 per cent, of the cost, and with 35 per cent, added, the total of the combined duties amounts to 191 per cent. ad valorem. These are a few only of the instances set forth which seem to call for an early revision at Wash- ington. Mr. William Brown, of the well-known firm of Stansfield, Brown, and Co., makes the following indict- ment against the United States: " The duties levied on serge de Berri and lasting, used largely in the manufac- ture of boots and shoes in America, have to submit to a duty of 50 cents per pound, and 35 per cent, ad valorem, A piece of serge de Berri, weighing 14 pounds and cost- ing 50«., pays duty £l 10«. 4(/. for weight and 17s. 6d. 158 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. for value, or £2 Is, \0d. per piece, or about 94 per cent, on cost in this market. Now mark I the consumer has to pay a profit to the importer and to the boot and shoe maker, not only on the cost here, but also on the cost there, after payment of the duty, rendering the price enormous, to the great detriment of the customer and injury of trade. This duty is levied on an article — I had almost said a raw material — for the manuficture of boots and shoes, in which America employs so many thou- sands of hands, and in making the machinery for which she beats almost all other nations. This system has ruined their large export trade, as attested by General Francis A. Walker, chief of the Bureau of Awards at the Philadelphia International Exhibition, in his report on the boot and shoe exhibit. The natural results of such a system have been the gradual strangling of the trade between the two countries, or the transference of what is left into the hands of the smuggler, the briber, or the perjurer, a system which robs the exchequer and impoverishes the consumer. Every respectable house on this side of the Atlantic has been compelled to aban- don the trade, and I regret to state that this condition of things has been produced by the high import duties of the United States." Mr. Brown concludes by recom- mending, in the mutual interests of America and Eng- land, a total abolition of the duties on weight or mea- sure, and the imposition of such a moderate ad valorem AMERICANS UN ENGLISH FBEE TRADE. 159 of of duty '* as will make fraud not worth risking, and which I am satisfied will in time produce the largest revenue to the American Government." "Very interesting documents these," I said; '* free- traders of Bradford seem rather to despair of the situa- tion. A course of that policy of threat and intimidation which was originally proposed for the Turk might possibly induce the American Government to give way V" '.m A, You gather an indication of something of the kind from these papers? Or from local opinion? Q. From both. You must have heard a good deal about retaliatory measures? A. Yes; half in earnest, half in banter, and not with- out desire on the part of some. I hear arguments used in favour of putting a tariff on American produce, while admitting that from British colonies free. Even men who have formerly been staunch free-traders favour this idea. Some of these gentlemen say that such a measure should be passed in retaliation for the high duties of the United States; others argue that if England is to help any one gratuitously it should be her own subjects, and that a duty on American produce and free imports to the colonies would benefit and encourage the British dependencies, and make England independent of Ameri- can cereals and provisions ; and they say if the trade once left the United States it would never return again. 160 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. In that case they would urge the Government to use its influence upon Australia, New Zealand, and India to devote themselves to the production of cereals and wool, while Canada, being nearer the mother country, should turn her special attention to beef, pork, butter, and cheese. Q. Do you think such legislation is seriously con- templated? A. No, not at present; but things are culminating to a point at which something has to be done. Extreme cases require extreme remedies. Q. And you think America might fairly make the fust move? A, I am of opinion — take it as ray individual opinion, for what it is worth — that America has been quite right in fostering and protecting her manufactures; but that the time has arrived when she is strong enough to stand an open competition in regard to many of her produc- tions, and that she would do well to reduce her tariffs. Since this interview Mr. Mitchell has been elected to the presidency of the Bradford Chamber, and Mr. She- pard has called my attention to that gentleman's report as judge at the Paris Exhibition. *' We cannot," he says, " hope to resume ou position of supremacy on the old lines. If we would be successful we must adapt our- selves to the changes of taste and fafhion that are for ever occurring, and not seek to keep the world bound AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 161 to the acceptance ot* the same kind of goods from year to year." On this point I have returne or how heavily she was loaded with wages and short hours; but now, instead of a walk over, she has a hotly-contcstv^d race to run. She has to face a wonderfully close-pressing competition, VOL. II. M rr- 162 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Ill m with the addition of hostile tariffs against her every- where. The majority of the people of England still believe in free trade. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, it would seem that their doctrines are getting very much discredited at present. Q. Some months ago I had a conversation with an iron proprietor and manufacturer, who is, 1 believe, transferring his capital from England to Belgium or America. The absence of reciprocity in our free trade and the tyranny of trades unions combined had beaten him. " I have," he said, "recently been travelling on the Continent. I went through some large iron manu- facturing and engineering works in France. I found one man attending to three lathes. In England the trade societies compel us to have one man to each lathe. Our regulation working time is nine hours a day. In France they work twelve. Our wages are from five to six shillings per day. The man working three lathes is paid in France from two shillings and sixpence to three shillings and fourpence. They were building at these works locomotive engines for the South Eastern Railway of England. Calculating the difference of wages, hours, lathes, &c., I found that in England we are paying twenty shillings for what the French manu- facturer pays two shillings and sixpence." To this must be added the fact that we export iron to AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 163 to France free of duty, and we let into England the manu- factured article free ; so that we give France the raw material which she can manufacture and send back at a price that beats English enterprise in its own market. Belgium takes our pig-iron and manufactures it into rails, which she sells in Yorkshire below the English manufacturer's price. " In England," continued my friend, *' you are aware that in every contract there is a clause inserted pro- tecting the contractor from penalties in case of a strike. Now Krupp, the great gunmaker, has no necessity for this clause; he gets cheap and free labour, and he is manufacturing steel rails for England at a very much less price than we can make them, even when he has paid freight and other charges.'* A. An indorsement, in fact, of our mutual views as to the way in which England is handicapped by unre- ciprocal free trade and the worst form of protection practised in her midst by her working men. With the tendency already noticed to create protective tariffs against England on the part of Italy, Spain, France, and Russia, the entire world bristling with high import duties, and at the same time increasing their own powers of production, invading our own markets, and fighting us abroad, it is idle to talk merely of over-pro- duction and trade disputes. The dispute between capital and labour, laxity of commercial honour, the production M 2 164 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. of inferior goods to meet high tariffs, too extensive a preparation for trade that has not come to us — these and other things have to be considered, no doubt ; but the one great glaring fact which has to be accepted in England before anything is done to repair the past and legislate for the future is, that the world no longer depends on England for iron and steel manufactured and unmanufactured, for cotton and woollen goods, for hard- ware and cutlery, and the thousand ■ and one things in which England has had a practical monopoly for so many years, while England does depend on foreign countries for food. When British politicians and political economists will look this thing squarely in the eye, it will be possible for that ** something " to be done which everybody is beginning to say must be done. IV. Cities have physiognomical characteristics like men. The streets answer for the faces; you can read them both. You might idealise Sheffield as a grimy smith, strong, sinewy, with frowning brows leaning upon a broken anvil ; Bradford as a factory operative, with keen eyes and hollow cheeks, sulkily contemplating the silent works of a model factory, with its spindles that no longer spin, and its shuttles that have ceased to fly; Birmingham, in contrast, would be the handy man of the workshop, the Whiteley of industries, who makes his Ui AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 165 of lis ■warehouse a universal store, and, one line of business being depressed, turns his attention to another. Jack- of-all-trades, Birmingham is theCheap John of commerce. These similes are not used disrespectfully ; they are intended to signify variety, activity, many-sidedness. There is no room for the cynic to rejoin to Jack- of-all- trades, ♦ Master of none ; ' and in the otlier figure the parallel would be to a trader who studies his customers and supplies their wants; who watches the market and obeys its demands; who, manufacturing a locomotive, is still not above doing business in pins ; who makes an idol for Indian worshippers and laughs at the credulous; though he sets up a shadow which he calls principle, and falls down before it himself with Oriental devotion. It is a notable fact, taken in connection with trade depression at any time, that Birmingham will usually look busy, and be busy. The civic authorities rarely pause in their work of local improvements. Recently, when I visited the town, while Sheffield and Leeds and Bradford and Liverpool were sadly quiet, the Birmingham authorities were building a magnificent municipal hall ; designing and constructing new streets ; decorating the town buildings up to the artistic spirit of the age. • The leading idea seems to be to go ahead, and not look back: the reckoning will come later. Sober burgesses shook their heads when one talked to them about the prospects of trade. 166 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Nevertheless, Birmingham manufactures such a variety of articles that the town manages to hold its own, at all times, better than its neighbours. No district is j in- dependent of trade crises, because — unlike many English industrial centres — it is not confined to one or two staple manufactures. It is difficult to mention a single com- modity which is not made at Birmingham — from a needle to a railway train. Guns, buttons, nails, locks, wood'Screws, railway bolts and spikes, needles, pins, Indian idols, saddles, watches, jewelry, bedsteads, pots and pans, bronzes, electro-plate, and a thousand other things, come handy to the manufacturers of Birmingham. From 1804 to 1815 1,743,382 muskets were made here for the Board of Ordnance, in addition to 84,507 of a new pattern from 1814 to 1817, making a total of 1,827,889. Besides these, from 1804 to 1817 Birming- ham made for the Board of Ordnance 3,037,644 gun- and other fire-arm barrels, 2,879,203 locks for rifles and pistols, 1,000,000 guns for the East Indies, and 500,000 fowling-pieces for the home trade. Belgium, France, and America have greatly interfered with this trade. It is a startling fact that, during the late war between Kussia and Turkey, Birmingham did but a small trade for either country, while America supplied both with vast stores of arms. Russia felt the superior quality of the American rifie in the hands of the Turk on many a bloody field. AMERICANS ON EN0LI8H FREE TRADE. 1G7 In 1830 Birmingham employed 50,000 men, women, and children in the nail-trade; in 1861, 26,000; in 1874, 23,000; and in 1877, about 21,000. The adjacent towns of Willenhall and Wolverhampton probably make more locks than any other two towns in the world. The average production is estimated at 4,500,000 locks per year, including all varieties — pad, cabinet, till, box, and other kinds. The oldest and principal lock firm in Wil- lenhall is that of Messrs. Carpenter and Co., who com- menced business in 1795. Messrs. Chubb, the principal Wolverhampton manufacturers, date their operations from about the same period. The wood-screw trade is a great industry in Birmingham. In 1873 one firm alone (Nettlefold and Chamberlain) made 7,200,000 gross of screws. The aggregate quantity annually turned out in all England is 9,000,000 gross, or 1,296,000,000. Time was when this article was exported to the United States. America has now her own screw company, which holds, on the other side, a similar position to Nettlefold's here and Jaffy Brothers in France. The Birmingham Screw Company (Limited) also does a large trade in ordinary times ; and here let me premise that the figures I am about to quote represent the normal condition of the local manufactures. The nut and bolt trade is usually on a vast scale, occupying about 3,500 hands. Darlaston also does a large trade in this business, though at present the industry is under a cloud. ' f ■ -^ , 1^1 168 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Birmingham is the great button-market. MilKona of buttons are turned out monthly. From 1865 to 1870 pearl buttons annually used 1,000 tons of mother-of-pearl shells. The failure of the Central American fisheries has reduced this to 300 tons; and the trade would have been literally extinguished but for the discovery of the necessary shell on the east and west coast of North Australia. In addition to these shells, the button trade consumes annually 800 tons of ivory nuts (vegetable ivory), 500 tons of brass, 1 ,000 tons of latten and other iron, the value of which, with tinned plate and the mother-of-pearl shells previously mentioned, reaches the enormous sum of :£24 1,000 per year for button materials. It is calculated that England manufactures 50,000,000 pins every day, of which 37,000,000 are made in Bir- mingham. The saddles made here arc pre-eminent and famous all over the world. Electro-plating had its rise in Birmingham^ and at a recent date employed 21,530 men and women. A kindred industry, the manufucture of all kinds of vessels, cups, teapots, &c., in white metal, is now greatly extending in America. Perry and Co., Mason, and Gillott are familiar names as penmakers. A Gillott is often used as the opposite to a quill, the name of the famous maker having become synonymous with steel pen. Their manufactories are all here ; and they make 900,000,000 pens a year. The glass trade is an enormous one. In three local glass- AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 169 works £120,000 a year is paid in wages. The 2,500 workmen employed use 165,000 tons of coal, 10,000 tons of sand, 4,500 tons of alkali, 3,500 tons of limestone, producing 17,000 tons of glass In five and a half years, at the mint of Messrs. J. Watt and Co., were made 606,379,848 bronze and copper coins, or 3,3 17^ tons of money. Webster and Ilorsfull produced 30,000 miles of steel telegraph wire in eleven months. The town turns out 500 tons, or 100,000 miles, of wire a year, for tying corks. A year or two ago 6,000 iron bedsteads per week represented a local industry ; and the brass trade uses up over £2,000,000 of material a year, and employs 10,000 hands. In these days, when it is too much the fashion to run down the warlike power of England, it is worth while to refer to the time between 1804 and 1815, when France, having command of all the workshops of Italy and Belgium in addition to her own, could not equal Birmingham alone in the manufac- ture of guns. Papier-mache is a special trade; it employs about 750 hands in Birmingham and 60(> in Wolver- hampton. Ironmongery and edge-tools, pencil-cases, and a miscellaneous class of jewelry and fancy goods, go to keep the town more or less busy ; but foreign competi- tion is just now beginning to be seriously felt, and well- founded apprehensions of a steady decline in trade are expressed by all the local authorities with whom I have conversed ; and the importance of the subject is pretty ' f.. II I' i 170 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. well demonstrated by the interesting figures just enume- rated. " Our export trade with America is dead." This was the observation made to me by an eminent member of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. " A large firm of American merchants, who used to do a large export trade in ironmongery with the United States, no longer bends out a single article, hut, instead, sells here American merchandise imported from the States.** ♦* That is," I replied, ** a remarkable instance of change, truly; and what is your opinion of the American ■J >> wares .'' " Excellent,'* he replied; "they include many inge- nious notions; this tup on my gas-burner is an American invention.'^' He turned on the gas-light as he spoke, and seemed lost in reflection. *' They are a clever people," he said, presently, *' and beat us on our own ground ; but the tarid^s kill us- Th,ire was once a famous firm here — Vnn Wart, relatives Oi' Washington Irving; they did an extensive trade in exports to the States ; they closed up their business some time ago. The truth is the American trade is over ; and what a trade it was when I was a boy ! Wh}', Sir, the Antericana are actually sending us electro-plated goods, and there is a French ironmonger in the town ! 1 am a free trader, but really I think we miglit try a little pro- ..MERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 171 '9 a tection on countries which trouble us most. I don't know about America, but Spain is abominable. They have made a dead set against us there; 28 per cent, worse than any other country they think a fair thing foi' John Bull." ** But is it not," I asked, ** the labour question which hampers the manufacturer in England as much as the want of reciprocity of tariffs?" " No doubt, no doubt," said the free-trader, as if glad to put the question of protection aside. " Trade unions and their absurd regulations have done us serious mischief. An instance of this came under my notice recently, A plasterer was at work, attended by a labourer whose wages are 32.9. a week. The actual labour of that man was not worth half that sum ; a boy could have done it ; but the trade union says a man must do it, and his wages be 328. In the building trade bricklaying is regulated to a nicety. A man must only lay a certain number of bricks per day. He must have each brick handed to him by a labourer. Tlje bricklayer must never lay down his trowel. He is to be waited on hand and foot." ** That would be funny in a farce," I suggested. " ' Will your honour please to take a brick?' It might be handed to the chief workman on a silver tray." '* That," said the Birmingham trader, " would hardly be an exaggeration of the real state of things in this country. * III mi' k 172 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. Mr. J. C. Tildealey, a gentleman who is known in the fields of both journalism and manufactures, in reference to this conversation tells me that it was at Mr. Van Wart's house in Edgbaston that Washington Irving wrote his Sketch-Book; and that the partners in Van Wart's old firm are still in business, trading chiefly with America in their own names. As a set-oflf to the state- ment that the export trade with America is dead, the same authority informs me that there are two exceptions at least, namely padlocks and curry-combs; although sub- ject to a heavy duty of something like 40 per cent, these two articles are being sent out in fair quantities to the States from Willenhall. My one desire in thest papers is to arrive at the truth, whether the fact be for or against free trade, in favour of or against reciprocity, opposed to or in support of protection. It goes hard with the export question at Birmingham when its life can only be claimed on the score of padlocks and curry-combs. There is no safer guide to the condition of local trade than the reports of the Chambers of Commerce. Taking up a recent official record of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, I find the Council declaring that *' It is painful to observe that, after so many years' experience of the beneficial operation of free trade in this coui.iry, many foreign governments, and our own colonics, are adopting more restrictive duties. Especially is this the case with Spain and Italy, who seem deliberately to i » I 1 i.n AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 173 )er is ice are Ithe to make their tariffs as hostile as possible to England." But, as if to neutralise this Hrst note of the trumpet of protection, the report adds, ** Notwithstanding these discouraging circumstances, your Council desire to record their firm adherence to the principles of free trade." There is something truly admirable and eminently characteristic in the firmness with which free-traders, even in the midst of ruin, adhere to their principles ; though a leading inhabitant of Birmingham said to me, " I heard Mr. Wright, the leader of the 600 Liberals here — the caucus — declare * that if he undertook it he could produce such facts and figures as would compel any government to cancel free trade.* " When the future historian comes to tell the story of free trade in England he will have to pay tribute to the dignity with which the farmers during the last twenty years have borne their fall from comparative affluence to poverty. To-day, while the American agriculturist is accumulating wealth, the English farmer is a ruined man. The chief source of a nation's prosperity, the cultivation of the soil, is ** a played-out industry '* in England ; while in Ireland hundreds of tenant-fanners, having paid no rent for years, are on strike against paying any more at all. Free-traders who take credit for every kind of industrial and material progress must surely debit themselves with some portion of the general bankruptcy and distress of the cultivators of the soil. To-day Ireland asks for relief i .'I 174 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. with bitterness in her hear'v and a gun in her hand ; to- morrow England will folluve suit, but without the gun. Neither of them dare blame free trade, which is a sort of fetish to the Liberals, and a something the Tories dare not touch, lest they be pointed at and called *^ lunatics '* and "retrogrades" ; and so the political world attacks land- lords and the present land tenure. But the English farmer knows that he cannot grow wheat in competition with his American rival, and that he is even hit in the matter of stock-raising, and no amount of ^'tenant-right" and land reform will help him ; but he and his family will go to the workhouse, or act on Lord Derby's advice and emi- grate, with the happy consciousness that they are victims to the maintenance of a glorious principle, mnrtyrs to the virtue of that self-denying Christianity which, struck on one cheek, turns the other to the smiter. In the height of our manufacturing distress, the hon. member for Birmingham himself spake with dome serious misgivings about the future of England. It was on the occasion of some celebration at Manchester. Mr. Bright was the chief guest at a great bai;quet. No wonder that, standing on the downhill of life, though at the summit of his greatness, the friend of Cobden, and joint founder of the famous Manchester school in politics, Mr. Bright should experience sensations of sadness as well as ot pride. In the great prose writer's American Note-book there is a pathetic suggestion for a story or an essay. AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 175 It Ir It ** An old man, ou a summer day, sits on a hill-top, or on the obser/atory of his house, and sees the sun*s light pass from ore object to another connected with the events of his past life — as the school-house, the place where his wife lived in her maidenhood — its setting beams falling on the churchyard." Mr. Bright at Man- chester reminded me of Hawthorne^s thumbnail picture. The great politician looked back over his past career and the sun which has set on his political work, for John Bright is whi^c.haired and totters somewhat in his gait, though the lamp of his eloquence burns brightly as ever. There was something peculiarly sorrowful in the anec- dotical episode of his speech, in which he referred to a visit to the ruins of Tantallon Castle, thirty-five years ago : '* As I walked among these ruins, my friend Mr. Ashworth stopped me, and turned round with a look of sadness, and said, * How long will it be before our great warehouses and factories in Lancashire are as complete a wreck as this castle?* I have thought of that several times, tho'jght of it with sadness, as I think of it now.'* Then he wandered iu eloquent reflection to the great cities that had fallen in the old days, before Manchester and Liverpool, great mercantile cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, the cities of Phoenicia, the cities of Carthage, Genoa, and Venice. He quoted the words of the poet singing of the people of Venice ; ^;i !.. m I- m 176 TO-DAT IN AMEUICA. Her danghters had their dowers From spoils of nations; and the exhanstless East Ponred in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. While his voice rang out these lines of triumph he was modulating it to the closing words, which he spoke with a pathetic sadness that drew tears from the eyes of a man who related the incident to me with a quivering lip: Venice lost, and won, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done. Sinks like a seaweed into whence she rose. The speaker thereupon glanced at the difficulties and dangers, as well as the commercial power and material glory, of England's empire in India, and altogether the old man eloquent found in the aspect of affairs little other than thoughts of waning strength and decaying greatness. The Daily News, in an editorial article upon the commercial gloom in the midst of which Mr. Bright spoke, refused to lend any sanction to the speculations as to the possible decadence of England, " which has always been beginning in every period of trade depression, and is always forgotten when trade revives." Nevertheless, the signs of a dark and difficult future for England are too numerous and too apparent to be ignored. That the old country will go through the fire, and come out perhaps even the purer and better for the ordeal, may be fairly hoped, when one looks back to find that her past AMBRICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 177 history has been one long triumph over obstacles and trouble sufficient to practically annihilate any other than an Anglo-Saxon nation. VI. In the autumn of 1878 I paid a visit to the Midlands. I conversed with many farmers in Derbyshire. They were talking a good deal about the comparative failure of the harvest. ^' The worst of it is," said one of them, *' we don't get an increased price for our wheat, as we did years ago when we had a bad harvest; on the con- trary, we shall get much less, because not only is the supply short but the quality is bad ; we have to stand the open competition of foreign wheat, which is better and more abundant than our own." I asked him what the farmers thought the Government ought to do under the circumstance. " Why," he answered, " it seems to me that the Duke of Rutland was about right in the proposal he made at the Farmers' Club meeting last week." Being asked what his Grace had said, he replied: "The Duke was for putting a five-shilling duty on American wheat, and a one-shilling duty on Canadian, and it appears that is the idea which the Mayor of Sheffield also advocated, only the mayor would make it five shillings on all foreign wheat, whether it came from Canada or Russia, America, or anywhere else, and he calculated that the bread-buyers would only suffer VOL. II. N i- p 178 TO-DAT IM AMERICA. by such a tax one-tenth of a penny on the four-pound loaf, fiut the contribution to the revenue would be very large, and the farmers would only, after all, be benefited to this extent, that the competition between him and the importer would be a little bit more even." I asked him, talking of the opinions of dukes, if he had seen his Grace of Beaufort's letter, expressing an opinion that the British farmer had better give up growing wheat. " Yes, I have seen it, and I don't know but he is right ; our weather has for years past made the harvest such an uncertainty, that corn-growing has become a sort of lottery, not depending on skill and industry, little influenced by good land, so that the in- vestment of money in it is now just a toss-up as to results. Baising beef and mutton is a certainty com- pared with wheat, and I intend myself to put every acre which 1 have had in com for the last twenty years into pasture.** At Chesterfield, the centre of a vast mineral district, I met a very intelligent and observant merchant, who answered my inquiries as to the improvement in the iron trade somewhat in these terms : " Yes, there is a decided advance within three months ; we have received a lot of orders from America at prices which they can't touch on the other side. Even against their tariffs we can go in and beat them; but there is a good deal of artificial activity in the iron trade. There is a ring. We are AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 179 learning from your American friends. The philosophy of rings is being mastered here with great aptitude. A number of wealthy men in this district, and sdll further north, have clubbed together and put down an enormous sum of money to be invested in pig-iron. Scores of furnaces have been relighted, and already the intelligent and patriotic working man is harassing the master with applications for increased wages and threats of new strikes. This eminently clever toiler and the scamps who lead him pretend to think that the tide has now fairly turned, and good things have come back again. This labourer is a fool, his adviser a knave, and those who go about honestly expecting the present bit of revival to last are ill-informed. The increasing quantities of iron that are being turned out are not by any means needed for export; some of it, of course, is going away. America has taken a lot, but the remainder is being bought up by the iron ring, which consists not merely of speculators but of men who are unwilling to see England exhausting her stock of raw material." In order to emphasize his views and crystallize his information, I asked him if he was of opinion that the present revival of trade might possibly last. ^*No, Sir," he replied, ^^that was the idea I intended to convey to you. Iron will go up in price, because the world must have it, and because we make the best in the world, but the ring will get the biggest n2 M 180 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. pull out of the business ; they will make a million or more between now and the spring." * This same gentleman told me some amusing anecdotes of the colliers, ironstone getters, and puddlcrs of the district, during the inflation period. " The very men," he said, ^* who are now having parish relief, and whose families are almost starving, were then earning easily their pound a day, and as a rule they spent every farthing of it. I was in a spirit merchant's shop, when a ganger, a man who had a few others under him, came in and bought for Christmas Day three bottles of port wine, two of brandy, two bottles of cura9oa, one of cherry brandy, and two bottles of rum. He had a cab at the door, and when he got into it he was the centre of a pile of goods, a turkey, two geese, a sirloin of beef, a hamper of oranges, apples, and nuts, a sack of potatoes, and a great twelfth cake. That man was earning a little fortune then, and this was the way it went. He is now a pauper. As a general thing neither the pitmen nor the iron- workers saved a penny during the good times. In a public house not far from here there was a room set apart for a sort of business and convivial meeting of iron masters once a week. They met, dined, and talked over trade matters, and this habit of using a particular parlour * This forecast has been fulfilled, and to-day there arc signs of another depression in the iron trade. AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 181 obtained for it the appellation of *the gaffers* room.' Gaffer is slang for master, mm us boss is in the States. Well, one * off night ' four pitmen called at the house and said they would like to have the gaffers' parlour for a few hours ; they'd got some brass to spend, and they'd like to sit in gaffers' chairs and at gaffers' table. The favour was granted. They ordered half-a-dozen of port wine to begin with. Having drunk that, they said to the servant girl, * What do our gaffers generally drink?* * 0, sometimes one thing, sometimes another; they has champagne and they has hock and they has burgundy.' * Well, let's have four bottles of *ock wine.' They drank the 'ock wine, and said they didn't think much of it ; there was no strength in it. They tried the champagne, and thought it nice drinking for a hot day, but too much like ginger-pop. They then ordered three bottles of burgundy. After the girl had taken this last order up to the gaffers' room the mistress of the house dis- covered that the servant had committed a slight mistake; the hostess had been making walnut ketchup or sauce, and had put it into burgundy bottles. This was the •burgundy* that had gone into the gaffers' parlour. The girl went up to explain, and was aghast to find that the sauce had been all drunk. * That last wine thou brought us was something like,' they said, ^ It's gotten some strength in it, it's hot in the throat; we'll have IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) /. 1.0 I.I itio mil 2.0 1.8 125 1.4 i.6 4 6" ► V <^ /a ^ ¥ % .;/ '%' Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 A %■ 182 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Bome more of that the next time we come ! ' They spent five pounds in that short and foolish drinking bout. It was a common thing for a pitman, who was a dog-fancier, to buy legs of mutton for his animals. Luxuries of iish and game in the local markets were bought up by the colliers. They had the first salmon of the season, the first cucumber, the first bit of lamb, the first partridges, the first pheasants. I cannot think there is a more improvident set under the sun, and I question if their days of poverty would leave behind any lasting lesson, supposing a great revival of trade should restore their former prosperity." I pointed out to my friend that at all events the next generation of iron-workers and pitmen would not be likely to repeat the errors of their fathers ; for wherever 1 went I saw the buildings of the School Boards, and everywhere the schoolmaster seemed busy. The next generation of toilers will be able to read and write ; they will be men who have read books, who can take up their newspapers, and get their opinions first hand, instead of through the distorted channels of agitators and political clubs. AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 183 711. So far as I can estimate the results of my inquiries, they are unfavourable to the continuation of a one-sided arrangement which is establishing foreign manufactures, and crippling those of England. Hostile tariffs against us in every land met with free imports at home is not free trade. If it is, then the sooner we return to pro- tection the sooner will England see her working people once more fully employed and her great factories busy with profitable orders. If giving the Continent our j. V>iron, and receiving back free of duty the raw material maui^'" *ure J to undersell our own artificers, while the Continent cloyes her markets to our manufacturers, is free trade, then free trade is no longer a boon to England. It was all very well when England had a monopoly of machinery and mechanical power; but to-day we are fighting our own inventions; to-day we are competing with the very machines we have sent abroad; to-day the pupil is as clever as the teacher; to-day Jack is as good as his master. The free traders, in those past days when England was the chief workshop of the world, told us that America would give us her produce and we should give her our own manufactures. But to-day we are paying for that produce, not in hardware, not in 184 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. machinery, not in cottons, not in silks, not in carpets, but in gold. Mr. Bright told us that the other nations, seeing our prosperity, would emulate us. France is held up as one of our converts. Yet France goes beyond the ordinary lines of protection. She gives bounties to her sugar-refiners, who undersell us in our home markets, and sugar-refining in England is a ruined industry. The so-called free-traders say the few must suffer that the many may be happy. But surely we are passing that ancient landmark. Not the few, but the many — are they not beginning to suffer for the few? We are im- porting £12,000,000 a year of French silks ; £l ,518,557 of gloves, chiefly French, Why should we not balance the sugar question by a duty on silks and gloves? " Because then," the free-trader will reply, " sugar will go up in price." So it may, a trifle per pound ; but what is the good of cheap sugar to the poor wretch who can hardly buy bread, and to whom sugar is an unattain- able luxury ? This continual separation of the producer and con- sumer in an industrial country such as England is folly. We import beads, china, clocks, embroidery, lace, fur, sealskins, and many more luxuries. Tax them, and give the poor that free breakfast table we have heard so much about. Luxuries of all kinds miglit bear a duty for the general good. It would not hurt the rich ; it AMERICAKS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 185 would help the poor, who are not confined to the labouring classes, as those who know anything about the small shopkeepers, clerks, countermen, and the middle walks of English life can testify. The French treaty is the one triumph of the Bright school ; and England is congratulated to-day because there is a prospect of a renewal of it. Mr. Lister, a practical authority on the question of textile manufactures, answers this in a few telling lines. " Seeing that they have under the former treaty entirely destroyed our silk trade, and have also under that treaty increased their exports of silk manufactures to England from £580,000 before the treaty to from nine to ten millions last year, while we have the additional blessing of about five millions from other countries, I think they may well be content with their share of that trade, as practically we have now got none left. And now for worsted and woollens. In 1877 they sent us £3,858,000, and we sent them £3,073,000, so that in that branch of industry they sent us more by £800,000 than we sent them ; and the returns for 1878 show, as do those of 1879, that whilst they have been gaining ground we have been losing ; and as they charge duty upon all we send them, and *' the craze " admits all their goods free, I think they may well be content with that part of the bargain also. But we must come to cotton. We sent them in 1877 £2,649,000 against fcheir £692,000, 186 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. or two millions more than thev sent us. Now it is these two millions of cotton goods that they intend to handicap with further duties, and then they think they will almost be free-traders. And this is Mr. Forster's promising convert I They have destroyed our silk industry under the old treaty, and have further shaken Bradford to its foundation ; for it will only require another decade to make it a second Coventry. "We might as well fight against the winds and the waves as fight against 72 hours with 56." " But," say the free-traders, "we have given you cheap wines ; and Mr. Gladstone has blessed the country with free trade in wines and spirits." In America, where they have no Mr. Gladstone to give them cheap wines, they have established an enormous trade in cheap and whole- some ale, lager-beer. The rich, who drink wine, are content to pay a duty for the benefit of the country ; and the poor, who drink the mild wholesome beer of the country, are soberer than our poor, who cannot afford claret, and have no cheap form of mild invigorating ale to drink. It is questionable whether the English are morally or constitutionally better for the forcing upon them of the thin wines of France. The old * ale-conning ' in modem shape, under modern administration, and the fostering of the national beverage, would possibly be more beneficial than the philanthropic development of French industry and the advancement of the French AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 187 wine trade. In America you rarely, if ever, see a girl or woman go into a bar to drink. This kind of pro- miscuous tippling used to be confined in England to the lower classes. But Mr. Gladstone, from the highest motives, no doubt — for all he does is of course eminently conscientious — made every confectioner's shop a drinking- shop, so that the women of the middle and of the upper classes could go out and tipple as well as their poorer sisters. And they do it. Mr. Gladstone's famous free- trading measure has increased drunkenness among the women of England to an alarming extent; and the evil was in no wise neutralised by the very opposite principle of restriction applied to men drinkers in the Licensing Act of Mr. Gladstone's Government. The " principle " of free trade in that case did not prevent Mr. Gladstone from "protecting" the subject against the publican; and to that extent he is to be commended for not letting the bogy of so-called " principle " frighten him from an alliance with " national expediency." The English people have been so browbeaten with *' principle " in the matter of free trade, that, in accepting the " theory," they have not discriminated about the " practice " so long as the country was pros- perous. Until quite recently, if one dared to question the results of so-called free trade, it were to have your life 188 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. r made a misery to you by the sneers and set arguments of aggressive politicians of the Bright school (and how aggressive they are, except when the national honour abroad is concerned I), who could always theorise you off your legs ; because in theory free trade is as beautiful as republicanism, as noble as turning your other cheek to the smiter, as sweet as humility, and as successful as sweet, no doubt, if you could only find a world of sympathy and sentiment in which to practise it. But free trade as it is practised in England is a just man fallen among thieves ; a virtuous woman in a community of free lovers; a Daniel in the lions' den; and the age of miracles is past. Mr. John Bright may shake his grand wise old head, and murmur ** lunatic." But in fifteen years, from 1864 to 1878, to quote Mr. Lister's figures, which I have verified, " our exports have increased by little more tj.^a a million and a half, or about 2^ per cent., and that, excluding cotton, which has special advantages, from having the key of the Custom House of India; but taking all our other textile manufactures, we are actually exporting less than we did fifteen years ago by about half a million. And what is still more surprising is that during those very fifteen years our imports of textile manufactures have increased by £13,026,000 ; so that, taking all our textile industries, while our exports have only increased 2^ per cent., our AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 189 imports have increased 126 per cent"* And 1 fling back in his teeth Mr. Bright's epithet; for they who wish to have this thing argued out and arrive at the truth are not lunatics, but brave and wise as Mr. Bright was when he stood before his fellow-men to preach unwholesome truths, and was called " madman " in his turn. " Free-trade " is not " free-trade " if only confined to buying ; you must have free-trade in selling as well. * The fall figares are as follows : Exports. 1864. 1878. Cotton £45,799,000 £48,086,000 Worsted and woollen . 15,333,000 16,723,000 Linen 8,172,000 5,834,000 Silk . . . . . 1,460,030 1,921,000 £70,764,000 £72,564,000 70,764,000 Increase . £1,800,000 Showing an increase of 2^ per cent. Imports. 1864. 1878. Cotton £833,000 £2,058,000 Worsted and \,vK)llen . . 1,849,000 5,996,000 Silk 7,481,000 14,986,000 Linen ..... 140,000 289,000 £10,303,000 £23,329,000 10,303,000 Increase £13,026,000 An increase of 126 per cent 190 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. That is reciprocity. But it does not matter whether you call it " Reciprocity," " Free trade,*' or ** Protec- tion," if it is a just thing, and proper to the happy and prosperous government of the country. The other nations of the world will not consent to be governed by England; they will not consent to confine themselves to growing or making what they can do best; they prefer a variety of occupations ; they like a many-sided life. If each country would confine itself to its own staple commodity, and each interchange its goods with the other, one giving wheat for implements, another wool for cloths, and so on, then we should get along to Mr. Bright's satisfaction ; we should rule our lives with a beautiful Quaker-like simplicity, and go to heaven to a certainty. But neither America, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, nor any of the nations of the world, will play at this saint-like game; not even the colonies will take a hand in it. How, then, shall we go on playing, giving foreigners all the trumps and court-cards? Let us have a new shuffle and a fresh " cut in." Mr. Bright, with all his theoretical worship of freedom, would coerce the colonies. Perhaps a confederation of England and her possessions for commercial purposes would be a better expedient than vulgar coercion. Our experience is not in favour of dictation, and " the liberty of the subject" should not be forgotten even when *' free trade " principles are in question. A special duty AMERICANS ON ENGLISH FREE TRADE. 191 on luxuries imported into England, or a 10 per cent, duty all round on foreign importations; a retaliatory tariff against everything brought in under the ** bounty " system; and Is. per quarter on wheat — the sum is too small to hurt the consumer, and it is large enough to influence the revenue considerably — these, I hold, are duties worth consideration. A registration-tax on im- ports and exports, helping the revenue and giving us valuable details of trade, published every week, would enable us to judge how trade is going, into what channels it is moving, and keep manufacturers and traders on the alert to its changing fortunes. I throw out these sug- gestions with all humility; but at the same time, stand- ing on a basis of hard facts, I confidently ask every elector in the United Kingdom to consider the question fairly for himself; to form his own honest judgment about it on its merits, not from a party point of view (for this question of the hour should not be judged from that narrow ground), and make the candidate for whom he votes explain beforehand clearly and explicitly what he means to do when Parliament has to revise our com- mercial policy. When you have thought it out, 1 think you will come to this conclusion : — If England is to become a mere residential country for well-to-do foreigners and Britons, then let us continue our present miscalled system of free trade. If England is to con- tinue a manufacturing country, and maintain her place 192 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. in the van of commerce and civilisation, she must give her industries fair play in competition with rival nations. If you are content to look at England from the mere consumer's standpoint, you may, in the cynical philo- sophy of dilettanteism, vote for the residential view ; if you are not ashamed of being called a patriot you will say, ^* If I am to be benefited as a consumer to the destruction of my brother the producer I will make a little sacrifice if necessary for his welfare, and for the happiness and glory of our common country." In either case put it to the candidate for your suffrages, and have a clear understanding with him. You will probably find that he knows exactly how Russia should be governed; in what relationship Turkey should stand to Europe; at what age a Zulu should marry; but he will hum and haw about free trade and protection. Do not let him. Settle with yourself what you think is right, and then settle with him ; and at the next election let the subject of " England's commercial decline " have the first place in your thoughts. Do not be hood-winked by theories, and let your vote upon this subject be above party and beyond prejudice. 193 VI. CROSSING THE FERRY. On board the " Ariaona " — An Ugly Companion on the Deep — Tra- velling with a Hnrricnne — Atlantic Storms — Naval Hotels — Won- ders of the Sea — What London looks like after Absence and Travel — Strangers in the Metropolis — Basy City— A Rising against the Fogs — An English Spring as a set-off against an American Auliomn — London in the Spring timv — Circe at Ficcadilly. I. If you are not what is called a " good sailor," cross the Atlantic in the quickest ship. At the moment her name is the ** Arizona " of the Guion line. How soon she will he eclipsed hy some newer steamer is only a matter of time. Her owners are building a splendid comp)peed of the train which carried him to St. Pancras; for on a portion of the line the Midland express runs at the HOME AGAIN. 223 rate of 70 miles an hour. My American friend went to bed in a Pullman car, and I was content with a first- class compartment in a "■ bogie " carriage, so called from its American wheels. The English railway dep6ts are better built, and the waiting-rooms better appointed, than those of America, though there is no smoother travelling in England than that on the Penn- sylvania Kailway, or the New York Central line to Niagara. On the whole, one feels a greater sense of security on a first-class American railway than on an English line, the speed being much less, the carriages larger, and the construction of the wheels such as to adapt the cars to sharp curves. There are Englishmen who find travelling in America far preferable to railway journeying in England, on account of the absence of the fee system. For my own part, I prefer to be waited upon, to have my hand-bag carried, and to be generally watched over by the railway guard and porter. The services they render you are useful and pleasant, and are very cheap at a small gratuity. Compared with the haughty independence with which you are treated by the servants of a great American railway, the conciliatory courtesy of the feed officers of the English lines is com- forting and refreshing. The degree of heat at which the negro guards and porters are permitted to maintain the atmosphere of the Pulman cars is a serious trouble to English travellers, and Americans themselves often 224 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. suffer from the want of ventilation in which the darky revels. The "coloured gentleman" sufficiently revenges himself for the past slavery of his race by torturing the white travellers in the Pulman cars, who wonder that, after a night's so-called sleep, they get up with parched lips, aching heads, and a general derangement of their faculties. The coloured official has kept them all night in a suffi^cating atmosphere of heated stoves and pipes that consumes the oxygen without any means being taken for renewing it. But, though not practised to such excess in private houses, this habit of heating apartments of all kinds and excluding iiio outer air is a source of misery to European strangers in the United States, and must be injurious to the health of the people. Better far the airy coldness of some English houses than the asphixiating heat of the majority of American homes. IV. At present there is no comparison between English and American homes. America has not the houses, the servants, nor the inducements that belong to the home life of England. In the first place, the wooden house of the country districts of America is a poor substitute for the English cottage or villa. This will be strikingly apparent to Americans travelling for the first time through Great Britain. There is no exaggeration of HOME AGAIN. 225 sentiment in the tributes which poets have invariably paid to " the cottage homes of England." The humblest peasant householder in the country districts has often a picturesque little home, with a flower and kitchen garden, altogether superior to the American villa one sees at outlying places along the railway routes. To have a house of his own is the chief ambition of an Englishman. Except in London and other large cities, no young man dreams of marrying until he has furnished a house, and cun literally take his wife " home." Even in large cities it is a most rare and unaccustomed thing to see a family dining out at a restaurant. " Home " means more in England than in America, and the home life of New York bears no comparison with that of London. The lack of a thoroughly settled class ot men and women devoted to domestic service in America has much to do with this; so also, of course, have the heavy rents of good houses. The artisan's cottage and the middle-class house of England are almost unknown in the great cities of America. Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago have more to show in this direction than New York. Yet with these advantages on the side of England, where the sanctity of home is a sort of religion, we exhibit to Americans at every street corner a sight which is peculiarly sad and loathsome — women drinking at public bars, women with babies in their arms taking gin at all hours of the day, women often reeling into the streets in VOL. II. Q 226 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. a state of drunkenness. There is no deeper stain on the moral escutcheon of Great Britain than this public scandal, except it be the open and shameless solicitation by a crowd of prostitutes in the West-end streets from dusk till long after midnight of every day that comes. It would seem as if the highest virtues and the lowest vices travelled along, side by side, in the English metropolis. Poverty and wealth meet here oftener face to face and exist closer together than in any metropolis the world has ever seen. V. While I was in America Mr. Edwin Booth, the repre- sentative actor of the United States, made his reappear- ance in London. The criticisms of his Hamlet were cabled at length to the American journals, and the event was regarded by all classes with the greatest interest, the more so as it was reported that Mr. Henry Irving, England's representative actor, had evinced a discour- teous jealousy of the American. There was no truth in this report, but it gave piquancy to the situation. I pro- mised some New York friends of both these eminent artists that on my return to London I would investigate the statements that were circulating to the detriment of Mr. Irving, and append to my report Booth's position and prospects in London, more particularly in connec- tion with his representation of " Richelieu." I saw both HOME AGAIN. 227 Booth's impersonation of Lord Lytton's dramatic por- traiture and the new Princess's Theatre together for the first time. I can now understand how heavily the American tragedian was handicapped by circumstances, and how much greater his success is than it appears to be. During Mr. Gooch's management of the Princess's Theatre the old house was the home of melodrama, not classic melodrama, but strong, realistic, I had almost said *• blood and thunder," melodrama; it was practically an East-end theatre at the West. A Bowery theatre in Madison Square is the parallel idea for New York. " Guinea Gold," *^ Jane Shore," "It is Never Too Late to Mend," *' Drink," "The Streets of London," were its most successful plays. In the height of its money-making history in this line Mr. Gooch pulled the theatre down. It was old, dusty, inconvenient ; it smelled of sawdust, orange peel, and gas ; it was draughty, afflicted with rats, and the stage was positively dangerous; but the cheap parts were crowded every night. Tom, Dick, and 'Arry were there always; they " cat- called" to each other from pit and gallery. Now and then the better class of playgoers came ; but the " money " was in the pit, gallery, and upper circle, not in the boxes or stalls. " The masses " were the chief supporters of the theatre. Mr. Gooch catered for them, and was successful; but his ambition is to have a theatre that shall attract all classes of play- goers. Q2 228 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. To-day the old house is no more. On the historic site has arisen a clean, comfortable, and handsome theatre, with a beautiful entrance-hall, artistically decorated cor- ridors, pleasant waiting-rooms, a cheerful saloon, and everything else in harmony therewith. The auditorium looks rather cold ; perhaps the decorations are heavy, but the arrangements for the comfort of the audience are admirable. When Conquest rebuilt his tumble-down theatre at the East End "the boys " would not go there any more, because it was "too nice"; it was unfamiliar; they no longer desired to wipe their feet on the cushions, and " shy " orange peel at their friends. I wondered as I sat for the first time in the new Princess's if Mr. Gooch, too, had exorcised the " gallery " by his clean, well- conducted house. The old "pitites" who used to swarm into their narrow seats, and clap their hands and crack their jokes, they were not here now. The gallery boys in their shirt-sleeves, leaning over the rails, and making you tremble for fear that thoy should fall into the pit, they were not even represented. In their places were two small crowds of respectable, orderly people. They were attentive to the play all the time, and evinced a quick and cultivated taste. They led the applause over and over again during the actor's magnificent scenes in the fourth act. In the stalls and dress-circle of the theatre there was also a different class of playgoers to that which had been in the habit of attending the old nOME AGAIN. 229 theatre in its last days. These parts of the house were occupied by persons of a higher grade than one usually sees at the Princess's. Evidently attracted by the actor himself, they manifested a thorough appreciation of his method, joining their hearty plaudits to the cheers of pit and gallery under the electrical influence of his outburst of passion in the strongest dramatic scenes of the play. Mr. Gooch, it will be seen, had not only dispersed his old constituency, but he has appealed to a new set of playgoers, not only in the sweetness of his new house but in the class of entertainment he offers to the public. Under the circumstances Mr. Booth was as much handi- capped as if he had to make the reputation of a new theatre. He gained nothing by the early traditions of the old house; and in producing classic plays he had to contend against the modern fashion of gorgeous scenery and costly furniture; for Mr. Gooch had no stock of scenery and properties in his new theatre that would enable him to carry out the Booth policy of a frequent change of programme from one historical work to an- other. In addition to all this, it is impossible, without long training and association together, to be secure of a good all-round company equal to the claims of " Hamlet," « Richelieu," " Macbeth," and " Othello." The old pro- vincial schools of acting in England are no more. The travelling companies have made of Bath and Bristol, of Manchester and York, mere ordinary circuits for star 230 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. ! . companies; while " opera bouffe " and the " tea-cup and saucer " eras have left us with only a handful of artists who can speak blank verse. Mr. Booth did not light upon this handful, though he counted in his company one excellent and competent actor in Mr. John Ryder, To carry a new house with a new policy, a poor com- pany (the best that could be hurriedly collected), and come through creditably, would have been a great thing ; but Mr. Edwin Booth has done more than this, he has made a distinct artistic success. Under more favourable circumstances he might have counted his triumph in piles of gold ; but he has done all that an artist could desire on the score of fame; and when he leaves London he will leave behind a great name, troops of admirers, and the right to return to reap the harvest of his courage and his genius. V. No heartier, no more sincere applause ever greeted an artist than that which acknowledged the merits of Mr. Booth's Richelieu on Tuesday night. It came from every part of the house, and when the curtain fell on the last scene the actor was *' called " with an enthusiastic renewal of the demonstrations of approval which had accompanied him from the first, going along with him in characteristic companionship, and breaking out into cries HOME AGAIN. 231 of " bravo " when Richelieu hurled the thunders of Rome upon his presumptuous persecutor. I have seen all the great modern actors play Richelieu, but Mr. Booth's representation, especially in the fourth act, was as great a revelation to me as it was to John Ryder, who played Joseph to Macready, and regarded Macready's Richelieu as the most stirring realization of the character until he played the part with Booth in London. The famous old English actor went into Booth's dressing- room and told him so, with tears of excitement running down his cheeks. Many distinguished persons have attended Mr. Booth's representations. The late Lord Chief Justice Cockburn was in the stalls three nights before his death, and expressed great pleasure at his Hamlet. Mr. Anthony Froude wrote to him, and said of it that he had never liked Hamlet on the stage before. Sir Theodore Martin and Lady Martin (Helen Fauci t) were delighted with " Richelieu." They told Mr. Booth 80, both of them, and Lady Martin wrote him a letter in which she gave his interpretation the palm (as Ryder does) even against Macready's. This is immense praise, for Lady Martin was the original heroine of the play. The present Lord Lytton, the Countess Granville, Lady Lonsdale, Lady Colville, Sir A. Grant, Earl of Dunmore, Lady Treveiyan, and the Queen's friend and Lady- in- Waiting the Marchioness of Ely, are among the most notable persons who visited the Princess's during 232 TO-l>AT IN AMERICA. Mr. Booth*8 engagement there. Mr. Gooch and hh company are full of admiration of the artist's work, and the management offers him a three years' treaty to remain in London. But there is, I fancy, a longing look in Booth's expressive eyes as he mentions this to me, a look that means rest or home. Tl. I called on Mr. Booth at his hotel — the St. James's — and found him delightfully placed in two parlours com- manding that part of Piccadilly where the park begins. Mrs. Booth and he received me after breakfast in a cozy room, with an English fire in the grate and an English fog gathering at the windows. You could see the park trees standing in dun-brown outlines against a streak of grey, smoky clouds, with a thick curtain gradually closing in upon them from above. It was noon, and Mrs. Booth's first experience of a London fog in the day-time. We sat talking in comparative darkness for half-an-hour, and the great thick curtain of mist and smoke did not, after all, compel us to light the gas. Mr. Booth speculated a little as to the pictorial treat- ment of the subject by his friend Mr. McEntee, as we stood at the window and watched the clouds trail off to the east, and the leafless trees of the park come out nOME AGAIN. 233 again clear and sharp against the grey sky, from which the rain now began to pour. Along Piccadilly cab and 'bus and brougham drove through the wet, and we turned to look at the soft-coal fire and talk of the great city. *' It was not my intention to act at all for a year at least," said Booth, ** but at Queenstown I received a pressing invitation from Mr. Gooch's manager to open the new theatre. My first idea was that my wife, who was sick, should obtain the medical advice she had been counselled to seek here ; that then we should make a long Continental tour, for a year at least. I thought I might possibly act in Germany, en route, coming or going, then play a short time in London, and go home. The Lyceum was suggested to me a year or two ago, and I did communicate with Mr. Irving. It occurred to me that he might have Booth's Theatre if he wished to visit America, while I could have appeared simul- taneously on his stage here in London. Nothing came of that idea, and it was urged that, as Drury Lane was taken for the spring, I should have no opportunity so good for an appearance in London as the opening of the new Princess's Theatre; so I came, and here I am playing every night and working harder than I have done for years." " And you are satisfied with the result ? " *' Quite. It has not been all smooth sailing, but it 234 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. has been full of very pleasant incidents. Nothing has been more gratifying than the individual and collective kindness I have received from the profession. It is quite unusual in my experience for actors to send com- plimentary letters and telegrams to other. Since I have been in London I have had quite a number of both i'rom members of the English stage. They have gone out of their way to be kind to me. So also have a great many persons of note. My relations with the ladies and gentlemen of Mr. Gooch's company are most agreeable. They have all shown a real personal interest in my success." ** I see that you have a portrait of Mr. Irving hanging on the wall. Gossips and pretendf ^ friends have no doubt told you all manner of storit lut his jealousy of you. I know busybodies have reported to him that he might look for all manner of rivalry at your hands.'* *' Oh, yes. I hope I know as well as Mr. Irving how to judge this kind of gossip. I need not say to you that I have the highest respect for a gentleman who has done so much to elevate the profession to which we both belong. But for the inadvertent overlooking of a letter he received a long time since we might possibly have carried out the project of an interchange of theatres." " Has Mr. Irving called upon you ? " " Yes; I do not like to discuss even the idea of jealousy nOME AGAIN. 235 or rivalry. On my part, those who know me know that competition of the sort indicated by paragraphists in the newspapers and elsewhere docs not exist in my mind for a moment. Mr. Irving, I know, has always spoken well of me, and he has no reason to do otherwise, nor I of him.'* •' I believe, if you were intimately acquainted with him, you would like him very much." " I feel sure I should." " It has always occurred to me that it would be an international good, an instance of artistic amity and pro- fessional friendly feeling, to have you two gentlemen — each representing the best aspect and mission of the drama in the two great English-speaking countries of the world — on intimate terms: the Englishman acting at Booth's, the A' lerican at the Lyceum, or both playing for a season in the same theatre on alternate nights." '* New York friends of mine have often talked in that strain, and I should be glad to carry out their wishes, supposing Mr. Irving were also anxious for such inter- national couitesies." *' Do you think it is too late?" « I cannot tell." ** I am convinced that Mr. Irving is only actuated by the most friendly and sympathetic feelings toward you, and, indeed, all American artists as a rule speak of the kindly attentions they have received at the hands of the 236 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Lyceum management. Do you propose to play a long engagement at the Princess's?*' " I have not decided. At home I am accustomed to take a rest now and theu. Mr. Gooch is anxious that I should go on beyond the date of our first arrangement, but I am hardly willing to undertake a long responsibility of a nightly appearance in the arduous parts that make up my repertoire." " What are your forthcoming pieces ? " "*The Fool's Revenge,' •Macbeth,' and 'Othello,' I believe. I was most unfortunate in losing poor Mr. Harcourt as my leading man. On the first night of ^ Richelieu ' Baradas fell sick, and Mr. Swinburne had to take his part at a moment's notice. On Tuesday night Mr. Ryder was taken ill and Mr. Swinburne had to play Joseph. He did exceedingly well under the circumstances ; but I have had many troubles of this kind. On the first night of * Hamlet,' the theatre being new, the scenery did not run smoothly; then the prin- ciple of keeping the auditorium almost in darkness had a gloomy aspect from the stage that depressed me; I had been warned that many of the gentlemen in front had come to write me down. These and other matters, all small, no doubt, in themselves, affected my spirits, and I really did not play Hamlet at all to my own satisfac- tion until the last nights, when I had become used to the company, the scenery, the audiences, the theatre. HOME AGAIN. 237 Of course I did not expect to please all the critics; I don't do so in New York, and I did not come to take London by storm ; but in private letters, in personal calls, and in a hundred ways, I have received courtesies, kindnesses, compliments which I shall never forget, and my audiences every night are as warm, and hearty, and enthusiastic as one could possibly desire." We chatted for some time much in this strain, Mrs. Booth coming now and then to her husband's aid where his natural modesty kept back the many individual com- pliments he had received. Mr. Booth is really a shy man, and sensitive to a fault. In the hacknevcd meanint; of the term, he is not genial; not in the ordinary social interpretation of the phrase ; not genial as Mr. John McCullough is; not "a night bird," sacrificing his rest to his friends, as most actors do who cultivate society during a London season. It is Booth's habit after acting to go home, and it is not his practice to lunch at clubs or pay complimentary visits, except once in a way on Sundays. He cannot do it. His nervous system is too highly strung for any claims upon it beyond the hard work of his business as an actor. He rarely takes wine, and he lives the life of a student, almost of a recluse, outside the theatre. This is well known in New York. He does not feel disposed to change his habits here; and success on the English stage without the aid of the small change of social amenities is rare in these days. 238 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Mr. Jefferson achieved it on his individiial merits, and Mr. Booth is steadily mounting the same ladder. Genius, which is well directed, and sustained power, can do without the aid of Society, but can get along more quickly with it. Mr. Booth is entitled to stand alone, and if he had opened in ** Richelieu " he would have drawn the town instead of only an intellectual and cul- tured portion of it. *' Hamlet " just now offers too many points of controversy for the critics to be able to resist the temptation of exhibiting their own knowledge at the expense of any or every new Hamlet witli which they might be challenged. I predict for Mr. Booth new laurels in " The Fool's Revenge " and " Macbeth." It is not unlikely that these works may bring back to the theatre some of Mr. Gooch's deserters. Hitherto the imaginations of the pit and gallery folk have been inflamed by startling posters and window bills. Mr. Booth so far has not deigned to supplement the ordinary announcements with these pictorial aids to publicity. Jealous of his position and not willing to lower the dignity of his art, he has been satisfied with the kind of announcement that con- tented the Keans, Macready, and Phelps. But other times, other manners. It is a London tradition of New York that to do anything there you must stand on the side-walk, and, beating your breast, declare to the passers-by that you are a devil of a fellow. It seems HOME AGAIN. 239 to me that this kind of thing is much more necessary in London than in New York. If Mr. Booth could be persuaded to see this he would hasten the general acknowledgment of his powers. But there is much genuine satisfaction in the pleasures of self-respect. Mr. Booth has made a permanent and honourable im- pression upon the history of the London stage. VII. A few weeks after the above sketch had appeared in The Times I called upon Mr. Booth again by appoint- ment to discuss the development of our previous conver- sation. It was understood that, apart from other con- siderations, the visit had a business aspect from a jour- nalistic point of view ; but my object was chiefly to give the American public sufficient data upon which to form its own judgment of the relations between Mr. Booth and Mr. Irving, and to correct the impression which had been fostered there by pens and gossipers on both sides of the Atlantic, that the great English actor had been any other than kindly in his treatment of his great American contemporary. Anything relating to the alliance of these two artists, anything illustrative of their positions, their individualities, appears to be so interest- ing to the readers of the current journalistic histories of the time, that I venture to think this record of an 240 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. interesting event will not be deemed out of place in these volumes. The first week in March, 1881. A bright spring day; the sunshine as warm as in summer. Clean, dry streets. Buds on the lilacs in the open spaces of the town. A thrush was piping a loud joyous song on an elm-tree as Ipassed by Re^ont's Park Road. The West-end streets were crowded with splendid equipa^'id. I called by appointment on Mr. Edwin Booth at the St. James's Hotel. The sun was streaming in at his windows; yet he looked worn and tired. His wife was very ill. Her condition gave him cause for the greatest pnxiety. It is hardly possible that she can recover. She was ill when she came to London ; and, though at first it seemed as if change of air and English medical advice were benefiting her, she has lately appeared rapidly to lose strength. Those who know Mr. Booth will understand how great a trouble it is to him to be without her advice and business assistance ; those who know how devoted a wife he has in Mrs. Booth will understand what a deep grief may possibly await him. *• I am sad about my wife," he said; " she is, I fear, a very sick woman." I led him on to talk about the events of the day. Conversation seemed to be a relief to him. Presently, lighting cigarettes, we sat down, and came back to the subject of our first conversation about Irving, which I HOME AGAIN. 241 te a had published in the interest of both artists during the early days of the Princess's engagement. **What seemed vague and uncertain then/' I said, " has come to pass? " *' Yes, I am to play with Mr. Irving at the Lyceum." *' The suggestion of The New York Times was, then, not the foolish idea some people chose to think it? " " No; it was sound. As you know, Mr. Irving asked me to luncheon or to sup with him, and I was to name my day. I played at a matinie recently for the benefit of Mr. Chatterton, at the request of some good people. Mr. Irving also acted. I named the day for the luncheon. He invited me to his rooms. We spent quite a long time together talking of subjects in which we were both interested. I found him charming and sympathetic. During our conversation I intimated that I would like to give some matindea at his theatre, engaging my own company, so that I could present to the London public with satisfaction to myself some of the pieces in which I had not yet appeared, as well as those in which they had already seen me. It has been said so often by the press, and reiterated to me so much in private letters, that the company and surroundings at the Princess's Have been detrimental to the proper production of Shakespeare during my engagement there, that, prior to my pro- vincial tour, I thought I would really like to have the satisfaction of appearing in at least one or two good VOL. II. B 242 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. i ' 1 1 I i I ! all-round performances. Mr. Iryiug consented at once, and left the matter in my hands to propose further what I wished. And so we said au revoir, having spent a most agreeable day." " I felt sure you would like him, and that he was anxious to show you some courtesy." '* Soon after I had reached my rooms," continued Mr. Booth, " Mr. Irving called. He said he had been thinking the question of morning performances over. The matinde is not popular in London. Once a week, not more, could be relied upon for large audiences, and that morning was occupied by himself. It was Saturday. My idea was, of course, to play on other mornings. * I cannot advise you,* he said, * to risk matinees ; sup- pose you come and play in the evenings, say three nights a week, with me in ' Othello ? ' I replied that I should be delighted to do so. He at once mentioned terms that were most liberal, and we closed the arrange- ment." " And when do you appear? " " On the 2nd of May. After the 8th of April Irving withdraws * The Corsican Brothers * and produces * The Belle's Stratagem.' He will play this, with * The Cup,' three nights a week, and ' Othello ' on the other three. He opens the engagement with lago, which he will play for three nights. In the week following he will play the Moor and I lago, and so on." HOME AGAIN. 243 ree. rill ** Have you spoken of any other piece for consideration during the engagement ? " ** Mr. Irving mentioned * Venice Preserved,* but only as a matter of conversation, though I see something has been said about it in the papers. It is an old-fashioned tragedy, and was laughed at when produced in New York. I do not think Mr. Irving has any idea of re- viving it at the Lyceum. Our arrangement only has reference to the production of ' Othello.' " **When do you conclude your Princess's engage- ment?" " On the 25th of the month." *' You are now playing ' Lear ' j you must find that a most arduous impersonation, a great tax upon your energies ? " " Yes, I have never played the part for so many con- secutive nights as here in London. In fact, it is hardly within my recollection that I have played so long an engagement as the present one without a rest. I shall be enabled to take a month's holiday between my close at the Princess's and the opening at the Lyceum. During the last week at the Princess's I shall play * The Merchant of Venice.' Mr. and Mrs. Pateman, with whom I have acted in the United States, are engaged to support me, Miss Pateman as Portia. I think London will like her reading of the part, more particularly in the trial scene." ** Have you seen Miss Terry in the part? ** b2 244 TODAY IN AMERICA. ^* I saw her in the isolated scene at the benefit per* formance. She is very graceful. I liked, too, Mr. Irving. He played the first part of * Richard III.' and the trial scene of *The Merchant of Venice.' His repose is delightful. It was a very fine and intellectual performance. I quite look forward to seeing him act in his own theatre during my month's holiday. The faculty of repose is a great thing. McCuUough has it. I some- times think it is lacking in my own performance." '* It would be a capital arrangement at some future day if you could have Irving's theatre here for a short season while he appeared in the United States." " I should shrink from the idea of having to carry on even for a season his splendid policy in the mounting of Shakespeare. I went through all that at Booth's Theatre. When I left that house it seems to me as if my hopes and ambitions in the way of stage display, Shakespearean revival, artistic spectacle, and all that, had ended. There was a time when I had the energy, and experienced all the evident delight, in those things which Mr. Irving feels. I do so no longer. I am an actor, not a manager. I used to think of nothing else but the work of mounting and dressing pieces. If I took a holiday, questions of the colour of this material and the historical correctness of the other were continually before me. When first I began to produce Shakespeare on grand historic lines I had no precedents in the United States, and could obtain HOME AGAIN. 245 very little assistance, but I found a never-ending pleasure in hunting up authorities, consulting my artist friends upon points of costumes, getting designs made for dresses, and seeing the artistic business growing under ray hands. I should dread to attempt a revival of this kind of work now, and it is necessary to the Lyceum Theatre. More- over, Mr. Irving has no present intention of visiting America. I feel a deep interest in my engagement with him." " So do the public. It is the one popular topic in theatrical circles. All the Americans whom I have met are greatly pleased. Seats arc already being booked in advance, in spite of the doubled prices. The cast will be very strong, including most of the late Lyceum com- pany who appeared in * Othello,' with the addition of Mr. Ferris as Cassio. A good deal of Mr. Irving's business of the stage as Othello is new, and he has not yet played lago, though the part has often been men- tioned as one likely to suit him admirably. When do you rehearse ? " " Not yet for some weeks. At Booth's Theatre I introduced * The Willow Song ' for my wife, who played Desdemona. Miss Terry, I am told, sings in * The Cup.' I think I shall propose the introduction of ' The Willow Song' to Irving," " When do you begin your provincial tour ? " *' In September. I think the first place is Birming- 246 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ham. Engagements are made with all the leading cities, and the tour will go on close up to Christmas. Mr. and Mrs. Pateraan, Mr. Brooke, Mr. Ryder, and other leadmg artists, are in the company." ** Irving tells me that he played with you at Man- chester when you were in England on your first visit. The piece he remembers best was * Richard III.' The manager of the theatre was Richmond, and he had given himself a splendid new set of armour, and had provided the best the theatre afforded for his army. He was popular with the public in front, and did not mean to have his position unduly interfered with by the star in * Richard.* He interpolated the prayer scene, the invocation to the god of battles, from ' Henry V.* While Richard's army was clothed in the most ordinary costumes, Richmond's was ablaze, partially in new armour and in old armour cleaned up and polished. When the manager came on the extraordinary display of magnificently appointed men was loudly applauded. Everything appeared to be going as he could wish, and at last came the invocation to the god of battles. Down on his knees went Richmond ; his army tried to follow suit. The property men had not oiled or greased the joints of their armour. Going to kneel they struck all kinds of comic attitudes, one or two fell on their faces, all of them looked ridiculous. The stiff joints of the armour would not work. The audience screamed with laughter. A more absurd stage-picture HOME AGAIN. 247 was never seen. The invocation over, the army at- tempted to rise. This was a more silly-looking business than trying to kneel. The men on their faces could not get up again. Those who did get up made far more to- do about it than Rip Van Winkle after his long sleep, 80 admirably represented by Jefferson. Richmond went off amid howls of laughter and chaff from the gallery. Apart from any question of ability, Richard had the best of that arrangement." Mr. Booth remembered the incident, and recalling it amused him and set him talking of other interesting episodes of his early career, which went back to the early days of his father, and to the time when following in his father's footsteps he produced " The Apostate " and other old dramatic works in the leading theatres of the United States ; and so presently we parted ; and I was met in Piccadilly by the newsboys crying their varied and startling announcements of the day's intelligence. It has been stated in an American journal that the Baroness Burdett-Coutts has presented Mr. Irving with a lease of the Lyceum Theatre. The Baroness never owned the lease or any other property connected with the house except her private box, which she paid for at the ordinary tariff, as she would pay for her box at the opera. Another American journal states that she was Mr. Irving's business partner in the responsibility of *' running the Lyceum." There is not the slightest truth r 248 TO-DAY IN AMRKICA. in this. I have previously said so, and I have now Mr. Irving*8 special request to further contradict it. The Lyceum, from the first day of his management, has been entirely his own undertaking. He borrowed a large sum of money on business terms and security. lie has been enabled to pay the entire sum off, though not wholly out of profits. During his management, Mr. Irving inherited a considerable legacy, which he promptly put into the theatrical treasury. lie made his first payments on behalf of the theatre out of the large receipts of his provincial tour, and ever since the Lyceum has yielded him large profits, but not out of propor- tion to his heavy expenditure. While controlled by good judgment and great though tfulness, Mr. Irving^s management is lavish in every department. lie pays the highest salaries in London. His chiefs of depart- ments are skilled and experienced men. Expense is no consideration where an outlay is considered desirable. His orchestra is the best we have ; his theatre the most comfortable. When Mr. Gladstone went behind the scenes on the first night of " The Cup ** he was intro- duced to Mr. Bram Stoker, Mr. Irving's Chancellor of the Exchequer. *• And do you find tho^ nil these great expenses yield you a proportio' " usked Queen Victoria's Chancellor jhe* r. " We do," was Stoker's prompt i ^Jy, an . he gave the Premier some interesting financial c umples in point. Mr. nOME AGAIN. 249 n Gladstone was much interested in the figures. Indeed, it may be said for the Premier that everything interests him. There is not a more versatile mind in the Empire. It is worth while recalling, in conclusion, the first night of Mr, Irving's management of the Lyceum in the winter of 1878. There are a few critics who have stood by Mr. Irving from the commencement of his career, and who felt a personal concern in the success of his first managerial night, when he played *' Hamlet " in his own theatre, and in his own way, with artists selected by himself, with a new leading lady, with a new arrange- ment of scenes, and, in so far as decorations and fittings are concerned, in a new and beautiful house. There are other critics who have more than once turned upon the popular idol, and it would seem, when you are opposed to Mr. Irving and his method, you must be bitter and personal; you must attack his legs, you must sneer at his gait, and, if you are a caricaturist as well as a critic, you must draw hideous pictures of him, forgetting that mannerism is individuality, and that a man does not make his own legs. But to-day it is all sunshine. The courageous artist, the thoughtful actor, the conscientious student, has conquered. It would be eccentric, nay clownish, to stand apart amid the general congratula- tions. During this new era in his career not a jour- nal of note but has paid tribute to the actor and the manager, who, on the recent re-opening of the Lyceum, 2^0 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. 1! was welcomed in the double capacity by a brilliant and enthusiastic audience, which in the stalls waved handkerchiefs at him, and in the pit raised hats and cheered with one voice. It was a scene not to be forgotten when Mr. Irving came on, for, apart from his own personal popularity, he had abolished the fee system, he had cushioned the seats of both pit and gallery, he had made each stall a comfortable and elegant chair, and transformed the heavy-looking house into a very temple of art Behind the scenes, as in front, the manager-actor had introduced notable reforms. The dressing-rooms had been decorated and properly furnished, hot and cold water being provided, and everything done to uphold the decencies and promote the comforts of life on the actors' side of the curtain. Until very lately, the conditions under which artists have had to dress in London theatres, as a rule, have been simply disgraceful. Strange to say, the provinces set the example of reform in this direction, but even now, behind the scenes of some of the London theatres is worthy of a back slum in Seven Dials or a Bowery gaff. The Lyceum, Prince of Wales*, Covent Garden, the Gaiety, the Court, and the Hay- market, St. James\ are more or less exceptions to this, and now that managers are in the humour to ^' reform it altogether" we shall soon have no reason to complain, for the managers of London are like sheep — they follow a bellwether pell-mell. Mr. Irving has shown them the HOME AGAIN. 251 way, and in due course things will be pushed to extremes, changing from Seven Dials' rooms to West End boudoirs, from a Bowery gaflf to a Fifth Avenue theatre. The Lyceum scenery for the new version of " Hamlet" is of the highest order of stage art, and it moved on the first night with the regularity of clock-work and with the silence of greased wheels and list shoes. No entr'acte music was set down, no prompter's bell rang, the play went on without warning, the curtain went up and down with a mysterious regularity; and when, after each act, calls were made for the artists they did not come on before the curtain, but received their honours on the scene. The orchestra, under the direction of Mr. Camp* bell Clarke, was out of sight, and the churchyard scene was played to a characteristic organ accompaniment. The interview between Hamlet and the Ghost took place on a wild rock-bound coast, the apparition addressing the prince from the summit of a rock, and af);erwards gradually fading out, as it seemed, among the cliffs, as the russet morning broke over the sea. The court of the king was a fine, solid-looking set ; and the furnishing of the Queen's room was an archaeological triumph, full of well-studied mediaeval detail, hung with tapestry, and suggesting an atmosphere of superstition and religious exercise grimly suitable to the incident of the play which belongs to the scene. The funeral of Ophelia was per- formed at eventide, which is defended by Mr. Frank m< i 1' II li 252 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Marshall, on the ground of the " maimed rights " ac- corded to a supposed suicide ; though this view of the time when the ceremony should take place is not borne out by the text; for neither Hamlet nor Horatio see anything unusual in a funeral taking place at such an hour; but this is a small matter. The scene is laid on the slope of an old fashioned burial-ground, in the solemn twilight, the processional chant of the monkish choir breaking out at intervals to the requiem strains of the organ. The business of Hamlet's leaping into the grave is cut out, and the Prince's exit is made behind the group of mourners, who represent a rare picture, both as to composition and colour, as the curtain goes down. There is something incongruous, yet curiously impressive, in playing the last tragic incidents in a hall of the palace looking upon a pastoral scene of lawn and birch-trees in their first spring leaves. With this brief outline of scenery, which omits several exquisitely painted cloths for front scenes, the reader will have sufficient notes for realising the fact that, without loading the tragedy with gorgeous pictures, Mr. Irving has had the work mounted in a worthy setting, in which the poet and the artist have worked cordially together. When the audience insisted upon the new manager say- ing something at the end of the performance, Mr. Irving in a short address said he had been working all his life to realise that night's Shakespearian performance. London HOME AGAIN. 253 and is agreed that the effort is honourable to the manager- actor, and not unworthy of the great poet's immortal work. « « • • • VIII. And now farewell ! If these few papers shall, in ever so small a degree, help to strengthen the friendly ties of America and England I shall consider them " a good- conduct notch" on my record of usefulness. This is not the sort of work that always **pays" an author. I do not know that it enhances his reputation. I do not myself think it a good book, inasmuch as I feel that the matter falls short of the subject. There is little the critic can say against it that I cannot endorse, except he denounce the good intention, except he dispute the duty of ever^ Englishman and every American who wields a pen to promote the brotherhood of America and England ; except he favour the wretched habit of intolerance of national peculiarities, the poor thin jealousies, that make men on both sides of the Atlantic traduce each other and try to maintain that wall of caste and hatred which King George erected between us, and which the electric cable and the Philadelphia Exhibition should have scattered to the four winds of heaven. I appeal to our common language, to the old English songs which are the lullaby of cradled infancy in both countries, and the joyous outpourings of its manhood; appeal to our 254 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. ;m! common interest in the works of Shakespeare and Long- fellow and all the other great Anglo-Saxon writers ; I appeal to the mutual laughter that has banished sorrow at many a lonely hearth over the humour of Ward and Twain ; I appeal to the mutual tears that have fallen on the story of " The Luck of Soaring Camp " and the childish troubles of Tiny Tim and Little Nell ; I appeal to the natural love of freedom and justice for which men have laid down their lives on both sides of the Atlantic ; I appeal to all that is good and true and noble in the character and deeds and aspirations of th^ two great English-speaking peoples, for the exercise of mutual forbearance one with the other. If ever the time should come when these two nations can act together as two great men and brothers bent on the advancement of human happiness all over the world, then you may see the end of war and the millennium of peace; for England and America, allied heart and soul in the unselfish duty of controlling the destiny of the world in the interest of the peace and love and truth of the Christian dispensation, could dictate to the universe a policy of honour and righteousness, a policy of letting every man have his own, a policy of right being might, a policy in which Justice should take the place of Diplo- macy, , id in which there should be no room for Tyranny, and therefore none for insurrection, rebellion, the lash, the knout, the gallowc. and Siberia. <* Utopia !" exclaims HOME AGAIN. 255 Ithe ims the cynic. *' A dream I " says the more pitiful student of history. Well, let us dream, let us erect our castles, let us imagine on earth something of the paradise we are promised in the skies. There is no harm in dreaming if our dreams are good, and we can do ever so little towards bringing them to pass. In every American heart that takes count of the historic past and finds there an ancestry of fame and glory there is a little comer sacred to England, a little spot wherein is cherished a vague instinct of undulating meadows, blooming hedgerows, green lanes, moss-grown graveyards, ancient churches, and village chimes. There is in the heart of every Englishman a sentiment of brotherly affection for America, a sense of family pride in her progress and prosperity, a feeling of wonder at her vastness, her mighty rivers, her rolling prairies, her storm-tossed lakes, and her multitudinous resources. That corner in the American heart is our cousins' Westminster Abbey of dead heroes and living history, his legacy of romance dating back to the ages before and after the sailing of the Mayflower; while his own New World, with its great unoccupied spaces, is the land that fills the thought and aspirations of thousands who, toiling in the shadow and in the rain for the crust which they eat in the criminal atmosphere of poverty, look forward with the pathos of a doubtful hope to the promise of golden treasures in the great mining States of t^ie Republic and to the 256 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. sunshine of Western harvest fields. There are more feelings in common between England and America than between any other two nations; they have each more reciprocal advantages to offer to the other; they have the American admiral's reason that *' blood is thicker than water " for mutual fraternisation, for mutual con- fidence and trust; and the closer and more unitedl}' they march on together in the van of Peace, contesting, none the less for their friendship, in an active rivahy of trade and commerce, of science and art, so much the better will it be for themselves, so much the better for the world at large. FIN I IS. Westminater : Printed by J. B. Nichols and Sons, 36, FwUament Street f ^ V. re more ica than zh more ey have thicker iial con- ily they ig, none [)f trade 3 better for the eet