JOHN HABBERTON. OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE OK, GREAT NATIONAL QUESTIONS AS VIEWED BY THE MOST PROMINENT EDITORS AND CORROBORATED BY EMINENT MEN OF OUR COUNTRY, INCLUDING PRESIDENT HARRISON, CARDINAL GIBBONS, EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND, BISHOP POTTER, SENATOR SHERMAN, T. V. POWDERIY, JUDGE THURMAN, GK.\ KllAL SCHGFIELD, BISHOP FOSS, ADMIRAL PORTER, AND SCORES OF OTHERS, CONCERNING MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE, IMMIGRATION. LABOR AND CAPrM, RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE FARMER WOMAN'S WORK. THE RUM POWER. THE NATIONAL DEFENCES, ETC. COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY JOHN HABBERTON, AUTHOR OF "A LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON," ETC., AND liUITOR OF "THE SELECT BRITISH ESSAYISTS." ILLUSTRATED BY ROCKWOOD, THE CELEBRATED PHOTOGRAPHER, UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK PHILADELPHIA AND ST. LOUIS : JOHN Y. HUBER COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. 1890 Copyrighted by MlLLER-MEGEE COMPANY, 1880. NOTB. IN a government where responsibility rests upon every citizen for the right use of his ballot^ and where " free fnstitutions " may be seriously affected by the abuse or misuse of the franchise, or by " perverted " public sentiment, it is exceed- ingly important that the soundest information upon the conditions and prospects of our country, and the tendencies of our Government, be dis- seminated as widely as possible among the people. The authenticity and value of these editorial utterances, and the special and cordial approval of this volume by many of our most eminent men, in both Church and State, are clearly indi- cated in the author's preface. Distinguished as author and journalist, Mr. Habberton is eminently fitted for the task he has here undertaken. His high position, long main- tained, upon the editorial staff of the New York Herald, has enabled him to collect the opinions 2 NOTE. of those best qualified to judge of the great na- tional questions now confronting our Government for solution, and appealing to our people for pa- triotic thought. These we submit as ample reasons for com- mending to the public the following pages. THE PUBLISHERS. It is also worthy of note that the excellent portraits in this volume are from Rockwood, of New York, whose reputation for superior work is national. PREFACE. MOST of the opinions recorded in this book are those of many wide-awake editors of national prominence and from different parts of the country. They have been strung together as if spoken by a single individual. Nearly all were spoken not written, and are specially selected for this reason. Men do not always talk better than they write, but they generally express themselves more forcibly in speech than with the pen, for in writing a man hesitates to make a strong statement unless he has time and space to back it up with arguments or statistics. Editors are no more intelligent than thou- sands of other men, but their bread and butter, beside their reputation, depend upon their close study of all subjects of general interest ; so, like other men, they are peculiarly worth listening to on their own special departments of thought. (3) 4 PREFACE. On topics distinctly political and partisan, editors differ violently in print and often in spirit, but on most of the subjects touched in this book they are so well agreed that many of my chap- ters are close reports, from memory, of chats between live editors of different papers, after office hours, over the dinner-table, or during "vacation larks." No names are given, for many of the gentlemen quoted have talked of perpetrating books of their own on one or other of these subjects, and will do themselves fuller justice, over their own names, than a few quota- tions can amount to. Some of the opinions attributed to distinguished public men are quoted from memory or from matter already published, but many have been given the compiler for special use in this volume and in sympathy with the views expressed in the chapters in which the opinions appear. An immense amount of glorification of our country and its near future appear in Fourth of July orations, Congressional speeches, and politi- cal harangues, yet all of it combined does not equal the full measure of our resources and PREFACE. possibilities. But the greater the power, pos- sessions, and influence, the greater the responsi- bilities. It does not seem, therefore, that a vol- ume on the lines I have followed needs explana- tion or apology for its appearance. The book is not " literary ; " it does not pretend to be. It is merely a lot of condensed sense for the people, who, the author believes, like that sort of thing, and can stand a great deal of it. JOHN HABBERTON. NEW YORK, January, 1889. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. Marriage Customs in the United States Shiploads of women dis- posed of as wives to the earlier Virginia Planters The Marriage Relation should be closely guarded Divorced people, have they moral right to remarry ? A rich man and a stupid wife Drift- ing apart Duty of the Church Views of a happy wife Novels, love and marriage " Beauty and the Beast " An insulting im- putation Is it the " best match ? " Marriage blunders . . 17 CHAPTER II. FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE Changes of sentiment American cemeteries Improvident marriage Infants fed to the sacred beasts in India The Druids in Ancient Britain " The Lord will provide " The Greatest Healer of human ills Restraints in the Public Schools Opinions of a noted New York physician Touching incidents " The simple annals of the poor'" Vicious children Improvident marriage and the modern Moloch . . . . . . . . -3 CHAPTER III. THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. Marriage not a failure Rev. David Swing's caustic comment Views of Rabbi Silverman Heartlessness of Divorce Court proceedings -Divorced persons debarred by the Queen of England Sufler ings of the children " Vice is a monster of such hideous mien " Shall we have a Constitutional Amendment restricting divorce ? Views of Bishop Foss and Bishop Whittaker Position of the Catholic Church and of the Hebrews " Church union cannot be combated " " Burn the bridges " 39 (7) 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. Encumbered with mortgage Energy of the farmer Lack of capital Labor The farmer's children and city life " The borrower is servant to the lender" The census valuation of farm lands Hiram Sibley, the millionaire farmer Twelve Vermont farms The Western farmer and the railroads Co-operative stores " Land-poor " Government aid for the farmers . . . .51 CHAPTER V. THE RUM POWER. Harm done by the liquor traffic Views of Bishop Warren, of the Methodist Church Miss Frances Willard's views " Petroleum" Nasby Rum in politics Channing't; aphorism Rev. Theodore Cuyler's summary of statistics Causes of drunkenness Ways to reclaim the unfortunates Control the demon by law Public opinion Bishop Foss' reply Restrictive measures . . .67 CHAPTER VI. FOR WOMAN'S SAKE. Suffering woman Whittier's sympathy " The rolling death of drunkenness" A delicate subject The fabled lion led by the fairy American reverence for woman Let them try it . .82 CHAPTER VII. TEMPERANCE LIES AND TEMPERANCE FACTS. Curse of rum " Machine " reformers Rev. Dr. Cuyler's proposi- tion " Does your church live up to it?" " Boys, we are all wrong " Robert Burns' aphorism A New York rough His total abstinence He arraigns the police Buy the drunkard back to respectability The reformation of John B. Gough A touching incident A common drunkard: an wwcommon re- former .87 CHAPTER VIII. NATIONAL DEFENCE. Our harbors useless Caught napping by England Troops and the Indians General Sheridan's last report General Sherman's pro- tests Congressional inactivity Admiral Porter hammering at CONTENTS. 9 Congress A blast from the late Samuel J. Tilden Desertions from the army Statistics from General Schofield's report Fron- tier life for the soldier Major Stunner's plan . . . .103 CHAPTER IX. OUR ENEMIES. American bravery and foresight England a pauper nation Her national debt can never be paid Her immense class of dissatisfied people Germany poor France the richest of European nations Factional fighting the bane of the French Republic China Tar- tars and the Russian Empire The big ironclad of the Italian navy Our relations with Canada, Mexico and the South Amer- ican nations A British fleet and our national capital " We are tremendous when aroused " The danger of our defenceless con- dition Warnings from the Navy and War Departments Too economical to salute the national flag Recent moves to improve our navy Will Congress continue this important work? . .118 CHAPTER X. LABOR. Laboring men Their mistakes and their grievances Labor sure to be imposed upon Driving a sharp bargain Low wages resulting from competition A laborer in chains recently brought for sale into the market-place of a New England town But the people rise in their wrath Does practical slavery exist in the United States? Coal miners'and factory hands compared with the consis- lados of South America The store system of credits Resulting evils to the laborers . 132 CHAPTER XI. SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. The importance of being a " full-handed workman " Successful mechanics know more than one branch of business This quality developed in new countries Votes of laborers controlled by cor- porations A curious experience in the West . . . .150 CHAPTER XII. ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. The principle of equality We have revised it in one particular The feeling can't be kept down A bad start doesn't always pre- vent a good finish No end to our aspirations The American boy gets there Public life open to all Not conceited Merely self-dependent A prominent example The spirit not dying out . 165 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. Any virtue may become a vice Sense of fitness not enough con- sidered Everybody thinks himself fit to be President The rush for office Spending faster than earning The rage for dress and display Induces rash speculation The gift of gab Competition will slowly help us out of the trouble 179 CHAPTER XIV. IMMIGRATION. America is a home Not an asylum Liberty is not license No paupers need apply Nor any contract laborers Skilled labor welcome, if it comes to stay Immigrant farmers will do us good Too much hurry in granting citizenship Foreign faction fights must not be kept up here Transplanted stock improves rapidly . 194 CHAPTER XV. ANNEXATION. We don't want the earth We need more neighbors Not more chil- dren Non-assimilative races would weaken us The Old World's experience at land-grabbing Let Canada alone till she wants us Likewise Mexico We have enough discordant interests now We don't want to pay other nations' debts . . . . .211 CHAPTER XVI. THE COLORED MAN. He is a valuable element The example of the North He is a hard worker He can learn, will learn, and does learn General Arm-, strong's testimony What Virginians say A little leaven leaven- eth the whole lump He does not fear his white neighbors at the South Neither does he hate them Hands off, and give him time .... ....... 22 ^ CHAPTER XVII. THE INDIAN. He has stopped fighting Let us stop robbing him The Indian will work He has plenty of brains Capacity for education abun- dantly proved Records of the experiment at Hnmpton He knows a good thing when he sees it The beneficent effects of the Dawes bill Even the Apaches have worked as good as white men . ........... 252 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER XVIII. THE PRESS. The editor is the nation's schoolmaster Also the most trusty advo- cate of the people's rights He brings the people together in spirit and purpose Always ahead of Congress and the govern- ment Rapid improvement of the newspaper Independence in journalism Trial by newspaper 266 CHAPTER XIX. THE SCHOOL-ROOM. Boys and girls who are to be men and women The schools are be- hind the times Too much fuss and too little gain Discipline which costs too much Heads stuffed, but hands and hearts neglected Faults of teaching About faculties benumbed by rou- tine work What has been done can be done The country boy ahead 277 CHAPTER XX. THE POLITICIAN. The great national nuisance Never a statesman Politics for reve- nue only Worse than a traitor Often a good fellow Always a corrupting influence Ways that are dark Every man's hand should be against him Our liberties in danger from him Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty . 298 CHAPTER XXI. RAILROADS. Rights and wrongs of the great transportation corporations What they have done for the country and what the country has done for them Era of construction closed and an era of restriction and regulation begun Why railroad officials become millionaires Watering stock A curious question which will be raised one of these days 310 CHAPTER XXII' WALL STREET. A bad school for youth The "honor" of the street and its limita- tions "Kings of the street "an extinct race Why men are ruined Gould and Gouldism A good name wins even in Wall street Drexel, Morgan & Co.'s views The speculative spirit leads to gambling The " fever of hell " How Wall street men think and how they live ........ 334 12 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIII. TRUSTS. Origin of trusts How they operate to crush out competitors What is said in their defence They advance prices to the consumer How they must be dealt with Legal aspect of trusts Why the law should control them 354 CHAPTER XXIV. SPECULATION PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. Moderate speculation useful in providing a permanent market for buyers and sellers It has contributed to the development of the country Much of so-called current speculation is merely gam- bling The distinction Changes in character and methods of speculation The crime of " cornering " the necessaries of life Nemesis that pursues " cornerers " Jim Keene's fate Old Hutch's tactics . 374 CHAPTER XXV. BANKS AND BANKING. New York no longer the sole dictator in the money market Why Western business men are now independent of metropolitan money-lenders The increase of "reserve cities" Banking methods to dodge the laws How unscrupulous bank directors get rich Why sa many cashiers go to Canada and how to stop them Noted living bankers . 392 CHAPTER XXVI. OUR CITIES. Cities are necessaiy evils But greatly to be avoided City life is dangerous to most persons Unnatural influences are inevitable Hard on the purse and hard on the heart Poverty's last refuge The home of the thief The touch of nature lost Temptations innumerable Restraints few No place for country boys and girls City forms of government must change THE DARKER SIDE The sorrows of the city poor Friendless and alone Miserable homes Health and morals menaced All depends on one life Chances and misfortunes Sickness and death The story of the Ganges paralleled The majority are industrious An army of heroes Religion and rum their only comforts Child work and child ruin Benevolence wearied and despairing .... 418 CONTENTS. 13 CHAPTER XXVII. RELIGION. Religion is in no danger The letter suffers but the spirit grows Essentials were never more prominent The tree is judged by its fruit Proselyting has gone out of date Denominations have ceased to fight A life as well as a faith 446 CHAPTER XXVIII. CHURCH WORK. The proof of sincerity There is plenty of it The live churches are those that work A net that hurts no fish Laborare est orare The harvest great and laborers numerous Some specimen efforts and workers The field is the world 454 CHAPTER XXIX. RECREATION. We haven't enough of it What we have is not good enough Few outdoor sports Theatres, circuses and shows Yacht and boat races Base ball Social recreations At full drive or not at all No holidays The principal cause of Sabbath-breaking Humor in demand More money for amusement than anything else . 473 CHAPTER XXX. THE AMERICAN PHYSIQUE. It is in danger Women are not what they should be Our men less so Numerous natural causes for the change A famous athlete on the situation Too much nerve Too little blood and muscle Everybody wants to be indoors The change can be stopped Some practical suggestions 483 CHAPTER XXXI. WOMAN AND HER WORK. One " woman's right " secured She has a chance almost everywhere The liberation of man Woman's wits sharpen quickly Advan- tages over male workers Woman need not marry for a home The tables turned Some effects upon society Never enslaved unless stupid The " Song of the Shirt" The coming generation 489 CHAPTER XXXII. THE KITCHEN. " The blood is the life " ft ought to be better Plenty of material 14 CONTENTS. for enriching it Eat to live Brain needs blood We need more of both Fewer cooks than preachers A bad place to save money Yet we waste as much as we eat Bad bread the unpardonable sin Too little variety Make the dining-room attractive . . 503 CHAPTER XXXIII. OUR SERVANTS. The worst servants in the world No proper source of supply All the good ones marry Most of the mistresses die No one knows how to train them Old-fashioned " help " A leaf from the Old World's book Our young women too " uppish " Try man's plan A possible check to extravagance The only way out . .516 CHAPTER XXXIV. OUR LITERATURE. A nation of readers Books to be found everywhere The Sunday- School library Chautauqua's great work The American author is a busy man Good books make their way, sooner or later Abler men should go into authorship Our literature making its way abroad American writers' characteristics Our literature is clean, earnest and hopeful 1,29 CHAPTER XXXV. OUR THEATRES. The theatre has come to stay What are we going to do about it? We must make the best of it by making the theatre decent People demand entertainment Good plays and bad Managers do not deserve all the blame Shows will be exactly as their patrons want them No need for fear of the stage, if the better classes will do their duty 545 CHAPTER XXXVI. AMERICAN HUMOR. The salt that will save us A nation of jokers Our Puritan and cavalier ancestors were fond of fun-r-President Lincoln's jokes Humor in the pulpit Fun in the newspapers Prentice Mark Twain NasbyNye and Riley Miles O'Reilley " Uncle Remus" John Hay "Bob" Burdetle All healthy fun No malignity in our jokes The best-natured people alive . . . 560 CONTENTS. 15 CHAPTER XXXVII. THE HIGHER EDUCATION. A land full of colleges How these institutions began to exist Tributes to American regard for intelligence and education Something better needed No lack of money Views of Presidents Dwight of Yale, Eliot of Harvard, McCosh of Princeton, White of Cornell, Bartlett of Dartmouth, and Gilman of Johns Hopkins Bishop Potter on the place of the scholar in America . . -579 CHAPTER XXXVIII. CULTURE. A much-abused word, but a good one What culture is, and what it is not We can't have too much of the genuine article Culture' doesn't mean merely good taste in bric-a-brac Culture means character, as far as the culture goes It does not depend upon a man's clothes, or the house he lives in Some notable instances Culture's short-comings " Despise not the day of small things " . 610 CHAPTER XXXIX. OUR GREAT CONCERN. Our country first and foremost No sectional differences No foreign interests or entanglements The people first, the party afterward Loyalty to party means disloyalty to the republic Meddlers must be suppressed All in the family One for all and all for one E Pluribus Unum 624. LIST OF PORTRAITS. THE AUTHOR . . . frontispiece. BISHOP FOSS . facing 50 MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD . . 68 GENERAL SCHOFIELD . . . IO6 EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND . . 140 P. M. ARTHUR ... I5O BISHOP POTTER . . . . IQO PRESIDENT HARRISON . . 242 GENERAL S. C. ARMSTRONG . . 246 JUDGE T. M. COOLEY ... 324 CORNELIUS VANDERBILT . . . 332 INSPECTOR BYRNE . . . 444 REV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE . . 446 REV. RUSSELL H. CONWELL . . 454 REV. WAYLAND HOYT . . . 456 REV. GEORGE RAINSFORD . 458 CARDINAL GIBBONS . . . 464 WILLIAM BLAIKIE . . . 486 EDWIN BOOTH . . . . 550 LAWRENCE BARRETT . . . 556 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY . . 5/O BILL NYE .... 57O- PRESIDENT ELIOT . . . 582 PRESIDENT DWIGHT . . . 5QO T. V. POWDERLY " 636 (16) CHAPTER I. SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. THERE ought to be a radical change in mar- riage customs in the United States, if we would avoid a terrible deterioration of -social life. In the early days of our country, when most of the inhabitants were representatives of the classes which have supplied populations for all new countries, marriage, as among the lower order of peasantry everywhere else in the world, and among the savages besides, was a mere mat- ing of male and female. Women were brought over by shiploads to be disposed of, as wives, to the earlier Virginia planters ; no stories have come down to us of cruelties or mismatings, yet the transactions were as plainly a matter of pur- chase and sale as any in the subsequent trade in black slaves. The rapid settlement of the country, the improvement in civilization, which has come through the multiplication of large villages and of cities, the general facilities for obtaining edu- cation, such as exist in no other country, have 2 (17) 18 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. made ours the land above all others in which generations may rise rapidly from the social posi- tion of their ancestors. Consequently there is no part of the world in which the marriage relation should be so closely guarded as here. Does this seem over particular, in this land of freedom and era of emancipation from narrow views ? Then look carefully over a list of the richest and most influential men who have come to the front within the past few years, particu- larly in the newer States ; regard their marital relations this will do no harm to any of them who are respectable and consider the nature of the influence which these people exert upon society around them. The subject is not easy or pleasant to discuss, but, fortunately, there are not many people who cannot discuss it for them- selves. To expect to bring about the desired change by religious means, which are the first to sug- gest themselves either to the Christian or the philosopher, is impossible. However desirable it may be our political system has made it impossible for us as a body of people to go back to the customs of a period which was superior to ours in regard to the sanctity of marriage relations. However much these relations may be regarded as sac raments by some, and as specially sanctified by others, the making of the marriage relation a matter of mere civil contract has become so gen- SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. 19 erally a fact in law that it is impossible any longer to expect the majority of people to abide by the precedents and customs of different churches. The fact is, the churches don't do it themselves. Divorced people who have no moral right to re- marry are continually taking new partners and ministers are performing the ceremony. The danger, aside from easy divorce, of which more anon, is in the probable change of social condition of the contracting parties. Men and women, mating in their very early years, as is the custom in all small villages and agricultural districts, frequently find themselves, by some happy accident, raised to a higher degree of finan- cial standing than they had expected, and in the newer portions of the country, which contain a large majority of our population, such change of material condition carries social importance and influence with it. As would be the case any- where else in the world, the change of condition shows itself differently in man and woman. The man of means quickly finds himself a man of mark among his fellows, and rapidly receives a vast amount of that valuable education which comes from what some philosopher has called " the attrition of minds." His wife, relieved of the drudgery which is almost inseparable from pov- erty, does not follow her husband intellectually, unless such is her natural bent. She consequently devotes her leisure and improved material condi- 20 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tion to luxury and to show. From this difference of conditions in a family which was once united can be found the basis of many thousands of divorce suits. You take exception to the expression "intel- lectual?" You are wrong. I know it is the fash- ion to regard literature, law, theology and other so-called learned professions as sole possessors of the world's intellect, but this is all nonsense. It requires just as much intellect intellect of just as high order to put a railroad through a new country, or to invent a new threshing machine, or to manage a turbulent town-meeting, or to work a bill through the Legislature, as to write a poem, sermon, or novel, or to plead a case in court. Edison and Ericsson are as much men of intellect as Longfellow or Lowell ; the differ- ence in their lives is one of taste and detail not of brain and intellectual endeavor. The posi- tion in which money places a man anywhere, ex- cept in the large cities and it isn't safe to except these much compels him to use his intellect a great deal, and to sharpen it frequently Unless his wife is his partner in every sense of the word, she is going to be left behind. That is not the worst of it ; there are plenty of bright women lying in wait for the man who has plenty of money and a stupid wife. Among those not yet married the same danger is ever apparent. Men have always been guided SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. 21 more by impulse than reason in the selection of their mates, and to this day philosophers often marry fools. Consequently it is not surprising that young men of strong natural intelligence and great energy, who nevertheless have not yet received their fair start in life or developed their powers to the uttermost, select their brides through some mere fancy or caprice, which might never lead to bad results were their condition in life always to remain as it was in the beginning. But the reports of hundreds of divorce cases, which have amused the public to some extent, disgusted it still more, and horrified the thinking portion, show that alleged incompatibilities are generally the results of changes of condition, which have caused husband and wife to drift apart for reasons not at all related to the conjugal state. It would be natural to suppose that the churches would give the subject special attention, the world's morality being more dependent upon proper marriage than all other influences com- bined, religion itself not excepted. Well, the church does something in this direction. It does a great deal, but not one-thousandth part of what is necessary. A pastor of no matter what de- nomination gladly welcomes the opportunity, which, nevertheless, is seldom made by himself, to urge upon young people the seriousness of the marriage relation, the necessity of affection, con- 22 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. stancy and forbearance, and to show them to the best of his ability glowing pictures of the final results of conjugal faithfulness. But constant warnings, such as are given against a great many sins of less serious influence upon the world, are seldom heard in churches. Homilies on the sub- ject of marriage are ordered by some denomina- tions to be delivered once in three months. If they were heard once in three days their injunc- tions would be none too frequent for the necessi- ties of the great mass of people who are most interested in the marriage relation, or, at least, most curious about it. A happy wife, happy during and after half a lifetime spent in wedlock which did not escape the usual number of family troubles and sorrows, said once to me that the trouble with marriage was that conjugal impulse and conjugal sense were the scarcest faculties of the feminine nature. I would not dare quote this if it were not said by a woman instead of a man. Desiring at times to raise expectant brides to the highest sense of their coming responsibilities and privileges, but reluctant to put her own heart upon her sleeve, she tried to find something in print to give them by way of counsel and admonition, but she did not succeed. Novels about love and marriage can be found by the thousands. How many of them are of any value at all for purposes of in- struction and forewarning ? I leave the answer SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. 23 to women who most read novels. From those who are mothers I have never been able to obtain the names of a half dozen. There seems to be snch a thing as inheritance by sex. Woman was for thousands of years the slave or the plaything of man, and she is uncon- sciously but terribly avenging herself for the wrongs done her by the ruder sex. The best she could hope for in earlier days, the best that many of her sex now dare hope for, is home, protection and kind treatment. The kindness may be that the man shows to his horse or his dog, perhaps to his friend, but the fact that the woman is to be legally his equal, the appreciation of this, is as rare as the resolve of the woman herself to make herself equal to the position. What is the result ? Why, girls, sweet girls, girls whom good men regard as only a little lower than the angels, often marry for causes which should not justify any but the commonest women in marrying at all. A girl whom all of us adore for her goodness, delicacy and sweetness, sud- denly appalls us some day by accepting as her husband some gross fellow who has nothing but his pocket-book to recommend him. Were she to attach herself to him without marriage vows and ceremony, although perhaps with absolute honesty of devotion and singleness of purpose, the world would be horrified. Yet where is the difference as regards her own life ? Many other 24 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. women know, if she does not, that no elaborate- ness of ceremony or solemnity can ever make a perfect marriage between a woman and a boor. Yet the old story of " Beauty and the Beast" is repeated every day a thousand times, except that the fairy touch which transformed the beast into a gentleman never occurs nowadays except in novels. There is prevalent a stupid notion, born of vul- gar natures, too vulgar to understand that the Almighty never endowed humanity with any quality which had not a noble purpose, that it is not safe to let young people know or think any- thing about the realities of marriage. People allude at once to fixed passion as if the only passion possible to the marriage state were physi- cal, and as if the companionship, sympathy, de- votion, tenderness and continuity of a friendship solemnly pledged for life, a friendship of a char- acter that children instinctively long for and youths desire more earnestly than all things else combined, never entered into the thoughts of young people. This is an insulting imputation upon your children and mine and of every other man's beside. Strong sense of duty may do much to correct the ruinous notion of young women regarding marriage, but it is not enough in itself. Women of strong sense of duty are probably commoner than men with the same desirable qualification. SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. 25 Yet all of us know of men who have strayed from married mates who were pure, faithful, and duti- ful well, everything that a conscientious servant could be. But, if a man's wife is no more to him than a first-class servant, she cannot prevent him yielding to temptation if he is so disposed. No man worthy of the name marries for the sake of obtaining a servant. It is far more convenient, besides infinitely cheaper, to obtain servants and housekeepers through the ordinary channels. Religion is the strongest influence for good that humanity knows, but religion alone cannot make a perfect wife of a well-meaning woman. There is no condition of life in which one virtue can be successfully substituted for another, and no amount of prayer and faith can make a good wife of a good woman without distinct conjugal impulse and purpose. Neither can the maternal instinct, an honest impulse which of itself has made wives of many good women, who otherwise never would have married at all. To be the mother of a man's children should and may entitle a woman to high respect, but many Mormons, who heartily respect their wives, do not hesitate to seek companionship of other women. A womar needs the conjugal instinct to make a good wife of herself and a happy and faithful man of her husband. If it is not in her she should acquire it before giving her hand and life 26 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. to any man. The better the man, the more per- sistently should she hesitate before marrying without this requisite quality. The mother who does not inculcate the necessity of this impulse and quality is more remiss of her duty than if she left her children's stockings undarned and their dinners uncooked. As nearly all affection concerns itself with the relations of the sexes, and particularly with what is alleged to be love, it is commonly assumed that young women are sufficiently instructed through desultory reading on what is frequently called the grand passion. This appellation, " grand passion," truly describes what the novelists usually give us as love, and is no more education or preparation of the young person contemplat- ing marriage than the outside of a lot of school- books would be to a student desiring to graduate at a college. The novelist prudently ends his story where marriage begins. Up to that time everything is very plain sailing for both man and woman, but there, where the necessity for knowledge begins, the novelist discreetly ends his tale. How can he do more ? Were he to make his story as it should be, in the light of human experience, it is doubtful whether young men and young women would read it at all. Is all the blame of marriage failures to be at- tributed to women? By no means. The men are terribly faulty creatures, but it is the genera? SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. 27 opinion that, through some reason or collection of reasons, the conjugal instinct in man is more fully developed than in woman. Most of us know of men not very good, some of them not good at all, who become model husbands from the time of marriage. How many know of wild women, of careless girls, of whom the same could be said ? Whether this is due to the invisible con- nection between the material and the spiritual; whether woman's nature is kept in an embryonic state to the verge of deterioration by the modern custom of bringing up girls in-doors, denying them physical exercise, separating them from as- sociations with their brothers, to say nothing of other members of the ruder sex ; whether the increasing prosperity of the world, which makes it no longer necessary that the entire interests of the family, including some of the confidences between husband and wife, should be heard by children as once they were, the fact certainly is that the opinion which the young girl at the present day has of matrimony is one of the most appallingly inaccurate notions that can be en- countered in conversation anywhere. Then how is the desired change to be brought about ? Only through public sentiment, in which the churches ought to take the lead. Marriage by accident, which is the common method, should be frowned upon and discouraged, no matter how romantic or " cunning " the preliminaries may 28 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. seem. Everybody knows that men never enter into a business partnership, which may be termi- nated at any time, without some sense of the fitness and compatibility of the contracting parties. Were they to fail in this respect, all of their friends would protest, and all of their acquaintances would make fun of them. Both parties would suffer in business reputation by such a blunder. It should be the same, though far more earnestly, regarding the life-partnership that is formed at a wedding. All relatives of the contracting parties have at least one interest at stake which justifies them in protesting against a blunder I allude to family reputation. Then aren't young, tender, loving hearts to be allowed to choose for themselves ? Nonsense ! How much of love, in the true meaning of the word, is to be found in the great majority of marriages ? If men, as a class, loved their sweethearts as much as they loved their dogs, there would be less ground for complaint ; but men seldom tire of their dogs ; who is there that does not know men who tire of their wives ? Am I harping again upon woman's failure to remain dear to her husband ? No ; but I do say that the girl who makes the " best match," as the saying is, and by marrying money marries above her station, is accepting more than she may after- ward be able to live up to. Marriages should be between equals persons who are competent to SOCIETY'S FOUNDATION-STONE. 29 support one another in any and every condition to which their material life can ever lead them. As for men, the greatest sinners, though not the greatest sufferers, by marriage blunders, the man who marries except with the idea of making his wife his closest companion, should be regarded by all his acquaintances a deliberate scoundrel. A chance passion is no excuse for marriage ; neither is a condescending pity. The man who marries merely for the sake of getting a permanent cook, housekeeper or plaything, is equally a scoundrel, and deserves more earnest and general execration than if he entered into familiar relations with a woman without the for- mality of marriage. The whole community should be on guard against man or woman who makes any less of marriage ties than the highest honor demands. Some people whose conjugal relations are ir- regular, are irreproachable otherwise, do you say ? Yes ; but you can say as much about some thieves and forgers ; except for their one fault they are good fellows. The moral influence upon the community of an unfaithful or careless hus- band or wife is worse than that of a common criminal, for there is no fixed passion in human nature that causes people's minds to dwell upon theft or forgery or murder, and to make excuses for the persons who are guilty of them. CHAPTER II. FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE. CHANGES of sentiment which may be necessary to the improvement of the marriage state are so largely mental and spiritual that it is useless to invoke the assistance of the law in their behalf. But there is one step that might be taken by legislation, in the direction of reform, and that is, to brand as a criminal any one who marries with- out proper assurance of support for his probable family. The love, so called, which brings young people together in life-long bonds is generally in its be- ginning a passing fancy which casts reason to the winds ; consequently, a full half of the occupants of American cemeteries and probably those of all other countries are children who should never have been born children who would not have died had their parents been from the first intelli- gently and financially able to have them properly cared for. Nearly all,, of the terrible aggregate of suffering in large cities which charitable and benevolent persons are called upon to relieve is due to improvident marriage ; first or last, it may (30) FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE. 31 be traced to this source. Human beings have no right to mate like beasts in this day and age, even if a church can be found which will solemnize the union. No one will deny that the parents of children imperfectly fed and cared for suffer in- tensely over the troubles of the unfortunates, but what good is that to the little wretches for whose existence they are responsible human beings who through no will or purpose of their own have been brought into the world only to suffer for the heedlessness of others ? The world now regards human sacrifice with horror. Byes stream with tears over the stories of infants fed to sacred beasts or serpents in India, of the wicker figures filled with children who were burned in ancient Britain by the Druids, but all the savage priests of England's mest savage period did not sacrifice as many children as suffer and die in a year in one large city suffer and die literally as sacrifices for the sins of their parents. " The Lord will provide." Yes, the man who has not seen startling illustrations of this promise must have gone through the world with his eyes blinded. Even the old pagans used to admit that occasionally the gods cared for those who were unable to care for themselves. But that the Lord sometimes performs a miracle is no sign that hu- manity should throw common sense and the prov- ident virtues to the winds. The greatest healer of human ills whom history records was Jesus. 32 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. who went about healing the sick, but even He did not extend His beneficent influence upon living humanity beyond a tiny portion of a section of one of the great subdivisions of the world, and He gave but three years to the work, which was only incidental to his spiritual mission. The providence of God was not designed as a substi- tute for the improvidence of man. No one will be quicker to admit this than the best Christian. Still less was it designed to encourage the sel- fishness and self-gratifying instincts of man or woman. A " grand passion" should be no excuse in law or morals for the bringing of helpless creatures into existence. If love were nothing but pas- sion, the lower animals would be the noblest lovers in the world. If a grand passion is not to be controlled at any stage of its career, or if it is to disregard its material consequences, then hu- man beings are not better than the beasts. They are worse, for the latter have no higher sentiments to restrain them and therefore are not responsible. Some years ago the readers of the Century magazine were convulsed by a grave essay of Frank Stockton on the proper education of par- ents, and paragraphs of it were quoted in society, with numberless witty comments and with nu- merous compliments to the author for his brill- iancy in turning things topsy-turvy. But was there so much nonsense in it after all ? Whc is FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE. 33 the more responsible, the child of the parent, or the parent of the child ? Certainly the parent is the only person to blame for the child's existence. Were any one to conceive and bring before the public a business enterprise of as lasting dura- tion as the average human life, he would be held to strict accountability by public sentiment and by the law for the proper care of his interest, and for the effects which his action might have upon the community. But there seems a general im- pression that the child is the result of accident rather than design, and is to be ignored, and re- sponsibility for him is to be got rid of, somewhat after the manner of accidents in general. He exists ; he must be endured ; indeed, he is some- times endurable. But when his necessities con- flict with the desires and inclinations of his par- ents, it is not adult selfishness that suffers as a rule, but the rights and true interests of the child. The public schools of our large cities are full of children who are sent there for the sole pur- pose of getting them out of the house. This would be a cruel thing to say had it not already been said by hundreds of thousands of mothers. The ordinary restraints of school-life would be unendurable to the majority of adults, but how many protests against these restraints, against their duration and their frequent severity, are heard from parents in any station of life ? A 34 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. noted physician of New York, who is a specialist in diseases of the spinal column, insists that a great number of the cases that have been brought to him for treatment, and which he has found in charity hospitals of one sort or other, are the re- sult of school-room discipline, the result of the compulsion of sitting upright for hours at a time. For what reason ? Oh, the child was a nuisance at home and was sent to school that the mother might be rid of it for a few hours per day. That some outside assistance in the care of children is absolutely necessary in the case of some women who are compelled to help in eking out the family subsistence by leaving their homes to work dur- ing the day is undeniable, but this is merely an- other proof of the impropriety of hasty mar- riages marriages which were made without proper provision for their results. Schools are not the only places in which city children spend a great deal of time outside of their homes. They can be found by thousands in the streets, in the parks, in the gutters, and elsewhere, absolutely out of home control, or good influence of any kind, too small to deserve the attention of the police, except when seriously in- jured by some accident. They are as uncon- trolled in their movements as any lot of little savages on the Western plains. One can hear as bad language, as many vile passions expressed, as much malignant anger voiced, by children in FOR THK CHILDREN'S SAKE. 35 the streets as by the lowest grades of humanity that congregate in bar-rooms and other disrep- utable places of resort. But city children are not the only ones who thus suffer for the most flagrant sin of their par- ents. Human nature does not require any special surroundings to enable it to make a fool of itself. In all our large villages many chil- dren can be found who are growing up with as little restraint as the animals, and with far greater capabilities for harm. Crime has no special abiding place ; the rural districts send their full quota of representatives to the State prisons and the gallows. That parents often regret this deplorable state of affairs must be admitted, but regret often is the only sentiment they are able to express with any force. Not a .month passes in which the newspapers do not tell of some despairing mother committing suicide, perhaps first killing her children to save them from the fate that seems before them. Her only possible hope for them is in heavenly intervention, and of this she does not see much prospect, for the experiences of similar families are about her to remind her of the almost inevitable end of the offspring of those persons who have brought children into the world without having first made provision for their proper support and training. Let nobody underrate the many touching in- 36 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. cidents of the "simple annals of the poor." Some of the most devoted parents and affection- ate children are found in homes where enough clothing is a rarity, and a full meal is a luxury. Some of the thousands of city children who daily go breakfastless to school are followed by paternal anxieties and yearnings as tender as ever at- tended a child. But all the love and tenderness of which parental instinct is capable cannot give strength to an underfed body, or shield poorly clad limbs from the winter's blast. Love is the strongest known stimulant of energy and exer- tion, but it cannot create to order opportunity for bettering one's condition ; if it could, only the unloving would be poor in this world's goods. But what pretence can the law have to inter- fere in a matter so entirely of personal right as marriage and the production- of children? The same that the law has to interfere with the care- less use of firearms, or the maintenance of nui- sances. The public, by whom laws are made, has the right to protect itself against any unnec- essary or injurious charge upon its pocket and its peace. Vicious children, untrained children, grow up to become a burden to the community. A single pauper requires the labor of another man or woman, or its equivalent, for his support ; a single criminal, even of the common sort, often costs the community more than a good road or a public building, and yields nothing in return. FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE. 37 The weak are not always vicious ; some chil- dren who never should have been born reach adult age without any vices, yet are so incapable, from lack of proper nourishment and training, as to be more or less a burden upon those about them, and these people always multiply as rapidly as the commoner varieties of other animals. The community has a right to protect itself by law against such inflictions. How ? By compelling a man, who desires to marry, to give proof that he is prepared to prop- erly meet the responsibilities of his desired con- dition of life. It may sound impracticable, but if a man in marrying were compelled to give a bond that his probable children would be cared for at least as well as his neighbor's swine, there would not be much diminution in the number of desira- ble marriages. Would not any interference with the freedom of marriage cause a rapid increase of immorality ? No, unless you recognize but one cause of im- morality. Any laxity of the relation of the sexes is cause for grave alarm, but after gravely weigh- ing one sin in the balance against the other, is there any greater crime against the moral law than that of calling human beings into existence without assurance of proper care ? It used to be considered unspeakably horrible, as it was, to bring shiploads of Africans to this country and deprive them of their liberty, but the harm was 38 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. nowhere near so great to the individual as ex- istence is to the children of millions of parents. The slave could fight for his freedom, or take his own life ; the unfortunate child dare not fight its only owner, nor can it make way with itself. Children used to be given to Moloch. Moloch is not dead; improvident marriages keep him robust. Only law can slay him. CHAPTER III. THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. IN one of the older theological periods, yet not so very old, there was a theory that Satan was a necessary part of the godhead. At present there seems to be a theory like unto it. It is that divorce is a necessary feature of the marriage system. This notion is working fully as much mischief in morals and manners as Satan could do if he were part of Omnipotence. Divorce is popular with certain classes, be- cause married life not marriage is sometimes a failure, but the fault is not with the institution, but the individual. When Mrs. Mona Caird's low-toned essay, "Is Marriage a Failure?" was being talked of a few months ago, Rev. David Swing, of Chicago, said the question should have been, " Is Good Sense a Failure ? " Dr. Swing then struck at the root of the trouble by saying, " 111 comes not because men and women are married, but because they are fools." Yet this is almost the only class for whom ou* divorce laws are made, and the more liberal the (39) 40 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. laws, the more foolish the fools can afford to be. Were divorce popular only for the sake of get- ting rid of undesirable partners it would be bad enough. Really it is a thousand times worse be- cause its principal purpose is to help husband or wife to a new partner. This cause never is as- signed in a petition for divorce ; it doesn't need to be ; the community has learned to assume it, as a matter of course. The case was well put a short time ago by Rabbi Silverman, at the great Temple Emanu- Hl, in New York, when he said, " The real cause for divorce is that there is nothing behind the civil contract that cements the marriage union and so welds it that nothing can tear it asunder. The real cause for divorce is that the marriage was a failure because it was not a marriage in fact, but merely in name. It was not a union of hearts for mutual happiness, but merely a part- nership for vain pleasure and profit." So long as we allow divorce to be easy, do we not encourage such marriages ? Any divorce except for the one cause recognized by the founder of Christianity is more injurious to society at large than any other crime, murder not excepted. Most crimes may have a good reflex influence by persuading men to be more watchful of their own impulses and lives, but the men or women who obtain divorces for any but THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. 41 the gravest cause are sure, aside from the effect upon themselves, to increase the discontent of acquaintances whose married life is not all that had been hoped or wished. One condition absolutely necessary to a pure and happy married life is the belief from the be- ginning that wedlock is to last as long as life it- self. Without the stimulus of this tremendous sense of responsibility no person will unmake and remake himself so as to be the fit companion of another. Even with this impulse the effort often fails, as all of us know from observation of our own acquaintances. To admit the possibility of a cessation of relations or, worse still, a change of marital relations, is to relax effort and to be- come a selfish time-server to become a confidence man instead of a partner. The effect of a divorce suit upon the plaintiff is something which does not require theorizing. It can be ascertained by personal observation in almost any American court which grants divorces, for such cases are becoming more and more fre- quent. Whether the plaintiff be man or woman, whether the cause be drunkenness, or desertion, or incompatibility of temper, or insanity, or im- providence, or any of the various causes for which divorces are granted in some States, the plaintiff or complainant, if closely watched from day to day during the proceedings, will be seen, even by his dearest friends, to show marks of mental de- 42 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. terioration. To tear two lives apart is a serious thing at best. Two friends bound only by ordi- nary ties have seldom separated without bad effects being visible upon both. Where the friendship is of a nature that has affected every portion of the life of each, as must have been the case even with wedded couples who have married at haste and have not even begun to repent at leisure, the effect is so marked that a person seeking divorce almost always loses some of his adherents, who previously had been his warmest friends, be- fore the case is decided. Where love was, hatred is excited though it may not even have existed in the first place. The contest upon points of fact, upon recollections of difficulties and differences, the depressing literalness and materialism of proof such as is demanded in courts, the entire materialism, hearties sues s, callousness, of all the proceedings, as they must be conducted under forms of law, are such as to debase any nature but the noblest but noble natures do not seek divorce. Bad as may be the condition of the complain- ant and the effect upon his own manner and con- duct, it is not as deplorable as that visible upon the defendant. To face any direct charge in a court of law before witness, even if these be only officers of the law who are supposed to be impar- tial and judicial in their opinions and actions, the violation of privacy in regard to interests and re- THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. 43 lations, which above all others except perhaps those of a human being toward his God are sacred even to the rudest minds, cannot help have its effect upon any nature but the strongest. The life of the defendant in a divorce suit, unless the complaint is utterly groundless and unfair, is from the first likely to be blasted. The more at fault the more the defendant must suffer, not only in his own self-respect, but in the regard of those about him. The curious gaze of the spectators, the intent look of the jurors, the disgust of the judge upon the bench, the flippancy of the wit- ness on the stand, all have influences which would make many innocent people show signs of guilt. Upon any one really at fault all these influences must be still more depressing. It is a common saying among lawyers that a woman divorced from her husband, on no matter how slight cause, is pretty sure to go to the bad thereafter. This is not necessarily an indication, so the lawyers say, that the woman is at fault, but that the mental strain to which she has been sub- jected, the strain upon her self-respect, is greater than poor humanity is equal to. What the sub- sequent results are upon her in society we all know. The present ruler of England has de- cided that no divorced woman, no matter in what country her divorce was obtained, shall ever ap- pear at court. The rule seems cruel, but social results certainly appear to justify it. 44 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. If there are children in the case, as usually there are for somehow people without children seldom appear in the divorce courts if there are children, the results upon them are worse than upon either the complainant or defendant. The principal good influence children are subject to is that of home. A disagreement between father and mother naturally interrupts this. An absolute break between the parents cannot fail to immediately have the worst possible effects upon the children. All children except yours and mine are at times brutes. There are no worse tale-tellers, no worse back-biters, no worse sayers of cruel things, than little children. It is not that they are unusually wicked or savage by na- ture, but insufficient training, lack of self-restraint, lack of adult sense of propriety, causes the tongue to say whatever is in the heart ; and any adult who is obliged to keep a watch upon his own tongue should be able through sympathy to im- agine the savagery which will be inflicted upon the children of divorced or divorcing people by their associates. However disobedient or irrev- erent children may be to their parents, the filial instinct exists in all of them, and a stab at either parent is felt most keenly by the children. The ordinary consolations of a person wounded through the heart of another are denied the child. It has neither religion nor philosophy, nor even stoicism, to support it. It must suffer keenly, THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. 45 and when it looks for consolation or desires con- solation, where is it to go, when the two authors of its being, whom it has been taught to regard with equal respect, are at difference, ?,nd each is ready to accuse the other and belittle the other ? The child of a divorced person is a marked ob- ject of curiosity in the society of children, whether in neighborhood parties or at school or Sunday-school, or even in church. The slightest quarrel brings the inevitable taunt that " your mother ran away from your father," or " your father is in love with somebody else's mother," or " you haven't any father now," or something of the kind. Only a short time ago the news- papers of the United States recorded the suicide of a child of nine years, who had sought death to avoid the torment of being twitted with the separation of its parents. Four lines of one of Pope's poems, which prob- ably are familiar to every one, indicate the gen- eral effect of divorced persons upon society : " Vice is a monster of such hideous mien That to be hated needs but to be seen ; But seen too oft, familiar with its face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." The report that any person has obtained a di- vorce for any cause but the most serious gener- ally sends a shudder through any American social circle which calls itself respectable. Even husbands and wives whose own marital experiences have 46 OUR COUNTRY' s FUTURE. not been as- joyous as was expected, are shocked by the legal disruption of a family the spectacle of the wifeless husband whose wife really lives, or the woman without mate or protector whose husband nevertheless is not yet dead. But the force of the shock gradually weakens through frequent meetings with either party. The faults of the absent member are recalled, the good points of the alleged culprit are also recalled, and little by little excuses are made, until the change is regarded as coolly as the dissolution of a busi- ness copartnership. Unfortunately, too, the par- ties to a divorce are often brilliant members of the society in which they have moved, for the live- liest persons are generally the most discontented. The unrest of some phases of social life, the de- sire to be less confined at home, and to be more in general and congenial company, has a great deal to do with bringing about divorce, much though the guilty parties may deny it, and the persons who most frequently appear in the divorce courts are those who have been the most popular in their respective social sets. This is bad enough, but it is only the begin- ning of the evil. What man has done man or woman may do, is as true of evil as of good. If Mr. A or Mrs. B has escaped a lot of apparent marital trouble by divorce, why should not Mr. and Mrs. C do likewise? They meant well this is an admission which most people sooner or THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. 47 later make in favor of everybody not absolutely fiendish they failed. Why should they not try again ? Then besides, they once more have their freedom, and the longing to be free is strong enough in the animal portion of any one's nature to rise and trample down everything else, if it is at all encouraged. Little by little, yet very rap- idly, contemplation of the problem of divorce discourages efforts towards self-improvement and the perfection of marital life. It is a benumber and deadener of every honorable conjugal im- pulse. To endeavor to decide between two evils is an experience which is demoralizing to any one ; to decide between evil and good, when the good seems no more desirable than the evil, is a great deal worse. Yet this is the mental and moral condition of every one still married who con- templates divorce as a possible release from rela- tions which are unsatisfactory, yet which might be made all that they should be. The effect of association with divorced people and there i$ no grade of society which does not contain them is especially deplorable upon young people of marriageable age. The veriest heathen who has studied the influences of mar- riage will admit that the rising generation needs greater seriousness in contemplating wedlock. But what can be expected of any good-natured, well-meaning, thoughtless, careless, pleasure- loving, selfish young man or girl and nearly 48 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. all young people are fairly described by these adjectives who, while wondering whether or no to propose to, or accept, some attractive person of the opposite sex, is continually reminded by certain facts and incidents that if the bond becomes irksome it may be broken at will ? Some husbands and wives fight like cats and dogs, but in spite of it all, thank God, they still dearly love their children. What man or woman within the pale of decency would give a daughter in marriage with the thought that she might be put away by her husband at some time for some cause recognized by the courts of Utah, or Chicago, or Indiana, as sufficient for divorce ? What parent will allow a son to mate with a girl who might possibly weary of him, release herself through legal measures and become the wife of some other man ? Physicians and spiritual directors agree that persistent thought upon the lower developments and interests of the marriage relation are ex- tremely injurious to human character. What other phases of married life can be much dwelt upon by the mind of any one who thinks at all of the possibility of divorce for any cause but the most serious ? The relationship thus re- garded is so nearly that of the animals that love, so far as it has existed, must be brought down to the level of passion, and passion afterward to that of lust, and lust in turn down to appetite, THE DEMON OF DIVORCE. 49 until beings, who once had hopes and aspirations and longings which, in spite of being unfortified by knowledge and principle, were noble in them- selves, place themselves practically on the level of the beasts. According to managers and chap- lains of great prisons there is hope of reform for almost any criminal whose offences were committed only through what are called the selfish instincts, by which is generally meant destructiveness and theft. But these same ex- perts in crime are utterly hopeless of the refor- mation of any one whose sexual instincts have become depraved or even inverted. Yet it is difficult for any one to go through a divorce case, or to think steadily upon the possibility of divorce, without such a deterioration of sexual feeling, impulse, and aspiration. What hope can there be that such persons will occupy a respectable position in society in the future ? Can divorce be made less popular and easy ? Yes. How? By a constitutional amendment, against which no respectable citizen not a lawyer would dare to vote, that the national government shall make a divorce law to replace those of the States. Tricks of, and concessions to divorce lawyers cannot be slipped through Congress as easily as through a State Legislature. Congress is up to a great many dirty jobs, but not of that kind. Congress can't make a stringent divorce law, 50 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. say some lawyers, but perhaps these gentlemen have their own reasons for saying so. Ex- Attorney-General Russell, of New York, who has looked into the subject closely, recently said such a constitutional amendment was possible, because more than two-thirds of the States already are inclined to limit divorce to the gravest cause only. In the framing and adoption of such a con- stitutional amendment, Congress would have support from a source whose importance cannot be overestimated. I mean the Church ; not any one denomination, but all Mormons excepted. Bishop Foss, of the Methodist Church, said re- cently that his denomination could be counted upon to support such a movement ; Bishop Whittaker, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, spoke in similar strain. The Catholic Church recognizes but one cause of divorce, and the Hebrews are equally rigid. Indeed, all creeds agree on this subject, and when the amendment comes up for vote or ratification the influence of such " Church Union " cannot be combatted much less overcome. The effect of a divorce law upon the com- munity should be like that of a burned bridge to a lot of soldiers who have just crossed it. With no possibility of going back, there is every in- ducement to go ahead and make the best of whatever is before. BISHOP FOSS. CHAPTER IV. THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. THE average American farmer is one of the best fellows in the world. He also is one of the most unfortunate. He generally comes to his profession by acci- dent. He may not have meant to become a farmer, but through death, or change of family, or some other circumstance entirely out of his own control, he comes in possession of the family estates, almost certainly encumbered with mortgages, and must continue the family busi- ness to secure a living for himself. From the first he is doomed to loneliness, which is one of the worst curses that humanity can suffer. He cannot afford to employ help, for if he had capi- tal he would not be a farmer, and it requires capital to secure proper assistance in the conduct of a farm. He must do all of his work himself. If he cannot do it, it must remain undone. As a rule the farmers of the United States are awake long before daylight in the morning, and their work continues long after dark in the evening. The working hours of the day, which to the (51) 52 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ordinary laborer are ten hours, and to more fav- ored classes eight or seven, or even six, are to the farmer as a rule at least fourteen in twenty- four. His work is never done, any more than womans. As a natural consequence he always is tired out. Custom and the demand of the markets restrict him generally to a single crop. Whether this be wheat, or corn, or oats, the seeding time is comparatively short. So is harvest time. The farm is larger than any one man or family can possibly manage, but American demand being at present only for raw materials, he has no choice. He must plant the staple^ from which foreign countries are willing to purchase the sur- plus for cash. Otherwise his condition would be worse than that of a slave. It is very hard for any one man to "break up" more than one acre of ground per day with a good team of horses. What, therefore, can the single-handed American farmer, who owns a hundred and sixty acres of ground, the customary "quarter section," expect to do with his immense estate? To properly care for his family he should plant all of it ; but, except in the case of wheat, if he were to plant it all, one-half to three-fourths of the crop would be wasted through lack of necessary cultivation. His horse is like himself, an overworked animal. In any section of the country the farmer is re- garded safe who owns a pair of good horses. But THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 53 animals working twenty-six days per month from sunrise to sunset in the long days of summer cannot be kept up to their work by any amount of feeding or care. Sooner or later one or the other of a span of horses may break down, and then the farmer is helpless unless he has money in hand with which to purchase a substitute. Not ten farmers thus fortunate can be found in any contiguous hundred. For the farmer is always poor, If it were otherwise he would not be a farmer. A very lit- tle experience on the farm and less observation of men about him show him that there is more money in mechanical or mercantile business, to say nothing of other callings, than his own. But he is handicapped from the start, no matter if he begins young, and while he still is a bachelor. When he has a family on his hands he is simply helpless so far as the possibility of change goes. The average farmer lives in hopes that in time his children, of whom he generally has many, will be of some assistance to him. Frequently his hopes are apparently fulfilled for a short time. But children are not as steady as grown people. They roam about in any time which they have to themselves. They reach the villages. They learn of a life which contains less toil and more comforts than that to which they are accustomed, and one by one they begin to intimate a desire for a change. It is utterly out of nature for the 54 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. farmer to disregard this desire. No matter how much he may love their company he knows in his inmost heart that a change from farm life to some sphere of activity which is less exacting would be a benefit to them physically and men- tally, possibly morally also. His sons endeavor to become salesmen in stores, or to be clerks in lawyers' offices, or solicitors for one business en- terprise or another anything to avoid the per- sistent and wearing drudgery of the farm. His daughters, in spite of the boasted independence of the farmer, and of his family, are very easily persuaded to go into any factory that there may be in the vicinity. It is not that they love home less, but they love companionship more, and, be- ing like human beings everywhere else, they are keenly sensitive to the cheering influence of money real cash received once a week instead of a possible balance to the family's credit at the village store at the end of the year. For the American farmer is generally at the mercy of the trader. The trader is as good as the average merchant, and is practically a mer- chant in all respects. He is generally the keeper of a general store at which the farmer during the year purchases everything which he may need for his family on an open account ; with the understanding that when his crops are made they shall be turned over to the merchant, and a general balance struck. When there is THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 55 a good year the result may be in favor of the farmer, but good years are not the rule in the United States, even though the country is, as is said, the garden of the world. People who work and strain their energies to the uttermost require more in the way of ordinary creature comforts than those whose lives are more regular, and, though the farmer may discuss prices with great earnestness with the local merchant, the end is practically the same : he purchases whatever his family wants, so long as he can have it " charged." He must purchase at the price stipulated by the merchant, for it is utterly im- possible for him to look anywhere else for what he may need. Some newspapers have made sensational com- plaints of the system of peonage to which some southern blacks or freedmen have been reduced by the storekeepers of plantations since slavery days, but there is no practical difference between their condition and that of the farmers the CQuntry over. " The borrower is servant to the lender," and the man who has no money with which to purchase must submit to the exactions of who- ever is willing to extend credit to him. Farmers' notes are in the market in almost every county of the United States, and frequently those of which sell at the lowest prices are drawn by men of whose honesty of purpose and intention to pay no one has the slightest doubt. The only reason is that 56 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the farmer's absolute necessities have been in excess of the cash value of his farm products. It is customary to speak of the farmer's life as being the happiest and the safest occupation in the world. Nearly every one knows of some one successful farmer, and bases his judgment upon his knowledge of that solitary individual. But facts are stubborn things, and they have been proved by figures in the United States in a manner that should make those who are envious of the farmer think again. According to the last census report the aver- age valuation of the farm-lands of the United States, including buildings, was less than twenty dollars per acre. The average value of the products was less than eight dollars per acre. A quarter section of land, which is the ordinary size of an American farm in the States most devoted to agriculture, is a hundred and sixty acres. The reader may cipher out his own inferences with very little trouble, remembering that groceries, medicines, clothing, and every- thing else not produced by the farm costs quite as much in the rural districts as in the large cities, and generally a great deal more. It has been said that the gold produced in the mining districts of the United States has cost far more in labor and physical loss than its value amounted to. The cost of the farm-land in the United States leaves the apparent waste on gold THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 57 in absolute insignificance. There are tnousands of American farms to-day, probably hundreds of thousands, of which the land under the hammer would not bring as much money as the fences of those same farms have cost. The expense of clearing wooded land to fit it for agriculture has been far greater in almost every section of the country than the value of the land at the highest price prevailing would repay. The work of fencing and clearing was done by other generations, who got less from their farms than the present occupants are receiving. One of the favorite arguments of men who urge younger men to go West and take a farm and grow up with the country is, that they will never lack for plenty to eat. This statement is entirely true. A man can always have plenty of food from his own estate if he cultivates it at all, or has any live stock. But one accompany- ing fact is, and this fact should be carefully con- sidered that frequently he has no place at which to market at a profit what he produces. He is so far from any market that what he does not eat he frequently is obliged to waste. Corn in the ear has been used during many winters for fuel in portions of the West, not because there was no wood to be had, but because there was no convenient place at which to market the corn, even at the bare expense of shelling and hauling to market, to say nothing of the previous cost of 58 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. planting, cultivation, and harvesting. Where a farmer is near a market, as in some eastern States, his table is no better set than that of the cheapest-paid mechanic in the city. He may have eighty acres of wheat, but if his family wishes to eat a cabbage they are obliged to go to some village market and purchase it ; the farmer himself has not had time to plant and cultivate it. Summer boarders find fewer vegetables in the country than in the city. The natural question occurs, why does not the farmer change his business as hundreds of thousands of mechanics and other men are doing every year ? The answer is that it is impossible for him to do so. He cannot leave his farm without ruin to his family, for to neglect to plant and cultivate is to lose the credit upon which in ninety-nine cases in a hundred he must subsist. He cannot sell his farm at auction under the hammer as if it were a city house or a village residence, for purchasers of farms are the rarest of all purchasers of real-estate in the United States. This is not in accordance with European precedent or supposition, but it has been demon- strated in every State, and almost every county of the Union. Does all this mean that farming will not pay ? No. Farming will pay if backed by capital as well as practical knowledge. But it is almost impossible that the American farmer of the THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 59 present generation shall have any capital from any source whatever. Farming, when conducted intelligently, can be made profitable in any portion of the United States by a man with sufficient money in his pocket. Hiram Sibley, one of the most remarkable men whom the United States ever produced, was, at the time of his death, in 1888, managing four hundred dif- ferent farms in nine different States of the Union, conducting all through correspondence, and he made it his boast, in which undoubtedly he was honest, that from each of these farms he secured a profit. But Sibley was a millionaire twenty times over, probably forty times. What- ever his farms needed they could have at once, and at the lowest market price, for he always had cash to pay for whatever he wanted. Never- theless, this successful farmer, this millionaire, this thorough-going man of business, said, to the day of his death, that there was no more pitiable character in the United States than the farmer. Nobody knows more about any one special business than the man who does not have to attend to its details, so there is a widespread opinion and assertion that the trouble with the farmer is that he is improvident. Men call at- tention to the expenses, apparently unnecessary, which he is continually making, particularly in the direction of comforts and even luxuries for his family. But what can the farmer do? 60 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Everywhere east of the Mississippi river he is near a village. His children go to school with those of the village. They learn of comforts and luxuries to which they are not accustomed at home. They talk about them. They think about them. They long for them. The farmer himself is a human being. Any one who mis- takes him for a boor makes a terrible blunder. Whenever it is in his power to make his home more comfortable he does so with a degree of earnestness that is almost terrible. He is anxious to save himself from the possible im- putation, by his own children, of being a less careful provider than any one with whom his family are on intimate terms. When there comes a year in which crops promise well, the farmer will buy anything that his family may want, if he can pay by giving his note of hand, to fall due after the yield of the year is sold. Makers of sewing-machines, organs, pianos, venders of furniture and bric-a- brac, agents of subscription-books, go first and most steadily to the farmers with their wares. The farmer will give his note, the vender will find some one who will discount it, and in the end it must be paid or compromised. If the crops go well everything is paid perhaps. If not, the farmer is deeper than ever in the morass of debt. He has the consolation, apparently slight, though it is great to him, that his family THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 61 has enjoyed some of the benefits of villagers whom they have envied, and that some day, somehow, he will get even with the world for it. Perhaps this apparent extravagance of his will keep his family together longer than the family of his neighbor A or B or C, from which the boys have drifted into village stores and shops, and the girls into domestic service in the town, or perhaps into factories, all to avoid the hard work, but still more, the loneliness and barren- ness of the average farmer's home. How helpless and unpromising is the present condition of the American farmer can best be imagined by a glance at the farming interest as it exists at present in the New England States. Here, within the lifetime of the present genera- tion, mills have dotted the sides of every river and brook that has sufficient power to turn a wheel. Thousands of people are gathered closely together every few miles along these water-courses, working in mills and factories, and absolutely dependant upon the surrounding country for their food supplies. Yet in no other section of the country are there so many aban- doned farms. A short time ago the twelve best farms in the State of Vermont were practically abandoned because it seemed impossible to their owners to work them withoiit a loss, and a bill was introduced in the Legislature to exempt these particular farms which, again I repeat, were the 62 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. best in the State to exempt these farms from taxation so that some one might be persuaded to work them. It is not that the farmers have no market for what they produce, but that the finer farm products, or what in the larger cities are called the products of market-gardening, are of a nature so perishable that the profitable promise of a good soil may be speedily lost by the loss of the field itself after gathering. Bven near the large city of New York, where some men pay the interest on land worth five thousand dollars per acre for the sake of tilling it for market-gardening purposes, there are thousands of acres of ground utterly neglected year after year, as they have been for the past twenty years. It is possible that some of these might have been tilled to profit, but, with a steady demand for labor in the cities for which sure and frequent pay is guaranteed, the farmer's sons and daughters left their home, and the father was left without assistance and without means to hire help. Even had he hired it, the results would have been the same the balance on the wrong side at the end of the year. Frequently the suggestion is made that the farmers hould receive a bounty from the Govern- ment or from his State on special products, and this system, so far as individual States are con- cerned, is in partial operation. The farmer him- self is distinctly of the opinion that, while legis- THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 63 lation provides special relief and assistance for nearly every other class in the industrial world, he should not be neglected. When he begins to demand such assistance, as he is now quite will- ing to do, there will be before the public a ques- tion of greater magnitude than any labor prob- lem which has yet appeared. Special legislation has an unpopular sound, but the fact exists, as any follower of Congressional and legislative pro- ceedings well knows. The granger movement in the West was the initial of this attempt at improving the farmer's condition. Like other great popular movements, it began with a sudden impulse, in which there was more earnestness than intelligence ; }^et any observer of the necessities of the farmer and the management of the railways knows that there was a substantial basis of sense to it. For a great many years the railways took the lion's share of the farm's yield, on the plea that it cost that proportion of the value of the crop to move corn or wheat or pork to market. Why it took so large an amount is well known in the case of many roads, which by watering their stock or subsidizing construction companies were capital- ized at several times their value. In the future efforts of the farmer to secure recognition and proper compensation for his service, the factors of the problem may not be so distinct, but, un- less something is done in the direction of legisla- 64 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tive assistance, the farms of the West must in time be deserted as largely as those of the east- ern States, in which there are now thousands of farms in which not only the land, but the build- ings, are without occupants, and are at the service of anyone who may be fool enough to occupy them that is the farmer's way of putting it. It has frequently been suggested that the farmer could save largely from the financial results of his year's work by participating in co- operative movements for the supply of stores and other necessities of his family on his farm. It may not be known to theorists that this sugges- tion has nothing new in it. It occurred to the farmer in hundreds of counties, and he endeav- ored to act upon it. But what can a man do in the way of purchasing from first hands, who has no capital with which to purchase? Farmers' stores and farmers' clubs were tried, to a large extent, forty or fifty years ago, all over the States which now are the most populous section of the Mississippi valley. Sometimes the effort re- sulted in the establishment of depots of supply for farmers alone, but a single year of bad crops, whether caused by drought or insect pests or over- flows, or any other cause entirely outside of the con- trol of the farmer, would cause the ruin of any establishment which chanced to be started with capital sufficient only for a little while. As before stated, and as must be kept in mind THE FARMER'S TROUBLES. 65 in each and in all considerations of the farmer's lot and the farmer's future, the agriculturist of the United States is almost always a man with- out capital, and a man whose constant struggle is to be equal by his output to his daily demands. When a farmer's store failed, the deficiency had to be made up in cash, even if some of the back- ers had to sell their estates. Bankruptcy pro- ceedings or "arrangements " with creditors were not easy. It is no exaggeration to say that it would be far easier, in most parts of the United States, to sell a white elephant or a million-dollar diamond than to turn a farm into cash at short notice, although the seller were willing to sub- mit to a ruinous sacrifice. There are hundreds of thousands of farmers in the better and more fully settled States, who for years have had their estates in the market, and been walling and anxious to sell at a loss, yet have been utterly unable to find a purchaser, except among men of their own class, who had no money to pay in advance and who could simply offer a mortgage as security for future payment, and from which mortgage, in case of default on interest or principal, nothing could be obtained for a y?ar or more, and even then only after proceedings most uncomfortable to institute and likely only to result in a terrible sacrifice to the creditor. The number of men who are " land poor " in the agricultural districts of the United States is almost beyond computa- 66 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tion. The man who has a farm of two or three hundred acres, nominally valued at a hundred dollars per acre, is supposed to be worth twenty or thirty thousand dollars and quite good for all his debts. The truth is that often he suffers more for lack of some small necessity for which cash must be paid than the city mechanic or la- borer, who receives only a few dollars per week for his services. Why doesn't he borrow from a bank, giving a mortgage for security ? Bless you, no bank that would lend to farmers, on the risks and time usu- ally necessary, could continue in business. The suggestion may be startling, but still it is practical, that it may yet be necessary, for the proper feeding of the community, that farming, like the policing of cities and the maintenance of an army and the conduct of the postal de- partment, shall be done at the expense of the government. This seems to have been the method in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh and of Joseph, his steward, and America may yet have to revert to it. The Government will have either to man- age the farms or assist the farmers ; the people may choose which shall be done. CHAPTER V. THE RUM POWER. MOST people have heard of the man who in a difficulty with a vicious bull finally got the animal by the tail. He could not hurt the brute, yet he did not dare to let go, so he was slung about most unmercifully, and at last ac- counts he was still being slung. The bull was in the wrong, the man in the right ; still he had the animal only by the tail : instead of quieting or frightening the brute, he merely made him angry and was severely punished for his well-meant efforts. The people of the United States in their con- test with the rum power are in the position of the man with the bull. The rum power is in the wrong ; the people are in the right, yet they have the monster only by the tail, so they only worry him and make misery for themselves. It is not necessary to recount the harm done individuals and families by the liquor traffic. Almost every charge that the most rabid prohi- bitionist makes can be substantiated by a thou- sand men who sell liquor, aside from what total abstainers may know or believe or imagine. (67) 68 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Bishop Warren, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, is not an excitable man, but he does not overstate the truth at all when he says : " Innu- merable are the crimes of dolorous and accursed ages, and a fruitful source of them all is in- temperance. It robs the body of its strength, the senses of their delicacy, the mind of its acuteness, the spirit of its life. It fires every passion, makes every base appetite the master of mind and will, leaves man an utter wreck. Of its work there are frightful statistics of rob- beries, arsons, murders, insanities, and curses to the third and fourth generations ; .but there are no statistics that can measure the heartbreaks of wives, hungers of children, disappointments of fond parents, and physical inheritance of de- terioration and unconquerable appetite. It is the one great, stark, crying curse of our race and age. It is the personal foe of every parent, Sunday-school teacher, and preacher of right- eousness." Miss Frances Willard, who is doing more suc- cessful temperance work than any man who is in the same field at present, states the case as ear- nestly as Bishop Warren, and with the extra force which figures always give figures which no one contradicts because no one can. She says: "No man of the smallest intelligence can be ignorant of the fact that the saloon is to-day the chief destructive force in society ; that the cumulative FRANCES E. WiLLARD. THE RUM POWER. 69 testimony of judge, jury, and executive officers of the law declares that fifty per cent, of the idiocy and lunacy, eighty per cent, of the crimes, and ninety per cent of the pauperism come from strong drink ; that the saloon holds the balance of power in almost every city of ten thousand inhabitants ; that it is the curse of workingmen and the sworn foe of home." It isn't necessary, either, to call attention to the harm done free institutions at election times by the influence of rum. The late " Petroleum " Nasby, whom all of us knew for a lovable fellow and an able editor, once consumed a gallon of whiskey a day on the average. When he stopped drinking he wrote a series of temperance editorials, concluding with the words " Paralyze the rum power." " Pete " had been in politics himself: he knew what the "power "of rum was, and how it was used. The demoralizing effect of plenty of liquor is so well known that the first duty of a local cam- paign manager, no matter of which party, is to make proper arrangements with rum-shops for supplying free drinks for the purpose of changing voters' views. The man who has opinions, no matter what they may be, is quite likely to modify them if asked when he is under the in- fluence of a few drinks; and if his liquid conso- lation is to be supplied at the expense of some other man, the opinions of the two are likely to 70 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. be in entire accord before the transaction is con- cluded. Votes are easier purchased with rum than with money, no matter how large the sum that may be at the disposal of any political boss or ward committee. The public heard, a few years ago, to its horror, that an important State had been carried for the victorious party by a general distribution of new two-dollar bills. The truth is, as any one can learn by visiting the districts which then were close in the .State alluded to, that a great deal more money than the entire number of two-dollar bills amounted to had previously been expended in rum-shops to which men who were willing to listen to what was called " a fair presentation of conflicting views" could be persuaded to come. Liquor is cheaper in the western States than in large cities. It is worse, too. A little of it goes a long way, and the man who will spend an even- ing in a rum-shop in a rural locality, is equal to any enormity, compared with which an apparent change of sentiment on political subjects is a mere trifle. As Channing used to say, " Rum out- wits alike the teacher, the man of business, the patriot, and the legislator." Stepping aside from sentiment, and coming down to practical facts, Rev. Theodore Cuyler says that the liquor question " enters more im- mediately into the enrichment or the impoverish- ment of the national resources than any question THE RUM POWER. 71 , of tariff or currency. More money is touched by the drink traffic and the effects of the traffic than by any other trade known among men. The tax upon national resources levied by the bottle is far heavier than the combined taxes for every object of public well-being." Statistics of drink are undoubtedly more appalling than those of the most bloody and senseless war that the world ever knew. Some that are published are entirely untrustworthy ; a head for reform does not always mean a head for figures; so figures are often made to lie, like tombstones. But the truth is bad enough. It is plain to any man who knows anything about current values that the price of a glass of poor beer will buy a pound of good bread, and the price of a glass of best whiskey will buy a pound of the best meat. Yet a great deal more money goes for beer and whiskey than for bread and meat. Why? Depraved appetite, answers the professional moralist. This is the veriest nonsense, although it is the commonest of the reasons that are given for inordinate indulgence in stimulants. An ap- petite, properly speaking, must be of a fixed na- ture. There is no drunkard alive who has a fixed appetite for liquor. The depraved appetite, so- called, is an occasional manifestation of the influ- ence of long indulgence in alcoholic stimulants, 72 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. but it is no more possible to prolong it and make it a fixed condition of a man's life than it is for a human being to make a voyage to the moon. The first purpose of drink, to any one who is beginning to use liquor, is to " feel good," and there is no denying that this is a generaj. longing in every grade of humanity, from the highest to the lowest. Most human beings of the lower order are full of physical defects, all the way from those of the muscles and joints to those of the vital organs and nerves. If you ask the south- ern field-hand how he feels, you may safely bet that he will answer, " pooty porely," and to get re- lief from his aches and pains he resorts to liquor, whenever he can get it. The Indian is another specimen of the man who wants to ' ' feel good. ' ' He is supposed to be physically a splendid child of nature, but he seldom is without some serious functional disorder or inherited curse of the flesh which makes him the willing slave of any stimu- lant he can get. A great host of unfortu- nates who have come to the United States from other lands are practically in the same condition; starved, abused, and underfed for generations and centuries, a glass of rum is to them like the touch of an angel, and a jugful is the equiva- lent of a heavenly host. There is no sense in talking about " depraved appetites " when you contemplate these people, from whom come the mass of the rumseller's customers. THE RUM POWER. 73 The second strong impulse to drink is like unto the first ; it is to " brace up." Human nature is either a dreadfully weak machine, or one which the majority persist in overworking. Men's en- ergies, spurred by their necessities, too often out- run their strength ; then stimulation will be re- sorted to if it is at hand. It is quite true to say there is more strength, and stimulus too, in a loaf of bread or pound of meat than in a glass of liquor; but the food works slowly; the liquor works quickly. There are drinkers almost in- numerable among the better classes, who use liquor medicinally, as literally as other men use quinine. Their liquor habit never is an indul- gence ; they would as lieve take some other stimu- lant were it equally convenient and effective, but they do not know of any ; neither do their doc- tors. When men feel the need of stimulation, yet dread the use of alcohol, they will search for help somewhere else. With the nominal decay of the rum influence in the United States some years ago, began the enormous sale of bitters, ano- dynes, narcotics, stimulants, nerve foods, brain foods, and other nostrums of similar purpose, witli which the advertising columns of a great many newspapers, including most of the religious week- lies, were filled, as some are at the present time. In the city of New York, where there is one rum shop to every thirty families, it is not a common 74 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. experience to smell opium or chloral in the breath of the man next you in church or street-car or business resort. But in the State of Maine, which has had more experience with close pro- hibition than all the other States of the Union combined, it is hard to go into any community of men without being made cognizant of the fact that resort to these stimulants is quite common in that virtuous State. I do not say this in con- tempt of Maine's effort to get rid of liquor. The prohibition movement in Maine has done incal- culable good in some directions. There is no other State in the Union in which young men have never been invited into bar-rooms, and do not know what public opportunity for drinking is. Do I mean to say that alcoholic stimulants are absolute necessities of life ? No ; I do not, but don't underrate the meaning of that little word but the majority of our voters do, and majorities rule in this country. There is altogether too much indulgence and drunkenness too much yielding to the desire to " feel good." The use of alcohol in large quantities has a bad effect upon the character and conduct of anyone ; the temperance men will give you all the dreadful statistics you like as to the part rum plays in filling our jails, poorhouses and insane asylums, and God himself would shudder to tell us how many homes it ruins how many widows and orphans it makes. On a division of the subject THE RUM POWER. 75 which is out of the province of statisticians, physicians will admit that more sexual im- morality comes from rum than all other causes combined. There is no fear of overstating the aggregate bad effects of over-indulgence in liquor it is beyond the power of words or figures to overstate it. Having admitted that the curse of rum in the United States is quite as great as any moralist or pr6hibitionist has ever asserted, it follows that some remedy is necessary, and the question naturally occurs, What shall it be ? The almost unanimous reply will be, Control the demon by law. The majority of law-abiding citizens are quite willing to admit that this should be done, but the question arises and be- comes more urgent year by year, What shall the law be? Shall it be in the direction of prohi- bition ? The experience of several States, Maine no less than others, is overwhelmingly to the effect that prohibition does not prohibit. Per- haps not as much liquor is consumed in Maine as if there were open bars in every town. But anyone who is fond of a glass knows by experi- ence that it is quite as easy to gratify his tastes in the State of Maine as it is in the city of New York. Worse still, the stranger going from another State to Maine, if he has any acquaint- ances at all in the prohibition State, is so im- portuned by hospitable souls, who wish to make 76 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. him feel entirely at home, and as comfortable as he might be if he were in his native city or village, and has set before him liquors in such variety, that he generally goes to bed with a heavier head and awakes in the morning with a harder headache than if he had been in the worst rum-cursed portion of the country. Have I heard the arguments in favor of pro- hibition ? Well, can anyone help having heard them ? No project ever placed before the public has been more earnestly and persistently advo- cated. But where is the sense of demanding a law against which you know the majority of the people will be arrayed ? Suppose during momentary enthusiasm a State carries a prohi- bition law by a small majority, some drinking men themselves being constrained by their neighbors to vote for the law and against their own inclinations, how is the law to be main- tained? By public opinion. Who creates public opinion? The majority. But the ma- jority drink, and will continue to do so for some generations to come, unless all signs fail. Every State has a law against bribery and corruption of voters. Is bribery or corruption less common than before the law passed? No; it becomes worse year by year. Why? Because public opinion dare not and will not support the law. Personal interest, expressed in party feeling, winks at its violation not all the while, but THE RUM POWER. 77 merely every time there is anything to be gained by it. Both sides of the prohibition question were well put in a recent conversation between a prominent prohibitionist and Bishop Foss, of the Methodist Church, who has worked industriously for years to decrease the rum influence, but believes restriction is the only means practical. " Bishop," said the prohibitionist, " if you saw a rattlesnake in the street, biting people and destroying human lives, would you kill it, or try to pen it up ? " The bishop replied, " If I had been chasing it up and down the street for thirty years, trying to kill it but never succeeding in doing anything but make it uglier, I would con- sider myself lucky if I had a chance to pen it up." Then should law take the form of restriction ? Yes ; but immediately the law-makers discover in the words of some satirist of the past genera- tion, that a great many men can be found in favor of a certain provision in law, who are against its enforcement by any method that is suggested in the form of a bill before any Legislature or Congress. A restrictive measure immediately affects a great many business interests. Moral- ists would like the sale of liquor restricted. Well, so would a great many liquor dealers. If a poll were taken of the wholesale dealers in liq- uors in the United States, regardless of section 78 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. or environment, it would be overwhelmingly in favor of limiting the number of rum-shops, and compelling the sale of only the better class of goods. Perhaps the wholesale dealers are not philanthropists, but their work is in the direction of philanthrophy in the respect that they make more money on old and well-refined liquors, and consequently would prefer that nothing else should be sold. Restriction can be attained in no other way ex- cept through license laws, and upon these at once the entire public agree to disagree. A license law that would regulate the traffic in a large city would be utterly destructive of the entire retail liquor interests of the country districts. Conse- quently the country dealers, through their rep- resentatives in Legislatures, protest strongly against any such enactment as the famous Scott bill, which was of such great service in restrict- ing the liquor trade in the State of Ohio. The license exacted from a retailer in a large city would consume the entire profit of a country dealer, even if he were the only one in his town. City prices and country prices are different. It may be also stated upon undoubted authority, for the information of prohibitionists and other gen- tlemen who have never looked into the practical details of the liquor trade for themselves, that the countryman's drink compares with that of THE RUM POWER. 7!) the city man about as a full bath-tub does to a basin of water. After restriction, and lowest, though not least important, among the list of reformatory meas- ures, conies the principle of regulation. Can the liquor trade be regulated? Should it be regu- lated in the interest of morality and the public safety? Yes. We regulate everything else absolutely everything that affects the safety of humanity. We stipulate by law or special li- cense where dynamite factories shall be located, how dynamite shall be transported, where it shall be stored, how it shall be sold, and every other stage of the trade in this dangerous yet useful article of commerce. We regulate the trade in gunpowder ; there are very few States in which any minor is allowed to purchase any quantity of gunpowder or any other explosive. We regu- late the sales of poisonous medicines, no matter how useful they may be, forbidding the chemist to sell them except on a physician's order, and we make him keep them specially classi- fied, and label every package or bottle or box of them which he sells, and to record the name of the purchaser. We regulate even the speed of horses in large cities ; although every man is supposed to be able to take his ease and pleas- ure with a horse and carriage if he can afford them or hire them, in all large communities it is required that he shall not drive at more than 80 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a certain pace. None of these regulations are regarded as abridgements of personal liberty. All of them are admitted to be necessary pre- cautions for the good of the entire community. Unfortunately the principal opposition to regu- lation, which is the easiest and most practicable method of reducing the dangers of the rum traffic, comes not from rum-drinkers them- selves, but from those who never consume any liquor I mean the prohibitionists. Their prin- ciple seems to be the old, big-hearted, but ut- terly impracticable one of " a whole loaf or none." In a number of recent local and State elections, in which the regulation of the liquor traffic was concerned, the prohibitionists usually voted with the advocates of free rum, not that they love liquor or liquor dealers, but that unless they could have their own way they preferred to leave things as they were before. Their pur- pose, as nearly as it can be discovered, was that the more fearful condition society could be brought to by the free use of rum, the sooner would so- ciety protest strongly against it and take " the only true view," this being the prohibitionist's modest way of putting his own upinion. The Russian Nihilists, whom everybody detests, work on the same principle; things can't be better until they have first been as bad as they can. The present influence of rum in the United States upon morals, manners, society, and poli- THK RUM POWER. 81 tics, must be charged upon those who have la- bored most earnestly to lessen it. Again I allude to the prohibitionists. They have discouraged every practical effort to abate the evils of the use of liquor. They have regarded all restrictive or regulative measures about as Mr. Garrison once regarded the Constitution of the United States in its relations to slavery as a compact with the devil. The time must come when it will be not only unfashionable but indecorous and degrading for any man to use liquor, except in cases of sickness ; but when that time comes the people will owe no thanks whatever to those who have talked most against the influence of rum. Once more, and for the last time, I allude to the pro- hibitionists. 6 CHAPTER VI. FOR WOMAN'S SAKE. THE evils of drink must be lessened in some way, if only for woman's sake. Men do most of the drinking; women do scarcely any, yet women are the principal sufferers. Go where you will in any town, in any county, in any circle of society, and you cannot help finding that when a man drinks to excess, the principal sufferer is not himself, but some woman. Gen- erally it is his wife, frequently it is his mother, sometimes it is a daughter or perhaps a neg- lected sister, but no man with any family ties can give way to the influence of drink without inflicting severe and sometimes lasting suffering upon some woman. Whittier, the sweet-souled, strong-brained poet, has put the matter just as all of us would like to put it for himself, when he says, " The world is full of suffering ; but my deepest pity is reserved for womanhood realizing the dreadful fall of the victim of the Tuscan tyrant a loving, sensitive and delicate life fastened to the rolling death of drunkenness." (82) FOR WOMAN'S SAKE. 83 That liquor deadens the finer sensibilities of humanity will be admitted by the hardest drinker alive if he is questioned for a few moments upon the motives of such misdeeds as may have been alleged against him. Every scoundrel who wishes to persuade a man to some deed of doubt- ful morality, or perhaps absolute crime, begins first by plying him with drink. Anyone who wishes to confuse a man's intellect knows that lie can do it quickest by filling him with drink. Indeed, the majority of men do not need to be full or half full, or quarter full of liquor to get entirely out of control of their better sentiments. Whether, as the materialists say, the brain is all there is of what we call the soul, or, as the physiologists say, the brain is the medium through which the soul acts, it is very certain that no soul, however pure, is superior to a large quantity of liquor. Even preachers and priests, good and unselfish men who have started on errands of mercy or self-sacrifice, have occasion- ally been found drunk and helpless. The fault was not with their souls, but with the liquor which they took into their bodies. " If this is so with the green tree, what must it be with the dry ? " If the better class of men can be re- duced to animalism and to utter inanity by the use of liquor, what must be the effect upon the lower orders of whom society is largely com- posed ? 84 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. It is a delicate subject to write or talk about, nevertheless it is an undeniable fact, that the most sensitive portions of the human physique are the quickest affected by liquor. The young man who refuses to go into the society of bad women, refuses no longer after having taken two or three glasses of liquor. The man whose manners are usually courteous, thoughtful and unselfish, can be detected at once as having in- dulged in drink by the change of his manner when in the presence of women. No drunken man, however admirable his character when he is sober, is regarded as a fit companion for re- spectable women. Some men who have been regarded as models of courtesy and chivalry have lost caste entirely among their feminine acquaintances through a single indulgence in drink. It is unnecessary to offer proof in substantia- tion of these statements. No one who is ac- quainted with drinking men in good general standing in society will deny that the foregoing statements are extremely mild in comparison with facts which they themselves can adduce. What then must be the effect of uncontrolled use of liquor upon the great mass of women who are practically subservient to men ? I mean the majority of wives in America and elsewhere. In this country woman has more liberty and independence than anywhere else in FOR WOMAN'S SAKE. 85 the world. The law has improved her position in material affairs from year to year until in many States she is almost equal to her husband in all respects except that she is not entitled to vote. But in the family circle what is her protection against a husband who is under the influence of liquor ? He may not kill her, he may not beat her, he may not use insulting and abusive language to her, but there are privacies and rights of domestic life which it is impossible for a drunken man to respect. " Drink breeds de- sire," says Shakespeare. That this is a fact can be proved by the existence of some millions of children who never ofhenvise would have entered this world. The subject is too delicate to admit of much argument or of any proof. It is suf- ficient to state it. The wives of drinking men will not deny it. For woman's sake man can do anything. Were mankind in general as devoted to God as to women, preachers and priests would find their occupation gone. The scoundrel upon whom no warnings, no plea, no invitation of religion have the slightest effect, is sometimes led by a woman as safely as the fabled lion whom the fairy led with a single strand of silk. Man's fondness for woman being as it is, it would seem as if one great reformatory influence has been neglected. Public sentiment differs on prohibitory and regu- latory laws, but it is on the side of woman by a 86 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tremendous majority. If temperance workers whose customary outlooks are discouraging will find inclination and brains to work public senti- ment against rum from the standpoint, " For Woman's Sake," they will gain more ground in a year, through American reverence for woman, than can be obtained by a century of argument. If they are the men they profess to be, let them try it. CHAPTER VII. TEMPERANCE LIES AND TEMPERANCE FACTS. MOST men engaged in mighty reform move- ments are likely to become fanatics. This isn't uncomplimentary to the men ; it merely means that the cause is greater than any of its advo- cates, as every great cause is, and the advocates, promoters, or whatever else they may call them- selves, are dazed by the contemplation of the subject before them. This is exceedingly unfortu- nate, though, for it makes men incapable of seeing any way but their own to whatever end may be desirable. The fellow who would insist that there is only one way to go from Chicago, St. Louis, or London to New York would hear some uncomplimentary things about himself if he were to listen at a key-hole ; in most cases it would not be necessary to look for a key-hole. The curse of rum might be greatly lessened, in its power for harm, by personal effort, did not almost every reformer msist that there is only one way of doing it. The proper course for the sensible man is to admit that all methods are practicable, if each be applied with a sense of ap- (87) 88 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. propriateness to the individual to be reformed. Thousands of drunkards are being reformed every year through a great variety of influences at which " machine " reformers sneer. The ref- ormation of one drunkard is more beneficial to a community than a large reduction of taxes for the year. Just look at a few possible means. A large section of temperance workers insist that permanent reform can come only through religion. This statement is not true, and when some men make it, it is a deliberate lie. Never- theless, the most powerful influence in reform of personal character, in any direction, is the spirit of religion. Whatever the Church, whatever the creed, whoever the teacher may be, honest relig- ious feeling can nerve a man to more self-repres- sion, self-restraint, self-control, than any other power, and there may come a time when religion will have this influence over all men. But at present its full development is hindered by the fact that, as a rule, he who wants you to go by the heavenly road is never satisfied unless you travel in exactly his Twn footsteps and footsteps differ. The Church could do wonders if it would. Rev. Dr. Cuyler, who has worked as hard in the cause of temperance as any other pastor, states plainly the duty of the Church : " If Jesus Christ established His Church for the very purpose of saving human society from its sins, then the TEMPERANCE LIES AND FACTS. 89 highest sin that curses society should command its foremost attention." That is logic. But what Church acts accordingly ? Mine doesn't ; does yours ? No ? I thought not. The Church is so busy in making people believe right that it doesn't have time to make them live right. Here's another bit of sound reasoning from Dr. Cuyler : "If the Church is a proper organism for saving men out of drunkenness, then, by sound logic, it ought to be a proper organism to keep people from falling into drunkenness. It ought to be a school of instruction to teach inex- perienced youth not to tamper with the ensnar- ing wiles of the tempter." Is it such a school? How many churches congregations, I mean, for these are the workers with which the individual comes in visible contact how many congrega- tions teach young men of any preventive meas- ures, except prayer and good company ? How many teach him that cleanliness, proper food, good digestion, ample sleep, and avoidance of excitement that these at least are necessary to the young man who does not want his physique to get down to where it craves stimulation ? To the Church the body is nothing, the soul every- thing, but, with all its power, the Church can't di- vorce soul and body without making trouble for humanity and grief for itself. Next to religion, formally expressed and fol- lowed, may be placed the power of prayer. It 90 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. should be of great comfort to religious teachers everywhere that very many men who have given the Church a great deal of uneasiness are also given to earnest prayer. Human beings are dependent creatures ; no one knows it better than they themselves, and some men, whose lives are almost everything they should not be, declare that they give the Lord very little peace while they are awake. This may be natural religion, or no re- ligion at all, but it is impossible to believe that the man who is constantly seeking assistance from a higher power, although he may not do it by any means prescribed by those who make a specialty of defining the relations of man to his Creator, will not sooner or later receive some en- couragement and support. From the earliest periods of recorded historj^, men of all classes and races have lifted up their hearts to such gods as they chanced to have, and some have become better by the influence. The prayer of the drunkard is sometimes as earnest and honest as any that can be made by better men. He who most feels his needs is naturally he who will ask most earnestly for assistance. A man may also break the power of drink by opposing to it the sentiment of self-respect. Some classes of temperance reformers insist this is not true. But a theory opposed to a demon- strated fact is as worthless as a pop-gun against an iron-clad. Drunkards have reformed without TEMPERANCE LIES AND FACTS. 91 any visible religious influence or any other power outside of themselves, but solely through their respect for themselves and their regard for what others may say about them. By self- respect I mean self-respect not pride for the proudest man is generally he who can make most excuses for his own faults and continue in them. It is very hard to find a drunkard of " good family " and good position who is not proudest when he is drunkest. But the man of genuine self-respect, the man who has in him the feeling that he is judged by his actions, is generally the most remorseful and pitiable in the whole fraternity of drunkards. Family pride, too, may have an immense in- fluence in the direction of reforming the man who is given to too much drink. Family pride is very much like the sentiment of national honor. The nation may have no honor to speak of and the family may more rightly be concerned about its faults than its merits, but so long as the sentiment exists, pride in a family and what the family has done, or thought it has done, or perhaps what it expects to do, has raised many men from various depths of depravity, in- cluding drunkenness. It has brought some utter infidels from many and almost all species of debauchery and degradation to nominal re- spectability. Don't try to kick over the drunk- 92 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ard's family pride ; use it as a lever with which to raise him. Force of example has probably saved more men from drunkenness than all prohibition lectures combined. The most fruitful incentive to inordinate use of liquor in any community is the fact that A or B or C, all recognized as promi- nent, successful, respectable citizens, are known to use liquor whenever they feel so disposed and often to use too much. The man of lower quality, taught to look at these models of con- duct, as they are regarding material affairs, can- not be blamed for taking his cue from them re- garding the use of liquor. At one time in New York, when a large circle of tremendous drinkers had been argued with and labored upon and prayed for by temperance reformers of various kinds, the entire crowd was converted to total abstinence by one of their own set, whose only argument was, " Boys, we are all wrong, and I will stop short if you will." The leader of this moral movement was not a moderate drinker, nor a Christian, nor a man of specially high char- acter in any particular, but his associates were led to follow him by the admirable sentiment, which certainly is more abundant in America than anywhere else in the world, that they were not going to let any man get the better of them in any particular. The man who is wondering about various methods of suppressing the liquor TEMPERANCE LIES AND FACTS. 93 traffic without any regard to his own consump- tion of the dangerous article, can always find a place for himself as reformer by starting a move- ment of this kind in his own social circle, and he may have the consolation of knowing that every woman, every wife, sister, mother and sweetheart in his whole circle of acquaintance will rise up and call him blessed. Drinking men have often been reformed by being compelled, in cold blood, to see the ex- pense which their habit compels. On this sub- ject, fortunately, it cannot be said that figures lie. The cost of different varieties of liquor are very well known. So are the prices of all articles of domestic necessity or comfort. The drinking man who can be persuaded to keep an account for a single day of his expenditures for liquor for himself, or his friends, or both, can be shown very quickly that he is robbing his wife and his family, if he chances to have one, of a great many comforts which they lack, for what woman in the world is not apparently in need of something else at once which will cost considerable money? (Women do not differ from men in this respect.) When other arguments fail, an inordinate drinker in America, if he is of half-way decent extraction, may often be reformed by appeals to his ambition. There is but one class of Ameri- cans in which every member does not look for- 94 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ward to reaching a better station in life. The class alluded to is that of tramps. There is no mechanic or common laborer so low in the busi- ness scale that he cannot recall some one who started quite as low as he, and who now is in a position of prominence. Although workingmen are in the habit of saying the chances are not what they used to be, and that a poor man is not in the way of getting up in the world, facts prove him to be either ignorant of commercial conditions or wilfully false in his statements. At the present time it would be easy for any man of large ac- quaintance to count a dozen or twenty prominent and successful business men who started with nothing, less than a generation ago. "What man has done, man can do." The laborer, the mechanic, when not in his cups, knows this per- fectly well, believes it, and hopes accordingly. If his ambition can be aroused, it will be a better stimulant than any amount of drink. The experiment has often been made successfully. Several men who stand high in their respective business circles in the United States to-day, can be remembered as deplorable drunkards twenty years ago. Their success began when their am- bition began to show in work. Physical prudence can be made a powerful lever to raise the drunkard out of the bog into which his bad habits have placed him. No man wants to die. He may become depressed and TEMPERANCE UES AND FACTS. 95 desperate enough to express a wish for death, but he generally makes active efforts to escape the opportunity. There is a well-known fable of everybody's friend, the venerable ^sop, which illustrates this. So long as he is young and can " sleep off a drunk," as the expression is, and " come up smiling after the last round," the in- ordinate drinker may be careless about his physi- cal future. But however careless he may also be about the future of his wife and family, he can be brought to his senses very easily when he reaches the condition, which inevitably all drunk- ards reach, of not being able to recover rapidly from a severe attack of rum. It would be de- lightful to record that all reformed drunkards were started on their upward course by warn- ings and persuasions of a high and unselfish character; but the truth is, as any man knows who is well acquainted with human nature, per- sonal reformation of any kind usually begins through fright. A week of work lost by results of inordinate indulgence, or an accident to limb or life, has more reformatory power upon the average man than all the moral and spiritual in- fluences in existence. Bobby Burns says, "The fear of hell is a hangman's whip to keep the mob in order," and physical injury conies as near the average man's idea of hell as anything that could be instanced. Physical pride seems to be a contemptible 96 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. quality, but it can be used with the best of effects upon a great many men who seem imper- vious to any other argument. Proper physical habits can do more to discourage the use of liquor than all other influences combined. This may seem irreverent to some temperance workers who have depended upon powers higher than themselves powers which all of us respect and revere. But, as already said, facts are facts, and theories must not get in their way. A large pro- portion, perhaps a majority, of the total abstain- ers in the world are not religious or specially moral. They do not abstain from liquor from any conscientious scruples, but because they have no desire for it. When the cause of this lack of desire is discovered it is found to be a good physical condition and balance. The man whose system does not need some stimulant, or at least crave it through weakness, can scarcely be per- suaded to touch it, and a single slight indulgence is to him a matter of more discomfort than any ordinary physical punishment. Almost every day in New York may be seen on Broadway and in some resorts where men of doubtful character congregate, a citizen who has made the officers of the law a great deal of trouble, who has been in prison for good cause, and who never was known to utter a moral sen- timent, much less a religious one ; nevertheless, he has never once in his life tasted liquor. He TEMPERANCE LIES AND FACTS. 97 wishes it distinctly understood that he does not refrain froin any moral principle or sense of self- respect, but because liquor would do him no good, and on the contrary would make him very uncom- fortable. He is a thief; he has been a prize-fighter ; he is suspected of having been a counterfeiter, and is known to be a receiver of stolen goods ; yet he is as strictly a total abstainer as the most religious member of the Prohibition party. He is careful to explain that his abstinence is solely on the ground of personal comfort. He has a good physique, which he never has abused, and which, therefore, never claims consolation for abuse. He has frequently lectured officers of the law, when he has been brought before them, for their own fault in using liquor, the charge against him at the very time being that he persuaded some one else to commit crime by first coaxing him to drink. He has defended himself by saying, ' You drink wine at your table and whiskey once in a while at a bar ; why should not this man do it ? You have all comforts and consola- tions about you, and he has not any but rum. I do not see how that helps him, but he does, and you ought to." If a man of this character can keep himself entirely free from the drinking habit, what may not be done by better men who have devoted themselves to improving their own physical condition ? Some drunkards can be reformed by proper 7 98 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. feeding. A man's physique depends largely upon his treatment at home. It may not be right to assume that woman is made only to be a man's cook and provide him with proper cloth- ing and see that he attends to his ablutions, that he goes to bed at proper hours and does not rise too early, but one thing is certain : the man who has filled his stomach with good food cannot soon afterward fill it with bad rum. The one prescrip- tion which the rumsellers themselves give to in- ordinate drinkers who wish to break away for a little while from their tyrant is, " Go off and get a full meal." New York has one rumseller who, strange though it may seem, is a man of large conscience, which he has kept in active working operation. When one of this man's customers becomes severely run down through the use of liquor, the proprietor takes him upon his con- science and also upon his hands. He invites the poor fellow out for-a day, takes him a hard walk in the country over roads upon which there are no saloons, and finally stops at a place where a good meal can be had. In an hour he resumes the walk, which is continued for a long time and concluded at some other place, where again a large meal is taken. Then he conducts the unfortunate back to his home and tells him that, if he will go right to bed and to sleep, he won't want a drink that day, and that if he takes one the next day it will be without the slightest excuse. This TEMPERANCE LIES AND FACTS. 99 man must be sincere, for his method of physical treatment has cost him a great many good cus- tomers. It is not to be expected that woman shall make herself the slave of man merely for the sake of keeping man from enslaving himself. But it is certain that the man who is properly and suffi- ciently fed will have no actual need for liquor. I say " need," because the prevalence of the drink- ing habit is largely due to actual need. No other term can properly express it. It is no more truthful to say that a man never needs liquor, no matter how unnecessary the cause of his craving, than to say that he never needs quinine or calo- mel or any other of the thousand medicines which are given daily by reputable medical practitioners, and which, if they were prohibited by law, would lead to a greater riot than history has ever re- corded. I leave the hardest method of reform to the last. It is hardest because it compels the tem- perance apostle to put his hand into his pocket his most sensitive part, unless he is unlike the rest of us. It is to deliberately buy the drunkard back to respectability. It is less tried than any other method you all know why. The mere thought of trying it on some heavy drinker among my own acquaintances sends cold chills all over me. It has worked wonders, though. A. little financial worry, if prolonged, will drive 100 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the average man to drink, and the drink gener- ally increases the worry. To set a man on his feet, morally, by paying his debts is not always practicable, but frequently it is. You can buy many a hard drinker off by relieving him from some small but tormenting bill, or by giving him a new suit of clothes not old ones or by giv- ing him steady work, if he is out of employment. You can be three times as sure of him if you'll do all three of these services at once. I've said this to many enthusiastic temperance shouters, but somehow they looked solemn and doubtful right away, and had to change the subject. Others have told me that it wouldn't work, but I had them there, for I sprung John B. Cough's story on them his story of his own reformation. Let me read it to you I have it in my pocket it's a good thing for a man to carry, if he's in the habit of meeting reformers who are " all talk and no turnips." Gough says fce was slouching about the streets of Worcester, half full of rum and the other half of him full of dismal thoughts, when " Some one tapped me on the shoulder an unusual thing, that, to occur to me ; for no one now cared to come in contact with the wretched, shabby-looking drunkard. I was a disgrace ' a living, walking disgrace.' I could scarcely be- lieve my own senses when I turned and met a kind look. The thing was so unusual and so TEMPERANCE LIES AND FACTS. 101 entirely unexpected that I questioned the reality of it ; but so it was. It was the first touch of kindness which I had known for months ; and simple and trifling as the circumstance may ap- pear to many, it went right to niy heart, and, like the wing of an angel, troubled the waters in that stagnant pool of affection, and made them once more reflect a little of the light of human love. The person who touched my shoulder was an en- tire stranger. I looked at him, wondering what his business was with me. Regarding me very earnestly, and apparently with much interest, he said: "'Mr. Gough, I believe?' ' That is my name,' I replied, and was pass- ing on. "'You have been drinking to-day,' said the stranger in a kind voice, which arrested my at- tention, and quite dispelled any anger at what I might otherwise have considered an officious interference in my affairs. "'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I have.' "'Why do you not sign the pledge?' was the next query. " I considered for a minute or two, and then in- formed the strange friend who had so unexpectedly interested himself in my behalf that I had no hope of ever again becoming a sober man ; that I was without a single friend in the world who cared for me or what became of me ; that I fully 102 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. expected to die very soon I cared not how soon, or whether I died drunk or sober; and, in fact, that I was in a condition of utter wretchedness. " The stranger regarded me with a benevolent look, took me by the arm, and asked me how I should like to be as I once was, respectable and esteemed, well-clad, and sitting as I used to in a place of worship, enabled to meet my friends as in old times, and receive from them the pleasant nod of recognition as formerly ; in fact, become a useful member of society. " Only sign the pledge," said my friend," and I will warrant that it shall be so. Sign it and I will introduce you to good friends, who will feel an interest in your welfare, and take a pleasure in helping you keep your good resolutions. Only sign the pledge, and all will be as I have said; aye, and more too." Gough signed ; his friend kept his word. The drunkard suddenly found good clothes on his back, money in his pocket, and regular employ- ment at good pay. The world knows the rest. No one man has done more than Gough for the temperance cause. But Gough wasn't a common drunkard. Wasn't, eh ? He himself says he was the lowest of the low he ought to know. But the man who reformed him wasn't a common reformer. Aye, there's the rub. CHAPTER VIII. NATIONAL DEFENCE. IF Heaven helps only those who help them- selves the United States will be deplorably help- less the first time they fall into difficulty with any foreign power. Ever since the late civil war ended the general of the army has annually given us earnest and intelligent warning as to the incomplete state of our fortifications, and the inability of our artillery for offensive and defensive operations against the improved armaments with which other nations have amply supplied themselves. The admiral of the navy has made similar reports. For a little while this looked like unnecessary precaution or what a distinguished Congressman once called old woman's fussiness. Hadn't we just triumphed over the largest armies that had been brought into the field, except by ourselves, in half a cen- tury ? Hadn't we organized a navy out of noth- ing, armed it splendidly, and done with it what- ever was desirable that the naval power of the country should attempt ? To be sure, our forts were few, but so were our harbors. The construc- (108) 104 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tion of some of the harbor forts in the United States was admired by the engineers of all the other civilized powers only thirty years ago, and the public knew of it. To afterward be told that these splendid and expensive structures were of no use, that they were inadequate, that two or three guns on a second or third-rate ship of some second or third-rate naval power could knock them to pieces would have been humiliating had it not been enraging. Attempts were made from time to time, in the earlier years following the close of the war, to keep our military and naval establishment in fine condition. We had admirable staff departments, and large "plants" for the manufacture of almost everything required in ordnance and ammunition. We had the nucleus of a navy and army from which a peace establishment unequalled by any on the face of the earth might have been selected. But we let it all go. No such spectacle as the disbandment and disappearance of the great armies of the North and South was ever before seen, and historians have glorified in this. Sol- diers, however, whose opinions we may yet be called upon to respect, regarded the spectacle in entirely a different light. We had once before been caught by England napping in a most unexpected way, said these old fellows ; we paid dearly for our neglect ; but now we are repeating exactly the same blunder. Excellent men who NATIONAL DEFENCE. 105 were willing to remain in the service were allowed to go, material of every kind was disposed of at auction as rapidly as possible, and nothing was provided to take its place. The numerical force of the standing army was reduced more and more until even the Indians held us in contempt. In- dian massacres on the border have frequently been charged to the rascality or duplicity of the white men. Undoubtedly the Indians have had a great many provocations, but, so far as restraint through fear is concerned, they have been sub- jected to very little of this very necessary disci- pline. Large bands of armed Indians have been able to keep brave but small detachments of United States troops within small camps or forts, to isolate them and taunt them for days in suc- cession, to steal cattle, murder settlers, desolate the country, all because they had contempt for an army which was so small that it never could oppose more than a handful to any Indian raid which might suddenly be made. Just look at some of the warnings we have had during recent years. In his last report as com- mander of the army (1887), General Sheridan said : ' The condition of our sea-coast defences has continued to deteriorate during the year, and the majority of them, both as regards the mate- rial of which they are built, their location and present armament, would prove of but little real service in time of foreign war." 106 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. What was done about it? Nothing. General Sheridan further advised that we should adopt some modern magazine rifle for our soldiers, as all foreign nations had refitted their armies with these guns. What was done about it ? Nothing. General Sheridan further said : " I am strongly in favor of the general movement extending all possible aid to the National Guard of the different States, as they constitute a body of troops that in any great emergency would form an important part of our military force." What was done about it ? Nothing. Before Sheridan, General Sherman made clear, vigorous, sensible protests every year against our neglect to maintain good defences, but nothing came of it in the way of improvement. After Sheridan's death, General Schofield, the ranking officer of the army, continued the good work ; only two or three months ago General Schofield said in his report that the new guns we are mak- ing will make an increase in the number of ar- tillerists indispensable, and he urged the forma- tion of two new regiments at once. Does any one expect to see them ? Admiral Porter has been hammering away valiantly for years at Congressional thick-heads for the neglect of the navy, but it was not until the late Samuel J. Tilden gave his own party a blast on the subject did we begin to construct a GENERAL SCHOFIELD (Commander of the Army). NATIONAL DEFENCE. 107 navy. Even now there is persistent halting; Congress, regarding the navy, is like the girl of a certain class regarding her suitors so anxious to get the very best that she is in danger of not- getting any. Both political parties seem agreed on the re- duction of the regular army to the smallest pos- sible numerical force. While the Republicans were in power some officers of the army used to hope for a change of administration, and conse- quently change of party at the head of affairs so that the army might "have a show." But when the Democrats came in with President Cleveland, there was no perceptible difference, except that there was more trouble than before in obtaining ammunition with which to salute the flag morn- ing and evening. The army, small as its maxi- mum strength is according to law, has not been full in years, and there are grave doubts among some of the higher officers of the army as to whether it can be made full. Why ? Because men desert run away at a rate unheard of in the army of any other nation. General Schofield, in his annual report, says there were two thousand four hundred and thirty- six desertions last year more than ten per cent, of the entire army ! Fear of punishment seems to have no effect, and General Schofield felt obliged to recommend that a full half of each en- listed man's pay shall be retained until the end 108 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of the period of enlistment. Isn't this a humili- ating state of affairs for the army of the freest nation in the world ? - There must be serious reason for this anoma- lous condition of the military force. Our soldiers are better fed, better clothed, and far better paid than those of any other country. An American soldier receives, outside of his allowance for ra- tions and clothing, more money in a day than the British soldier can show to his credit in a week. His term of enlistment is shorter and his possi- bilities of duty are pleasanter, or should seem so to men of intelligence. Yet to enlist, which is the first suggestion that presents itself to a man out of work in a foreign country, seems to be the least popular in the United States. Undoubtedly one reason is, that among the in- ducements to enlist, we are entirely lacking in anything that approaches the glory of war. Our only enemies are Indians, the meanest, most sneak- ing, most treacherous foemen that any civilized na- tion is fighting at the present time, and there is less glory in capturing one of them or a great many of them than in any taking of prisoners in ordi- nary war. The soldiers of other countries see at least a great deal of the pomp of war, if very little of its circumstance. Showy dresses, fre- quent parades, numerous occasions of display, encampment in the vicinity of large cities and towns, freedom to go about and spend money NATIONAL DEFENCE. 109 among civilized people, are all inducements to men to join and remain in a foreign army at the present time. But what inducement is offered the Ameri- can soldier ? He is put in a camp of instruction as soon as he enlists, and sent to the border as soon as he is fit for service. The border is a de- lightful country, according to dime novels, but no sober man with his eyes open finds it any- thing but dull. It is a sparsely settled country, uninteresting to every one but the speculator and hunter. The soldier has nothing to speculate with, and is very seldom allowed to go hunting. He is kept within narrow bounds, sees almost no one but his own officers and comrades, has noth- ing but camp duty to do, except when on long scouts outside camp lines, or, still more unpleas- ant, when detailed for police, gardening, or other laborious duties within the camp. It naturally occurs to the American soldier that if he is to work eight hours a day in building houses or stables, or digging wells, or throwing up em- bankments, or ploughing the soil, or hoeing gar- den crops for the benefit of the post, that he might as well be doing the same sort of work in the States at a dollar and a half a day, and have his freedom between sunset and sunrise. Except that police precautions against the In- dians are still necessary, the only excuse that any one, except the military officer, seems inclined to 110 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. discover for the existence of our army at all, is that we should have a nucleus of a military es- tablishment in case of necessity. But what is the nucleus worth ? Two thousand officers, among whom undoubtedly are a number of the best educated soldiers in the world, constitute nearly all of our military force upon whom we could confidently rely in case of trouble. The enlisted man, taking him as an average charac- ter, is practically worthless at a time when the enlargement of the army may suddenly become necessary. In France or Germany officers may at any time be selected from the ranks. Of course the systems of the two countries differ greatly from ours. Conscription and the re- quirement that every adult man shall serve a portion of his time in the army, makes a soldier of every one. But is it not rather significant that the better class of men, to whom we would have to look for additional officers in case of the necessity of sud- denly making a large army, are seldom found among our own regulars ? Some of the reasons for this deplorable deficiency of valuable material have already been suggested. There is nothing to induce a man to enter military life, and the enlisted man is too frequently used as a common laborer. But beside this, there is a greater grievance. It is that ours is as aristocratic an army as any NATIONAL DEFENCE. HI in the world, and that the distance of the officers from the enlisted men is so great as to be simply immeasurable. Volunteers used to grumble that some of their officers " put on airs." It is scarcely fair to say that regular officers put on airs, but it certainly is true that the enlisted man, as a rule, is generally treated by his superiors as a being of an entirely different order. Few men rise from the ranks. Some men now high up on regimental rosters used to be private soldiers, and a few instances of the kind occur nowadays, but the vacancies are too few to attract good men to the ranks. Let any one live at a military post a little while and explain, if he can, how any one with sufficient self-respect to be fit for military rank of any kind can bring himself to enlist in the United States army at all. All this could be changed, without increasing the numerical strength of the army, by an entire change of method which would not create any friction, disorganization or reorganization, but which nevertheless would encourage a better class of young men to enlist a change which, indeed, would secure some of the very best in the coun- try. An army so small as ours should be in the highest sense a military school. There is noth- ing to prevent it. There is no army which has more leisure at its disposal or officers more com- petent to act as instructors. No army in the world has a greater percentage of highly edu- 112 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. cated officers. No country can show a larger proportion of well-educated, restless, unem- ployed, aspiring young men. There is no en- gineering party for a railroad, a mine, a river improvement association, a drainage company or anything else requiring applied mathemati- cal and mechanical skill but can secure a large staff of intelligent young men at an expense not exceeding that of the ordinary soldier. These men generally work harder and fare worse, regarding personal comfort, than the meanest of soldiers, yet they are not only entirely satisfied with their chance, but elbow each other fiercely in their desire to get it. Suppose that instead of selecting men merely for their physical quality and their supposed capacity for obedience, the standard of admission to the ranks of the army should be as high as that of admission to West Point. Suppose the Government were to assure the people that the recruits would be treated as well as the cadets at the military or naval academy ; in an instant the army might have its choice from a hundred thou- sand intelligent, well-born, well-bred, honorable, aspiring young men. As already said, there is no trouble in getting any quantity of men of this class to go out under the control of engineers for hard and unpleasant duty. The inducement, be- side the financial compensation, is that they will be enabled to fit themselves, at least to some ex- NATIONAL DEFENCE. 113 tent, for the class of work which their superiors are already engaged in. They are close observ- ers, earnest students, intelligent assistants, and the beginning of many an engineer, now prom- inent, has been in just such parties. The United States army might as well be one great school of engineering and military tactics. It is well known that the mere company drill, which is almost all the drill the American soldier is ever subjected to, thanks to the distribution of the force in such a way that scarcely any regi- ment has been together within a single period of enlistment of any soldier in the army, requires very little time. It is no harder to become pro- ficient in than that of the militia of the various States and cities. Indeed, with company drills once a week, almost any militia regiment or com- pany can present a finer appearance upon parade than any but two or three "show" companies of regulars. The remainder of military life consists in guard duty, the details of camp duty and of applied engineering, which each man can learn as rapidly by experience as an equal number of assistants in a construction party anywhere else. It is known well enough at the West that the construction parties of railways contain, beside a mass of common laborers, a great many intelli- gent young fellows who have put on flannel shirts and cow-hide boots, have taken pick and shovel and wheelbarrow, not so much for the wages that 8 114 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. are paid them as for what they are learning of the art of railroad building. If such men can put up with the treatment ordinarily accorded the section hands of a railway constructing party, they certainly would be satisfied with the man- ners of officers of the United States army. But and here is an important distinction no railway boss, however much of a tyrant he may be, would dare to order one of his hands to cook his supper or wait at his table or groom his horse or do any other service of the quality commonly known as menial, but the American soldier in the regular army is sometimes obliged to regard such demands as a matter of course. A plan was suggested a short time ago, by a military officer of experience, by which the army might be reorganized on this basis without any additional expense and without any possibility of friction. Several years ago Major Sumner, of the regular army, himself a son of an old regu- lar of national fame, suggested a similar plan re- garding a single branch of the service the cav- alry. His plan was to select from among the floating population of wild boys of the different cities a number of the more intelligent, and or- ganize from them a single regiment of cavalry, to be carefully trained and specially educated, the more promising and deserving recruits to be placed in the line of promotion, and all to be en- couraged to look to possible rank, responsibility NATIONAL DEFENCE. 115 and position as part of the compensation for the necessary restraint to which they might be sub- jected. This restraint could by no possibility be more severe and continuous than that of West Point. All that has been said about the army applies with equal force to the navy. When the appren- tice system was formulated there was hope ex- pressed by hundreds of officers who had served in one branch or other of the service during the late civil war, that it might afford a step- ping-stone to ambitious young men who wished to adopt a seafaring career, but were unable to obtain admission to the naval academy, or in any other way to gain a sufficient education in seamanship and gunnery, which are the two principal requirements of the American naval officer. But if any number of naval apprentices have yet reached officers' uniforms- or see be- fore them any hope of such advancement, the country -has not heard of it ; neither has the naval department. The boys are treated kindly, well fed, well clothed, educated to a certain extent and trained by officers carefully selected for their intelligence, forbearance, patience, and tact. But has any one seen any recommendation either to the naval department or to members of Congress that the apprentice ships should be schools for naval officers ? The consequence is that in case of our becom- 116 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ing suddenly involved in war with any power we would be in as bad a position as we were when the civil war broke out. At that time there was a sudden demand for twenty times as many trained military officers as the regular army and the graduating class at West Point could supply, and the demand became greater every month during the time in which our first million of men were enlisted. The scarcity of available mate- rial was so deplorable that many lieutenants of regulars were called to the command of volun- teer regiments. Did any one think to go to the ranks of the regular army for officers ? At that time there were in the army thousands of ser- geants, any one of whom, had he been in the militia in a corresponding position, would have been considered amply fit to organize, drill, and otherwise care for a company of a hundred men. But there were no such demands, and had they been made the proper men would not have been forthcoming to any extent. The lack was not of military skill, but of the many other qualities which go to the make-up of a soldier. And first among these is a high degree of self-respect a quality which has never been nourished among enlisted men of the regular army of the United States. The real trouble is lack of proper public spirit. During a recent chat with Admiral Porter, that NATIONAL DEFENCE. 117 fine old sea-dog and fighter bemoaned the lack of any proper public sense of caution. '' Why don't you write up the subject your- self? " I asked. " ' Write ! " exclaimed the veteran, in his ener- getic way ; " I've almost written my finger-nails off, and do not believe it has done a particle of good. Nothing would please me more than to be able to infuse a patriotic spirit into the Ameri- can people make them feel that they have a flag and need a navy to protect it. I wish we had some of the energy and patriotism exhibited by our forefathers, for, according to present in- dications, we will one day be humiliated by some fifth-rate naval power which will come to our shores and teach us a lesson. No reason exists why we should be exempt from war, for we are easily excited, and, like the school-boy, dare any one to knock the chip from our shoulder, though not able to fight." So say we all of us all who give the subject intelligent thought. CHAPTER IX. OUR ENEMIES. WHEN complaints are made of the weakness of our army and our national defences the com- mon reply is, Who is going to war with us ? If a man were to neglect to put locks on his doors because he knew of no one who would like to rob him; if because he feels well he would neg- lect provision for his family after his death, he would be contemptible in the eyes of everybody. A great teacher, a highly respected authority on human affairs, one who deprecated strife of every kind, once said : " Know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what watch the thief would have come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up." St. Matthew, xxiv. 23. Of course this was said of men, not nations. But what are nations but aggregated men ? Why should any one go to war with the United States? The question is natural enough, but experience shows that any reason is sufficient to him who wishes to pick a quarrel. But siippose we do not want to fight ? That (118) OUR ENEMIES. 119 does not alter the case if some one else wishes to provoke strife for any purpose. Neither you nor I want to fight. It would spoil our tempers and clothes and perhaps our hands and faces. If any one inj ures us we ought to call the police ; if any one offers us an insult we should regard him with contempt. Still, admitting all this, you must also admit that if any one were to slap either of us in the face there would be entertainment for the street Arabs in about a minute. But who should want to pick a quarrel with the United States ? Any one who wants to rob us. Rob ? Yes ; robbery has been the principal incentive to war ever since men began to fight. But foreign nations with whom we are now at peace are not thieves, are they ? Well, that de- pends upon what you mean by nations. If you refer to the people, they as a body are busily en- gaged in earning their living, and they have no taste either for killing or being killed. But a government is not always a nation's representa- tive. It is more often a substitute, with self-as- sumed powers. It consists of individuals, some- times a single individual. But whether one or many, the government, in distinction from the people, is, as a rule, looking out for Number One, who is not national, but personal. Well, suppose some country were to fall out with us or desire to rob us, as you put it, what then ? Why, if they were prepared for their 120 CUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. work, as robbers usually are, they would find us entirely at their mercy. Yes, I know all about American bravery and foresight and inventive faculty. I have read all the stories of the various uprisings of the American people against home or foreign enemies ; nevertheless the United States never yet took part in a war for which at the beginning they were not entirely unprepared. They never were less prepared than at the pres- ent time. But who are they who want to rob us ? The answer is simple enough. Thieves are merely those persons who need more than they can hon- estly acquire within a given time, and who make good their deficiency by seizing the property of persons who are not sufficiently on guard over their own. Bngland is almost a pauper nation to-day. Any attempt to increase any form of tax in Bngland is fought by the entire people. It is not necessary to quote Sidney Smith, on the tax- ations of the English, which have been materially increased since his famous witticism was written. No man imagfnes that the English national debt can ever be paid. The most that any holder hopes is to receive his interest regularly. Eng- land, nevertheless, has ambitions she calls them aspirations and for any of them to which a na- tional color may be added she can count upon the support of all the unthinking portion of her pop- ulation. If this is as large as that of the United OUR ENEMIES. 121 States, it includes probably nine-tenths of all the inhabitants. England has a better navy than we who haven't any to speak of a larger army, more incentives before her soldiers and sailors, and an immense class of dissatisfied, restless, uncomfortable people whom she could quickly pacify by appeals to national honor or national vanity. So, for this and a number of other reasons, which will occur to any one recalling the condition of England, a war with the United States would be a sunny-faced blessing to Great Britain. Germany is just as poor as England, and no more scrupulous, though some of my Irish- American readers may have doubts on this sub- ject. England is isolated from the rest of the world to a certain extent by her insular position, consequently she can occasionally afford to laugh at her enemies. To wade a narrow river or to walk across an imaginary line is sufficient to bring some of Germany's enemies into her coun- try. She has been obliged to remain on guard against foreign foes until nearly every German is by nature a soldier, and from the soldier's im- pulse to that of the robber is not always as great a distance as some moralists may imagine. France is not poor in this world's goods. There is a greater accumulation of wealth in France in proportion to population than in any other continental nation. Nevertheless, France 122 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. is terribly discontented. A war from which, a certainty of glory might be premised would be of immense service to France at the present time, and probably as much longer as the French Re- public lasts. There is constant factional fighting in the French Assembly, at the polls, and in the press factional fighting of a quality which Americans cannot imagine unless they are stu- dents of French history of the past twenty-five years. No one party of the nation is sufficiently strong to disregard its combined enemies. Still less is any one party honest enough to trust its enemies for fair treatment, or to accord it. A war with any foreign power would weld French- men together at least during the duration of the strife that would mean a prolonged lease of life for the republic. After that well, then perhaps the men at present directing public affairs might be dead, and their successors would probably have similar incentives to aggressive war. But, seriously, when we begin to examine the nations with regard to their possible causes of complaint against the United States and their chances of success in an armed conflict suddenly precipitated, what civilized nation is there that could not put us to great expense of money and blood, and to great humiliation of the national sense of honor ? Across the Pacific is China, an Asiatic heathen power which it is diplomatic usage to regard with good-natured forbearance OUR ENEMIES. 123 that almost reaches contempt. But does any American ever realize that we, the people of the United States, have done more than any other country to provoke the hatred of China and cause the people to regard us with vengeful feelings ? Does any one realize that the reigning dynasty of China at present is of Tartar blood; that many of the trusted officials of China are Tar- tars, that the army contains many lively Tar- tars ? ' Tartar " is regarded by the general reader as a mere race expression, indicating some people of no particular consequence who inhabit a little of the more uninteresting part of Central Asia. But it may be well to jog the reader's memory with the fact that these same Tartars have within a few centuries formed the Russian empire, geo- graphically one of the largest in the world. The difference of nature between the Turks and the Tartars is not great, yet it is but a few centu- ries ago that the Turks, a lot of semi-savages, en- tered Europe and threatened at least one-half of that division of the globe for a long period, and were so successful in their military operations that they exacted tribute from kings and cour- tesy even from the Pope himself, although they were infidels and he was the head of the Chris- tian Church and the representative of Jesus Christ upon earth. China's military establishment may be almost 124 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. beneath contempt, for it is almost as weak as our own, nevertheless China could obtain an unlim- ited number of men at very short notice, and precipitate them upon our western coast. That Americans defending their own homes would not in time be able to resist any invasion would be insulting to our national pride to imagine. Nevertheless the great harm worked by a great war is not always through the final result, but by the preliminary sufferings, annoyances, and hu- miliations inflicted upon those who are found un- prepared for an assault. In every large city there are numerous streets, the residents of which are intelligent, alert, and some of them are well armed, but what does all this amount to against the burglar, or couple or trio of burglars, who suddenly descend without notice upon a house or a block, upon thievish exploits intent ? But if you are inclined to laugh to scorn the idea that we have nothing to fear from China, what do you say of Italy ? A great many Ital- ians are in the United States at present. Some have come as permanent residents ; a greater number, so the Knights of Labor say, are here on contract to do a specified amount of labor, take their money, and go back home again. They are regarded with sentiments much like those with which the Californian regards the Chinese. In a great many towns they are merely endured, in some they are abused. The United States has OUR ENEMIES. 125 gone to war, or threatened war, more than once on account of bad treatment of a single citizen or alleged citizen of the United States. There are men still living who can well remember the action of Commodore Ingraham, of our navy, in the Martin Koszta case. Ingrahain threatened to shell an Austrian war vessel unless Koszta were immediately delivered on board his ship, and the Austrian empire, governed by a titular descendant of the Caesars, was obliged to submit. Well, Italy has an army ten times as strong as ours and a navy worth at least a thousand times as much as ours. Italy is restive, overtaxed, needs some outside interest to distract the attention of its inhabitants from home affairs. It dare not meddle with any of its European neighbors, but the big iron-clads of the Italian navy could, at a given order from the admiralty, lay Boston, New York and Philadelphia under contribution or in ashes at once. Of course, we could w r hip Italy afterwards ; we Americans can do anything. But, buncombe aside, isn't it our policy to pre- vent occurrences that may humiliate us in the beginning, no matter how handsomely we might come out of them in the end ? And while we are talking about possibilities of attack and invasion, does any one forget that our sister republics of Mexico and Chili owe us very big grudges, about which any one can learn full particulars by visiting either of those countries 126 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. with letters of introduction to prominent citizens ? We stole California from Mexico ; that is the plain Bnglish of it, although it does not appear in our school histories. Mexicans know it if Americans do not. Mexico is not as large a nation as we ; it has not as many inhabitants nor as much money ; but on the other hand, its people have abundant leisure in which to indulge all their hatreds. They are splendid fighters, and, were we ever to be in what diplomatists call a tight place, Mexico might swing her small but extremely active sword into the balance in favor of our enemy, and humiliate us worse than we did her forty years ago. As for Chili, in consequence of the bluster to which we subjected her during the Garfield ad- ministration, stopping for a time her military operations against Peru through fear of the United States, a fear that had no basis whatever, Chili has. a grudge against us. She is small, but she is rich. She is on the Pacific Ocean, where our navy is not. Her navy, though small, is strong. It has nothing whatever to do, and should it some day want exercise, it could make things very lively for the city of San Francisco, and by the time we could reach there with either soldiers or ships Chili would have had her revenge. We might afterwards arrange for "peace with honor," but honor that costs a hundred million or a thousand million dollars, as short wars frequently OUR ENEMIES. 127 do, is not the sort of honor for which peace-loving Americans are longing. It cannot be too forcibly impressed upon the American mind that nations go to war for pur- poses of plunder. They call it conquest, but the end is the same. We are rich ; every other nation of the world is poor. We are unguarded ; every other nation of the world is jealously guarded at every point of approach. We invite attack further by our air of entire security and self-satisfaction. The slightest intimation that warlike feeling exists in any other nation toward a continental or South American or even Asiatic power will set a whole country by the ears, but the United States regards all such talk with a mingling of conceit and contempt. We whipped England ; we consequently assume that we can whip anybody. This sort of talk does well enough for civilians, but soldiers understand that it is all poppy-cock gabble, and whenever war is talked about our generals and admirals and prominent staff officers of the United States army and navy have a great many uneasy nights. They know, as well as the corps commanders of France did in the days of the last empire, that we are not ready for war, and, still more, that we are unready to a degree that is simply disgraceful. They know that were war to be declared against us by any power in the world, excepting perhaps the black republics 128 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. in the Caribbean Sea, that we would be at disad- vantage from the first. They of course know that, with all our financial and mechanical re- sources, we probably should succeed in the end. Our country has a means of defence in its geo- graphical peculiarities, which give an immense centre, unapproachable except by foot-soldiers, a centre from which men, means and munitions of war could be poured in continuous stream for years without apparently any sign of diminution or weakness. But do we want to fight a war to a successful end, and endure the humiliations which must be imposed upon us in the begin- ning? We have gone through this sort of thing once. Within the present century a British fleet sailed up the Potomac River, laid a portion of our national capital in ashes, and destroyed the prin- cipal buildings and archives of the Government. We came out of the war victorious, as the saying goes, but the victory did not restore the burned buildings or bring a single written paper back from the ashes. We are tremendous when we are aroused; oh, everybody knows that, but why should we be asleep in the meantime ? We have more points of difference at the present time with foreign governments than either France or Ger- many had with each other at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war. It is true that none of these are with a power which is immediately OUR ENEMIES. 129 upon our boundary, as Germany was upon that of France, though an exception may be made regarding Canada, which, in the event of any quarrel of ours with Great Britain, would afford a series of posts and harbors from which men in any number might be poured into our northern States, destroying our trade, breaking our lines of communication, preventing the tilling of the soil, suspending manufacturing operations, and in one way and other impoverishing us to an extent ten times greater than the actual cost of warlike operations would ever indicate. How are we to provide against all these risks ? The answer has been given a score of times in the past ten years by Secretaries of War and the Navy, and by the General of the Army and the Admiral of the Navy in their annual reports. Any man who reads such documents knows that our army is weak, our forts are antiquated, our artillery is insufficient to cope with that of any modern warlike power. Our ports are defence- less, and we have neither soldiers, militia, ships, or anything else, except a few torpedo experi- ments, with which to meet an enemy on" short notice. A few years ago there was a clever sketch published, called "The End of New York," in which a writer who is also an engi- neer explained how a second-class Spanish craft came up to Sandy Hook, and was about to bombard New York; this bombardment and 130 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. utter destruction was only prevented by the ap- pearance of a single' Chilian vessel of greater force and with guns of larger calibre than the Spanish fleet. But at the present time we would not be able to hope for aid even from the Chil- ians, because now they hate us worse than they hate Spain, and so do all the other South Ameri- can republics. The reason for the deplorable condition of our army and navy, our fortifications and our artillery, is a hypocritical rage for keeping down expenses. There are no promising jobs nowadays in the improvement of our military and naval establish- ment. If there are, Congressmen cannot agree as to how to divide the profits. The economy of the United States has degenerated into such con- temptible parsimony that recently it was impos- sible for some military posts to salute the flag morning and evening, because of the cost of am- munition for firing the gun. This cost amounted to fifteen cents per gun, or, as they say it at the shooting galleries, two shots for a quarter. Army officers stormed, civilians protested, news- papers made fun of this pretended economy, nevertheless the flag went up and down at numerous posts on the Atlantic coast, where there were most people to know about it, with- out salute. There have been no powerful guns mounted at any fort in New York harbor in years, and the experiments which have been con- OUR ENEMIES. 131 ducted ill the making of great guns at home have been significant simply as failures. At present there is a spirit in the departments at Washington, which has been imparted in some degree to Congress, in favor of putting ourselves in a position to be secure as well as to feel secure. What it will amount to remains still to be seen. We have built a good ship or two and are begin- ning to build others, but as such enterprises de- pend upon appropriations made year after year by Congress, and as an appropriation for national defence is the last thing in the world with which the average Congressman concerns himself, it will not do to felicitate ourselves on a decided change until we see it in actual operation. At the present time the man who is founding an estate and a home for his family for generations to come will do well to get as far back from the sea-coast and the Canada line as possible. CHAPTER X. LABOR. LABORING MEN this is their own title for themselves do not work any harder than the remainder of their fellow-beings. But those who come under this title as it is generally under- stood have some grievances that must be removed before several million men can transverse the long distance between dissatisfaction and com- fort. The Labor party, so-called, has made an ass of itself a great many times, but its blunders cannot change the fact that many of its complaints have a great deal of ground to stand on. The farmer who shoots the man that stole his horses may be a murderer, but that does not alter the fact that his horses, upon whose work depend his crops, his family's fate, and the ownership of his farm, have been stolen. So, when a railroad strike prevents thousands of travellers not owning any railway stock, not having any part or influence in railway management, from reaching their des- tination, the strikers may be absolute scoundrels in their disregard of the rights of their fellow- (132) LABOR. 133 men; nevertheless it is entirely true that their own wages may have been ground down to starv- ation basis, and consequently the men have a right to complain. Labor is sure to be imposed upon just as much as the laboring class will endure the imposition. The poorer the man the more necessary is it that he shall work in order to live. This being so, he is sure sooner or later to encounter somebody who will take advantage of him. No man need be a scoundrel in order to drive a sharp bargain if he gets the chance. To drive a sharp bargain is something that all of us rather pride ourselves upon. Probably the laboring man would do it himself if he got the opportunity. Nevertheless, the purpose and aim of the laboring man should be to be so "fixed" that no one can catch him at a disadvantage. Labor that is, organized labor, must be in ceaseless conflict with the spirit of competition that prevails among employers. In every manu- facturing industry that admits of competition, all the way from making door-mats to building houses and railroads, men try by underbidding one another to get business. The energy of a new country is always in excess of its capital and also of its demand. This is very encouraging so far as the outlook for energy goes, but it does work a great many wrongs and unpleasantnesses. In business it does not take long to reach bed- 134 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. rock as to cost of raw material. After that, the strain of competition must come entirely upon labor, and, if labor does not resist, it must starve. Consequently the workingman must fight, and fight continually, to keep from being reduced to slavery in one form or other. The word slavery has a dreadful sound, but there are ways of muiHing it so that the slave himself does not always see himself in a true light. It is only a short time ago that New England was thrown into a fervor of patriotic indignation by the spectacle presented in one town of a native bringing a laborer in chains to the market-place to be sold. The owner regarded himself as en- tirely in the right, and explained his position very distinctly. He had obtained his vassal on a contract that a certain amount of labor would be given for a specified sum of money. The sum was small ; nevertheless it was paid and accepted, and the man afterward imagined that he could escape from the terms of his contract. Conse- quently the employer, or purchaser, as he seemed to consider himself, put chains upon the fellow, and as literally brought him for sale as any slave was ever offered in any slave-mart in the world. The beholders rose in their wrath, dragged both men before the court, the slave was freed and the owner was fined. But the point is here : this was simply a case LABOR. 135 in which the slave-dealer, taking advantage of an ignorant, unthinking man, was found out. How many thousands of similar cases exist in the United States at the present time of which the public know nothing ? All newspaper men at the principal sea-ports know that people come to this country by the thousand on contracts to do a certain amount of labor for specified prices. The prices may be below the cost of living, never- theless the contracts hold good in all courts of law, and the men are obliged to do their duty. We are sorry for them, but, according to the practice of all countries, man seems to be made for the law and not the law for man. Do I really mean to say that slavery is pos- sible in the United States ? Why, such a ques- tion is behind the times, for slavery practically exists. What else but slavery can you call the condition of some of the coal-miners, tanners and factory hands of' the United States ? Men with their wives and families go to a small town which practically belongs to their employer. They live in houses owned by their employer, buy their household supplies at stores owned by their em- ployer, take their pay in checks, tickets or orders signed by their employer, and get the remainder of their pay when their employer is ready. Suppose they wish to improve their condition and go away ; how can they move at all unless they have saved some money, the saving of 136 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. which, by a peculiarity well understood in all such localities, is simply impossible ? The method is practically that of South America. In some of our sister republics the laboring men who are on a plantation are called a consist ado. Men are obtained, in the first place, by a small advance of money, and are told that they can obtain additional sums at such times as the}?- may need them, provided the money is already due them for work done. But these laborers are improvident. When they wish to spend money, the employer good-naturedly so it is supposed allows them to draw slightly in advance, and by the laws of the country the laborer can never leave until his indebtedness to the employer is paid. In some of the South American republics there are consistados, from which no man can escape to work elsewhere without being claimed and returned by forms very similar to those which prevailed in the United States under the old fugitive slave law in slavery times. If a workman on the plantation of Don Tomas re- covers from a feast-day celebration in a state of mind which leads him to run away and go to the plantation of Don Jorge, he is missed at roll-call, his absence is reported to his employer, and straightway a lot of notes are sent out to the owners of surrounding estates notifying them of the runaway and requesting them to return him LABOR. 137 to his employer, who will pay the expenses in- curred by the return. The request is always honored, because what neighbor knows when some member of his own consistado may disap- pear in the same manner, and be, of course, slightly in debt to his employer? The same state of affairs prevails practically in a number of our mining and manufacturing regions. Men who are paid only once a month or once in two months get advances from their employers in the shape of orders for family sup- plies upon stores in the vicinity, stores probably owned by the employer. So long as the pur- chaser is in debt he may be stopped if he attempts to leave the country, and if he goes alone, as usually he must, his family is unable to follow him, and, still more, unable to retain a home and get food, for the roof which shelters them belongs also to the employer, as does the only store which gives credit. Only a few years ago I met in the State of New York a tanner, who was said to be one of the ablest men in his business, who told -me that he had been seven years in the town and house in which I found him, trying to work out his indebtedness to his em- ployer, so as to take his family somewhere else where they could have better society and where his children could have better facilities for edu- cation, but in spite of all efforts at economy he was still in debt to his employer. As the said 138 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. employer fixed the rate of wages, the tanner could not possibly see how his condition would ever be otherwise. This apparently anomalous feature of our civilization may appear to the reader to be acci- dental and exceptional, but it is not. In the larger cities the same conditions prevail under different forms. There are a great many shops in New York and other cities where men and women, principally the latter, work at starvation wages, and are so assisted by the pretended kind- ness of their employers that they always are in debt and cannot possibly leave without fear of suit and possibly arrest. The so-called slave marts of certain districts of the city of New York on Sundays are not overdrawn pictures, as the reading public may imagine them. There are hundreds of thousands of people so absolutely bound to their present employers that their only method of escape seems to be death. Public sentiment does not countenance slavery, though, and public sentiment is all-powerful? The will of the people is the law of the land ? Yes, yes ; that sounds very well. There is a good deal of truth in it, too, but the truth is all on one side. Public sentiment does not concern itself with anything which is not brought closely to its attention. Public sentiment in the United States did not countenance African slavery long after the Constitution was adopted, nevertheless LABOR. 139 the institution grew and flourished until it almost destroyed the nation. Public sentiment did not approve of any of the abuses of the colored race which individual overseers and owners might be mean enough to indulge in. Nevertheless, as in everything else, the public acted upon the old- fashioned principle of not interfering in other people's business. The general public does not handle the slaves, still less does the general pub- lic manage the employers. It hears once in a while of abuses and cruelties, and thinks these are outrageous, but they are not its affair. Each man must look out for himself, Heaven helps those who help themselves, etcetera, etcetera. There are a good many ways of getting rid of moral responsibility in this world, and nearly everybody is mean enough to take advantage of them when the moral responsibility does not af- fect any one of his own .family, much less his own pocket-book. But can the condition of labor be improved ? Yes, if labor is entirely in earnest about it. Labor's principal need is brains. I don't mean they must increase their own brains ; but in their conflicts with employers the laboring men should be led, or their interests should be man- aged, by men who know both sides of the ques- tion. Are there such men in the ranks of the laborers? It appears not; if there were, such men would not be laborers at all. How many 140 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. men there are whose hearts have been strongly stirred up by the wrongs endured by labor in the United States, who have longed for an oppor- tunity to assist the working classes with their sympathy and counsel, but who have been re- pelled again and again by the utterly unbusiness- like and senseless methods of the very men whom they desired to help ! During the strikes in the cotton mills of New England, a few years ago, it was remarked by a millionaire, a man of leisure, who desired to assist the operatives with his time, his money and his legal ability, that could he have such a faculty of working as the laboring class had of blundering he would be the greatest man who ever lived. There is no objection, on the part of Ameri- cans, to workingmen enjoying all proper rights and protection under the law; the only trouble is in unwise methods of procedure. President Cleveland puts the whole matter in a nutshell as follows : " Under our form of government the value of labor as an element of national prosperity should be distinctly recognized, and the welfare of the laboring man should be regarded as especially entitled to legislative care. In a country which offers to all its citizens the highest attainment of social and political distinction, its workingmen cannot justly or safely be considered as irrev- ocably consigned to the limits of a class and EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND. LABOR. 141 entitled to no attention and allowed no protest against neglect. The laboring man, bearing in his hand an indispensable contribution to our growth and progress, may well insist, with manly courage and as a right, upon the same recogni- tion from those who make our laws as is ac- corded to any other citizen having a valuable in- terest in charge ; and his reasonable demands should be met in such a spirit of appreciation and fairness as to induce a contented and patriotic co-operation in the achievement of a grand national destiny. While the real interests of labor are not promoted by a resort to threats and violent manifestations, and while those who, under the pretexts of an advocacy of the claims of labor, wantonly attack the rights of capital, and for selfish purposes or the love of disorder sow seeds of violence and discontent, should neither be encouraged nor conciliated, all legis- lation on the sjibject should be calmly and delib- erately undertaken, with no purpose of satisfying unreasonable demands or gaining partisan ad- vantage." The press of the United States, as a rule, is on the side of abused men of any class, not ex- cepting laboring men who strike against oppres- sion of any kind or against reduced compensa- tion, but often and often within a very few years, within the memory of men who are still young, the press has been obliged by common-sense 142 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. alone to condemn strikes of men whose condition they regarded as deplorable, but whose imme- diate purpose was absolutely indefensible. A business man in a position which he does not en- tirely understand seeks the counsel of a lawyer or of some one who fully comprehends the case in all its bearings. The laboring man seems to think such a course unnecessary, and he surfers the consequences. Will any unions, guilds, Knights of Labor, help the workingmen to maintain such rights as they have and gain such as they need ? Yes, if there are brains behind them. " In union is strength," but strength may be just as effective in a bad sense as a good one, and the more of it there is the worse will be the showing made if the cause is not just. If workingmen were di- vine, all their past efforts would have done a great deal of good, but they are only human, and there is no getting away from the fact that when any lot of men first are brought together through sense of wrong, their first thought is revenge, which never meets the public's views. " Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," is an expression from authority so high that we are obliged to treat it with respect, and it is certain that during the present generation a desire for vengeance by any one or for any reason whatever has never called forth the sympathy of the public. Human nature is a very weak article. No one LABOR. 143 knows this better than the wise man who has a great deal of it himself; so in all quarrels he as- sumes that there is a great deal of right on both sides and that reconciliation or adjustment must be brought about by conciliation and compromise. The laboring man on strike is not given to either conciliation or compromise. Whatever his wrongs may be, he has first endured them for a long time and when he has begun to complain of them his complaints have never been made directly, but simply are voiced among his fellows, then in- creased in volume. The argument on the other side has never been brought to his attention, and consequently he regards himself as the only per- son wronged and almost as the only person who has any interest in the matter in any way. It never occurs to him that his employer, like nine- teen in twenty of all the employers of the United States, is doing his business on the basis of general confidence and borrowed capital, and that what might seem fair to the employer as an individual may be utterly impossible when de- manded of the employer as a business man. In all the manufacturing centres outside of large cities the majority of employers do busi- ness with money borrowed from savings banks which have obtained this money by deposits from the laboring men themselves. An injury done to one is an injury to all. If labor goes back upon the employer, the* banks also must go 144 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. back upon him, and after this nothing but a very wise head can prevent injury to both. When upon such a complication there comes the spirit of revenge nothing but a special interposition of Providence can prevent injury for everybody. One fact that should be constantly borne in mind is that trades unions, no matter what their titular name may be, can never be sure of sup- port from men in the same trade who have most sense and influence. Protests, whether with words or blows, are always made by the discon- tented, but the better class of workingmen are not of that variety. They either have better sense than their associates or make better use of the sense they have, so they are in positions with which they are fairly contented. Men who have been " inside " of a great many labor movements are no less vigorous in their denunciation of the stupidity of labor than the most earnest or most hypocritical employer that can be named. They say or they have said to newspaper men whose business it has been to interrogate them closely that "if" so-and-so had happened the results would have been different, but A or B or C, each of whom had a number of personal retainers, thought differently, and consequently the trouble was prolonged. Had certain other men in the business belonged to the unions or guilds, or whatever associations made the formal protest against wages or hdurs, or whatever the griev- ' LABOR. 145 ances might have been, there would have been a chance for compromise, or arbitration, or some other method which would have brought the con- flicting interests into harmony. But these men " stayed out," as the saying is. They were men who saw opportunities for something better before them ; consequently they did not intend to com- promise their own position and future prospects by taking part in a fight. Neither can the unions depend upon support from mechanics and laborers outside of the large cities and of villages and manufacturing centres which are tributary to large cities. The carpen- ter, mason and blacksmith in a country town feels insulted when asked to organize or join a trade union. He does not feel the need of any protection. He, with good right, considers him- self as smart as any merchant or manufacturer or capitalist in his vicinity, and he not only does not see the need of any protection against such people, but he thinks himself smart enough to .overcome them all in matters pertaining to his own business. Experience proves that he is right. Such a man slowly but surely becomes a proprietor, and thus an employer himself. The idea that he is always to be a laborer is extremely distasteful to him, and even if he were convinced that such were to be the fact he would not admit it. He would feel that he would be voluntarily taking a lower level by making any such admis- 10 146 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. sion. The natural consequences may be seen by any man who has done business in a number of small towns or villages. The journeyman work- man in any trade whom he knew ten or fifteen years ago, in his beginning, is probably now an employer and a proprietor himself. Quite pos- sibly he has " struck a big thing," as the saying goes, and has money of his own ; his sons are being as well educated, his daughters as well dressed, as those of any of his neighbors, and his wife associates on terms of equality with the families of the judge or Congressman or whoso- ever else the local magnate may be. So far as labor expects to be helped by public sympathy, which is always on the side of the unfortunate and oppressed, it cuts its own throat by denying the right of any laborer to work at cheaper rates than his fellows. The abuses and indignities to which so-called scabs have been subjected have alienated public " sympathy " from labor movements to a most deplorable de- gree. No American, not even the millionaire, is free from the influence of competition in busi- ness, and the richest are sometimes those who suffer the most. Competition has been denned as the soul of business, and no one yet has been skilful enough to deny or modify the assertion. If employers may compete, if clerks, teachers, salesmen, lawyers, physicians, even clergymen, may compete with one another for wages or com- LABOR. 147 pensation for their services, why may not work- men ? Can any one imagine a body of clerks, or dry-goods salesmen, or lawyers, forming a clique and standing at dark corners with clubs and pistols to bully other men of their own profession into demanding certain wages on penalty of re- fusing to do any business at all ? " What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." If one class of labor is entitled to take as much wages as it may get for such services as it can render, why should not another be en- titled to the same privilege ? It is very true that the laboring man often sees in free competition by a large number of men a possibility that he shall be deprived of his daily occupation. But whose fault is it ? That of the competitor who will work for lower wages or of the man who has done so little outside of his daily stint of labor as to be obliged to stand in the position of a highwayman or bully toward any one who can do the same work for less money than he ? Can law improve the condition of the working- man ? Can you make a horse drink by leading him to the water? The law has done a great deal for the laborers in many States by giving workmen a first lien upon the results of their work, but it cannot and will not compel the com- munity to regard the inefficient worker as the equal of the good one, which is the point upon which some trade unions and other organizations 148 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. seem inclined to insist. Neither will it allow the employee to manage his employer's business. The employer may occasionally find himself "in a hole," where he must submit to any terms im- posed by the only men who can help him out, but if he gets in any such fix a second time his bankers and customers will go back upon him, after which he will have no use for labor at any price. . Then can law and public opinion do more for laboring men than they have done ? Not much. Why ? Because law and public opinion are made by people who themselves work people who stand just as much of this world's wear and tear as any common dirt-shoveller, to say nothing of any skilled mechanic. There are more farmers than mechanical laborers, and they work longer hours, but how often do they demand help of the law or the public ? In every large city there are tens of thousands of clerks who are driven to their utmost capacity at less compensation per day than the common laborer receives. It has been ascertained that a bank-teller who recently de- faulted was getting a salary of only six dollars per week, though he had long hours and great responsibility. Does not underpaid labor, outside the mechan- ical arts, frequently improve its own condition ? Yes, frequently. Well, how ? Why, by using its brains. If it were to insist that its whole LABOR. 149 duty was done when its daily work was over the public would laugh at it. The clerk, the teacher, the salesman considers it his duty to continually improve himself in order to be fit for such oppor- tunities as may arise. A man ' in any one of these positions who w r ould spend his non-working hours in indulgence, carelessness, or, worse still, at the nearest beer-shop, would be considered by his employers as unfit for confidence and by his associates as a man who never would rise. If such men are so badly paid, so severely worked, yet are skilful enough to rise from the low finan- cial level upon which their work places them, why should not the laboring class in general rise in the same manner ? It is useless to say they cannot, because thousands upon thousands have done it for years. It has already been said that the mechanics of a few years ago are the em- ployers and managers of to-day. A great deal more might be said in the same direction, for there are great mills, factories and industries of the United States to-day controlled by men who were merely poor laborers at day wages a few years ago. The question is not one of a class or of an industry ; it is entirely one of individual manhood, and the man stands or falls by him- self. The more he depends upon an association or his fellow-men the less strength there is in himself to resist injury or to make his way up- ward. CHAPTER XI. SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. IF the laboring man doesn't want to be in a state of slavery, he must refrain from putting himself into chains. He is a good deal like the rest of us ; he always blames somebody else for his condition. He wont be able to get out of trouble until he lays most of the blame on himself. If a man feels obliged to enter into business relations with a lion he does not begin by put- ting his head into the animal's mouth. If a workingman begins life with the belief, which seems prevalent now, that all employers will en- slave a man if they can, he should not allow himself to be in such condition that he cannot take care of himself. Why, even a dog or a cat going into a strange room spends its first moments in looking around to see how it can get out again in case of necessity. Employers as a class have so many sins to answer for that there will be lively times for them on judgment day, I suppose, but that is no reason why the employee should be a fool. If a (160) P. M. ARTHUR (Chairman of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers). SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. 1S1 man sticks a knife into you, and is sent to State's prison for it, his sentence punishes him, but it does not pay your doctor's bill, or make up to you what you have lost in time and money while you have been lying in bed under the surgeon's care. The workingman is too often satisfied to do whatever is before him without fitting himself to do anything else in case of accident or change of business, or lack of demand, or any one of the various other accidents that may occur to disturb the even routine of his life. No man in any other line of business dare be so careless. There are clerks and book-keepers and men in the highest mechanical arts who are very good in their places, but who never fit themselves for anything better or anything else. These men are slaves literally. Their employers know it, if the slaves themselves don't. No matter how honest they may be, no matter how capable they are in their own specialties, these are the men who always are passed over when promotions are to be made, or when men are to be selected for higher positions. By a strange coincidence these are also the men who grumble most at their rate of pay, their hours, the amount of work they have to do, and the manner in which their employers treat them. Many of them are such good fellows personally, so full of human virtues that are not 152 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. specially business virtues, that they excite a great deal of sympathy among their acquaint- ances, but in the case of any acquaintance who happens also to be an employer there is no sympathy whatever. The American workingman, above all others on the face of the earth, needs to take this warning to heart, for one result of competition has been the subdivision of most varieties of mechanical labor to a degree which requires twenty or thirty men sometimes to complete a bit of work which once was done by a single in- dividual. Undoubtedly work can be done cheaper in this way, and both capital and labor have some obligations to fulfil toward the con- sumer, but the less a man is a " full-handed workman," which means that he can do all branches of the business in which he is en- gaged, the more necessary it is for him to be prepared to do something else in case of emer- gency. To illustrate : there was a time, almost within the memory of the present generation, when miniature painting was the most profitable divis- ion of art work in the United States. A fine miniature would bring more money than an oil painting. Suddenly the process of daguerreotyp- ingwas discovered. Then came the ambrotypeand photograph, and other cheap methods of making accurate likenesses, and as a consequence minia- SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. 153 ture paintings became less and less in demand, and the few members of the profession who still survive have none at all of the work at which they once were famous. Some of them took to drawing on wood, others went into oil portraits, some devoted themselves to water-colors, and others went into mechanical businesses where a good and accurate eye for color and proportion commanded good pay. But if the miniature painters, whose misfortunes were greater than those of any class of common laborers now com- plaining to the public, had insisted that the public owed them a living and they were going to have it, and that Congress should make laws enabling them to get a living out of their busi- ness, they would have been laughed to scorn. The miniature painters had no more brains than mechanics. What is fair for one is fair for another. One of the first things that the young labor- ing man does is to take a wife. A wife is a de- sirable object of possession. So is a horse, a yacht or a handsome house, but the man who would load himself with either while he sees no means of supporting it except by weekly earn- ings which might be stopped at short notice by any one of a dozen accidents to life or business, would be regarded as a fool. Some people would call him a scoundrel. Yet when financially pushed a man can sell a horse or yacht, and get 154 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. at least part of the value while getting rid of responsibility. He cannot sell a wife, though, even if he is willing. That sort of business has become illegal. Even if it had not, the proba- bilities are that a wife, taken by a fellow who is so reckless as to marry before he is able to properly care for so precious and complicated a bit of property as a woman, would not be in salable condition. The possession of a wife implies, quite im- plies, occasional bits of income, but also of re- sponsibility, in the shape of children. " He who has wife and children has given hostages to fortune." The rich man knows this to his cost, though he may get enough delight out of the experience to pay him a thousand times over. But to the poor man dependent upon daily wages, and with no property or savings to fall back upon, a family is often fetters, with ball and chain to boot. Thank God, such bonds often feel as light as feathers and soft as silk, but these sensations do not decrease the weight or drag- ging power one particle. If a man determines to marry while he has nothing to marry on, let him at least be honest with himself, tell himself that he is going to be the slave of whoever em- ploys him, and blame himself instead of em- ployers, or capital, or public opinion for the con- sequences. There is a large class of workingmen who do SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. 155 not seeiu to think they are fit for anything but what they are doing. Such men may be honest, cheerful, obedient, industrious, painstaking and obliging. Well, slaves have been all this and more. Such men are bound to be slaves. Noth- ing that trade unions, Knights of Labor, law, religion or public sentiment can do, can save them from practical slavery. The men who organized any State, county or town in this Union had no bigger or healthier brains than the workingmen of to-day; but if each of them had imagined he could do but one kind of work, the map of our country would not look as it does now. Any of these men con- sidered himself equal to taking a hand at build- ing houses, clearing land, shoeing horses, dig- ging post-holes, following the plough, planting corn, tending stock, loading steamboats, acting as deck-hand of a flatboat, carrying mails, or doing whatever else had to be done. They blundered terribly at times, but who did not and who does not ? Bach new kind of work they laid their hands to sharpened their wits and widened their view of what might be done in the way of getting ahead in the world. That is the reason why trade unions do not flourish in new countries. Men there have been taught by ex- perience to take care of themselves. The com- mon laborer in a new country thinks himself the equal of the judge, the doctor, the lawyer 156 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and the railway president. And so he is, so far as a fair impulse and a fair show can make one man equal to another in the race for life. It is a great pity that representative working- men in our large cities cannot once in a while be sent on a tour of observation by their respec- tive trade societies. It is the custom of almost every man to regard every one in his own busi- ness as about in his own condition. But an ob- serving man going outside of the large cities and the manufacturing towns will quickly be un- deceived regarding the possibilities and future of his own business, or of himself, or of any of his associates who have any spirit in them. He may find men of his own specialty doing work longer hours per day and for less money than he is accustomed to get, and they may seem to be having terribly hard times, but there is one significant difference between the two classes : the men in new countries never grumble at whatever their hard times may be. If nature refuses a crop, or makes a river overflow and washes away a town, or a plague of locusts comes upon them, they can grumble quite as badly as any one else. But so far as they have free use of their own wits and their own hands, they " don't ask nothin' of nobody," to use their own emphatic expression. The mechanic who works all day in the newer countries can seldom be found in the beer-shop SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. 157 at night. He drops into the post-office, or the store, or the office of the justice of the peace, or wherever he sees a crowd of men, or knows that men will congregate, so that he may learn what is going on. He will change his business six times in the week, and then be guilty of doing it twice on Sunday, if there is any money in it. You never know the business of a man in a new country for more than a week at a time, unless you have your eye on him. It may seem awfully stupid to the stranger, but among people where his lot is cast the workingman manages to keep his end up, as the saying is, and the man who attempts to depress that end is dealt with by the individual himself. If a laboring man aggrieved in any of the newer countries were to go to his fellow-workmen for relief, he would be called either a fool or a coward. If he does not like what he is doing he is expected to try something else, just as every one else in the country does. The banker does not restrict himself to one single business, or one subdivision of business. Neither does the merchant, or the manufacturer, or any of the few farmers who have become " forehanded." He does whatever he sees most money in, and he has blind faith in his ability to do it. It may not be the finest variety of finished labor, but that is not found anywhere except in the competitive trades. It should not need any argument to prove all 158 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. this. There seldom is a great strike at any manufacturing centre during which a large num ber of the operatives do not disappear. Some of them find work elsewhere in their own specialty, but the oldest inhabitant, or the village gossip, 01 some one else who has time to pay close atten- tion to other people's business, can tell you that some of these men have struck out for them- selves in some other direction, and they very seldom are able to tell yon that any such change of business has brought unfortunate results. It has already been said in this book that some of the great industries of the country to-day are managed by men who once were common laborers. However ignorant the workingman may be of the fact, or however willing he may be to ignore it, the truth is that the workingman half a century ago was a great deal worse off than his successors to-day. He worked longer hours, he got smaller pay I mean smaller pay in propor- tion to the purchasing power of money, and his social position was very bad. Even the Revolu- tionary war, the Declaration of Independence, the rights of man, and all that sort of thing, didn't break down at once the laws of caste that had come to us from the old country. It was not so very long ago that even the students of Harvard University were classified according to their ancestry, the list being led by gentlemen, SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. 159 which was followed by the profession and then brought up by the general assortment of what the late Mr. Venus called " humans various." The apprentice was not only household servant as well as work-boy to his employer, but he was kept in order by a strap or a club, and the law not only could give him no redress for personal abuse, but it recognized the right of the em- ployer to treat his boys in that manner. Boys brought up in that way had not much independ- ence when they became men, and the independent spirit of the present generation was a thing almost unknown in the more thickly settled communities at that time. The workingman in that day was more religious than his successors in the present generation, but when he went to church he sat in the poorest seats ; generally he sat in the gallery. When he was out of work he went to the poor-house. The poor-house was built especially for people of his kind. Perhaps in some of the large cities workingmen and their families go to the poor-house to-day, but most of them will take pains to go to another community than that in which they are known before they allow themselves to be supported in such manner. The people of the United States cannot afford at any price to support a class which proposes to stay in one spot, making no endeavor to go further or go higher. No grade of society can 160 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. afford to support such a class. The class itself cannot afford to remain in any such position. Allusion has already been made to the willing- ness of men of the present generation to enslave their fellow-men when they get special oppor- tunity. The methods are not the same as of old, but the fact is the same and the practice is steadily fostered by the inability of a great number of men and women to impress upon the public any ability to be anything better than slaves. The workingman may take such consolation as there may be in the fact that this rule does not apply to him or to his own class alone. It exists everywhere. There are plenty of business houses who keep their men under their power, body and soul, by a custom, apparently founded on good nature, of lending them money in excess of their earnings. It is a modification of the South American consistado plan, to which allusion has already been made, and it works just as well in New York or Chicago, or any other manufacturing centre, as it does in South America. A man who will not spend his earn- ings in advance if he can get them is pretty hard to find. If this were not so there would be very little of running to banks, by business men, for discounts and loans, and " shaves." The im- pulse to discount the future is almost as old as the world itself. It dates all the way back to SELF-HELP FOR LABOR. 1G1 the Garden of Eden, when our first parents began to devour some fruit which they were not yet entitled to. It may be that slavery sometimes is pleasant. Indeed, it often is. In spite of all the bad stories that were told about the treatment of the southern blacks during old slavery days, there were a great many plantations from which the slaves did not run away, even after they heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, and knew, from what they heard in the dining-room and parlor, that the South was on its last legs, and that the good old times could not possibly come back again. There were many plantations found by the Union army, during its tramps through certain States, which the masters and the mis- tresses had abandoned, but to which the colored people clung closely, from old association alone, and were found there when the owners came back again. Slavery exists still in many por- tions of the world, principally eastern countries, and Europeans of high character and close ob- servation have declared that the condition does not inflict cruel or unfair burdens upon the en- slaved. But this is a free country. All our institu- tions are based upon the theory that one man is just as good as another, and not only so, but that he ought to be expected to be as good as his neighbors, and that as soon as he ceases to be ail 11 162 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. independent being, the master of his own time and of his own family, including all their in- terests, he is not equal to his duties and respon- sibilities as a citizen. We hear a great deal about votes purchased for money and whiskey and offers of office ; but does any one realize how entirely the political status of certain States and counties and towns depends upon the opinions of even the temporary whims of certain large em- ployers ? There are thousands of men in each of at least three New England States who would not dare vote any way than they are requested to do by their employers. Fac-siuiiles of cards and written notices have been printed to show that in certain mills the proprietors announced that their operatives were expected to vote for certain candidates which were named. If an American, an inhabitant of the freest country of the world, cannot vote as he pleases, what does his personal liberty amount to ? Even a tramp has a right to his own vote, or to sell it to the highest bidder, if he has been long enough a resident of the locality in which he attempts to deposit his ballot. There are slaves in banks and mercantile houses as well as in manufactur- ing establishments, so the laboring man need not feel hurt at the intimation that he is in danger of being subjected to an involuntary servitude which not only will control his time, but also his mind, to such an extent that he is not a free SELF-HRI.P FOR LABOR. 163 agent in anything regarding moral opinion or his duties as a citizen. The principal outlet for the energies of the workingman at the present time is undoubtedly in the newer parts of the country. There is where he is almost sure to be found if he is a man of proper spirit and has not handicapped himself so it is impossible for him to reach there. This outlet will be practicable for at least a gen- eration to come. We hear a great deal about the new countries being filled up and there being no chance for a man any longer, but some thou- sands of men who have footed it half-way across the continent can tell us differently, and show substantial proofs that they are right. The man who resolves not to take any heavy responsibilities upon his time or pocket until he considers himself fairly settled in life, can alwa}^s make his way to the new country, and there in no part of this land, although it is not a land flowing with milk and honey, in which he cannot find something to do. I once was made curious, by the conversation of a number of workingmen in a large pork-packing establish- ment in a small town in the West, to know where they had come from, and what their previous occupation had been, and among twenty-seven men I found twenty-one businesses and profes- sions represented, not one of which was pork- packing. Nevertheless each of these men was 164 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. earning two dollars and a half a day, and keep- ing an eye open for something better, which I am happy to say I saw some of them realize within a few months. At that very time at least one-half of the trades which these men had originally learned, and in which they were all supposed to be .experts, were languishing in the East, and a great number of those engaged in them were in that desperate condition of mind that in other countries has often precipitated riots and brought about bloodshed and prolonged disorder. But let workingmen note the distinction- only two of these twenty-seven men were already married. What they had earned already was their own. They were able to move about from place to place until they found a satisfactory opening in life. Some of them afterward went to the dogs. It is impossible to find any lot of men together by chance in which there will not be some incompetents and some who, through one failing or other, would be their own enemies if they were in the best of hands. There were only twelve men in the first company of assist- ants organized by Jesus Christ, and one of them turned out to be a scoundrel in spite of the ex- cellent company in which he found himself. CHAPTER XII. ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. BELIEF in the principle of equality is an im- pulse which has made America the greatest and most prosperous nation of the earth. It is supposed to have begun with the Decla- ration of Independence, but this is a mistake. If it had not already taken possession of a majority of the people, the Declaration could not have been adopted. The idea of equality comes un- bidden in all lands where men are so scarce, and work so abundant, that each man must take a hand at anything and everything. The results disarrange all previous gradations of rank and station. The man at the bottom frequently reaches the top through his own unaided merit. Such upturnings and overturnings were so fre- quent in early colonial days, in this country, that by the time the revolutionary period was reached, the principal opponents of the equality idea were men who had nothing but inherited rank and station to fall back upon. Now-a-days we don't believe in equality as fully as Jefferson did when he wrote the Decla- (105) 166 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ration of Independence. But we meet him half- way. We don't admit that all men are our equals, but we are sure, each for himself, that we are the equals of anybody else. It is a beneficent belief. If it is a humbug, then blessed be humbug. Give us some more of the same kind. Many an intelligent "man in Europe, who is above the middle class, wishes his sons and daughters might be started in life with the belief that they were the equals of any other people, and that through mere intelligence they could become the associates of the greatest and best people. This feeling is the birthright of each American boy and girl. Some of us lose sight of it from the start. Others sell it for a mess of pottage which now-a-days is generally spelled whiskey or for something less tempting ; nevertheless the feeling is there for those who want to use it. That is not all. It cannot be suppressed in those who know how to avail them- selves of it. For instance, Sam Adams, as he was called more than a hundred years ago, was the son of a poor shoemaker in Boston. Shoemakers put on very little style in those days, nevertheless George the Third and his cabinet were more afraid of the shoemaker's son than of any Vir- ginia cavalier's descendant. Speaking of Virginia, some of you probably have read how indignant some proud, fussy, ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. 167 stupid old F. F. Vs. were in revolutionary days because of the prominence suddenly attained by Patrick Henry in national politics. Patrick was not of as high extraction as they, so they said, and he not only had kept store, but he had failed to make the business go. They had to stand him, though : they could not get along without him. There were not brains among all of them together to take his place. ' Times aren't what they used to be." They aren't, eh ? No ; the man of brains and char- acter cannot get into society or reach national prominence unless he has money and influence to back him. Nonsense; the most exclusive society in America is supposed to be the famous Four Hundred in New York. Yet some of these have but little money, and others are but a generation or two removed from tradesmen as common as any you may meet to-day. Most of the four hundred are illustrations of the working force there is in the idea of equality. A few snobs may have crept in by accident, or been dragged in by ancestral apron-strings or button-holes, but the further you look into it, the humbler the stock you find they sprang from. New York's four hundred is not the only fastidious social circle in the United States. There is a fine social set in each city and large town. One American, whom it would be dis- 168 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. courteous, to name, in view of what follows, is in demand by the best people of every American town he visits, for all his instincts are high, his manners are delightful, and his conversation charming. He is not rich, he is not yet old, yet during a part of his youth he was so poor that his customary coat which he wore on his father's farm was a thick grain-bag containing a hole through which to thrust his head, and a hole at each side for his arms, and a slit in front. But- tons and button-holes would have made the gar- ment more convenient, but the family could not afford buttons. Yet this man has made his way upwards by efforts unaided by any one but him- self. He set a certain standard before him and resolutely struggled toward it. After several years of endeavor, the end seemed as far off as ever. Yet the man's endeavors, instead of weaken- ing, were only strengthened by contemplation of the work which still remained before him. When he became prominent he did it very suddenly, and people who knew of him only by his name and the work he had done talked of him as a very lucky fellow. But he knows, as do all of his more intimate acquaintances, that everything he has and is is due to his own intelligence and energy. With this spirit of equality and a realization of its possibilities, there are no necessary limits to the aspirations of the American. All he ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. 169 wants is a start, and the spirit generally makes him wide awake until he finds a start. Sixty years ago a poor farmer's boy in Western New York determined to become a great manufacturer if possible, but he had sense enough to realize that such a career would require capital, so he set himself to work to begin an accumulation of money. His father could not help him, for he had not as much money as the family interests required. So the boy's first business operation was to act as barber for his classmates at the school-house at the cross-roads. He cut hair before school hours, and at the noon-day inter- mission, at one cent per head. It was poor pay ; but, as he afterwards admitted, it was also very poor hair-cutting. At the end of an entire school term he had accumulated exactly thirty cents. The " increment," not " unearned," when he died, was, as near as can be estimated by the executors at present, one million dollars upon each cent of the original capital. What the impulse born of the spirit of equality has done toward the higher education of people in the United States is known to all college-bred men, and particularly to men of college faculties. A poor boy in England never dreams of obtaining the higher education, as it is called, for he does not know what he would do with it if he had it. The American boy knows though, and if he sets his mind on going to college he gets there. He 170 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. does not always satisfy Himself with institutions nearest home either. He wants the best. This, by the way, is a characteristic American want and demand. So the poor boy is frequently found at Yale and Harvard. How he gets there nobody but himself can tell, and between modesty and a little bit of false shame he himself says very little about it. But I know of one of these fellows who subsisted a month at Yale College on forty cents worth of corn-meal, and boasted that he never went to bed hungry either. As for public life and the learned professions, the American who does not get into them if he wants to cannot blame poverty or insignificance. He is prevented only by lack of energy or lack of brains, the latter seldom being perceptible. The proportion of men who are born rich and who are well educated among men now prom- inent in public and social life is so small as to be almost insignificant, although many of the best- known names in business and politics are those of men young enough to have been brought up since the sudden accession of wealth which began during our late civil war and which has ever since continued at a marvellous rapidity. A number of newspaper-men who have spent much time in Washington can give many good stories, which they obtained from first hands, of the trials and struggles during youth of men who are now prominent in both branches of the national legis- ONE MAX'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. 171 lature and in other high official positions. I have already alluded to a judge of very high standing in his profession whose parents were so poor that they could not even afford to give him the date of his own birth. These men, now that they are successful, do not object to telling of the steps by which they first began to climb, and if similar stories were perpetrated by novelists they would be declared utterly improbable. Old Simon Cameron, who owns an immense amount of prop- erty, and is suspected of owning the entire con- science of Pennsylvania besides, often tells of one preliminary step toward his own education when he and his family saved money for months to accumulate the price of one single text-book, which, when he came to purchase it, cost a few cents more than he had in his pocket. The American spirit of getting along, of fighting one's way along in the world, arouses so much sympathy among one's fellow-men, that Simon was helped out by the merchant from whom he purchased the book, and it is said that no such magnificent interest was ever paid on any invest- ment in the United States as the ex-Senator, ex- Cabinet officer, and ex-political manager of the Keystone State gratefully paid to that deserving merchant. Indeed, in all parts of the country that are not yet grown, the spirit of equality and the conse- quent possibility of high attainment from small 172 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. beginnings is so fully realized and sympathized with that any deserving youth finds a helping hand, which a youth equally deserving in any other country might long look for in vain. It is quite a common thing in the Middle and Western States to find several prominent men of a town or village interesting themselves to procure a scholarship for some deserving young man who shows a promise of rising in the world and of making most of his possibilities. A young man attempting to begin business, if he has any busi- ness sense in him, may be sure of equal sym- pathy. I have seen a young fellow without a bit of property except what he wore on his back go through the business street of a Western village and borrow five dollars from each merchant, specifying a little business operation in which he thought he could find some money. He was not the best young man in the village, and occasion- ally he drank too much liquor, but no one refused him the money. I doubt whether any of them would have dared to ; public opinion would have been against them. Not that the boy deserved anything or had any right to demand it, but that it was the sentiment of the public that any one who found anything to do and knew how to do it ought to have a fair show. All of them started in life in much the same way, and those who had most succeeded were most convinced that it was only a fair thing to treat others as they them- ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. 173 selves had been treated. The young fellow al- luded to is now a prominent Congressman. The development of this spirit of equality is what makes foreigners call us a conceited people. Self-confidence is not conceit except when it is not put into practical operation. Perhaps it is not even self-confidence that makes individuals attempt what seems to be the impossible. If something must be done, and a man must do it for himself, compulsion is the impulse or perhaps self-preservation. It is not self-confidence, much less conceit, that makes the common soldier stand up against a superior force around him ; it is the feeling that there is no way to get out of his un- desirable position except that of fighting out. There never was a man who seemed to have less self-confidence than General Grant when he first went into the military service. He had been making a long fight with the world, and had had abundant reasons for imagining that if men were equal to one another he must have been left out in the general distribution of equality. Yet when fortune placed him in a position where duty was to be done he went to work to do it. He himself explained afterward that his first success was not gained through confidence in himself but through an impression that the commander on the other side was quite as badly scared as he, and that in the conflict between them the chances would at least be even in Grant's favor. As the war con- 174 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tinned, of those who were nearest him, including some who were watching him closely for the sole purpose of finding fault and discovering his weak- nesses, none were able to discover any signs of conceit or any expression of confidence in him- self. The impression seemed to be simply that he realized that a great work was to be done, that he was expected to do it, that consequently it must be done, and that he must find a way of doing it. His whole time was consumed in search- ing for this way. He made blunders, perhaps a great many of them, but he had no way of back- ing out, he had no way of giving up. Having begun he was compelled to go on. Whether or no he thought himself the equal of the trained and more experienced soldiers who occasionally were opposed to him, he was obliged to consider himself so for practical purposes for the time being ; and such being the necessity, he made himself equal to it. In like measure the spirit of equality, or that phase of it which compels a man to take the position of equal toward some one whom he may previously have regarded as his superior, made capital soldiers out of some very raw young men and of some experienced subalterns of the old army. Unfortunately they were not all on our side, as some splendid suc- cesses of Southern commanders will remind any one who looks over the history of the war. There is no sign of this splendid and distinc- ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. 175 tive American spirit dying out. When you see a class that does not manifest it, and you do see such classes sometimes in large cities and man- ufacturing towns, you are likely to find it com- posed largely of the leavings of native popula- tion and of a large proportion of foreigners who have not been " around " enough in this country to become infected by the national spirit. To be relieved of the necessity of doing something ap- parently beyond his skill and resources is a mis- fortune to the character of any man, particularly of any American, and the banding together of large numbers of men dependent upon a single employer or corporation and acting only as the tools of other men, instead of according to their own volition in the circumstances around them, is not good for any one. But some qualities lie dormant a long while in human nature without dying, and the sons of some of these same men, being sent away from home, or perhaps running away, and finding themselves in newer countries, or at sea, or strangers in a strange city, frequently bring to the surface qualities of which the parents have never suspected the existence in themselves, much less in their children. It is dying out in New England though, where it used to be liveliest. There is no deader place than an old New England village. Well, there is no emptier pocket than that of a man who has found real good use for all the money he can get. 176 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Make inquiries for a little while in one of these villages you call dead, and you will find that much of the liveliest life in the big cities and in the new West is provided by men who were boys in that village a few years ago. You don't go to a hotbed for full-grown cabbages, do you, or to a nursery for a barrel of apples ? You go to the places where the new growth is transplanted and comes into bearing or the fulness of its growth. Fears have been expressed very frequently, since immigration to the United States began, that we would have in time a class of population which would be a drag upon us because the spread of equality among many foreigners who have come here has often shown itself in a will- ingness to be as good as anybody else without assuming any of the responsibilities of the com- munity a class which has considered itself not only the equal, but apparently the superior of all others by insisting upon being supported without any labor on its own part. But it is a great blunder to mistake moonrise for break of day. Only very young roosters do that. A single gnarled apple is no sign of the yield of a tree, and a few anarchists and socialists and paupers and men who have made a business at home of in some way living upon the community which they chanced to infest for the time being, are not fair illustrations of our immigrant pop- ulation. The foreigner is very quick to learn ONE MAN'S AS GOOD AS ANOTHER. 177 what equality means in the United States and to work the spirit for all that it is worth. If you don't believe it, look at the names of members of city governments all over the country and the names on the police forces, and on all other lists of men who draw salaries which are paid from the taxes levied upon the public. The foreigner very quickly finds himself an equal of the native in all affairs pertaining to government of the nation, the State, the county or the town. And, to do him justice, he lives up to it as a rule as if he had a full and abiding sense of the honor which he has acquired. There may be some exceptions in the case of men who have so long been repressed in other countries that the rebound is powerful almost beyond their own control. Some of these people impress fearful souls with the idea that they were born to rule, and that their sole mission in the United States is to manage the natives. But this mistaken view of equality does not last very long. It very seldom descends to the sons of the conceited and assuming immigrant. If it were not for this spirit of equality ; if we, like most of the people of Kurope, were to de- pend upon a special class or several classes for the conduct of government, business, church and society in general, we would be in a pretty bad way, for some of the most successful execu- tive faculty to be found in the country is in the 12 178 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. possession of some men in very humble circum- stances financially, and who were born in the extreme lower walks of respectable life. Aris- tocrats, whether by birth or money, or both, are not the ruling class in any portion of the United States, not even in California, which, by a pecu- liarity of land laws, is the most aristocratic State of the Union, although one of the newest. The people will have their way, and they do have it in spite of all that money can do. Bribery itself is not superior to their will, although there is no land where it is resorted to as freely as here, or where so large sums are appropriated for the creation of that sort of influence. CHAPTER XIII. THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. THERE is no virtue that cannot be perverted into a vice. The spirit of equality to which we owe so much in this land can be misused so as to do incalculable harm. It often is so misused, and is doing a great deal of damage in numerous ways. If all our people had plenty of brains, or would use all the brains they have for all they are worth, there would be no trouble. But other nations, even the most favored, have not estab- lished a monopoly of fools and lazy-heads. On the other hand, our own nation has an indefinite number of people who are quite willing to take all the profits and the honors that are to be had, without endeavor to make themselves fit for them. The feeling that one man is as good as another, and that the world owes him a chance, and that he is going to have it in some way, by foul means, if not by fair, is altogether too prominent ; and the man who has that spirit is unfortunately so feeble of conscience that there (179) 180 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. is nothing to restrain him from making himself extremely troublesome. At the present time there are about twelve million adult men in the United States ; and, if statesmen and politicians are to be believed, about three-fourths of them are tormenting some one supposed to have in- fluence with the new President, to get offices for them. What the office is, is not pertinent to the subject; if they cannot have one, they will take another, but an office they do persistently de- mand. Among this body of office-seekers, there probably is not one man in a thousand who would not take the highest position within the gift of the President, if it were offered him. A sense of fitness seems to be left entirely out of their mental natures. Office gives prominence ; they must be prominent : that seems to be the nature of their argument with themselves. They know somebody else, no smarter than themselves apparently, who has held government office, perhaps been quite prominent, and if he was fit for the position, which he filled without being removed in disgrace, why should not they ? The man who does not think himself quite as good and wise as any of his neighbors, is pretty hard to find anywhere in the United States. He cannot be found at all among men who are look- ing for office. It would not be fair to attribute this reckless- ness to entire lack of conscience, because some THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 181 of the applicants aud aspirants are men against whose character there are no aspersions that can be proved. The feeling is largely to be attributed to the unceasing ambition of men already in positions of more or less consequence, and to the willingness of prominent public men to allow their names to be used in connection with offices far above their abilities. There never approaches the time for the nomination of Presidential can- didates without aspirants cropping up in every State. One of the hardest public duties at such times is for almost any State to select her favorite son. But after all the favorite sons are selected, how many of the whole number would strike any observer of large perceptive power and judicial temperament, as being at all fit for the highest office within the gift of the people ? There are men at Washington, in one branch or other of Congress, who are known to have been aspirants to the Presidency from the very beginning of their public career. They are personally honest, they are well liked by their neighbors : that seems to them sufficient excuse for their am- bitions. They would not, for an instant, hesitate to accept a nomination to the Presidency or a high Cabinet office, whether they have any knowl- edge or not of the practical duties of the position, or whether by nature and temperament they are fitted to discharge those duties as public trusts. There is no saying in politics so unpopular and 182 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. exasperating among the majority of men who hold office or want office, as that quoted by President Cleveland, " A public office is a public trust." Public offices some regard as gifts, and if the public is going to give away anything, each man considers himself quite as deserving as any of his neighbors to receive what the public has to dispose of in that manner. There are not enough presidencies to go round. But, as already said, the man who w r ants office and cannot have one position, is not on that ac- count going to decline another. Through every grade of politics in the United States there is not a position, even down to that of constable in a quiet neighborhood, but what is severely strug- gled for at every election. There is not a con- sulship in the gift of the government, no matter how small the fees, there being no other compen- sation, but what is in demand by numerous applicants. The utter unfitness of many of those applicants for positions to which they aspire is simply laughable. The man who has failed at everything else, and would not dare to apply to business men of any sort for a position of merit, trust and responsibility, seems to consider him- self quite fit to discharge the duties, often delicate, and always business-like, of a servant of the government. A man who cannot get credit of the corner-grocery, or at the notion store in the middle of the block, seems to think there is THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 183 nothing indecorous in his running for alderman of one of the districts of a large and wealthy city. The man who cannot borrow five dollars of any of his neighbors has no hesitation in going to all of them with a petition asking the Postmaster-General or the President to put him in charge of the post-office of his town. To be sure, he will be obliged to handle a great deal of money for the government, and none of his neighbors would trust him to handle any at all for themselves ; nevertheless a sense of his own unfitness never seems to strike him at all. The position of postmaster is vacant or likely to be: somebody must fill it. He is as good as any one else, in his own estimation, and he never descends to particulars in any comparisons which he may make between himself and other persons who may aspire to the position. There are about a hundred thousand places to which officers are appointed by the government, but even these are not enough to go round among all the aspirants. So men who aspire to official position, or to the control of affairs of other peo- ple, must look somewhere else. Fortunately for them, however unfortunate it may be to a long- suffering public, there are plenty of other places to fill. Every town must have a lot of petty officers, so must every church and every othei organized public or private association, and fot positions in these there is often quite as unseemly 184 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a struggle as for government office. Church fights are quite as numerous and quite as ugly as political squabbles over the spoils of office in country towns. Another misapplication of the spirit of equality is shown in the American impulse to make a show. We do not call it making a show; we call it setting the best foot forward. But the manner in which it is done requires that the best foot as a rule should be somebody else's, and used either without his consent or through a mis- statement of facts. The man who wants to build a house is almost sure to build a larger one than he can afford to pay for or to furnish, and he does this on the principle that he will be equal to it in the course of time, and that he needs it any- how, he wants it very much, and, more than all, he is not going to be outdone in that respect by somebody else who is not any smarter or richer than he. The houses inhabited to-day by clerks in many large villages are better than those which the same clerks' employers lived in when they were fairly started in business, and the resi- dents of all our large cities pay more money pro- portionately for house-rent than those of any other country in the world. It is not at all an uncommon thing in the United States to see a man devoting a full third of his income to house- rent or to the interest, taxes, and other necessary outlays upon purchased property. It is not for THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 185 necessity ; as a rule it is all for show. Good habitations are certainly hard to find in large cities without disproportionate outlay from one's income, but the habit of spending too much in this manner is not at all restricted to the cities. Builders take advantage of it, so do owners of land. An immense number of houses are sold on very small advance payments, with mortgages to cover the remainder, solely because the original owner knows that the purchaser cannot afford to carry the property, and that sooner or later it will come back into his hands, and he will have the purchase-money and the property too. This spirit of show, based upon a mistaken sense of the meaning of equality, is displayed in many other ways. The clerk is not satisfied unless he has about as good a pew in church as his employer. His wife must wear as good a dress as is worn by his employer's wife or daugh- ter. Max O'Rell, in his new book on the United States, expresses his amazement at the number of diamonds worn in the United States, and says and he certainly had reason to that he saw them on the hands of the wives of clerks, me- chanics, and even on the hands of shop-girls. There is no possible reason for this outlay and display. Rich people in other countries do not wear jewelry except upon dress occasions, but the American woman must be seen with her diamonds everywhere. If she has them at all, no one who 186 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. meets her is allowed to be without knowledge of the fact. It is almost impossible to distinguish by dress the wives of the rich and the poor until we come to the very poor. Shop-girls in New York and Boston and Philadelphia go to their business dressed quite as well as many ladies of wealth and refinement who may be seen on shop- ping tours and at church, and everywhere else indeed, except at places where dress is one of the features of an entertainment. As to the men, we do not profess to be a dress- ing nation, but we are the only country in which men do not dress according to their business. Mechanics who have dirty work to do can be seen in large numbers in clothing suited to their daily occupation. But the clerk on ten dollars a week goes to the store in quite as handsome and well- cut a suit as his employer can wear. He gets a new hat quite as often, and it is never of any style but the latest. He is well-gloved, well- shod, and if he doesn't wear an expensive watch and chain the reason probably is that he ran out of money before pay-day, and was obliged to leave these articles of adornment with the pawn- broker for a limited time. The spirit is shown also in every department of speculation. Some men whose names are well known have made large sums of money upon very small investments, and through some of the happy accidents which occur in all countries THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 187 where businesses increase and multiply with great rapidity. So the majority of young men, and even of men no longer young, consider them- selves entirely fit to go into speculation, which they call business, with very little financial prep- aration and a less knowledge of the business into which they propose to venture. Not one in a hundred of the people who " put up margins " in Wall street know anything whatever about the stocks which they are buying or selling, or the influences which control the rise and fall of the prices of those securities. But somebody has made a strike, as they call it, during a chance flyer, and if one man has made it why should not another ? So savings of all classes of men pour into Wall street's coffers in a steady stream. If this were not so there would be no Stock Ex- change nor any rich brokers, for the few men who really handle securities to any extent are quite competent to transact their own business without any assistance from an open market. In fact, they would feel more secure if there were no open market whatever, for as it is they are unable to make their own prices either in buying or selling, but must depend entirely upon figures which may be changed any day by the accident- ally concerted caprices of a lot of ignorant and irresponsible speculators. Yet all of these specu- lators imagine themselves in business, and talk fluently about what they expect to make and 188 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. about what they will operate in next. Their basis of reasoning is about as accurate as that of the stupid boy in a recent prominent play, who chanced to make a great deal of money by specu- lation, and who afterwards remained in the busi- ness and bought and sold according as a coin which he carried in his pocket would show heads or tails after being spun in the air. In society and in business this perversion of a noble spirit is bad enough. It is still more inju- rious to the community when it is manifested in politics. But the misery does not stop there. It invades the church quite as frequently as any other place. Almost any young man coming from a theological seminary considers himself quite equal to taking charge of a spiritual con- gregation with its varied needs that appall the sensibilities of men of long experience in that solemn line of duty. There is no one in theology who has quite so much confidence in his own ability and his own opinions as the seminary graduate. He knows nothing of his business except that a glib tongue goes a long way. His models are the pulpit orators who have become famous, and what to him is oratory, except what is described in old-fashioned terms as the gift of gab ? a gift in which very few young men are lacking. Perhaps if the truth could be got at in any way it would be discovered that a large num- ber of the empty pews in churches all over the THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 189 land should not be attributed to lack of religious feeling -and desire, but to the utter inability of the majority of incumbents of pulpits and pastor- ates to discharge the duties which the more sen- sible members of their congregation understand better than they. The other learned professions suffer in the same manner. It is almost horrible to see in every town of the Union some recent graduate of the medical school setting himself up as a physician, and having the power of life and death literally over a number of people. He is less competent than an ordinary nurse, but his lack of competence he makes up by an ample supply of confidence. The people know nothing about medicine, he argues; he knows something about it ; something is better than nothing. And cases which great surgeons have hesitated to handle he attempts with entire confidence and cheerfulness. If the patient recovers his confi- dence increases ; if the patient dies, there is always God to lay the blame on. We need a great deal more of the old-country spirit which declares that a man, no matter who he is, should be kept in his place, and not allowed to occupy any other until he has proved himself abundantly fit for it. The spirit of equality in an unthinking people is a constant war against this very admirable social custom, and the war is likely to continue indefinitely in this country 190 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. until our sparsely settled districts are so thickly populated that it will require more than self- assertion to place an incompetent man in a prom- inent position of any kind. The good work has begun at the bottom, and has come about through competition. Mechanics are sharply pitted against each other, and so are all specialists in the arts, and no amount of self-confidence has the slightest effect upon the employer who must get certain results from a certain amount of labor unless he is to lose money. The same spirit of competition is likely to work its way upward through other departments of labor and in all classes of society as the country becomes more populous and com- munities become larger. But until this is the case, until the dangers and losses due to the lack of sense of responsibility, which comes through this perverted sense of equality, are got rid of, it is the duty of every one to be on guard against a class which would not feel complimented to be called upstarts, but who ought to be satisfied at getting off with no worse name. In a most thoughtful and noble essay on "The Competitive Element in Modern Life," Bishop Potter, of New York, recently wrote : * " Nothing is more undeniably true than that such rivalries are among the most fruitful sources of evil in every department of life. The world lately has witnessed the spectacle of a * Scribner's Magazine, February, 1889. BISHOP POTTER. THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 191 great people, agitated by a heated political con- test which for the hour has absorbed every other interest. We may laud the superiority of our institutions, and compare them boastfully with the monarchical governments of other countries, but I fancy that some of us, seeing the heat and acrimony that our political contests so easily engender, catching the echoes of the harsh speech and bitter innuendo and half smothered strife that have often filled the air, have seriously questioned whether that form of government which involves such strifes is, on the whole, so surely wiser and more wholesome than any other. And yet the rivalries and excitements of political life are by no means the largest or most conspicuous element in any ordinary experience. At most they are awakened but seldom, and by contests which occur at considerable intervals. But of other rivalries the rivalries of the street and the shop, and the drawing-room, when and where do we not hear the echoes ? " The good bishop further says : " All are in the race, whether it be for place or power or fortune, ' but one receiveth the prize.' And when he does, at what cost he wins it ! The disappointed competitors who take their punishment so bravely, does anybody believe that defeat does not wound them ? When one has set his heart on a coveted possession, and has spent years in training for the arena, and then for other years 192 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. has strained every nerve in the race to reach it, does any one suppose that failure costs him nothing? And if, on the other hand, the struggle has been successful and the outstretched hand has snatched the prize, can any of us im- agine that even success is without its sting? To lose what you have toiled and schemed and striven for, and to see another finally possess it yes, that is hard ; but is there not a wretched- ness quite as real in the consciousness that your success has caused another's failure that your momentary triumph is his lasting misfortune, and that what you have gained for yourself , you have gained by snatching it from him ? Is there no element of misery in the consciousness that, whatever you may be in possession of, there are scores of other people who honestly believe that they have a better right to it, and will find no pleasure so keen as the pleasure of pointing at your defects and of detracting from your achievements ? Would it comfort you to live in a palace if you knew that, every time your neighbors passed it, they dropped a sneer at your ostentation, your extravagance, or your unfitness for your surroundings ? " Nevertheless competition is one of the laws of life, and the only one to which we can look for relief from the curse of incompetent men in the place of honor and responsibility. The success of the fittest means disappointment for families and friends of those who are unfit ; nevertheless, THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 193 as Bishop Potter further remarks, competition must be recognized and respected. Says the reverend essayist, " Competition a strife to excel, nay, if you choose, downright rivalry has a just and rightful place in the plan of any human life. A prize fight is probably the most disgusting spectacle on earth, but it has in it just one moment which very nearly approaches the sublime ; and that is when the combatants shake hands with each other and exchange that salutation as old as the classic arena, i may the best man win.' It is the equitable thing that the best man should win. When we turn to the most august and eventful conflict which human history records, we find it described as the winning of a prize, the reaching of a goal, the conquest of an adversary. Of course it is pos- sible to suppose such a thing as a life without rivalries and competitions, and to look forward to a time, when, amid other conditions, they will be at once needless and incongruous ; but in such a life as ours is now in a life, that is to say, which so plainly has discipline and education for its end to take all rivalry and competition out of it would be to rob it of one of the might- iest and most wholesome agencies for the en- nobling of human character." Such a life would make public life in America far more pure and effective than it now is. May heaven speed the day when it is to reach us. 13 CHAPTER XIV. IMMIGRATION. BECAUSE this is a land of liberty a great many foreigners imagine it a land of license. To do them justice, they do not know any better. But we do, and it is our duty to teach them the dif- ference. If we don't, we, not they, will be the principal sufferers. The subject of immigration has been largely discussed by the newspapers of late, and a good deal of demagogy has been got off in Congress on the same subject. But sensible people are pretty well agreed that it is time to put some restriction upon the use of America as a common dumping ground for the world's offal and rubbish. This country is not an asylum for criminals or paupers. That ought to go without saying and it should not require any argument to prove, but it seems we have been very careless in this direc- tion. A short time ago the New York Herald said : "America is no longer to be considered the legitimate dumping ground for the paupers, the idiots, the insane and the criminals of Europe," and Congressman Ford, chairman of the Immi- (194) IMMIGRATION. 195 gratiou Committee and father of the bill which was presented in January, made the statement that " if the law could be strictly enforced I be- lieve our immigration would be decreased from these sources at least one hundred and fifty thousand per annum." This is an awful propor- tion of the aggregate of immigration, for the entire figure exceeds half a million per year very little. Still Mr. Ford may be supposed, from his position, to know what he is talking about, for his committee has spent a great amount of time in examining a great many witnesses who are supposed to understand the nature of the immi- gration to this country of the peoples of the whole world. But enough about paupers, idiots, insane and criminals ; everybody is agreed that we do not want them. Are there any other classes whom we do not want ? Yes ; we cannot afford to have the con- tract laborer. The native labor organizations have talked a good deal of nonsense about the foreigner, but not on this one subject. The impor- tation on contract of men to do a certain amount of work for a smaller sum than American citizens would accept, and to carry back almost all their earnings to be spent in another country, is a very successful way of making a nation poor. If we were to send all of our money to Europe for the purchase of supplies and Europe were to buy nothing of us in return, it would soon be impos- 196 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. sible to raise enough coin to buy a postage stamp. Yet contract labor is a transaction of exactly the same nature, and it is increasing at a rate that may be estimated from the known ability and willingness of large employers to have work done as cheaply as possible, regardless of the conse- quences to every one but themselves. When, however, statesmen or politicians, or demagogues or well-meaning labor agitators or leaders, insist that skilled labor should be kept out of the country, it is to the interest of the community to firmly, persistently and indig- nantly oppose any such proposition. Lack of skilled labor is the curse of the country. Be- cause a man is employed on work which requires skill and experience is no sign that he is fully competent to do it. The tramps who bind the farmer's wheat, the cast-aways and chance laborers who build some houses in the West, the riff-raff who are gathered together occasionally to work a mine, or sail a ship, or do the work of a planta- tion or a farm for a short season, are the most costly labor that could be employed, and a great deal of work supposed to be done by experts in the United States is almost as expensive. So long as we don't allow young men to learn trades and that seems to be the rule at present we must have men who have learned trades some- where else. Plenty of Americans can be found in New York city at half an hour's notice who IMMIGRATION. 197 complain with real patriotic feeling that, while they would like all their own employes to be Americans, they cannot find a large number or even a respectable majority of natives who are sufficiently skilled to do the work for which they are called upon. The consumption of piano- fortes, for instance, in the United States, is twenty times as great, according to statistics of trade, as in any other country of equal population in the world. But in going through a piano fac- tory one might very quickly imagine himself in a foreign country. It is not that the manufac- turers are all foreigners, for they are not, or that they prefer foreign labor, or that foreign piano- makers work cheaper than those of native birth, but simply because we have scarcely any of native birth, although this variety of manufac- turing industry has been active in this country for nearly two generations. In many other of the mechanical arts the same lack of native skilled labor is manifested. The wall-paper printers, the engravers, the better class of weavers, and several other mechanical arts, which require the services of draughtsmen and colorists, are almost all obliged to depend upon men of foreign birth for their work. It is pleasing to realize that most of these foreign workmen are now naturalized American citizens and probably quite as loyal to the Union and the Constitution as any of our native-born oper- 198 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. atives, but the probabilities are, that as they grow old or disabled, and have to be replaced, the new men must come from the same sources as the old. Between Americans not being allowed to learn trades, and Americans not being willing to learn trades, we are pretty badly off for mechanical labor unless we can depend upon foreign countries. We need not blame foreigners for this ; we have only our own selves to blame and our own people. The reason for the general dependence upon foreign labor, beside the inability of young men who wish to learn a trade to be allowed to follow their inclinations, is that the most of our own people are rapidly getting above anything and everything that does not afford an oppor- tunity for speculation. Beside, it is one of the inevitable results of the theory of social equality, a theory which must do a great deal more harm than it yet has done before we abandon it, that, as the wealth and prosperity of the country in- creases, and new opportunities of making money multiply, the =ons of farmers and mechanics will be reluctant to follow the occupations of their fathers. We have heard a great deal about the unwillingness of the Hebrews to indulge in any mechanical or routine labor, and their avidity to enter all branches of trade where barter and sale are the principal occupations, but the modern American can double discount IMMIGRATION. 199 the Hebrew in this particular and then get ahead of him about as often as not. There is no sign that the native-born Ameri- can youth will revert to the good old custom of his fathers, and endeavor to learn a trade, even if he were able to do it. It is unfashionable to work with one's hands in a country where most of the money is made by working with one's wits. The mechanic's son, and the farmer's son, and the day laborer's son gets as good a common- school education as the children of the richest men in the town, and has equal opportunities for going into mercantile business, or for entering the offices of business houses and corporations, and his own father will tell him that he is a fool unless he embraces these opportunities. No man gets rich by farming alone, or by laboring at day's wages at any mechanical occupation, whereas some men in trade and speculation amass great fortunes. That forty-nine out of every fifty finally fail and never get upon their feet again does not occur either to the youth or to his parents. Let us hope that some day it will, and that our young men will not be ashamed to earn their bread literally by the sweat of their brow. But the prospect at present for any such change seems exceedingly remote. Indeed, until the change occurs we will need all the skilled labor we can get from abroad. Unless the supply increases we will either have to give 200 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. up some of our country's business schemes and prospects, or we will be obliged to offer a bounty or a premium to foreign laborers to come over here. We especially need .foreign farmers and work- men for the instruction of our own farmers, and a large immigration of foreign agriculturists, if they could be sprinkled among our agricultural communities in the various States, would do more than any proposed legislation to improve the condition of the American farmer. In his efforts to get beyond his strength and resources', efforts which are natural in all new countries, our farmer wastes enough to support another farmer. The Englishman, or Frenchman, or German, or Swede, can teach him how not to do this. There are a great many unprofitable farms near the city of New York, but when you see a small piece of ground tilled to the full extent of its capacity, and sending in large loads of fat vegetables to the city every day, you may safely bet that the proprietor is a foreigner. In one neighborhood very near New York city, a lot of discontented farmers are envious of the pros- perity of one fellow who is tilling only thirteen acres, yet who has saved enough money to buy three houses in the city of New York, each of which yields him a handsome income. And who is this lucky fellow ? A highly educated Ger- man, or a scientific English farmer ? No ; he is IMMIGRATION. 201 a wretched Laplander, a man who is obliged to be ashamed of the province which gave him birth, and who poses among acquaintances as a Swede. He was a common farm laborer in his own country, and came here with very little more money than would pay his board at a den near the Battery for- two or three days until some one should employ him. But he had learned how to turn every scrap of soil to the best ad- vantage, how to make the most of all fertilizers, and how to get the largest number of crops out of a given amount of soil in a given time. During the agricultural depression of Great Britain a few years ago, which followed several successive wet years, a number of English farmers sold out at a sacrifice, came over here and located wherever best they could, and it is astonishing to see how fast some of these men have got along, and how well fixed they now are, as the saying is. They didn't seem to be very smart fellows. In a horse-trade, or a shooting- match, or a political squabble, the best of them cannot hold his own for five minutes with an or- dinary American. But when it conies to farm- ing so as to make every resource of the estate count for all that it is worth, they leave the American farmer far behind. Nevertheless, we need to restrict and regulate more systematically, and with more rigor than we ever did it before. Of course we have the 202 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. right to refuse absolutely undesirable immigrants. No one can deny this with any show of reason, and if we would fight to maintain this principle no nation could blame us. But we also have the right to deny citizenship to workmen coming from any portion of the world, until we are satis- fied that they intend to become citizens, and that they will be desirable acquisitions. We are quite competent to keep up our own supply of idiots, and paupers and criminals. No nation has a monopoly of that sort of thing, and we do quite as well in that way as could be expected of us, and far better than suits our tax-payers. For the freedom of mind and body, and the prospects of founding homes for all of his posterity, an honest man should be willing to remain in this country a long time before claiming full rights of citizen- ship. There never were any complaints under the old rule, which required a very long term of probation, and there would be none under the new. Property rights of aliens are respected quite as much as those of natives, and there is no other right in which our laws distinguish between the native and the foreigner. A chance tourist arriv- ing here and getting into legal difficulty of any kind has quite as good a chance of obtaining justice as the richest man in the nation. This is not an American idea, for foreigners themselves have said the same. Intelligent foreigners, makers of opinion on the other side of the water, IMMIGRATION. 203 have marvelled again and again in speech and in print at the carelessness with which America admitted all classes of foreign-born persons to the rights of citizenship, and have declared that were citizenship rights to be delayed until the second generation came of adult age, there would be nothing in the law or customs of the country which would give a foreign-born resident any reason for complaint. Unless we restrict immigration there is nothing to prevent any foreign nation, desiring to pick a quarrel with us so as to steal some of our property, or have some of her own troublesome inhabitants disposed of by bullet wounds, or "to weld the people together" when they are pulling every which way, from sending a few carefully selected men here for the express purpose of fitting out a pretended dynamite expedition or something of the kind, for which the United States would be called to account. But that is only part of what they can do. At the present day every German and Frenchman under middle age has received a military training. There is nothing to prevent a few thousand picked soldiers, with their officers, being sent here in small parties in the guise of ordinary immigrants, to rally and rise at a given signal, seize some of our cities, forts and navy- yards, overcome our make-believe army and es- tablish a reign of terror, from which we could not release ourselves speedily without ransom. 204 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. They could find arms and munitions of war with- out the slightest trouble, for such things are on sale to every purchaser in every village in the land, and when desired in large quantities they can be purchased from any of our large manu- facturers without the purchaser first undergoing the formality of answering unpleasant questions. As for commissariat, they could live on the land. There is no portion of it from which a body of armed men could not obtain all they need in the way of food and clothing. There would be no difference between such a movement and the insurrections by which almost all of the older nations have suffered from time to time insur- rections some of which have been dignified by success to the rank of revolutions. The mobs which started the French revolution had a large army to oppose them, and they had little oppor- tunity for arming and organizing themselves, nevertheless they succeeded in overturning one of the oldest monarchies in the world, and ap- parently one of the strongest. Among the classes whom we must most reso- lutely exclude from this country are those which, in good earnest and with justifiable sense of wrong, but nevertheless with utter disregard of the land of their adoption, organize disturbances to be carried on in the lands from which they come. Russian nihilists, disaffected Canadians, Irish dynamiters, French socialists and anar- IMMIGRATION. 205 chists, and all the other broods of disturbers of the peace of foreign lands are out of place in the United States. Many of them have abundant cause for the hatred which they manifest toward the governments from which they have escaped. Most of them have the sympathy of the people of the United States, to the extent of wishing that desirable reforms might be accomplished in lands where any classes are wrongly treated or find themselves at disadvantage in comparison with other classes more favored. But this coun- try cannot afford to be a hot-bed of discontent from which the germs may be sent abroad. When the time for accounting comes, the bill will not be sent to the disturbers, but to the nation which harbored them. We have been dangerously near war with Great Britain two or three times on account of the operations of the large class generally known as Irish sympa- thizers. There is probably no class of foreign- born residents of the United States who have more reason in law and morals for the feeling which they manifest than these same Irish sympathizers. But when they come here as citizens the safety of this country, which we have the right to regard as an interest paramount to that of any other which may exist in the hearts of our people, must rank first. If this class or any other class of disturbers of the peace of foreign countries persist in their agitation on this 206 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. side of the water, it is the duty of the nation to expel them. Where they may go is an important question to them, but it is not one with which we can afford to concern ourselves. Perhaps there may be individuals among us who would take personal friends into their families with the understanding that they came there for the sole purpose of making trouble with their families ; but nations have none of that sort of disinterested philanthropy. The few that have tried it cannot be found to-day on the maps of any well-edited atlas. The United States has nothing to fear from honest, well-meaning immigrants, no matter how stupid they are. Transplanting does wonders for wild-wood trees and shrubs, that amount to nothing in their native wastes, and the improve- ment which some unpromising foreign stock has often made in this country recalls the traditional remark of the Bad Habit to the Small Boy : " Look at me now and the day you got me." Some of the most exquisite gentlemen and able men of our land descended from clodhoppers of no one nationality, who came to this country only a generation or two ago. Some of the wisest and grandest spirits of our revolutionary periods were descendants of articled servants who came away not many years before. But, pshaw ! Which of us who has not pure Indian blood in his veins did not descend from immigrants who a little IMMIGRATION. 207 while ago were so badly off in the old country that they had to move to get enough to eat and wear ? Some self-appointed aristocrats may ex- cept to this general classification, but either they lie or they don't know why their ancestors came here. No foreigner who is living comfortably at home, and who has nothing to be ashamed of, is going to a new country unless he has some un- rest in him which will make him a nuisance if he remains at home. Of course political annoy- ances have been influential in sending us many immigrants, but very few from the classes who have any possible excuse for thinking themselves better than other men. The development of fine natures from very rude stock in the United States has been so marvellous in some of its instances as to deserve a large book specially devoted to the subject. A little while ago it was discovered that a famous judge, whose opinions and rulings are held in respect in courts of every State of this Union, was the son of a pauper immigrant. A gentleman who was very favorably mentioned a few years ago as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States said himself that his father, who was an immigrant, was so poor that the son went to school without breakfast for five succes- sive years, and acquaintances of this estimable and highly cultivated gentleman, who stood at the very head of one- of the most learned profes- sions, said that the father was unable to read or 208 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. write at the time of his death. The population of the State of California started with men of all classes from all parts of the world. Probably more adventurers and worthless men took part in the rush for gold than can be found in all the state-prisons of the United States at the present day. Yet the descendants of some of these very objectionable characters are to-day men of promi- nence and character. The natives of that State attributed this wonderful change to the " glorious climate of California." But it is not necessary to make any such explanation. Cases of the same kind, though not perhaps in so large pro- portion, can be found in all the States of the Union. It is impossible that it should be other- wise. Whatever may happen to the original immigrant, his posterity has as fair a chance as that of any native. His children go to the same schools, the same churches, they mingle freely with all persons of their own age, have the same interests, same impulses, aspirations, and oppor- tunities. There is another great promise to this country also through its immigrant population, which may not be announced as a fact, but which cer- tainly has a great deal of probability in it. Mr. Darwin, who in tracing the descent of species seemed to interest himself in the descent of everything else, explained once the method by which forests suddenly appear upon some tracts IMMIGRATION. 209 of land which apparently had been long destitute of any of the larger varieties of vegetation. He found upon examination of one ^such tract that while the arboreal shoots which had first come into view that year were small, they nevertheless had enormous roots. Ploughing and cultivation had kept the soil above these roots broken for a great many years, or cattle in grazing over the ground had kept everything nipped short. Nev- ertheless the roots or germs were there, and through the very process of repression seemed to accumulate a strength which they put forth, when they were allowed to do so, as if they were making up for lost time, which was exactly the deduction which Mr. Darwin made in longer and more scholarly form. It is known to breeders that the strain of families of various species is fre- quently improved by infusion of the blood of an animal of the sort commonly known as a "runt;" that is, one which has been stunted in its growth. The average immigrant is a man who has been repressed for generations and perhaps for cen- turies. When his opportunity for development comes he really seems to have the capacity to make up for lost time. There is no other way of explaining the wonderful improvement in many thousands of American families of foreign extraction. There have been some amusing re- sults of efforts of men, suddenly become promi- nent and deservedly so, in tracing their ancestry. 14 210 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. They learned what Burns once expressed about himself after he had made similar investigations : " Through scoundrels' blood My race has crept, e'er since the flood." The wonderful virility and prosperity of the Hebrew in this country, as well as in those European countries where he has been allowed a chance beside his fellow-men, cannot be explained except upon this theory of accumulated strength during long periods of repression. Americans can stand all this sort of thing that Europe can bless us with. According to stat- isticians it costs two or three thousand dollars to bring a child from the cradle up to adult age and working power. Consequently every able-bodied foreigner we get who is willing to work is worth two or three thousand dollars to our nation and is so much capital in our pockets. Let us have all we can of them. The men who complain of them are those who are not capable of taking care of themselves. CHAPTER XV. ANNEXATION. THIS country has many important duties to fulfil in the family of nations, but annexation of other lands is not one of them. The contrary opinion is sometimes expressed, but the sooner we sit down upon it the less likely we are to neglect our own business. Annexation is an old business, and sometimes it has been profitable ; but th nations who best understood it have but few of their old posses- sions left, and they would get rid of some of these, if they could without being laughed at. What nations could we stand any fair chance of annexing? Perhaps Mexico, Canada and some of the West India Islands. What could be done with them ? Nothing that, in the long run, would benefit us. What would they do with us ? They would merely introduce discord- ant elements that would not help us a particle in making our own national position secure. Our country is so large already that there are jarring interests making themselves felt and known in Congress, in the press, in public opinion, and (211) 212 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. with all the efforts that have been made they are approaching solution at so slow a rate that a number of the advocates of one side or the other are discouraged and indignant. There are a great many brilliant theories of what might be done by the annexation of this or that country by the United States. But an ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory, and fortunately we have enough facts to keep us for a long time in exam- ination if we will take the pains. The ancient nation called Rome was the champion annexer of the world. She annexed every territory that it was possible for her sol- diers to reach, and at one time the entire world owed allegiance to Rome. It was practical alle- giance, too, because we read in the Gospel according to St. Matthew that in the days of Augustus Caesar there went out a decree that all the world should be taxed. To collect taxes from annexed countries is more than some mod- ern nations have ever been able to do. The mil- itary and political prestige of Rome was after- ward strengthened by religion. Rome ruled the souls as well as the bodies and estates of men, but even the Holy Roman empire went to pieces. Greece did a great deal of annexing in the days of Alexander, who penetrated farther into the civilizations of the Bast than the legions of the Caesars ever did, but Greece to-day is a mere spot upon the map. ANNEXATION. 213 But it is not necessary to go so far back. The great colonizing and annexing schemes of the world, when nation after nation became numer- ous and free enough to compete with each other, began soon after the discovery of America. Nearly every European power planted colonies in some portions of the new world. Most of these powers exist and are strong to-day. But where are their colonies ? England has Canada to be sure, simply because she does not know how to get rid of it. But Spain has not a foot of ground upon the mainland of America, and holds her island possessions by very uncertain tenure. Look at Cuba, " the ever-faithful island," as she is called, with the greatest extremity of sarcasm. The majority of the inhabitants detest the mother country and all the officials she sends out there, her taxes are paid grudgingly, again and again a large minority of the inhabitants have struggled to free themselves from the Spanish yoke, and the struggle will probably continue in view of the illustrious examples set by Mexico and all the South American republics. Perhaps you will say that Spain is a bankrupt old brute. Well, that is not overstating the matter at all. But look from Spain to Holland. The Dutch have not been cruel taskmasters. They have planted a number of colonies, and their paternal govern- ment, if characterized by thrift, has also been unstained by any of the cruelties and brutalities 214 - OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. which have made the name of Spain a synonym for savagery. How many of Holland's colonies remain in the possession of the mother country ? None of any consequence except the island of Java, and Java is no longer a treasury for Hol- land. France at one time had large colonial posses- sions. She owned nearly one-half of the territory now embraced by the boundaries of the United States and all of Canada beside. France has now a few insignificant islands and some undesirable swamp-land in Africa, which is valuable chiefly as a place to send military officers who are so ambitious at home as to be somewhat trouble- some. Sweden has no colonies at all. Denmark has two or three little islands near the Equator, and has an elephant on her hands in the shape of Iceland. But, you say that England is an exception to all these relations. Well ; is she ? Do facts and figures justify the assertion? The most peace- able portion of the British empire at the present time is the Dominion of Canada. Canada gives England absolutely no trouble on her own part. Australia is about as good. But of what use is either country to England except as a resort for dissatisfied Englishmen who wish to begin life anew somewhere else? an opportunity which they could have equally well if England didn't own a particle of soil outside the British islands. ANNEXATION. 215 But England has a large empire in the East. She holds nearly all of India. Yes ; but how does she hold it ? Some of it by absolute posses- sion, and a great deal through protectorates and treaties, through intrigues with native princes and by other means which the people of the United States would think beneath the dignity of our own country to exercise anywhere else. We know what happened in India a few years ago when great masses of people rose against English rule, and gave us the most horrible de- tails of war that this century has ever heard of. England's unrest and uneasiness about her pos- sessions in India can be seen by any one who reads the English newspapers or magazines or reviews. Some phase or other of the Indian question is continually popping up, and there never is anything in it to pacify the national un- rest as to the future of the two countries. The possibility of assimilation of the population of India and England is laughed at by Englishmen of all degrees. Britons will not live in India un- less they are compelled to do so, and also coaxed by compensation such as Englishmen never ex- pect to receive at home. Even in the days of "John Company" it was impossible to keep an army there without double pay. I am not cer- tain about the .private soldiers, but the officers received their pay from the home government and 216 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. an equal amount from the company, and even then the majority of them were discontented. As for the natives liking England or Bnglish habits or English customs, it would be unreason- able to expect it, even did not facts prove that it is impossible. Native Indians of wealth and intelligence frequently visit England but very few remain. What is called the superior civiliza- tion of the West has no charms for them. And they don't take English customs and principles home with them to disseminate among their own class and the orders beneath it. Many intelligent natives will admit that portions of the country are better ruled than they were under the native princes a hundred or more years ago. But at heart the feeling is that the old ways, if not the best, are certainly the most desirable and the most fitted to the nature of the people. England is in chronic fear of uprisings and disturbances. Her most statesmanlike public officials and her ablest soldiers are sent to India; not enough of them can be spared even to cross the channel to Ireland. And, speaking of Ireland, which is another of Great Britain's annexations, is there a more prominent and damning disgrace existing in the name of any civilized government of the world ? It is not necessary to go over the Irish question at all. Every man knows enough about it to know that England's rule of Ireland has been an ANNEXATION. 217 entire and disgraceful failure, and that with ample opportunities for colonization, for main- taining military establishments, for pacifying the people, Bngland has persistently and continu- ously failed to make Ireland anything but a hot- bed of hatred. Where England is at peace with her colonies, what price does she pay ? Why, she simply makes them almost absolutely independent of the home government. Except nominal alle- giance to the motljer country and the acceptance of a viceroy, governor-general, or representative of the throne by some title or other, these coun- tries are almost as free of England as the United States. They have their own parliaments, elect their own officials, make their own laws, assess their own taxes, and even perpetrate huge tariff lists, under which the products of the mother country are obliged to pay handsomely for being admitted at all. The only bond between Canada or Australia and England is one of affection to the mother country. This sometimes endures to the second generation, but there is precious little of it in the third. You can easily enough find that out for yourself by going up to Canada and becoming acquainted in almost any town in the Dominion. It seems farcical, but it is neverthe- less a fact, that the best English citizens in Can- ada are Frenchmen, descendants of the original settlers who fought England furiously and often 218 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. successfully for more than a hundred years. And the only ground for the loyalty of these people is apparently that there is no other place for them to go, and no way to take with them what little they possess. Australia is just as independent as Canada. If she should attempt to secede and declare her- self as independent as she really is, England would probably send down fleets and armies, and there would be war for a long time, with the same result in the end that followed the attempt to change the opinions of the thirteen colonies who organized this nation of ours. England's rule of the United States certainly was not severe. Now that the spirit of the Revolution has been watered out through two or three generations, it is per- fectly safe to admit that England never took as much money out of this country as she put into it. So, regarded as a business enterprise, annex- ation or colonization did not pay here. As soon as she began to demand taxes' from the colonies the revolt began. The question of her moral right is one that is not discussed now. Discus- sion would not do any good. But if taxes cannot be levied upon a colony or an annexed country, of what possible service is the new land to the old? Well, what is our lesson from all this ? What would be the result of our annexing either Mex- ico, Canada, or Cuba, for instance, to say nothing ANNEXATION. 219 of the small republics in the Caribbean Sea and in Central America, toward which some of our demagogues have occasionally pretended to cast longing eyes, and found a few fools to encourage them in doing so ? It would be utterly impossible under the spirit of our institutions for us to treat any such land as a conquered country. The Declaration of Independence would have to be completely overturned before we could consist- ently enter upon any such custom. The most that we could do would be to admit these coun- tries as portions of the Union. We would scarcely pretend to obtain them by force for this purpose, but if we were to want to get them peaceably, what would be the only method? Why, by granting them equal rights with our own citizens. Successful annexation would depend upon the acquiescence of the majority of the inhabitants of the countries alluded to. These people, like people everywhere else, have leaders of their own. All leaders have aspirations and personal ambi- tions, and personal pockets which never are suffi- ciently full. We would have to provide for them first before we could be certain of the people. We would be obliged to divide each country into States bearing some proportion of population to those which we already have. We would be obliged to give them representation in both Houses of Congress, provide judicial systems for them, and in every way recognize them as our equals. 220 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Now, the truth is, no sane American believes the people of any of those countries to be equal to those of our own. There are intelligent Mex- icans and Cubans and Canadians, but we as a body have very little respect for the general run of people in those countries ; no more respect than their own rulers have, and that is very little. Some exception must be made in the case of Canada, which is inhabited, so far as the whites are concerned, mainly by intelligent people. But Mexico, according to its own statesmen and ac- cording to all travellers who have been in it, is practically a semi-civilized country. The most of the inhabitants are deplorably ignorant. Free- dom of ballot is an utter farce. Law is a matter of barter, and life and property, while nominally secure, are frequently threatened by uprisings which no local government has yet been able to promptly suppress, and which certainly could not be suppressed by a central government three thousand miles away with an army of the con- ventional size of that of the United States. Cuba is worse than Mexico rather than better. Cuba has been in a condition of discontent and disturbance for so long that there are but few portions of the island on which life and property are safe. The majority of the voters can be pur- chased at any election time for a very small out- lay of money or rum, and the same purchased voters could be persuaded by similar means to ANNEXATION. 221 rise within a week against the newly elected authorities, even if all happened to be their own candidates for office. The class of representa- tives which Cuba would be obliged to send to Washington could not possibly be expected to have any interest in national legislation except such as pertained to their own portion of the land. They have no sympathies of any sort with any portion of the people or industries or aspira- tions of the United States. It would be unfair to expect it of them. By birth and tradition they are radically different from us. Their isolation from us would be none the less even were they part of our country, and the consequence would be an alien class, demanding everything and yielding nothing, exactly what would be the case were we to annex Mexico. Canada may drift to us in time. Some states- men on both sides of the line regard this as in- evitable. Well, what must be will be. But be- fore any such marriage of nations there ought to be a long courtship between the parties. At present there is no love whatever between them, and until there is a marked change in this respect the union would be too utterly selfish on each side to be safe for either. We want some, things from Canada, it is true. We have used up most of our visible supply of standing timber, and we could find enough in Canada for a century to come to make up for all deficiencies. But what 222 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. else would we get? Very little. We assume that Canada will buy a great deal from us. But it does not seem to occur to the majority of our people that Canada is not a large purchasing country. Canada has not only no rich class, as we regard the expression, but her well-to-do class is poor, and the majority of her people are not only very poor, but have very few needs and de- mands to be supplied even had they unlimited means. The French Canadians, who are probably the most industrious of the population, live more plainly than any American would believe until he had travelled in the country largely. They are so poor that they regard themselves in para- dise financially whefi they can find occupation upon American fishing vessels and in American factories. The pay of factory hands in the East- ern States is very small, as the trades' unions have informed us frequently and without any exaggeration, but it is infinitely better than any- thing that the young men and young women of Lower Canada could find at home. The home of the French Canadian, who seems to be entirely contented, contains so little furniture that to the poor mechanic of a Northern city it would seem very bare and empty. The farming population of English birth is better off, lives better and has broader and more expensive tastes. But it is one thing to have tastes and quite a different thing to have the means to gratify them. The means ANNEXATION. 223 would not be any greater if those people were citizens of the United States than they are now. One thing we would receive in bountiful meas- ure from Canada were we to annex her, and that is debt. She is loaded with debt in proportion to the assessed value of everything within her borders about five times as heavily as the United States, and let no one imagine that the Canadian is going to be fool enough to become part of our country and pay a proportion of our debts with- out having her own debts paid by us. The Canadian debt and ours would have to be amal- gamated, with the result that each individual taxpayer of the United States would have to take a share in paying, literally paying, for Canada. I know that a great deal is said about the vex- atious questions that would be entirely disposed of were Canada to become part of this Union. But would we really get rid of them ? All of the territory to the north of us is not strictly Cana- dian. Some of it still belongs to Bngland, and even if England were quite willing to be entirely rid of the Dominion, she would keep a foothold here if only for the purpose of having a source of food supply from the fisheries. Nearly two hundred years ago, when the British islands were nowhere near as populous as at present, and the sea yielded a bountiful harvest all along the British coast, England fought France savagely 224 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. on the fisheries question, and America so fully sympathized with her as to assist her to the best of her ability. So, as long as Hngland is any- where on our border, it would be useless to im- agine ourselves rid of her as a possible enemy. She could concentrate troops and munitions of war quite as easily upon any large island or point of the upper half of North America as she can in Canada. She might not be quite so near our border or have so many opportunities for crossing, but she would be far enough away for us not to be able to watch her so closely. The only purposes of annexation, now that men are no longer stolen and killed for the nomi- nal reason that we wish to make Christians of them, are to get something worth having for its own sake or to find a place of overflow for surplus population. None of our neighbors are rich ex- cept in debt. They have nothing we want which we cannot get cheaper by purchase than at the expense of time, money and patience that even peaceable annexation would require. As for receptacles of overflow, we already have enough to last us a century or two. Do not take any stock in the story that there is no more gov- ernment land worth having, and that there are no more chances for the poor man in the United States. I know that such stories are told fre- quently by those who are supposed to know most about it. The younger men of the farming com- ANNEXATION. 225 niunities of the West, some thousands of them, have been howling for years to be allowed to enter the so-called territory of Oklahoma. But if to each of the majority of these men were given a quarter section of land in the Garden of Para- dise as it existed before the fall of Adam, they would still be looking out for some new location. There is a great floating, discontented mass of people in the new countries. The proportion is quite as great as it is in the large cities. There are many farmers in the West who have occupied half a dozen different homesteads on pre-emption claims in succession, turned up a little ground, built some sort of house which never was finished, become discouraged or disheartened or restless, sold out at a loss or abandoned their claims, put their portable property in a wagon or boat and started in search of some new country. Their impulse seems to be exactly that of the small boy who is out fishing. He always seems to think the fish will bite better a little further on, either up or down the stream, it does not matter which, and he rambles from one to the other be- cause rambling is a great deal easier work than fishing. The unsurveyed territory of the United States is still enormous. Between the city of New York and the Ohio river there are still hun- dreds of thousands of acres of good land which never echoed the sound of the lumberman's axe nor heard the ploughman's whistle or oath. 15 226 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Several years ago the president of a prominent railway corporation, a trunk line, said to me that there were hundreds of miles of his company's land which never contributed in any way to the support of the road. It produced nothing, and scarcely anything was carried over the road to it. And he wanted to know if I could give him any possible reason why immigrants by hundreds went over the line to points a thousand miles away when so much good land was awaiting till- age, and was several hundred miles nearer mar- kets than the country to which they were going. I could not, except to suggest that it was human nature to imagine that the places which were fur- therest away offered the greatest advantages. Why, even in the State of New York, with its five or six million inhabitants, there are large counties, and not in the Adirondack region either, of which not more than half the good land is under cultivation to-day. The land is not bad, the distance from rail communication and from mar- kets is not great. Everything is more favorable to the settler than in some portions of the West- ern States that are filling up rapidly, and yet the immigrant passes all these localities and goes further away, and he who already is there is often dissatisfied and anxious to sell out and go somewhere apparently for no other purpose ex- cept to get a new start. The hill countries of xll the older States still contain immense quanti- ANNEXATION. 22 1 ties of valuable ground which might be made to yield more profitable crops per acre than any- body's wheat-land in the most favored sections of the United States. The ground that the State of Tennessee some years ago placed upon the market at six cents an acre so as to have it in personal instead of public possession, and with the hope of getting a little something out of it in the way of taxes, is as good as many of the more valuable portions of the Eastern States. The entire table-land of the mountain range that sepa- rates the Eastern States from the West is but sparsely inhabited. Not much of it can be util- ized for large planting of staple crops, but all of it is valuable for something that might be turned to profit. It is better ground than the Switzers live well on in their native country and far better naturally than that of some of the more prosperous provinces of France. On the basis of the population of the State of New York, which State certainly is not overcrowded in its agricultural districts, this nation has room for all people who will be born in it or who by any possibility can immigrate to it for two or three centuries to come. We need no place of overflow for any of our population that is not criminal, and this class can be trusted to find its own outlets and places of refuge without any assistance from the govern- ment or the people. CHAPTER XVI. THE COLORED MAN. NATIONS, as well as the people who compose them, must have some subject to quarrel about among themselves when everything else is lovely ; something which has so many sides that no one party or individual can change it. In the United States this subject is the colored man ; not exactly that, either, but the colored man in the South. There are plenty of colored men in the North, but there is no political ques- tion regarding them here. More than half a million of the colored population of the Union reside in the Northern States, and whoever heard of them being made an issue in any political campaign, much less a burning question between general elections ? And yet the two sections in regard to the colored man resemble each other greatly in many essential features. The colored men of the North, like those of the South, are ex-slaves or the de- scendants of slaves. It was not so many years ago that slavery was general throughout the Union. The South says that the North abolished (228) THE COLORED MAN. 229 slavery within its own borders merely because it didn't pay. This may be so, for the South itself is now inclined to acknowledge that slavery didn't pay south of Mason and Dixon's line either. And yet our Northern blacks are exactly like the others : descendants of savage races who in- habited utterly uncivilized portions of Africa, who were brought over here unwillingly, put to work under duress and fear of punishment, and learned what little they know under the lash. And yet we have a great many prosperous colored people in the North ; men who own houses and are transacting businesses in which they have the competition, the esteem, and some- times the fear of their white competitors. Why, even twenty-five years ago, during the general election of 1864, when the soldiers of the Union army were allowed to vote by commission and certificate, I chanced to be present in one camp where, in all the company of about eighty colored men, twenty-seven were entitled to the ballot in the State of New York. Yet at that time no colored man could vote in New York unless he was worth two hundred and fifty dol- lars in real estate according to the assessors' list. In how many white companies of soldiers, think you, were there as many men who could have voted had there been such a restriction upon them ? 230 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. How did these Northern negroes reach such position and property as they now possess? Certainly not through, any assistance they re- ceived from white neighbors. A great deal of sentiment has been expended and perhaps felt in the North regarding the negro, but it always was the Southern negro the man in bondage. Southerners are quite right in saying that the colored people as a class are treated with more familiarity and consideration in the South than at the North. Colored people have never been the equal of the whites, according to any class of society in the North, not even the practical abolitionists. They have been compelled to keep by themselves ; and to this day a colored man can make a great stir and arouse a great deal of indignation by buying a first-class seat in any Northern theatre, or a high-priced pew in any Northern church. And yet we have no color-line or color-question up here. And, as you may occasionally have heard, they do have one down South. What is the reason for the difference ? It is simply that the solid South is an absolute necessity to two political parties, one of which is the Republican and the other the Democratic. At present there is no third party that is likely to have the power to break these two combined. Of course we all have heard that the solid South, so-called, is a condition of affairs to be THE COLORED MAN. 231 deplored by all right-minded citizens. Republi- cans make the most of it, which means a great deal, at every general election, and at many State elections at the North, and even in contests over the petty offices in small towns the Southern question is almost always likely to be lugged in even by the heels. In the South the same sub- ject comes up in another form. The South is urged to remain solid for fear of negro domina- tion, and Northern influence by means of the negro. Of course this is all nonsense upon both sides, and no one knows it better than those who talk it most. There is no more danger to either party through the existence of the " Solid South " than there is to the country in general from the smallest church or denomination which is solid within itself. But how could either party hold together without this shibboleth? The Republican tells you of outrages against the Southern blacks, and insists that they would all be reduced to slavery were it not due to the constant agitation of the negro's old-time friend, the Republican party of the North. That a con- stitutional amendment would be necessary to bring this about is not mentioned by any of these partisan politicians for the best of reasons. They tell us also that we will never have a fair representation of the interests of the country until all the Southern blacks have full and free 232 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. right to vote, and we hear awful stories of intim- idation at the polls. Now the honest truth is, as every man can as- certain from the census reports of the United States, that if every colored man in the South were to vote, and to vote the Republican ticket, it would be almost impossible to put any State once more into the hands of the blacks. That there were colored senators and colored legisla- tures during the two years immediately follow- ing the war was due to the temporary disfran- chisement of a great many white men. But that time has passed. Political disabilities have been removed from all except a few irrecon- cilables who continue to make it a matter of pride that they have never asked to be placed upon an equal footing with the rest of their fel- low-citizens. Besides, all the blacks would not vote the Re- publican ticket. The negroes as a class may be stupid, but there are individuals who are a long remove from idiocy, and they are going to vote according to their own opinions of men and measures, regardless of what the majority of their race may do. There are strong Democrats among the blacks in every Southern State, ap- parently in every Southern county, and they are quite able to give a reason for the faith that is in them. Black men, like white men, are strongly influenced at the polls by their own business and THE COLORED MAN. 233 personal interests, and, so long as the two races are obliged to do business with each other, a great many thousand blacks in each State are going to vote according to the political ideas of the white men who control their fortunes and prospects to a large degree. The South is very fond of saying that the ne- gro is so lazy that if he had any political ascen- dency at all, even in a congressional district or a town, he would make it impossible for a white man to live there, hold his property and trans- act his business. How utterly ridiculous and groundless this plea is is known to thousands of newspaper men and commercial travellers who have spent a little time in the South and have kept their eyes free from political scales of any kind. The colored man is leisurely; there is no denying that. But it is impossible for the white man in the North to be long in the South with- out discovering that the Southern white also is slow, and does no more work than he is ab- solutely compelled to do. It is not a matter of color at all ; it is strictly one of climate and ne- cessity. The negro, being of a lower race, is willing to subsist upon less than the white man. He may eat quite as much, but he is not particu- lar about the quality of his food so long as there is enough of it, and the only luxuries for which he has any longing are tobacco and whiskey. No matter how well off he becomes, how many 234 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. acres of land he succeeds in possessing, he gen- erally lives in an humble cabin which contains nothing of what white men recognize as the necessities and luxuries of life. But is the negro lazy ? If he is, why is it that the South, with little more population than she had thirty years ago, raises twice as much cotton as she used to, besides a great many staples for which at one time she was absolutely compelled to depend upon the North. All of us have published in our respective papers reports and statistics of the rapid increase of manufact- uring interests in different portions of the South and of new methods of planting, and larger range of plantation crops, than the South dreamed of before the war. Is all this the result of white men working harder ? If it is, the white men of the South themselves don't know it. Some have gone to work who never worked before. But the man who in old times could enjoy abundant lei- sure and live upon the results of the labor of his slaves is not as frequently found as Republican partisans and howling abolitionists would have us believe. A little figuring will convince any one that the entire number of slaves in the South before the war did not average two to each family, and in the towns the ownership of negroes was the exception instead of the rule. A few men, comparatively few, who were very rich and had large estates, inherited with their lands a great THK COLORKI) MAX. number of slaves, and were continually obliged to add to the number. But how many of them ever became millionaires ? In fact, did any one ever hear of a Southern millionaire before the war, unless his money was made by trade in one of the larger Southern cities or seaports ? The Southern negroes do work. Not all of them, it is true ; but among all the lower classes of mankind the reluctance to work, unless abso- lutely compelled, is a marked feature. A good deal can be said in the North b}^ any one who is not a politician, and who never expects to run for office, about disinclination to work as mani- fested in the lower classes of Germans, Irishmen, Poles, Hungarians, and people of every other nationality who have come to our shores, but it is a fact which may be demonstrated by the records of any registrar's office of any county in the South that the negroes as a class have been very anxious to acquire land and make small farms, if not plantations, for themselves, and that the number of land-owners among the race which could not own a foot of land thirty years ago is now very large. They are as eager to possess land as the French peasants of to-day, whose avidity to become proprietors has not changed a particle since the end of the old feudal system, when every man not a noble was obliged to hire land from those who had inherited it. The old political demand of the blacks for forty acres and 236 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a mule sounded ridiculous, but there was a great deal of promise in it, a promise which has since brought forth more performance than the negro's most intelligent friends in the North had dared to expect. Consult a few of our enterprising Hebrew fellow-citizens who have gone into business in the South about the capacity of the negro for work, and they will admit to you that, although the blacks might do much more without hurting themselves, they still raise large enough crops to be his very best customers. The Hebrew in the United States is a pretty good indication of the commercial condition of any given part of the country. When he goes into business it is not for sentimental reasons, and when he starts a general store at a Southern cross-roads, or rail- way-station, or post-office, it means that he sees an opportunity for making some money there. Of course, the whites also trade with him, for he has an admirable business faculty for being the only merchant in the vicinity and for starting a store where no competitor is to be found. Never- theless the commercial traveller or drummer who stands in one of these stores for a little while will see by the manner of the enterprising mer- chant towards his colored customers either that the ex-slave is raising a pretty good crop that year, or that the Hebrew is going into the mis- THE COLORED MAN. 237 sionary business to an extent of which his race has never been suspected. Alluding once more to our Hebrew friend, who is of immense service to the South, it is worth while to remark that he does not always sell for cash, but on the contrary extends credit to the colored man just as the Western merchant does to the white farmer in his own vicinity. That is a better proof that the negro will work than all the argument that could be devised by the most skilful and determined advocate of the reju- venated Anglo-African race. He is not going to trust any customer further than the probable ability to pay. He bases his loan or credit partly on the probable yield of the man's farm, but largely on the individual industry and ability of the owner. This is placing the . black on a level of practical equality with the white, and doing it for the soundest, because the most material, reason that possibly can be imagined. But do Southern merchants trust all Southern blacks ? Well, in the language of the street, I should smile. Do you know of any Northern merchant who trusts all white men? Do you know of any town in the North where more than one-half the inhabitants can get credit to any extent at the local stores ? Colored men are not angels ; they are merely human beings with all the faults of ordinary humanity intensified by recent savage extraction and several generations OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of servitude, the worst curse of which was that it relieved men and women of all sense of re- sponsibility for their own material and mental condition. There have been shrewd yet some- what unkind suggestions made that whatever natural industry, foresight, and business shrewd- ness may exist in colored people of the South, is due to a certain admixture of white blood through methods of which the least said the better. But, strange as it may appear, this not only is not true, but it is strangely untrue. The ablest an4 most trustworthy of the Southern farmers and mechanics of the colored race are those of the darkest skins. A " yellow man " is a term of contempt in business and laboring circles in the South. Too frequently the man with a liberal admixture of white blood possesses all the vices of both races, without any of the virtues of either. It is useless to deny that there is an im- mense substratum of the colored population of the South which is indolent, spiritless and vicious, and may be counted upon for any kind of trouble which does not require energy. But are the Southern whites so very much better in this respect ? The corner loafer is as common a character in the South as he is at the North. Take two towns of equal size North and South and you can find more lazy, vicious, worthless white men at short notice in the Southern town THE COLORED MAN 7 . 239 than in that of the North. This is not due to Southern blood, but to Southern breeding. Lower classes everywhere will ape the aristocrats. The old aristocratic idea in the South was that it was very vulgar to work, and the force of example of aristocrats who have given up this rule has not yet reached the lower classes of whites, and probably will not until most of these whites have enjoyed a period of seclusion in their re- spective State prisons. The difference, however, between the blacks and the whites of the lower classes is this : that the blacks are quite satisfied to band together and remain inconspicuous so long as they are not annoyed, while the vicious class among the whites is prone to be aggres- sive at very slight provocation. Some of the newspapers make the most of any story of lynching of a colored man in the South, but they are strangely remiss in reporting to us the outrages, cruelties and indignities inflicted upon white men, very frequently white men, too, who are of Southern birth and Southern feeling. It takes a very little while to get at what is called public sentiment among a lot of lazy men. Shooting affrays which result from such public excitement are a great deal more common be- tween white and white than between w^hite and black, as any one can tell you who has spent any length of time in a Southern community outside of a large city. The feuds which occasionally 240 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. become historic, family feuds, which never were heard of to the extent of bloodshed anywhere in the Union except in the Southern States, are al- ways between white men. You never hear of vendettas in colored families. The Southern black, too, however proud he may be of his freedom, and however strongly he will protest against having any rebels to work over him, is nevertheless closely devoted to the class to which his old master belonged. He may not be willing to vote with " ole marsa " on election day, but he. is not going to fight against him or his class except under very strong provo- cation. There are some ugly negroes, of course. According to an unimpeachable authority there used to be ugly characters even among the an- gels in heaven. But it is seldom, indeed, that any Southern community experiences any genu- ine sense of fear regarding what the negroes are doing or what they may do. Small conspiracies under strong religious excitement have occasion- ally been unearthed in the South, but they sel- dom " came to a head," as the saying is, although there are localities, small ones, in which the blacks far outnumber the whites and in which they might sweep a small section of country for a time and be in absolute domination. A great many, probably a large majority, of the negroes will steal, and they also will lie ; but they never are grfeat thieves, and there is very little method THE COLORED MAN. 241 in their lying. The fear in which Southern edi- tors occasionally pretend that certain sections of the country fall has nothing behind it but the imagination of the editor or some political plan of the ruling class of the vicinity. Then why not wipe out the solid South and the color line ? Well, if you were to do it, where would the two great parties be the year after ? What would they have to grumble about ? \Vhat did we hear as soon as General Harrison was elected President of the United States ? Why, that he was going to inaugurate a strong South- ern policy. Why a strong Southern policy? Because there was nothing else in the world to talk about. The position of the South or of the Southern States had been the sole capital of one party ever since reconstruction was practically accomplished, and when politicians and partisan editors began to look over the ground after their surprise at the defeat of Cleveland, there was nothing else they could think of as a possible distinctive measure of the new administration. That the President will do anything of the kind should not be believed by any sensible man until he sees it. Indeed, in his inaugural ad- dress Mr. Harrison said, like a true statesman, " I assume that the whole body of the people convenant with me and with each other to-day to support and defend the constitution and the Union of the States, to yield willing obedience to all the 16 242 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. laws, and each to every other citizen his equal civil and political -rights." Administrations cannot act according to the fancies of politicians. The strong- est partisan elected to a high executive office in the United States is compelled suddenly to be- come very conservative, whether he wishes to be or not, and the most that may be feared of him, no matter to which party he may belong, is that he will fail to accomplish the ordinary duties im- posed upon him by his constitutional oath. To help the party is the last thing that any Presi- dent of the United States has ever succeeded in accomplishing, and probably the last thing to which he has been able to give any consecutive attention. But if it is nonsense for the Democrats to con- tinue talking about the color-line and the neces- sity of a solid South, why should not the other party ignore the subject entirely ? Because they would have no capital for another campaign, and would be obliged to begin at the bottom and start anew and devise something with which to catch the attention of the public. Politicians are shrewd fellows. They are not going to throw away old party cries so long as there is any one to listen to them. The bloody shirt has been buried again and again on convivial occasions at which members of both parties assisted, and even Republican orators travelling in the South have admitted that the sanguinary garment had al- PRESIDENT HARRISON. THE COLORED MAN. 243 ready been interred so deep that there was no possibility of a resurrection, but somehow they forgot these remarks as soon as they reached the North again. Some sort of banner had to be flung to the breeze to cheer the hearts of un- thinking retainers, and the bloody shirt was the only one available. If the color-line is ever broken at the South the white race will not be to thank neither the whites at the South nor those at the North. The colored man will break it for himself. The negro is becoming educated. He is doing it very slowly and is making some shocking blunders at it, but he is getting a little further ahead every year. Many hundred teachers, members of his own race, are being specially educated every year, and these men and women, going into the little centres of civilization in the South, are giving their own class some entirely new ideas as to how white men get along in those parts of the country where men get along fastest. They not only are being taught the elements of common school education and how to teach them to others, bu*t each one of them is taught a trade beside. He is being made able to work with his hands as well as with his wits and to show the members of his own race how to do for themselves some things which always have been left for the abler hand of the white man. A number of different mechanical trades are taught at the Hampton 244 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Normal School, which, has been in operation for a great many years, and has sent a great many teachers into the Southern States every year, and that is not the only school engaged in this benefi- cent work. In the South adult colored people go to school. More of them take lessons from their own children. The negro who cannot write his own name and doesn't know when he is sign- ing a promissory note or a receipt in full, is not so common as he used to be. Negroes are man- aging some large plantations and doing it well. One of the largest plantations in the South is managed and controlled in every respect by a man who was a slave thirty years ago, and smaller instances of similar nature could be de- tailed in great numbers. Education is a foe to prejudice of every kind, and as the colored man finds himself enjoying a fair field beside the white man, he gets rid of prejudice to a remarkable degree. He does not ask to be admitted to the dining-room or parlor of his old master or his old master's son, but he finds himself in the court-room and at the auc- tion mart and in all other centres of business quite the equal of the races which he has been taught to consider the superior. He finds that the courts are quite willing to grant him justice in all matters of dollars and cents, and after all these are the first matters with which the negro, like the white man, concerns himself. The more THE COLORED MAN. 245 rapidly his opportunities for education are multi- plied, the less clannish he becomes. This is the testimony of Southern whites themselves. He no longer votes to the party call of some white Republican, but votes according to his own convictions, or perhaps according to the financial inducements of the highest bidder, like a great proportion of the population of the North- ern States. He is quite as able to take care of himself as the barbarians which ancient Rome subdued, and quite as able to make his way, little by little it is true, to a position of equality re- garding all things in which the law nominally assumes that men are equal. He will break that color-line yet, and when that occurs our country will see the unwonted spectacle of an absolute disintegration and regeneration of political par- ties beginning at the bottom instead of at the top. Probably no living American has had longer and more varied experience with the colored race than General S. C. Armstrong, of Hampton, Virginia. During the civil war he trained and commanded colored soldiers. Soon after the war ended he organized the colored Normal School at Hampton an institution which is talked of, throughout the country, quite as much as Yale or Harvard. Besides seeing the colored man and woman in the class-room, the General man- ages an immense farm and a dozen shops all 246 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. belonging to the school, and all the workers being selected from the students. Beside at- tending to all these duties, the General found time to look in upon his old graduates through- out the country, and see the blacks at home everywhere. . I wrote him a short time ago for his opinion as to the outlook of the race. Here is his reply: "An experience of two years and a half, be- ginning in 1863, with colored troops, of two years thereafter in the Freedmen's Bureau, and of twenty years since in the Hampton School, is the basis of my convictions in regard to the negroes of the South. They have, I believe, established their capacity first, as soldiers; second, as law-abiding, industrious citizens ; third, for remarkable improvement under the right educational conditions. " From the first they have surprised us. Black troops were ridiculed in the South and distrusted in the North till the Confederate gov- ernment began, as a last resort, to drill them as recruits for Lee's wasted regiments ; and they proved, in the words of more than one Southern general, to be ' the winning card of the war.' There seems no doubt that they have since kept up their record as regular army troops, making efficient and courageous soldiers. " The first charge against the freedmen was that they would not work. The answer to this GEN. S. C. ARMSTRONG ( Principal, of Indian Training School). THE COLORED MAN. 247 is, that in the various branches of the ill-fated Freedmen's Banks there were deposited in abont eight years over fifty millions of dollars, ten per cent, of which was permanent, while their prop- erty, chiefly in land, is now estimated at from $90,000,000 to $150,000,000 in value. The am- bition of the negro to become a land-owner has been his salvation. When he found that he could not get his coveted 'forty acres and a mule ' except by the sweat of his brow, he set to work, and soon learned that one mule earned is worth ten given. The illustrations of this are universal. A negro and his wife will break up an acre or two with their own labor and half starve themselves to buy, for $15, a steer with which the next year they can cultivate a few more acres. Then they buy a mule, and with land at from five to eight dollars an acre, will, in five years, have paid for their little farm and established themselves on the foundation of good citizenship. The negro communities which, all over the South, have grown up in this way, fur- nish the nucleus for school and church work, and are among the most hopeful signs of the times. The lands which thus fall into their hands are usually the disintegrated plantations, which have broken up from sheer unwieldiness, and are now providing homes for a majority of the Southern people, white as well as black. City life is not wholesome for the negro ; for while it gives him 248 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. good schools and some special advantages, the influences are in the main bad, and attack the colored man on his weak side. " Taking the ex-slaves as a whole, I think it safe to say that one-third are progressive and in- dustrious and will get ahead anywhere, while another (large) third forms a shiftless, drifting class, not criminal, nor even vicious, but inclined to take life easily, even if it be at the expense of their neighbors. This element is to be found principally in Louisiana, Mississippi, and the so- called ' black belt,' and on the whole has, I think, in the last ten years, improved under the influence of more carefully administered laws and better schools. The middle third are well disposed, and rise or fall in direct response to their surroundings. The railroad building and other business enterprises of the new South are factors of immense importance in the negro's development, and his best hope is in Northern capital and immigration. "Again, it was said that the freedman was be- yond the reach of books and school-teachers. As a matter of fact, negro education began when as slaves they were taught to work, to speak the language of their masters, and accept their re- ligion, and in this enforced contact with the white race there were many compensations. The ne- groes were unconsciously trained into strength, while, just as unconsciously, went on the deca- THE COLORED MAN. 249 dence of their white rulers, which ended, as such conditions must, in revolution. "There are now about 15,000 free negro schools in the South supported by the self-imposed taxa- tion of the whites, and about twenty-five firmly established and powerful institutions of a higher grade, built and maintained almost wholly by Northern charity, which is sending South about a million of dollars yearly for negro education. These have cost from $100,000 to $400,000 each, and are training, each of them, from 250 to 400 selected negro youth as teachers for the public free schools. Of these a small per cent, become lawyers, doctors, and ministers, and show a fair average of success, but the crying need is for teachers practical men and women who can show their people how to do better work in their every-day lives. The Hampton School alone has sent out since 1868 over seven hundred col- ored teachers. 1 The increase of the blacks in numbers is a tremendous fact, and makes the question of their education an immediately vital one. The negro must work out his own salvation like the rest of us, but he must have a fair chance, and to-day there are about two millions of freedmen and women in the South to whom that chance is practically denied. They are, as I have said, distinctly dividing; the better class will take 250 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. care of themselves, but the large remainder can be saved only by Christian education. " We are face to face with the danger of an ignorant population whose hands hold the bal- ance of political power, and we can afford to make no mistakes in our dealings with them, whether as man to man or as Christian for Christian. " I think that the negro will disappoint us in the future as he has in the past that he will do better than we expect." It is said by some people at the North that the Southern whites are opposed to the education of the colored race. This is an outrageous slander. There are low-grade whites who are as jealous of the blacks as some whites, equally " low- down," are jealous of their colored neighbors at the North. But there is no such feeling among the class that makes public opinion. Many prominent Virginians are among the heartiest supporters of General Armstrong, Captain Pratt, and other managers of normal schools for colored people. A joint committee of the Virginia Leg- islature recently said of the Hampton School : " This institute stands as a monument, show- ing the untiring energy and indomitable will of the principal of this school ; the splendid gifts and noble charities of American citizens; the strong desire of the Anglo-Saxon race to educate and elevate the colored race ; the willingness of the colored race to receive an education ; the high THE COLORED MAN. 251 appreciation of this blessing entertained by this race ; the wisdom of Virginia in donating one- third of the land scrip fund to this institution ; the good judgment of the law-makers of Virginia in granting such a liberal charter ; the splendid achievements of human skill and industry ; the credit of the good and loyal people of Elizabeth City county and Hampton; the great part it played in bringing more people, more money, and more wealth to the community in which it is located. Let it flourish and prosper ; let its in- fluence grow wider and deeper and stronger and broader, until all parts of our common country will feel and know its blessings towards those who have been but recently made American citi- zens. The casual reader or observer cannot comprehend the magnitude and gravity of the ' education of the negro ' in Virginia. At this period in our history, when our people are over- burdened with taxation ; when our finances are as yet unsettled ; when the cry comes welling up from all portions of our State, ' Educate the youth of our land,' then law-makers and people should be thankful for aid, and should foster, nourish, and encourage every proper means or enterprise tending to the education of the youth of our State." Hampton is but one school of many preparing colored people to teach their own race. Negro intelligence is going to break the color line. CHAPTER XVII. THE INDIAN. IT was not very long ago that the Indian was the object of a great deal of discussion and alarm in the United States. He had a habit of breaking out at unexpected times and in unexpected places. He might be quiet in winter when the snow was deep and the reservation warehouse was so full of stores there was no possibility of his getting hungry, and consequently angry. When, however, the spring sun melted away the snow and brought the grass to the surface, so that it was cheaper to let a pony fatten on the grass than to kill him while he was lean, the Indian picked up his spirits and rifle which always was a good one and started on the warpath. He did not particularly care whom he might kill ; but if there were no other Indian tribes about, he was not going home without a scalp, even if he had to kill a white man. The development of some of our Territories was ar- rested for months, and even years, by some In- dian wars which began upon very slight pretext, and which our army, contemptible in numbers, (252) THE INDIAN. 253 was unable to suppress promptly; and the savages gained confidence from the knowledge, which they were not compelled to ignore, that we were not a fighting nation. Either through better soldiers or less dis- honest agents, there has been a change in late years. The Indian has not been on the warpath in a long time, and some of the exciting accounts of Indian raids in the West amount only to this that a body of men have left their reservation against the advice of their associates, and started on a stealing and murdering tour just far enough ahead of the military force to be able to do a great deal of harm in a short time. At the same time, however, the idea has been creeping to the surface that the Indian might possibly be regarded as a human being and as amenable to the ordinary laws and customs of civilization. All of us have heard the old brutal remark, attributed to General Sheridan and several other army officers, that the only good Indian is a dead one. But this is a base and cruel slander. There are a great many good Indians, and every honest Indian agent as well as every military officer who has much to do with the savage tribes knows that in each reservation there are a num- ber of men, rude though they may be, who are of considerable character and large self-control, and whose principal faults may be charged to 254 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the negligence of the government, which has regarded the red man as its special ward. The Indian has brains. No one is quicker to admit this than the army officer who has had occasion to fight the Indian. General Custer was a good soldier and an experienced Indian fighter, but Chief Gall was a better one. The defeat of Custer is usually attributed to Sitting Bull, but that old ruffian simply did out-and- out fighting ; the brains of the conflict all the strategy and all the tactics were supplied by an Indian named Gall, who still lives, and for whose military ability every officer in our army has a profound respect, not unmixed with fear. The flowery and elaborate speeches which dif- ferent representatives of savage tribes have made to the Great Father at Washington, through their interpreters, may seem to have a good deal of nonsense in them, but the Indian Bureau knows that they also contain a great deal of ad- mirable diplomacy. It may be because the In- dian has very little to think of and can give his whole mind to the subject under consideration ; but whatever the reason, the fact is assured that in pow-wows between representatives of our In- dian Bureau and some of the tribes in the Far West the preponderance of brains has not always been on the side of the white man. Another unexpected development of the In- dian question is, that the Indian will work. THE INDIAN. 255 This may seem a wild statement in view of what a number of travellers and military officers have seen on reservations in the Far West and at railway stations on the slender line which con- nects the civilization of the West with that of the Rocky mountains and the Pacific slope. But fortunately there are a number of witnesses to substantiate it ; for instance, the Apaches are currently supposed to be the most irreclaimable tribe of wild men within our nation's borders. It will not be hard to recall the difficulties which General Crook experienced in following, defeating and recalling Geronimo's famous gang of Apaches a few years ago, when they were followed to a mountain fastness in Mexico. Yet when some of the demons who had murdered, ravished and burned everything in their path were finally brought back to the reservation and taught that by tilling the soil they could earn some money, or at least the equivalent of money, they worked harder than any American farmer whose achievements had ever been re- corded. These so-called lazy devils supplied a military post with hundreds of tons of hay, every particle of which was cut by hand with such knives as the savages happened to have : they had no other tools with which to work. They also supplied the post with vegetables of various kinds, beside keeping themselves well fed with products of the soil which were results 256 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of their own labor. Farms managed by Indians are not at all uncommon in the West. It was the eviction, or the fear of eviction of an old Indian woman from her farm, that led to the murder of Indian Agent Meeker in Colorado. An Indian named Ouray was for a long time one of the most successful and respected farmers in Colorado. Ouray not only managed his own business well, but kept in order all the Indians in his vicinity. His methods were somewhat rude to be sure, but they always were effective, and no army officer of his acquaintance hesitated to trust him as implicitly as he would trust the Secretary of War for the time being. An In- dian at present is one of the land barons of the West, and has held his little estate near the centre of a large and flourishing town in spite of all temptations and machinations of rum- sellers, traders, lawyers and other scoundrels that have endeavored to swindle him out of his own. But it isn't necessary to go West to find out whether the Indian will work. One needs only to go down to Hampton, Virginia, where the government is supporting a lot of young Indians in the Normal school conducted by General Armstrong. I had heard so much about the unwonted spectacle of Indians, clothed and in their right minds, with clean faces and hands, studying books and using tools and behaving THE INDIAN. 257 themselves like human beings that a little while ago I went down to Hampton myself and went through the schools. First, I asked General Armstrong whether the Indian would work. " Will he work ? " said the General, with a merry twinkle of his eye. "Well now, you roam about here yourself all . day ; I presume you know a red man from a black one when you see him ; and you will have the question answered to your entire satisfaction." I did, and was convinced. I saw Indians out- of-doors working the soil, and Indians indoors, in the shops, handling tools as skilfully as the average white man. I saw houses inhabited by picked Indian families young people with chil- dren, and the " housekeeping" one of the most comprehensive words in the world was so thorough in all visible respects that either family seemed fit to teach domestic economy and neatness in many Northern villages I have seen. I saw four Indians in a class-room, at four sepa- rate blackboards, draw, inside of three minutes by the clock, four quite accurate maps of North America, putting the principal lakes and rivers in their proper places. Several prominent Amer- icans (white) were with me at the time, and each admitted, for himself, that he could not have done as well to save his life ; yet one was one of those railroad monopolists who want to own the 17 258 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. earth, and are supposed to carry at least their own section of it in their mind's eye. From General Armstrong himself I got the following brief statement of the Indian situation, and I have been unable to find any one in author- ity who is able to contradict any part of it. " There are now in this country (exclusive of the Alaskans) some 246,000 Indians, of whom 64,000 belong to the so-called civilized tribes, the Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Chickasaws. These, including their 16,000 ex-slaves, a rapidly increasing negro element, live, in the main, like white men. They, however, pay no taxes, receiv- ing ample revenues from their interest in the sales of land to the government, but, while they have schools and churches and an organized govern- ment of their own, are held back by their adhe- rence to the old tribal idea. This is thoroughly anti-progressive, and the savage Indian of to- day, who, taking his land in severalty, conies under the same law as his white neighbor, will probably in twenty years be well in advance of his Indian Territory- brother, who, under exist- ing conditions, can be neither one thing nor the other. "The principal uncivilized tribes are the 20,000 Navajos in the Southwest, and the 30,000 Sioux in the Northwest. The first of these have nearly doubled in ten years, own 1,000,000 sheep and 40,000 ponies, are wholly independent and THE INDIAN. 259 self-supporting, but wild and nomadic ; while the Sioux, who are but just holding their own, are still victims to the ration system. In spite, however, of this demoralizing influence, they have improved remarkably of late, chiefly be- cause they have been fortunate in their agents. It is upon the agents that everything depends, and those in charge of the Sioux have gradually decreased the food supply, thus forcing self- support and inducing the younger men to scatter along the river bottoms where there is wood and water, instead of huddling in hopeless depend- ence about the agencies. Along the banks of the Upper Missouri and its tributaries, and on the Rose-bud and Pine Ridge Agencies, the Sioux have generally broken from the hea- thenish village life and taken farms up of from one to thirty acres. As I drove last fall down the west bank of the Missouri river I saw hundreds of these farms, with their wire fences, log huts with the supplementary ti-pi, stacks of grain and hay, and everywhere men working in the fields, nineteen out of twenty in citizen's cloth- ing. As a better class of white settlers conies in, a better feeling comes with them, and the Indian can get in no other way such education as he receives from contact with these people. "The best of these Sioux, 3,500 of whom are now self-supporting, illustrate what we mean by ' progressive Indians,' and what has been done 260 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. for them can be done for all Indians. It is only a question of time and work. Between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain Ranges, and in Montana, there are many thousand Indians whose condition is not encouraging, chiefly.for lack of adequate effort in their behalf; while on the other hand, there are many on the Pacific coast who, under the influence of good agents and good conditions, are doing well. On farming lands Indians improve much faster than in a grazing country. u Government paid last year $1,050,000 for beef for reservation Indians, and $1,200,000 for their education, and only twelve thousand children are at school out of the total of forty thousand who are of an age to receive education. More education and less beef is the need. "An experience of eleven years with Indian students at Hampton, together with careful study of reservation life, has convinced me that In- dians are alive to progressive influences. They are intelligent and clear thinkers, quick at technical work in trades shops, unused to steady application but willing to take hold. They do not learn English easily, and are shy of speak- ing it, while they have no appreciation of the value of time, and cannot endure prolonged effort ; this last being a result of their lack of physical vigor, which I believe to be their chief disadvantage. In my dealings with them I have THE INDIAN. 261 treated them as men and have found them manly, frank, resentful, but not revengeful ; with a keen sense of justice, ready to take pun- ishment for wrong doing, and to speak the truth to their own hurt. " Of 247 sent home from the Hampton school, three-fourths have done from fairly to very well. At least one-third are doing excellently. There must always be a certain percentage of poor material, and there is a curious fickleness in the average Indian; but our students are always surprising us by doing better than we expect, and this is especially the case with the girls, for whom often we hardly dare to hope. Over one- half of our returned Indians have had temporary relapses, but there are few who do not recover themselves. A majority are working for their living as teachers, mechanics, farmers, teamsters, clerks, etc. "The need of the Indian is good agents, teachers, and farm instructors. They are born stock-raisers and their lands are the best cattle ranges in the country. With the right men in charge they could in ten years raise such a pro- portion of their own beef as to reduce the beef issue by one-half. " In their way stands a short-sighted economy, and a service so organized that it changes with every change of party. The lines of work for the Indian are indicated with sufficient clearness ; 262 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURK. the one thing now essential is intelligent co- operation of his friends. "The say ing that ' there is no good Indian but a dead one' is a cruel falsehood and has done great harm. They are a good deal like other people, and with a fair chance do well." That the Indian will work and that he also will learn was first demonstrated officially by Captain Pratt, of the regular army, who now is busily engaged in solving individual Indian problems at his noble school at Carlisle, Pa. The change in the government's policy toward the redskins is attributed, with good reason, to Captain Pratt's endeavors. Says Senator Dawes, who labored so hard for the bill enabling Indians to take farms instead of living in barbarous com- munism on reservations : " The division line between the present policy and the past is drawn here ; in the past the gov- ernment tried, by fair means or foul, to rid itself of the Indian. The present policy is to make something of him. That policy had its origin almost in an accident. Bight or nine years ago the government sent Captain Pratt with warriors, covered with the blood of a merciless war, from the Indian Territory down to Florida ; and Cap- tain Pratt, in the discharge of his duty, under- took to relieve himself of the labor of keeping these warriors in idleness, no matter if the work was of no service to anybody if it would keep THE INDIAN. them out of idleness. With this end in view he got permission to let them pick stones out of the streets. Then he enlisted ladies to teach them to read. Out of that experiment of Captain Pratt's has come all the rest. Behold what a great fire a little matter has kindled ! " Senator Dawes further says the following per- tinent words on the Indian, question ; no Ameri- can can fail to realize the force of his remarks: " If St. Paul was here and had 250,000 In- dians on his hands, whom the United States had sought for one hundred years to rob of every means of obtaining a livelihood, and had helped bring up in ignorance, he never would have said to them, ' He that will not work, shall not eat.' You did not say that to the poor black man ; you did not say that to the little children whom you sent by contribution out into the country for fresh air, and you ought not to say it to this poor, helpless race, helpless in their ignorance, and ignorant because we have fostered their ig- norance. We have appropriated more money to keep them in absolute darkness,, and heathenism, and idleness, than would have been required to send every one of them to college, and now we propose to turn them out. We did not relieve ourselves of the responsibility by that indiffer- ence ; we have got to take them by the hand like little children and bring them up out of this ignorance, for they multiply upon our hands, 264 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and their heritage is being wrenched away from them, and good men as well as bad are devising means to take it away. " What is to become of them then ? Have we done our duty to this people when we have said to them : ( We will scatter you and let you become isolated and vagabonds on the earth, and then we will apply to you the philosophic com- mand, "Go, take care of yourselves; we have every dollar of your possessions, every acre of your heritage ; we have killed more of your fel- lows than there are of you left} we have burnt your little homes, and now we have arrived at the conclusion that it is time to take away from you the last foot of ground upon which you can rest, and we shall have done our duty when we command you to take care of yourselves ? " That is not the way I read it ; I know how sin- cere and honest, and probably as near right everybody else is, but I am only telling how I feel. I feel just this : that every dollar of money, and every hour of effort that can be applied to each individual Indian, day and night, in season and out of season, with patience and persever- ance, with kindness and with charity, is not only due him in atonement for what we have inflicted upon him in the past, but is our own obligation towards him in order that we may not have him a vagabond and a pauper, without home or occupation among us in this land. THE INDIAN. 265 One or the other is the alternative ; he is to be a vagabond about our streets, begging from door to door, and plundering our citizens, or he is to be taken up and made a man among us ; a citi- zen of this great republic, absorbed into the body politic and made a useful and influential citizen." President Cleveland voiced the opinion of all thoughtful and intelligent citizens when he wrote that " the conscience of the people demands that the Indians within our boundaries be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the government, and their education and civilization promoted with view to ultimate citizenship" With a chance to work, the Indian needs also the chance to learn, and this he is getting more and more. Whether he will learn is a question no longer open to doubt. General Armstrong's testimony is given above. Captain Pratt says " scarcely a student but is able to take care of himself or herself among civilized people at the end of their five years' course." Bishop Hare, of the Episcopal Church, who has been doing splendid work among the Indians for many years, gives unwearying attention to schools on the reservations, but says, "I cannot shut my eyes to the incalculable service which well-conducted Eastern boarding-schools have done the Indians." When we shall have for a few years treated the Indian like a human being, there will be no 41 Indian question " to discuss. CHAPTER XVIII. THE PRESS. THE editor is the great American school- master. None other is worthy to be compared with him. He is about as numerous as all other teachers combined. His lessons are given more fre- quently, they last longer and they cost less than any others. To him forty-nine students in every fifty are in- debted for the only post-graduate course they ever receive. Many others would have no education at all if it were not for him. He does not always know his business so well that he could not know it better, but whatever he does know he imparts steadily, as well as some that he does not honor. He is the only influence upon whom the pub- lic can absolutely depend to right any wrong which is being endured in spite of the efforts and oaths of legislators. When law is lazy and legis- lators are venal it is the editor, and the editor only, who comes to the relief of the public. The pub- lic will not do this for itself. It seems to con< (266) THK PRESS. 267 sider its duty done when it casts its ballot. More than half a century ago, when editors were not supposed to think their souls their own, the first Napoleon said, " Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." Napoleon certainly knew the value of bayonets. The newspaper is the universal tribunal. It is an open court and there is justice of a sort for every one there at a trifling cost, one cent, two. or three, as the case may be. The editor is the lawyer to whom the poor man must of necessity come. His court is one of equity, and it is to equity courts after all that all of us are inclined to resort when we insist upon a final decision. He is the people's advocate. Before a law can be suggested in legislature or Congress to undo a wrong or strengthen a right, the editor has al- ready suggested it, debated both sides of it and rendered a decision, frequently a dozen or twenty decisions, which the public are inclined to admit or regard as accurate. He sometimes gets hold of a subject wrong end first, but he will submit to correction and improvement quicker than any judge or jury on record. He may not always admit that he has changed his mind, or that he turned over, or that he has turned his coat, but the change is there all the same, to any one who will read his paper. He is the only biographer and historian which the mass of the people can read. And he gives 268 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. more information for a given amount of money than the cheapest circulating library in the world. The editor is also invaluable as a social barometer. As Thackeray once said, ' The newspaper is typical of the community in which it is encouraged and circulated ; it tells its char- acter as well as its condition." This is awfully severe upon some communities, and upon the Dreaders of certain papers, but it is none the less true. Unselfish thinkers, who are concerned chiefly for the good of the community, are always the men who esteem the editor most highly. Wen- dell Phillips, who for more than thirty years was abused by about half the editors of the land, said, " Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress." Many years before, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of our government, said, " Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should prefer the latter." The editor has improved more rapidly in the past twenty-five years than the representative of any other profession. Theologians, physicians and lawyers all belong to schools of one sort or other, but of late years there has come up a new school of journalism which is called inde- pendent, and it has become so popular with THE PRESS. 269 readers of newspapers that the number of pro- fessors and students in it are increasing at a most gratifying rate. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., explains one dif- ference clearly when he says : " There is one grand distinction between journals some are newspapers, some are organs. An organ is sim- ply a daily pamphlet published in the interest of some party, or persons, or some agitation." But the organs are not as numerous as they used to be. Who would have imagined any time before the late civil war that in any great political campaign preceding a general election in this country there would be scores and almost hundreds of indepen- dent newspapers. The time was when a news- paper could not exist unless it were a party or personal organ. But the newspaper has gradu- ally risen from being a mere partisan or personal mouthpiece to being the mouthpiece of its own proprietor. At the present day no properly qualified journalist need attach himself to either party for financial reasons. If he is competent to make a good newspaper he is quite free to ex- press his own opinions regardless of whom he may help or hurt, and the position is so delightful that a great many editors rush into it apparently for the mere pleasure of expressing their own opinions. During the last general election the scarcity of strong party organs, even in the larg- 270 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. est cities where they were supposed most to be needed, was a matter of general comment among practical politicians, and it is known that some newspapers changed hands solely for the purpose of being turned into party organs and that it was frequently so difficult to obtain control of existing journals that new ones had to be started for the sole purpose of supplying their respective parties with mouthpieces. This may be considered a compliment to the personal interest of the average journalist or to his personal ability. But, which- ever it is, it is highly creditable to the profession, and it is a result which could not have been hoped for twenty-five years ago. Now-a-days every journalist of actual ability, no matter which party he belongs to, wishes that he may become owner of an independent news- paper. It is impossible for him not to see that the independent newspaper is not only the most quoted and the most talked about, but the most profitable. The paper which is read by both parties is sure of more subscribers, purchasers and advertisers than that which draws all its inspiration from the platform formed by a single convention. The independent editor hears him- self quoted in Congress by men of both parties ; and these same men are quite likely to grumble and swear within a week to find themselves casti- gated by the same men whose words of wisdom they recently availed themselves of. THE PRESS. 271 The possibilities of the press for good, now that independence in journalism is practicable and also a business temptation, cannot be over- estimated. Public opinion can be created more rapidly by daily appeals and arguments which the newspaper reader can quietly look over by himself, pausing whenever he may like to think over what he has read, than anything that can appear in campaign speeches or magazine essays or books by the most noted writers and special- ists. The editor, as a rule, has dropped the old stilted form of the essay, and puts his arguments in the ordinary colloquial form, with homely illustrations and forcible applications so far as words go. If it didn't seem like complimenting him too highly and making him vain, it would not be unfair to say that his method is that in which the more valuable portion of the four gos- pels was written. He has learned that political power is no longer in the hands of the learned classes, but that all portions of the community feel and read and think ; and that, as every man has a vote, the larger the audience he talks to, the simpler and clearer must be his arguments. Consequently the press is giving us a class of debaters such as the world never knew before, and such as no parliamentary body in the world possesses even now or can hope to possess for some time to come. With increased freedom from party reins and 272 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ties, the editor is continually . increasing and en- larging the interests to which he addresses him- self. There is scarcely a newspaper in the United States at the present day which restricts itself entirely to political subjects. Anything in the nature of human interests, social economies, moral reforms, and even the tastes and amuse- ments of the "people is a fair subject for the editor. He is not only a teacher; he is a preacher, and he preaches six days in the week instead of one. In fact, he frequently extends his ministrations into the seventh day also, to the great annoyance of preachers who occupy more dignified positions, but with not so large a congregation. The press hereafter must be the principal moral, political and social influence of the coun- try. There is no way to put it backward. It is being more and more trusted more and more read more and more depended upon to be equal to every emergency ; and, to do it justice, it sel- dom disappoints expectations a statement that cannot be made with any shadow of truth of any class of statesmen, except the very best. Years ago Lamartine was laughed at as a dreamer when he said, " Newspapers will ultimately en- gross all literature ; there will be nothing else published but newspapers," but Lamartine's prophecy is being rapidly fulfilled. The news- paper is invading every department of literature, THE PRESS. 273 and giving the reader the best at the lowest price. There is a great hubbub once in a while in courts and among lawyers about what they are pleased to style trial by newspaper, and it is atonishing that before a court can reach any important case, the conduct of the case, its merits and its probable conclusion have been so well foreshadowed by the press that interest in the trial itself is comparatively slight. So gen- eral is the resort to newspapers for information and opinion, that a short time ago when one of the famous boodle aldermen of New York was called up for trial, it was impossible, under the jury laws of the State, to find even one single competent juror in a city the population of which was one million and a half. Everybody had formed opinions, and the opinions generally agreed. They had seen the testimony seen it discussed from all sides and all points discussed so clearly, that they had no reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused. And all this they saw in the newspapers. It begins to look as if the time might come when lawyers, courts, jurors, judges, would all be supplanted by the editor, and as if soon after- ward teachers and preachers also might feel occa- sion to shake in their shoes. There is no danger in such an event of the editor becoming conceited. He always has a regulating principle close at 18 274 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. hand. It is right in the counting-room at the book-keeper's desk. The public can change its opinion of .a newspaper as quickly as it can of a political candidate ; and when it does, the editor knows of it at once by a class of figures that never are allowed to lie. Because all this is true and everybody admits that it is a great many men of more ambition than brains are attempting to be full-fledged editors at a single bound. " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Angels, who have un- equalled opportunities of knowing the true in- wardness of things, would think twice, or oftener, before attempting to be editors, without first going through a laborious apprenticeship. It seems the easiest thing in the world for a man who has a lot of money of his own, or, better still, some money which belongs to other people, to start a newspaper and air his own opinions which con- sist principally of partialities and prejudices but the end is sure to be disastrous. Many daily papers have started in our large cities and reached a large temporary circulation, which afterward disappeared in the mists of oblivion and left nothing but debts behind. A successful newspaper is the result of natural growth and accretion. Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, says : " The result of any newspaper enterprise depends upon the char- THE PRESS. 275 acter of the man who engages in it his capacity to discern correctly and to adapt his paper to the wants and needs of the audience it is meant to serve." Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, and now Minister to France, says : " Every great newspaper represents an intel- lectual, a moral and a material growth the ac- cretion of successive efforts from year to year until it has become an institution and a power. It is the voice of the power that the twenty or thirty years of honest dealing with the public and just discussion of current questions have given." Horace Greeley, the founder of Mr. Reid's paper, said truthfully that " The office of a newspaper is first to give the history of its time, and afterward to deduce such theories or truths from it as shall be of universal application." Can any mere peddler of news and scandals, or any man whose sole gratification is a desire to see his own impressions in print, live up to this standard ? Conscience, application and money, as well as intellect, is necessary to the successful manage- ment of a newspaper. George W. Childs, editor of the Philadelphia Ledger, snatched the sympa* thies of all decent members of the editorial fra- ternity when he said : " Few persons who peruse the morning papers think of the amount of capi- 276 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tal invested, the labor involved, and the care and anxiety incident to the preparation of the sheet which is served so regularly." Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun, says : u The legal responsibility of newspapers is a reality, but their moral responsibility is greater and more important." B. L. Godkin, editor of the New York Evening Post, says : " News is an impal- pable thing an airy abstraction ; to make it a merchantable commodity, somebody has to col- lect it, condense it, and clothe it in language, and its quality depends upon the character of the men employed in doing this." George William Curtis, editor of Harper's Weekly, admitting the tremendous influence of the press, voices the sentiment of successful editors everywhere when he says : " If the news- paper is the school of the people, and if upon popular education and intelligence the success and prosperity of popular government depends, there is no function in society which requires more conscience as well as ability." Bvidently newspaper men who amount to any- thing realize their responsibilities. The press is not " all right," but it seems as far from wrong as conscience arid common sense can make any earthly institution. CHAPTER XIX. THE SCHOOL-ROOM THE late lamented Sam Weller once spoke of a schoolboy, who, having learned the alphabet, wondered whether it was worth going through so much to learn so little. The same reflection has come to millions of Americans as they thought of how much time they had spent in schooling and how little they knew when they got out. There are parts of our vast country where the people are lucky enough to have teachers who know so little about the theories of teaching that they impart to their pupils more information than the law demands. But in the cities and large towns where teaching has been elevated, or more properly speaking, reduced to a science, where the most money is spent on the schools and where the school terms are longest, the prev- alence of " how not to do it " is simply ap- palling. The country boy who goes to school only four or five months in the year knows quite as much as his city cousin who annually has nine or ten months of schooling. What does the city pupil (277) 278 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. get for the double outlay of time, bad air, back- ache and discipline ? As he cannot make any subsequent use of his accumulation of bad air and back-ache, his entire gain over the country boy would seem to be in discipline. What does this discipline do for him in the adult life for which school life is a prepa- ration ? Does it make him a better business man ? No. If it does, why is it that the majority of business men in our large cities are from the rural dis- tricts ? A few months ago I happened to be a guest at a dinner party at which more than a dozen men prominent in New York business and professional life came together. A question being asked about a social custom of thirty years before, it gradually transpired that not one of the party had been born or brought up in the city of New York, a city of which all now were perma- nent citizens. I have told this story to prominent citizens of Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati, and in return received long lists of .the great men of those cities who came from the country. With some fear and trembling I tried the same story in Bos- ton at a large public dinner, but the man to whom I told it he was a man who seemed to know everybody's antecedents replied that not more than one in ten of Boston's Brahmans or live business men were born at the Hub. THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 270 Congress is fairly a representative body, but if you will look at the book which gives biographi- cal sketches of all the members, you will be as- tonished to find how few cities and large towns are represented by men born in them. Nearly all the members were born and brought up in the country. Occasionally you will find that some representative or senator was born in Phila- delphia or New York, but if you look at the head of the page you will discover that he is represent- ing a rural district of some State other than his own. You will find it the same way in the learned professions. In law, medicine and theology, art, literature and science, the men who are most prominent at all the great centres of education and intelligence date back to some farmhouse and country school. Most of these men went to college in the course of time, but whenever you find one of them and talk with him so long that he feels inclined to unbosom himself to you, you discover that the amount of schooling he had at his birthplace was very small. As most of these men have passed the period of their boy- hood by at least a quarter of a century, it is not surprising to hear them tell of school years con- sisting of only three or four months, and of school- room exercises where the number of text-books were so few that many of the lessons were de- 280 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. livered orally by the teacher, and boys and girls took turns with one another's books. If discipline, school discipline, counts for any- thing, these professions should be full of city- bred men. But they are not, except at the bot- tom way down at the bottom. City schools graduate an immense number of young men who enter seminaries and especially departments of colleges, to gain a special education, but somehow these are not the men who are prominent in the new blood of their respective professions. If discipline, so called, does not make the city- schooled youth superior to his country cousin, what is it good for? Well, it is good to keep the school-room in order. The larger the school the more necessary it is for a teacher to maintain order. In a building containing two or three thousand children, as many school-buildings in the larger cities do, rigid discipline is absolutely necessary to this end. But, to come back to original facts, why does it take seven or eight years to impart a common, a very common, school course which any bright boy or girl of fifteen years could master alone and unaided in a quarter of the time ? School systems, where there are any, seem designed for the special purpose of making the school a machine which should do credit to the individuals who run it. This would be excus- able with an actual machine made of wood and THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 281 metal, but children are not tough enough to be put to such use. Besides, there is better use for them. It is not odd that teachers should look out for themselves and for their own records in the management of schools. If they don't look out for Number One they will be an exception to all the rest of humanity. Nevertheless, com- pared with the children, the teachers' number one as about one to fifty, and their importance should be judged from this standpoint of com- parison. School systems of study seem based on the capacity of the stupidest pupils. All the others must crawl because the stupid ones cannot walk. This isn't right. If armies were trained in that way we never would have any soldiers. Let schools, like regiments, have their awkward squads to be specially trained, so that they may catch up with those who are proficient. What are the branches in which the common schools give elementary instructions ? Spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar. The farther from the large city, the surer the student is of getting any instruction beyond those branches during the first six or seven years of a common-school course. He may be qualified by home reading to go into the nat- ural sciences or into mathematics at an early age, but that isn't part of the system. It seldom 282 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. pleases the teacher of a graded school to be told of such acquirements of a new pupil. The school exists not to improve the intelligence of the pupil from the standpoint at which the teacher finds it, but to give him such instruction as the teacher is already detailed and instructed by law to give. A boy may forget all he knows of natural science, or algebra, or geometry, in the many years in which he is drilled in elementary studies leading up to the branches which he already understands. In the country districts boys are often fit to pass rigid examinations for matriculation at col- lege at the age of fifteen years. But the boy who does not begin to go to school until he is eight years of age finds himself at fifteen, in a city, merely fit to enter a high-school, and not a very high school either. Some of the most noted men in our country's history graduated from college at sixteen or seventeen years. The cur- riculum of a college in those days was not as high as now. Nevertheless, the graduates cer- tainly gave a very good account of themselves from their earliest entrance into public life. One of them was Alexander Hamilton, who graduated at seventeen, and who elaborated a system of financial management which a whole century of successive Secretaries of the Treasury have not considered themselves competent to improve upon. A very long list of men of similar prom- THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 283 inence might be given, but such, illustrations are not necessary. Any intelligent man who has been to school knows that a great deal of his class-room time has been entirely at his own dis- posal, for the lessons were easily memorized ; and therefore his hands were idle and Satan found something for them to do. The worst boys in school can often be found among the scholars who stand highest in the classes, and for the very natural reason that there is nothing to occupy their minds during a large portion of the school time. Seriously, what is there about the elementary branches, as taught in our common schools almost anywhere, that should consume such an immense amount of time? In the Southern States a number of the despised blacks, children of slaves who themselves could date back their ancestors from generations of slaves, became quite proficient in elementary branches during a year or two, lounging about military camps in the capacity of servants. Special schools were founded, as soon as the war ended, by missionary societies, which prepared courses of study which they considered within the comprehension of the Anglo-African mind. Of course there were a great many stupid blacks ; but, while some of these stupid children were making faces at text- books and drawing inartistic pictures on slates, their old fathers and mothers were learning from 284 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the same children's text-books more rapidly than the best children in the public schools of the North are allowed to learn. Sir John Lubbock complains that "A thousand hours in the most precious seed-time of life of millions of children spent in learning that i must follow e in conceive, and precede it in believe ; that two e's must, no one knows why, come to- gether in proceed and exceed, and be separate/! in precede and accede ; that uncle must be spelled with a c, but ankle with a k, while lessons in health and thrift, sewing and cooking, which should make the life of the poor tolerable, and elementary singing and drawing which should make it pleasant, and push out lower and degrad- ing amusements, are in many cases almost vainly trying to gain admission." Take the course all through, and what is there about it that should require any great con- sumption of time ? Reading certainly is not hard to acquire. Children out of school learn it in spite of any efforts to -hold them back. Spell- ing is learned more effectually through reading than from any text-book. Writing requires only a model of which copies may be made, for there is no business man in New York or in any other large city who writes a copy-book hand. If he did, he would be considered incompetent for what- ever position he may occupy. The first thing that a boy must learn on leaving school is to un- THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 285 learn his writing-lessons. Arithmetic undoubt- edly requires considerable practice to make the pupil perfect and quick in computations, but as it consists entirely of applications of the first four rules, why is it that so much time is spent over the text-books and very abstract propositions and problems ? Text-books of arithmetic seem to be skilfully designed for the purpose of keep- ing the child from practical knowledge on the subject as long as possible. Examples that are called practical are given in many of these books, but only after a large amount of figuring, the purpose of which the pupil is not allowed to clearly understand. A man whose education in figures has been obtained on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk will cypher more accurately and quickly any problem of ordinary nature that may be given him than his own son or daughter who has been several years in school, because he understands the relations and purposes of the factors, which never seem to be impressed upon the child. General F. A. Walker, once superintendent of the census and now president of the Boston Institute of Technology, says : " The old-fash- ioned readiness and correctness of cyphering have been to a large degree sacrificed by the methods which it is now proposed to reform. A false arithmetic has grown up and has largely crowded 286 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. out of place that true arithmetic, which is nothing but the art of numbers." Geography is so largely a matter of memory of the eye that no man who was denied the privilege of studying this science while he was at school ever thinks it necessary to spend a great amount of time over it afterward, even if his business requires him to have a practical knowl- edge of the subject. It is simply a question of sight and of memory, just as is the case with knowledge of localities which he may visit either to a great or small extent, yet geography in the public schools is divided into two, three, and sometimes five different books, by the use of which the pupil goes again and again over the same lessons, obtaining in the end no more in- formation than that he would get by a few days' deliberate study of an atlas or a set of maps. Prof. Geikie, a recognized authority on this subject, says : " Every question of geography should be one which requires for its answer that the children have actually seen something with their own eyes and taken note of it." This is reasonable ; it would also be practicable if globes and large maps were in the class-rooms, but gen- erally they are conspicuous only by their absence. It is quite true that grammar must occupy considerable of the pupils' time. For all the persons who have studied it, there seem very few of any age at the present time who are able THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 287 to apply the principles of this science in such a mauner that they habitually write and speak correctly. But this isn't so much the fault of the pupil and of the teacher as of the text- books from which the science shall be studied. Good example, from which adults learn grammar more correctly and rapidly than in any other way, seems to be considered too good for children, so they are given text-books with definitions utterly beyond their comprehension definitions so subdivided that there is nothing which the intelligent teacher so dreads as a few intelligent questions on the subject from a pupil on the grammar-lesson of the day. I have seen an in- telligent man, himself a college graduate, and a public speaker of high reputation and elegant style, labor with one of his children over a lesson in grammar, and finally give up in despair and toss the book across the room. If a man of such character is unable to understand a grammatical text-book, what can be expected of the child ? The greater the scholar or teacher, the greater is his contempt for text-books of grammar. Old Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth of England, delights in saying that his distin- guished pupil " never yet tooke Greek or Latin Grammer in her hande after the first declininge of a Noun and a Verb." A more celebrated teacher, John Locke, complained that " Our children are forced to stick unreasonably in OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. grammatical flats and shallows." Dr. Park- hurst said recently : " The way for a boy to talk correctly is to talk subject to correction not to apply himself to linguistic anatomy, surgery and dissection. I studied grammar in the ordi- nary way about three weeks just long enough to find out what a genius some people can show for putting asunder what God hath joined to- gether. It is a splendid device for using up a boy's time and souring his disposition." Well, all this routine is being imposed upon the children, and the little wretches are losing spirit and impulse through the delay to which the cleverer ones are subjected and the lack of clearness which causes the stupider ones to despair. Nothing whatever is done toward train- ing the senses and physical intelligence of the child. They do this sort of thing abroad, but for some reason Americans are not allowed to follow the foreigners' example. Apparently our children have a divine call to whatever handi- work may fall to their lot thereafter in the world, for certainly they get as little training in it as the twelve apostles had in theology before they were called to preach and teach. The French or German, the Swedish child, and even many a Russian child, is taught to use his hands and his eyes and all his senses that can be applied to practical affairs, but the American child gets no opportunity of that sort, except in THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 289 the few schools which conform more or less to the kindergarten system. We have a few tech- nical schools in large cities, but they are re- garded as means to finish a course of education instead of part of the ordinary elementary in- struction. When technical education, which means simply the use of the hands and eyes, is spoken of to members of Boards of Education and Superinten- dents of common school systems in large cities, the result is generally an impatient gesture or word. There is no room for that sort of thing, we are told; beside, it is a mere notion of theor- ists. The general run of children are not equal to it and would be more troubled than benefited by it. Well, experience is more valuable than argu- ment in answering assertions. A few years ago a man who had scarcely ever done any work in the school-room brought some theories on the subject of technical education over here from Germany, although he was an American. He went to Philadelphia and started a little class for the instruction of teachers. The majority of common school teachers sneered at his theories, so he proposed to silence all further opposition by a practical test. He started a model school for the purpose of demonstrating that what he as- serted was practicable. He did not select the brighter pupils in the public schools, but went 19 290 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. deliberately into the streets and picked up at ran- dom a lot of little gutter-snipes who had never been to school at all, or who, if they had, were persistent truants ever since. In a short time people saw for it was necessary to have them see in order to make them believe at all these ignorant children of the street doing better tech- nical work in several directions than could be found anywhere else in the city except in estab- lishments paying high prices for artistic labor. They carved wood, they modelled in clay, they made designs on paper, they stamped leather and brass and even showed some capacity for engraving and coloring in the direction of the higher arts. The effect of this display should have been to have given the system prominence and practical demonstration in the public schools, but it amounted to little except the gathering of a few wide-awake teachers who wished to learn to teach as the theorist had been teaching. A few of those who took the course went into public school work elsewhere and have succeeded admirably ever since. In the city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, any child who wishes can now re- ceive a technical education under the direction of the common school authorities. The work be- gan in a single school with a single teacher. It has since been extended to all the public schools cf the city, and two teachers work hard from THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 291 morning until night. A strange development of this course of teaching deserves notice. Eliza- beth is a city containing a great many large manufacturing establishments, and the modest young woman who had charge of the technical education in the public schools was amazed one day to receive a written request from a number of master mechanics in different establishments for a night school for their own benefit, for which they were willing to pay freely ; and some of them told the teacher that their attention to the sub- ject was first attracted by their own children do- ing clearer and more rapid work in the line of design than they, these master mechanics, who had been in the business all their lives, had ever yet succeeded in doing. So for months there was visible the astonishing spectacle of a lot of middle-aged men being taught their own business by a young woman who herself knew nothing whatever of their business. The helplessness of the average American teacher when the subject of technical education is mentioned was shown amusingly a few years ago when one of the several superintendents who have general charge of the New York city schools devised a system of teaching from what he called object lessons. He prepared a manual and a set of charts and the Board of Education in compli- ment to him purchased a great many and placed them in the class-rooms. But it was almost im- 292 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. possible to have them used unless the superin- tendent himself took the work in hand. The teachers didn't understand it. They said they couldn't get the hang of it. The truth was they had never had any education of the same kind themselves and the matter was as foreign to their intelligence as Hebrew or Sanscrit would have been. But, mark the difference ; when news of this system penetrated the wilds of the rowdy West, demands and orders for the material to work with came Bast rapidly, and I was told that a single State in the new West made more use of this system than all the Eastern and Middle States combined. The West knows what it wants ; the teachers are closer to the children than in the Bast. This may be one of the bless- ings, or perhaps penalties, of life in a new country, but, whatever it may be, the results seem to justify a wish that all of us could be transplanted to a new country, for at least a little while, from the older centres of our American civilization. General Walker, president of the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology, says : " The intro- duction of shopwork into the public system of education cannot fail to have a most beneficial influence in promoting a respect for labor and in overcoming the false and pernicious passion of our young people for crowding themselves into overdone and underpaid. departments where they THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 293 may escape manual exertion." Col. Auchmuty, the philanthropic founder of New York's great ' Trades School," says : " What scientific schools are to the engineer and architect what the law school and the medical school are to the lawyer and the physician, or what the business college is to the clerk trade schools must be to the future mechanics." President Butler, late of Columbia College's faculty, now president of the Industrial Association's great model school, says : " Manual training does not claim admittance as a favor ; it demands it as a right. The future course of study will not be a Procrustean struc- ture absolutely and unqualifiedly alike for all localities and for all schools ; but it will have in it a principle, and that principle will be founded on a scientific basis the highest duty -of the educator will be its application to his own par- ticular needs and demands." Is the experience of practical educators like these to be cast aside in favor of the antiquated theories of teaching now in vogue ? Any one who wonders why country boys be- come prominent city men, and why there are about as many Western men in New York city in business as there are men from the East, can find out by looking closely to the difference be- tween city and country systems of education. If a country village is too small to have a high school, it is nevertheless generally the case that 294 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the higher branches are taught to a large extent in the commonest of schools. College graduates find the profession of teaching a very handy means of paying their expenses while looking about the country and seeing where to begin the practice of law or medicine, or perhaps drop into the pulpit. Boys and girls of twelve or fourteen years may be found studying physiology, algebra and geometry, natural sciences and chemistry in schools all over the new West at a time when children of the same age in the large Eastern cities are slowly wrestling with the lessons and elementary text-books of geography and gram- mar and arithmetic. When competitive exami- nations for West Point cadetships are held in the West the general trouble is that the candidates are too young to enter the military academy even could they pass the necessary examination and succeed in winning the competitive prize. I saw such an examination myself in one Western town, which was narrowed down to two boys. These youngsters, the ablest of all the appli- cants, were aged respectively thirteen and four- teen years. They passed rigid examinations in mathematics, with scarcely a mark against them. That is more than could be done by any boys of similar age in the public schools of New York and Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the three largest cities in the Union. The rapidity with which children pass through THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 295 text-books in the newer States and more sparsely settled districts is the cause of the great number of so-called colleges which are found all over our country. There are more colleges by title in the United States than in all the rest of the world beside. Their standards are never those of the universities of Burope seldom of Yale or Har- vard. But they are higher than those of the ordinary high schools, and the young man or young woman who passes through them has a very fair general education, and is fitted to go on by private reading to almost any extent. In the larger cities of the Bast such opportunities are few. There is, perhaps, a single large institu- tion in each city, like the High School of Phila- delphia or the Normal College of New York, at which girls are educated, or the College of the City of New York, to which the better boys are sent for a full college course if they desire it. But these same facilities are demanded and ob- tained in the newer cities at a rate that would astonish the Bastern person who chose to look into the subject. The most pressing need of our common school system is more teachers. With more teachers greater personal attention could be paid to each pupil, and smaller time would be required for the ordinary school course. In the cities it is the rule that boys and girls must leave school at a very early age in order to help earn a living 296 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. for their respective families. The majority of them are children of parents who are very poor, who have to work terribly hard and save in every possible way in order to keep their families from starvation. Consequently the children go to work as soon as they are large enough to be accepted by any employer at any sort of occupa- tion. Their subsequent opportunities for learn- ing anything are necessarily limited. They must learn by general reading if at all, except for such few opportunities as are granted them by night schools, a beneficent class of educa- tional institutions, which those who most need them are least able to attend, for how much studying can a boy or girl do after nine or ten hours of work" in a counting-room or shop or factory ? With more teachers our city children could obtain a fair high school education at the age of fourteen, and be better able to make their way in the world at whatever their work might be. The best finishing school that the people of the United States have ever been able to avail them- selves of is the course of home reading which one society or other has within a few years devised, and which some of them are conducting with great care and success. Systems of reading and consecutive study are devised, books are supplied, individuals are selected to receive and inspect ex- amination papers to show the capacity of the students and to give suggestions according as THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 297 the students may seem to require, and in this way one single society has now eighty thousand students, with more than a hundred instructors and inspectors. This system might be definitely extended at very small expense by the various States as part of the local system of education. Until the blunders of the common school system are modified or done away with, it is as little as the State can do to give an intelligent child this much of consolation and assistance for the time that it has been compelled to lose by incompetent tuition in the public schools. CHAPTER XX. THE POLITICIAN. THE one nuisance of which the people of the United States need most to rid themselves is the professional politician. This is an old story, but by no possibility can it be repeated too often. There is scarcely a man of affairs who will not say on reading these lines that there is a great deal to say upon the other side, and when he is closely questioned his explanation amounts to about this : that a good many politicians are first-rate fellows. This is exactly so, and herein is the root of the trouble. It may safely be said in general terms that there is no use of any one going into politics as a profession who does not fulfil the definition of a first-rate fellow. His good-fellowship is his original capital, and slowly it becomes his prin- cipal stock in trade. Scarcely a politician who has made a great mark in the world has failed to be a good fellow. It is unnecessary to give names, and also inad (298J THE POLITICIAN. 299 visable, because it would be almost impossible not to hit some friend of the reader, or some his- torical character whom the reader has learned to admire. Nevertheless, facts are very stubborn things, and one of them is, that a good fellow may do more harm in politics than Satan him- self is usually capable of doing in morals. Politicians and statesmen very often are con- founded with one another. The only possible point of resemblance between them is that both have a great deal to do with public affairs. On this basis, if the two men are alike, we might as well say that the iackal and lion are one and the same. Distinguished from the statesman, the poli- tician is a man who goes into public affairs as a matter of business, for the sake of making his living. There is no place in any honest com- munity which such a man should be allowed to fill. The purpose of the statesman is to serve his country. Unless he has this purpose it is im- possible, no matter how great his ability, for him to be a statesman at all. The purpose of the politician is to benefit himself. This does not mean that the politician is necessarily a man without conscience or char- acter. Very often he has a great deal of both, but the damning point of his character from start to finish is that self comes first. 300 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. The starting-point of the politician who suc- ceeds is one which he has made in view of a desired end, and that end is his own personal advancement and profit. Consequently he looks upon every question of the day not according to the requirements of the people and the common- wealth, but to those of himself. A measure, no matter how beneficial, that may be proposed is not considered by him for an instant in its effect upon the general weal, but upon himself, his projects and purposes. He wishes the people no harm ; he is one of them himself. He simply wishes to get a living out of them, and as good a living as he can. It is not unfair to say that the burglar regards life in exactly the same manner. The burglar is not always a bad fellow. Some- times he has a family, whom he treats very well. He gives them a good home, dresses his wife properly, never beats her, sends his children to school and to Sunday-school, and would a great deal rather find a lump of gold lying around loose among the rocks somewhere than to go off and steal a lot of plate and melt it up into a lump afterward. But business is business ; he has selected that particular method of life, and he must shape his actions accordingly. The politician is in entirely the same position toward the public. He does not wish the public any harm, and probably on Fourth of July and Washington's birthday his heart indulges in THE POLITICIAN. 301 some very honest thrills of patriotic emotion. But if it chances to be necessary to his purposes that a little job should be set up on either of those national anniversaries, he never postpones the operation until the next day. Quite frequently the politician is a man of suf- ficient intellect, knowledge, foresight and experi- ence to creditably fill any office to which he may aspire or to which he has been elected. But no matter in what place he .may find himself, his conduct is based upon his own interests and not those for which the servants of the public in all countries and under all forms of government consider themselves elected or appointed. His methods are as unlike those of the states- man or the public-spirited citizen as the wildest imagination can conceive. Some extraordinary stories have got into print regarding the methods pursued by certain politicians to attain desirable ends, and some of these stories may be untrue, but the wildest of them do not exceed some facts that could be given to the public of almost any congressional district of the United States. Prin- ciple is not allowed to stand in the politician's way. Politics is business to him and everything is fair in business. If he wants an office for him- self or for any one for whom he is working, the platform of his party or the resolutions of a com- mittee or convention do not trouble him in any respect. He is not working for principles : he is 302 working for power; and he can jump a resolution, or a syllogism of politics, as easily as a spirited hunter can jump a low fence. He can explain his action afterward, too, and do it so successfully as to puzzle the most determined of his enemies unless they too chance to be politicians. The method of the politician is as cold and methodical and business-like as that of a man in any ordinary commercial occupation. The late Jim Fisk started in business in Wall street on a nominal capital of one gold watch, which was strongly suspected of being plated, but he made his way to the top of railroad affairs in a com- paratively short time. The politician frequently starts with capital even more contemptible, but, like the unlamented financier, he turns everything to account in a manner that no statesman or re- spectable citizen would dare adopt. An example from the political history of the city of New York may perhaps be to the point by way of illustration. A dry-goods salesman out of employment during a political canvass thought he saw an opportunity to make some money by going into politics. His sole capital was personal acquaintance with a number of men whose families took in sewing for a large manu- facturer of clothing. The salesman was a good- looking, well-dressed fellow and he went to the manufacturer and said : " See here, nearly all of your people live in ward. I live there my- THE POLITICIAN. 303 self and I have a great many acquaintances. Smith is up for Assembly in that ward. Now if you will just hint to your people that Smith will make a very good member of Assembly and will always keep an eye on the interests of the work- ingman, I will buy all my clothing here and I will persuade my friends to come here also." The head of the establishment thought over the propo- sition for a day or two, saw no possibility of losing anything by it and did see a possibility of mak- ing something, so he acted upon the suggestion which he had received. The politician then went among the sewing people employed by other concerns and told them that the first house he had approached had satisfied its men that Smith, who was running for the Assembly, would be a capital friend of the workingman if he could get into office. Then he went to the candidate and deliberately contracted to procure him a majority for a given sum of money to be paid after election in case the candidate were to succeed. Word went around in a little while among the working people of the ward that Smith would be their champion if he reached the Assembly. The up- shot of it was that Smith was elected by a hand- some majority and the man who had contracted to furnish the majority had about three thousand dollars in his pocket. How Smith got even in the operation, as his salary for the entire term for which he was elected was only and exactly 304 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. three thousand dollars, the sum which he paid his trusty worker, may seem to have nothing to do with the subject ; nevertheless it is a question well worth working over in the mind of the reader. With the money thus secured the politician was able to live handsomely for some little time, and the prestige which he gained as a rising young statesman for people are possessed to give the appellation of statesman to any suc- cessful worker in politics went around in city circles which men ambitious for office most fre- quent, and long before another election day fell due the politician was in demand and able to make his own terms. He became the agent of two or three different candidates in two or three different wards or districts, and by fulfilling all promises which he already had made he was able to achieve far greater financial and political suc- cesses than during his first effort. Here it is important to state that the successful politician is not, as the general public suppose him, a most unscrupulous liar, but, on the con- trary, a man of his word. His capital, after he has embarked in business, consists largely of promises, of the fact that he dare not break a promise to any one of any consequence. From this comes the odd fact that the most dangerous politicians are frequently declared by their ad- herents and employes to be " square men," and no THE POLITICIAN. 305 one who knows them can say anything to the contrary. The late lamented Mike Cregan, who, although a mere politician, became a man of national note at a certain period, went down in the estimation of his fellow-workers, and pos- sibly to his grave also, through having broken his word by contracting with men on both tick- ets and taking money from both. It is only fair to the entire brood of practical politicians to say that Mike lost caste terribly by this operation, and that even had he lived he never again would have been able to obtain any important com- mission in the way of securing majorities for cer- tain men or in compassing the defeat of others. The politician must be practically a bravo as much a bravo as the ruffians of mediaeval Italy who used to assassinate men for a financial consideration. The character of the candidate on either ticket, the political principles involved, the necessities of the town or ward or district or State, are of no possible consequence to him from the first. His business is to secure a certain end for a certain sum of money. For this, any other interest is secondary ; in fact it is so insig- nificant as not to demand his attention at all. He is often very sorry for the man against whom he contends and often though always after elec- tion expresses contemptuous opinions of the man whom he has assisted. But business is busi- ness so is practical politics. 20 306 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Contrary to the usual supposition, the poli- tician as a rule does not want votes for himself. He can make too much money in other ways. But when he does go into office it is for the pur- pose of carrying into legislation or administration the abominable principles or lack of principles which make him a menace to civilization and to public progress. If he goes to Congress it is for the sole purpose of assisting to carry a measure which is so bad that the general sense of the ma- jority cannot be trusted to carry it through ; or, he goes to defeat a measure which is admirable in most respects and entirely in accordance with the desires of the people, and which must be fought by means not entirely parliamentary for fear that it may succeed. The people are under the soothing impression that the politician, like malaria, is never in their own locality, but always in the next town or county or district or State. This is a great mis- take. The politician is everywhere. Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be gathered to- gether, and the average voter is so utterly care- less of the mechanism by which ideas must be put into shape in constitutions or statutes or ordinances, that he thinks that his vote is all that is required of him. He is in the position of the householder with a great deal of money or portable property in the house who never thinks to lock his doors. The politician has a THE POLITICIAN. 307 distinct purpose before him of which the voter has little or no knowledge. He consequently works systematically and to his own advantage, while the voter does nothing whatever except de- posit a ballot, although he knows that many an influence, judiciously used, can change the slate of any party in almost any political subdivision of the country. It would not be fair to say that all elections are carried by politicians, but it is entirely truth- ful to say that those which are not owe the fortu- nate circumstance to the fact that there was no money in sight for any practical politician. In every Presidential election in the United States a great number of successful votes for electors are in accordance with the will of the majority of the people ; but there is no man who has been in politics at all in either party and been admitted to the secret councils of his organization without knowing that where there was a doubt as to a majority, there always could be found some per- son who would overcome the obstacle for a con- sideration. In all Presidential elections some large moneyed interests are at stake. They may be entirely legitimate and depend for their settlement upon matters of opinion upon which there is honest room for difference, but they sel- dom or never are left to honest differences of opinion. Those most in interest and those most in doubt on these questions call for the assistance 308 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of the professional politician, and they always find it. After every general election a host of bills affecting private interests, however cun- ningly they may seern worded as matters of general interest only, are brought before Con- gress. They are brought there by men whom the professional politicians have placed in office. They are followed after in the same manner. They are forwarded step by step by professional politicians, not by the persons most in interest. The lobby at Washington seldom sees the prin- cipals in any of these cases ; still less do the members of Congress see them. But some one shrewd fellow, who has no corporate or personal interest in the enterprises themselves, is working for them steadily as an attorney works for his client, regardless of the merits of the case re- gardless of the rights and interests of the peo- ple regardless of aitything whatever except the money which he has received or expects to re- ceive for his services. The will of the people has been set at naught in this way hundreds and hundreds of times within the recollection of any living man. This is bad enough while the only purpose is to take money from the pockets of the taxpayers for the benefit of a few individuals. But suppose the case to be one of international importance, where the interests of nations rather than individuals are concerned, does any one imagine that patriotism would restrain the poli- THE POLITICIAN. 309 tician from working against the interests of his country? If any one does, he is greatly mis- taken. Why, cases of foreign governments against the United States cases which have no possible semblance of right to defend them have not only been accepted, but successfully forwarded for foreign nations by Americans who would have felt indignant had they been criti- cised as common politicians. They called them- selves attorneys, lawyers, counsellors, and they were by general consent and according to the business directories of their respective places of residence. Did they lose caste by it? Not at all. Some of them afterward were elected to high offices solely on account of the great ability which they displayed in opposition to their own government's interests. ^sop's old story of the man who was stung by the serpent whom he had nursed has aston- ished a great many people, but parallel cases may be found by the thousand in the United States at any time, and the serpents are always professional politicians. CHAPTER XXI. RAILROADS. THE railroad problem is one of the most com- plicated and vital questions of the day. Nothing, perhaps, is so typical of the ingenuity, skill and colossal power of our modern civilization as the railroad train a solitary man holding the lever which controls this tremendous mass of wood and metal, with its freight of goods and passen- gers rushing past us at the rate of a mile a minute. The growth of the railroad is one of the great- est marvels of this wonderful century. Bngland got her first road from the Romans in 415 A. D. To move the Roman armies it was necessary to have the " Roman Way," and the remains of those wonderful works still excite the adinira^ tion of all beholders. The dangers and delays of roads in the middle ages, and even in the stage-coaching days of our fathers, beset as they were with difficulties and terrorized by highway- men, all seem . to us to belong to some remote past. It is a new tribute to the genius of that irnpe- (310) RAILROADS. 311 rial people who swayed the world in the earlier ages of Christianity that even now, with all our facilities of modern travel, our people are begin- ning to realize the necessity of roadways ap- proximating those which they constructed. The farmer often has to haul the products of his fields many miles to reach the railway station, and the time and the effort needed to get his wheat or corn over tortuous and defective road- ways entails a very serious loss. In many parts of the country the roads in fact are so impassa- ble in certain mouths that the farmer is unable to transport his grain to the railway at a time, perhaps, when the markets are high, and is forced to hold it until the reason opens, and to dispose of it at a much lower price. There is a general awakening of public sentiment to the necessity for improvement in this direction, and for some years to come there will probably be quite as much effort expended in the bettering of country roads as in the further improvement and extension of our already colossal railroad system. Until the opening of the railway era, com- merce and travel followed the natural lines of transportation the water-ways. There were, it is true, a few exceptional instances like those of the ancient caravan routes which crossed the lines of the great rivers and built up inland cities, but the operation of natural laws in time 312 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. prevailed, and these cities fell into ruins, while others sprang up along the coasts and water- ways. Even after the introduction of railways, the cost of transportation thereby was so heavy that the water-ways still commanded the general direction of commerce, and it is only since the wonderful cheapening of railway rates due to the enormous growth of the traffic and the intro- duction of more heavily loaded cars and other economies that the iron way has dominated the water-way and subverted what had been one of the maxims of commercial development from the earliest times. At the present time, where the question of time is not important, the carriage of passengers and goods by water is so much cheaper than by rail as to survive in competition. Where the passenger's time is of value, or perishable goods are carried, or the merchant is in a hurry to re- ceive his consignment, the railway, following virtually the shortest distance between the two points piercing mountains, spanning ravines and crossing the rivers, is, of course, the neces- sary means of communication. Most of the great cities that have sprung up within the memory of people still living, like those of old, are reared on the sea-coasts or the shores of great lakes, or on the banks of navigable streams, the facilities of transportation by water conspiring to create these centres of activity and industry. Where RAILROADS. 313 a number of railroad lines concentrate, a great city may spring up like Indianapolis ; or where great manufacturing facilities exist, as in the juxtaposition of the coal, ore and flux as at Birmingham, Alabama. But these are compara- tively few in number, and have not such limits of expansion as cities which may be reached by water. Aside from their commercial disadvan- tages, the inland cities present difficult prob- lems, among the most important being that of successful sewage and sanitation. In this country, indeed, most of the earlier railroads were projected merely to connect navi- gable streams with one another, or with the coast, their founders evidently regarding rail transportation as an auxiliary of the natural ways, and not as a great rival which was in a very few years to dominate them. In other in- stances, railways in the early days were simply built along the banks of the rivers, because the people found that when the latter were frozen in the winter, they needed some other means of transportation. These scattered bits of road here and there were, in after years, as the possibilities of railroad development began to dawn upon the minds of far-seeing men, united by connecting links and reorganized into roads of much greater length. In fact some of the most difficult feat- ures of the railroad problem of the present day grew out of the failure of projectors of railroads 314 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. in the early days to grasp the meaning of the system which they were instituting. France, Germany, Belgium and other Buropean cities have had no serious railway problem. The English people, however, have passed through very nearly the same experience as ours, and we are now solving the same questions which puz- zled their heads nearly a generation ago. The immunity of the continental nations from many difficult railway questions arises from the fact that they began building railroads after England and our own country had undertaken them, and after we had sufficiently developed their possibilities to show the absurdity of many of the ideas that prevailed when they were inau- gurated. It was supposed that the first com- panies chartered would build a railway just as they would build a highway, and that the iron way would be open to competitive traffic by indi- viduals or combinations of individuals, just as the ordinary highway was open. In the charter of the first railway company which built a line, the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, and in fact in all the charters which were granted in England prior to 1829, an( ^ tne charters granted in this country in the same period, this idea is clearly expressed. The Ithaca and Owego Rail- way, now a portion of the great New York Cen- tral trunk line, was chartered in 1828, and one section of the charter contains this provision : RAILROADS. 315 "All persons paying the toll aforesaid may, with suitable and proper carriages, use and travel upon the said railroad, subject to such rules and regu- lations as the said corporators are authorized to make by the ninth section of this act." It is obvious that the notion entertained by the founders of this railway was that they would sim- ply own a turnpike with rails upon it, and would derive their revenue from the tolls charged upon the vehicles that should be rolled over it by indi- viduals. It was not until railway building had proceeded for about a dozen years that it became evident, from the nature of the power employed and the higher rate of speed unforeseen until then that might be attained, that the railway company must monopolize the service over the road they built. This rendered necessary an en- tire revolution of the principles upon which all future charters should be granted. But the fun- damental mistake was made. The continental peoples began to build their railways after this fact was discovered, and therefore had the benefit of their predecessors' mistakes, and adopted pre- cautions which have relieved them of many awk- ward complications. Besides this, another mistake of ignorance was the belief that railways would be used exclusively for the transportation of passengers, and it was long after the first rails had been laid that the 316 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. notion that " light goods " might be conveyed, dawned upon their minds. Any man who should have told these pioneers of the railway world that the United States would possess in the year 1889 a hundred and sixty thousand miles of railroad, enough to belt the world seven.times at the Equator, would have been regarded as a lunatic. The ownership of this vast property is represented by stocks and bonds aggregating $9,000,000,000. They receive yearly from the public for carrying passengers and freights the sum of $1,000,000,000 and, after paying the expenses of their operation, including the wages of more than 1,000,000 employes, they have left an available revenue of $415,000,000. More than one of the larger companies has a revenue greater than that of the United States government was thirty years ago. To earn this enormous sum the roads work night and day, seven days a week. Through the darkest and stormiest winter midnight, as well as through the pleasantest summer afternoon, the locomotive fires are kept alight and the wheels revolve un- ceasingly along the rails. The work they ac- complish is something startling in the aggregate. In the year 1887, the latest for which the com- plete figures are at hand, the railroads of the country carried 428,000,000 passengers, travelling 10,500,000 miles, a distance equal to 450 times around the globe. The freight carried in the RAILROADS. 317 same year amounted to 552,000,000 tons, and the distance traversed 62,000,000 miles. It is a commonplace to speak of what the rail- roads have done in the way of opening up the country and bringing the blessings of civilization into the wilderness. In the Western country, where the people formerly wore homespun or the coarsest fabrics of Eastern looms, the women now receive weekly fashion plates still damp from the press, and every cross-roads store has in stock the latest patterns, not only from the great cities of our own land, but from the centres of European fashion. The postal system follows along the iron way, the metropolitan newspaper reaches the most obscure hamlet daily, and a chapter might be written upon the growth of the railway postal service alone. The telegraph lines enter new territory with the railway, putting the dweller in the remotest regions within reach of instantaneous communication with al\ parts of the world. The effect of the railroad in thus multiplying and exchanging not only material products, but distributing the news of the day and bringing the inhabitants of the Pacific slope and those of the Atlantic seaboard into daily intellectual inter- course, and thus welding all into one homogeneous people, is a theme which has yet to be fully dealt with by the pen of the historian. From Maine to Texas, go where you will, you find the people 318 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. read the same news, discuss the same questions, and are subjected to the same vivifying influences, the ideas of the farmer on the borders broadening in even pace with those of the dwellers in the cities until such a thing as provincialism is un- known on this continent. Indeed, foreigners who visit our shores, who have a taste for the picturesque, complain of this monotony, and be- wail the fact that the American town or hamlet, whether situated on the borders of the great northern lakes or on the torrid shores of the Gulf, presents essentially the same exterior as- pect and identical social conditions. It would be too much to expect that this great railway system, with its unprecedented army of employes and the revenues of an empire, should be an unadulterated blessing ; that it should not carry some alloy in its composition. Like most humane institutions, even the most beneficent, it has wrought mischiefs as well as brought great benefits. Until now the needs of our rapidly developing country were such that communi- ties everywhere were clamoring for roads which would bring to them what they needed from the outside world and place within reach markets for their own products. Consequently, every possi- ble inducement was offered for the building of railway lines, and without surrounding their con- struction with such safeguards as had already been found necessary in old and thickly popu- RAILROADS. 319 lated countries. The result has been in many parts of the country an over-building of lines which has entailed subsequent losses and diffi- culties and the creation of abuses and complica- tions which together constitute what has come to be known as " the railway problem." It is clear that what might be broadly called the con- structive period in our railway system is ended, and that we have now fairly entered upon a period of restriction and regulation. The people have now to learn to subdue and control these great Frankensteins of their own creation. As Mr. Frederick Taylor, President of the Western National Bank of New York, who has all his life been a close student of the railway question, says : " Though the railroads have probably contributed more than all other agen- cies combined to make the United States what they are, no one will deny that the incalculable benefit which we have derived from their growth and development has not been, and is not, wholly ' unmixed of evil.' Leaving out other considera- tions, it is not unfair to say that three-quarters of all the legislative corruption from which we have suffered during the past fifty years have been directly chargeable to the railways ; and that a very large proportion, perhaps nearly as much as half, of the litigation that has occupied our courts during the same period has been di- rectly connected with railway matters." 320 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. The great panic of 1873 was directly due to the over-building of railroads. Following it came several years of terrible business depres- sion throughout the country, in which time and money was spent in trying to clear away the wreck. Hundreds of railroad companies were bankrupted and loss and suffering were entailed upon hundreds of thousands of persons who had invested their savings in these enterprises. In no end of instances the stocks of the companies were wiped out of existence entirely, the roads sold under foreclosure and reorganized. Again, in 1877, when the country was just begin- ning to recover from the shock, it was dis- turbed and depressed for a long time by the trouble between the railroad companies and their workmen, which in some cases culminated in riot and bloodshed. Another period of artifi- cially stimulated railroad building reached its culmination in the panic of 1884, an ^ two years later widespread strikes among railway opera- tives again disturbed the entire business of the country. During all this period the legislatures of the various States and the National' Congress were busy with legislation intended to modify or remedy the evils complained of. The question presents such difficulties that many students, including Mr. Taylor, can find a solution of the question only in the suggestion of national control of the railroads throughout RAILROADS. 321 the country. Mr. Taylor's idea, however, is that they should not be owned and operated by the nation, but that the government should have the same sort of control which it now exercises over the national banks ; in other words, that the national railway commission should supervise the railroads with the same authority w r hich the Treasury Department exercise sover the national banking system. The unrestricted building of railroads under the provisions of the general railroad acts passed in most of the States, following that adopted in New York in 1850, has given rise to destructive competition and brought about some of the knot- tiest points in the railroad problem. It was held for many years, and is-even now contended by a great many people, that the building of railroads, like any other business, should be left free to the unrestricted enterprise of individuals and associa- tions of individuals. "If a lot of fellows see fit to put their money into building a railroad where there is not enough traffic to sustain it, and the road goes into bankruptcy, that is their affair, not ours ; it is their money that is lost." That is about how the average citizen talks on this sub- ject. There could be no greater mistake. In the first place the railroads are public high- ways, and as such must be supervised by the community. When in ordinary conversation in this country we speak of a " road," from Chicago 21 322 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. to St. Paul for instance, it is always understood that a railroad is meant. In the older countries the mention of " roads " is understood to refer to a turnpike. The reason for the difference of usage is obvious. In old and settled countries the highways were in existence for centuries be- fore rails were laid, and the word " road " there- fore continues to hold its primary meaning. With us it is the railroad line which first enters into new territory, and it may be years before the contiguous region is sufficiently settled to render an ordinary wagon-road necessary. The vital fallacy in the popular argument that " competition will settle this question of too many roads " lies in assuming that a railroad is, like an individual, private enterprise. If a man starts a hat shop in a neighborhood already well supplied with hatters, and he is bankrupted in the strug- gle for business, that is the end of him. He has lost his money and the shop is closed and the equilibrium of supply and demand in hats is re- stored. But when a railroad becomes bankrupted it does not go out of existence in that way. Where is there an instance in this country of a road, once built, having been abandoned or ob- literated ? No ; the bankrupted road is placed under the protection of a court and in the hands of a receiver. It conducts a fiercer warfare than ever against its solvent rivals ; for the bankrupted road is relieved from the necessity of paying in- RAILROADS. terest on its mortgage or paying its debts, and continues to do business at lower rates than ever, for the receiver must keep it a-going pending its reorganization or whatever disposition is to be made of it. The English people long ago reached a point which we are approaching fast, in that before a railroad is built its projectors must obtain a special charter, and in order to obtain that they must prove that there is a public need of the new line. Any one \vho has read the papers for the past few years will readily recall many instances of the destructive effects of building lines in ter- ritory already \vell supplied with transportation facilities. Take the West Shore road, which par- alleled the New York Central, and not only sunk the capital of its own builders but forced a decline of fifty per cent, in the market price of New York Central, which from an eight per cent, dividend- paying corporation practically ceased to earn more than its fixed charges. The " Nickel Plate" road, paralleling the Lake Shore from Buffalo to Toledo, is another glaring instance in point. And still later we have the building of an unnecessary line from Kansas City to Chicago by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which has resulted in the fall of the stock of the latter company from about par to less than fifty cents on the dollar, with a coincident cessation of dividends. 324 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. A host of mischiefs and evils have sprung from the almost unrestrained power of railroad officials in the matter of their charges. By charging some shippers more and others less by means of secret contracts, the officials opened to themselves a field of unlimited profit. An awk- ward fact, which there is no denying, is the large fortunes, in most cases running into the millions, possessed by men who are or who have been rail- road officials on modest salaries, and who had nothing before entering upon these positions. The cost of transportation being such an im- portant factor in the price of commodities, it was quite easy for the railway to enrich one man and beggar or drive out of business another in the same trade, and this was done according to the personal interests of the man or men who could thus make rates. More than this, it was not at all difficult for the railroad to impoverish one town or city and build up another by discriminating in rates. In fact, the railroad had the power to say whether a merchant should or should not succeed in business, whether a town should' or should not grow in population and prosperity. In the Hep- burn committee's investigation of the New York railroads in 1879 it w r as shown that the milling business in certain towns of northern New York had been killed by railroads granting rates which favored Minneapolis and other western points. JUDGE T. M. COOLEY (Chairman of Interstate Commerce Committee). RAILROADS. 325 In one town all the millers but one were obliged to go out of business, and it was elicited in the investigation that this man had a secret contract with the railroad by which they carried his com- modity for much lower rates than any of the others. The merchants of New York at that time complained that the discriminations of the railroads against the metropolis were driving away its trade to Baltimore and other points. The nefarious contracts made by the railroads with the Standard Oil Company were discovered so recently as to be still fresh in the public mind. It will be remembered that the railroads not only carried the Standard's oil for a fraction of that charged a certain individual oil refiner, but actually paid over to the Standard Oil Company the overcharges of which they mulcted the un- fortunate individual refiner. The creation of railroad commissions in the various States, and the more recent establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission under the provisions of an act prohibiting these dis- criminations, forbidding the charging more for a longer than for a shorter haul, and inflicting a severe penalty for making railroad pools, goes far to remedy many of the most glaring evils com- plained of. But laws after all cannot make men moral, and, as President Charles Francis Adams, of the Union Pacific Railroad, said recently, " one of the chief causes of the railroad troubles is the 320 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. low standard of commercial honor among railway officials." The opportunities for personal profit possessed by dishonest railroad officials, while somewhat diminished by the prohibition of dis- criminating rates by which the}'' were enabled to build up one town in which they had an interest, or to favor certain firms in which they or their friends were partners, have been removed ; but the avenues of unlawful gain still open to them are almost innumerable. As Herbert Spencer remarked in dealing with this same subject in Kngland a quarter of a century ago, " corpora- tions have no souls." A combination of men will stoop to acts which the conscience of no one of them would sanction as an individual act. So, too, a man will deal with the rights and prop- erty of a corporation as he would never think of dealing with those of an individual. Among the more frequent abuses of their offi- cial power, we find railroad officers personally buying lands in new territory or mining lands, and then building at the expense of the corpora- tion branch lines to reach these properties and enhance their value ; the establishment of manu- facturing or business enterprises, in which the railway men are often secret partners, and secur- ing for these enterprises favorable terms, and then contracting with the railroad to do business for less than cost ; the fast freight lines, which ply over many roads, and which have excep- RAILROADS. 327 tionally easy contracts with the corporations and are in many instances the individual enter- prises of railway officials. It was not long since shown that some of these lines were actually competing with the railroad proper for freight, and carrying it with express speed as low as the railroad could afford to carry it in ordinary freight cars. Many of the swindles and abuses in railroad management owe their conception to the scan- dalous example of Fisk and Gould in the Erie Railroad. One or two of the little tricks played by Gould and his partner in that road, will give an idea of the possibilities of profit in dishonest railway management. When Gould became president and treasurer of the road twenty years ago, the Erie had a very favorable and long- standing lease of the Chemung and Canan- daigua roads. The rental was exceedingly low, having been made at a time when the leased lines were in financial trouble. By the terms of the contract, if the Erie should at any time fail to pay the rental, the lease was to be thereby abrogated. Under the circumstances, the secu- rities of these roads were naturally selling for a mere song. Gould, through his agents, quietly bought up these securities for about their weight in waste paper, thus becoming the sole owner of the roads. Then, in his capacity as president and treasurer of the Erie, he deliberately failed 328 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. to pay the rental, thus cutting oft the road from its lease and leaving him free to dispose of it as he pleased. He thereupon sold the roads to the Northern Central Railroad of Pennsylvania for three million dollars. Again, the Northern Railroad of New Jersey had a stock capital of $159,000 and $300,000 of bonds. It had never been able to earn divi- dends on this small amount of stock. It was leased to the Brie on favorable terms. Here was another example of Gould's genius. Four mil- lion dollars in bonds were issued on the prop- erty, and a million dollars of stock, which was divided among the conspirators ; and then, to give these securities a market value, a new lease was made to the Erie by which the latter guaran- teed thirty-five per cent, of the road's net earn- ings enough to pay interest on the enormous creation of new bonds and four or five per cent, on the stock. One more instance : The National Stock Yard Company was organized by the conspirators. The Erie Company advanced a million dollars, taking bonds to that amount. A million dollars of stock was then issued, representing not one cent of money paid, and was divided among the gang. It is well known that in nearly every large railroad company there is a construction ring which builds all extensions, and feeders on the RAILROADS. 329 most extravagantly profitable terms granted by the railroad company, the officials of the railroad being the chief parties in interest in the ring. Aside from all these rascalities in the actual management of the properties, is the deplorable fact that the officials and directors speculate in the shares of their own concerns, thus betraying the interests of the bona fide stockholders, whose trustees they are. It is more than suspected that the chief bears who have been active in depressing the securities of some of the Western roads during the past winter were in partnership with the directors and other officers of these cor- porations. It is easy to see that those in a posi- tion to know the exact earnings of a company and to foresee the possibilities in the way of divi- dends have the advantage of everybody else in estimating the future market value of the secu- rities. While the holders of railroad bonds and shares, however, display so much apathy with reference to the management of their properties and the election of proper men to administer them, they deserve little sympathy. It is notorious that the annual elections of most of our railroads are the merest pro forma affairs. The men who are in power send out blanks every year asking for the proxies of shareholders, and the latter forward them, and thus enable these men to continue in power and practically own the corporations they 330 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. control. Where there is a contest for control, it usually lies, not between the shareholders, on some kind of principle in the administration of the property, but is found to be between two speculative Wall street factions, each of whom is anxious to secure the pickings. Until the shareholders of American roads take an active interest in their properties, as do Bnglish share- holders for instance, and insist upon the publi- cation of the annual reports in advance of the meetings in order that they may attend the meetings and question their officials upon all dubious points, there can be little hope of per- manent reform. In cases where there is a con- test, it is not at all uncommon for an interested faction to pay stockholders a small sum for the proxies on their stock a proceeding which has been aptly compared to a merchant selling to a burglar for a dollar in cash the use of the key of his safe every night. So much for the rela- tions of holders of shares and bonds to the men who manage the corporations. As to the rela- tions of the railroads to the public, it is clear that the recent widespread discussion and the salutary influence of the Interstate Commission must lead to beneficent results. Aside from the great majority of the people, whose interests are indirectly but surely affected by any juggling with railroad properties and principles, is a great army of men who obtain RAILROADS. 331 their livelihood and that of their families by work on or for railroads. An army ? Yes ; more men than ever were seen in the largest army in the world. All of them are " effectives," too none of them can be found among " the sick, lame and lazy." Chauncey M. Depew, President of the New York Central road, says truly: " With those who are actually in the ser- vice, and those who contribute by supplies, one- tenth of the working force of the United States are in the railroad service ; and that tenth in- cludes the most energetic men and most intelli- gent among the workers of this magnificent country. There are ten million working men in this country, and six hundred thousand are di- rectly employed in the railway service. With their families they constitute a larger population than the largest of the States." Mr. Depew further says, with equal truth: u There is no democracy like the railway system of this land. Men are not taken out of rich men's parlors and placed in positions of responsi- bility. Men are not taken because they are sons of such, and put into paying places in the rail- way systems ; but the superintendents all over the country, the men who officer and man the passenger, the freight, and motive power and ac- counting departments, all of them come up from the bottom. Are you going to stop this thing ? No ! There are no men being born or to be born 332 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. who are to be by inheritance the superintendents, treasurers, comptrollers, auditors, the freight and ticket agents, the conductors, the yard masters, who are to be the master mechanics, the foremen of the shops, cf the future. They are not born. They have got to be made and come from the bottom up. And in every one of these depart- ments to-day, in every railroad in the United States, in the humblest positions, earning the smallest salaries, are men, who within the next twenty-five years, are to fill all these places by promotion. Don't tell me there is no chance to rise in this country." When this army grumbles, as once in a while it does, there is good cause for alarm ; not that they, like the disaffected of other armies, may do damage to life and property, but because their troubles are almost always traceable to stock-jug- gling rascalities, from which the men have no hope of redress. Some of the companies allow no business operations to interfere with the rights of their employees. Mr. Cornelius Vaiiderbilt is probably the most extensive owner of railway stock in the world, but he finds time to see his own employees frequently, and has even built and furnished a handsome club-room for them. He has also been active in assisting the Young Men's Christian Association in establishing reading rooms at railway centres. President Charles Francis Adams, of the Union Pacific Company, CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. RAILROADS. 333 found time not long ago to publish, in a maga- zine article, the outline of a system for retaining and encouraging competent employees. President Roberts, of the great Pennsylvania road, is as proud of his men as any general ever was of his army. These railroad magnates, and others who might be named, are setting a good example, which it is to be hoped some other officials will have sense enough to follow. It is bad enough for stock- holders to be annoyed and impoverished by stock- juggling operations, but when the employees also suffer the whole country suffers with them. It is an unpardonable crime for any company, man- aging a road which deserves to exist, to take such good care of its managers that its employees must strike and even fight to be sure of living wages. Railway strikes hurt every traveller, every ship- per, every receiver in the country. They never would begin if managers were honest. Stick a pin here and keep your eye on it. CHAPTER XXII. WALL STREET. WALL STREET is a phrase which stands for many things with many people. Pious people throughout the country regard it as a frightful gambling hell into which men are lured in order that they may be stripped of their fortunes as a very sink of iniquity. They im- agine that speculators and brokers spend their days in a wild fever of excitement and their nights in orgies. To investors Wall street means the market which daily puts the immense stamp of its values upon securities which these investors have locked up in their tin boxes or in the vaults of safe de- posit companies, and thus fixes the amount of their fortunes from day to day. To the projectors of railroads and other enter- prises Wall street suggests a collection of banks, financial institutions and wealthy individuals who are ready to advance capital in any scheme which promises profitable returns ; as the place to which they turn to sell bonds or stocks for the building of new lines, or to borrow money (334) WALL STREET. 335 for the payment of debts when they are in diffi- culties. To the vast horde of lambs in all parts of the country the fellows who at one time, or another have taken a flyer in speculation Wall street is a place of bitterness and regret. Numberless very sanguine men have there been reduced from prosperity to penury. Many a young clerk or cashier, lured by the glitter of its tempting game, 4ias taken his employer's money only to see it melted away, and to see his own character and hopes wrecked together. Wall street is each of these, and all of these, ac- cording to the standpoint from which it is viewed. Wall street proper is a narrow and somewhat insignificant street, save for the tall buildings which have been erected on it within the past ten years, running from the Hast river west- wardly across to Broadway, where it is cut off by Trinity Church. The name is derived from the fact that in the days of the early Dutch settlement the site of the present street now re- garded as the extreme lower end of the island marked the northernmost limit of the village, where a wall or stockade protected the settlers from incursions of their Indian neighbors on the north. When Wall street is spoken of, however, the phrase includes several city squares in the vicinity of the Stock Exchange, and, including the latter institution, the banks and trust com- 336 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. panics, the United States sub-treasury, the offices of the stock brokers and railroad magnates and private brokers in short, all the machinery of finance which is there assembled. The Stock Exchange, naturally, is the centre of all this. As a matter of fact, the Exchange is not on Wall street at all except for a narrow hallway leading to that street. It faces on Broad street and ex- tends through from that to New street, in the rear. There are eleven hundred seats or memberships of the Stock Exchange. These, ten years ago, sold as low as $5,000 each, have since that time sold at $35,000, and are now about $20,000. Al- though nothing is more common than to hear a broker denounce trades-unions, the New York Stock Exchange is the most arrogant and exclu- sive trade-union in the world. It has always de- clined to become incorporated, in the fear that this would bring it within closer reach of the law- making power. The Exchange is simply an u association of gentlemen " who meet every day from ten in the morning until three in the after- noon for the purpose of facilitating transactions among its members. The visitor to the gallery looks down upon the floor of a great hall about 150 feet square with a ceiling nearly 80 feet high, there being no floors intervening between .the street level and the roof. Upright posts here and there bear the names of certain 'railroads, WALL STREET. 337 and those who desire to trade in the securities of these roads will always repair to the designated posts. Abont each of these posts are set a few chairs for the casual repose of the weary brokers. An Englishman who visited the gallery recently, looked on these with some surprise, remarking : " Dear me ! And these are the celebrated seats of the Stock Exchange for which I hear as high as $20,000 is paid. Tell me, is it true that those beggarly cane chairs are put up at auction every year and bring such a surprising sum as that ? " But return to the trade-union aspect of the exchange. Its members are bound under the severest penalties not to work for less than a stated wage fixed by the governors of the ex- change. No outsider is permitted under any circumstances to enter upon the floor or do any business there, nor is one member of the ex- change permitted to have any interest, even through a partner, in a rival exchange under penalty of suspension or expulsion. To see how business is done on the exchange, let us follow an issue of the Smithville Railroad stock from the time the certificates are issued by the company until they become a part of the material of daily speculation on 'change. The Smithville Railroad Company has issued these shares for the purpose of building an extension, say, on their line. They have sold them to :\ syndicate of Wall street bankers. A portion of 22 338 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the issue has been sold on the recommendation of these bankers to investors. It always en- hances the valne of a stock to have it listed on the New York Stock Exchange, thereby pro- viding the holder of shares with a permanent market. The syndicate therefore request the company to make formal application to have the shares admitted to dealings on the floor of the stock exchange. A formal application is written out by the company stating the character of the property and the number of shares issued. This application is passed upon by the committee on stock list, and, if no objection is found, favorable action is recommended thereon by the governing committee, which consists of forty members of the exchange and a portion of which is elected every year. The exchange does not in any way pretend to investigate the actual value of the securities it lists, but merely to see that the cer- tificates, whether of bonds or shares, are prop- erly engraved so as to be difficult of counterfeit- ing ; that they are regularly and legally issued by the corporation upon property in actual ex- istence and operation ; and that the corporation is in a general way of good standing. As to intrinsic values, purchasers must see to that themselves. However, as the admission of a security to the exchange does, in the eyes of the public, give it a certain stamp of merit, the com- mittee as a matter of fact go somewhat further WALL STREET. 339 in spirit than the letter of the law above out- lined would indicate. Having received the approval of the governing committee, any member of the exchange is now at liberty to offer these shares for sale upon the floor of the exchange or to bid for them. Usu- ally, in order to initiate trading in shares with which the street and the public may not be acquainted, the parties interested, through their brokers, may buy and sell shares for a few days merely to call attention to them and to have the name of the shares arid their price sent out over the stock tickers. Every broker's office contains one of these telegraph instruments, which is in direct communication with the exchange and over which the sales during business hours are sent as fast as collected by the official reporters of the exchange on the floor. Now, suppose that Mr. Brown has been told that the shares of the Smithville Railroad are cheap at the current price of fifty cents on the dollar of par value and that he had better buy some. He repairs to a broker's office and tells the broker to buy him one hundred shares. This amount, by the way, is the unit of all transac- tions upon 'change, although one may buy or sell any number. Less than a hundred shares, however, are usually spoken of as a fractional lot. A broker goes to the place on the floor allotted for transactions in "Smithville" and bids 340 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. " fifty for a hundred." Another broker shouts " sold," and the transaction is made. As nothing is said as to the time when the shares are to be delivered, it is understood that the transaction is "regular;" that is, that the certificate for the shares is to be delivered at the office of the buy- ing broker on the following day before 2.15 o'clock in the afternoon. As the transactions are often made amidst great excitement, a comparison of all transactions is made after hours on the day of the sale. Ac- cordingly after three o'clock that afternoon Mr. Brown's broker sends a boy to the office of the broker from whom he bought the stock. The boy calls out to a clerk whose business it is to make such comparisons : " Bought from you one hundred Smithville at fifty, regular way." The clerk looks over his memoranda of the day, and finding that his employer has made such a sale, cries out " Correct," and the boy proceeds on his way to other offices on the same mission. Mean- while a boy from the second broker has called on Mr. Brown's broker and verified the transac- tion in the same way. Thus errors and mis- takes and they are very few considering the way in which the business is conducted are dis- covered and rectified very quickly. If Mr. Brown is buying for investment and wishes to carry the stock off with him he gives the broker a check for five thousand dollars, plus the broker's WALL STREET. 341 commission of one-aighth of one per cent., namely, twelve dollars and fifty cents, and when he calls on the following morning he is handed the certificate. But suppose Mr. Brown is not prepared to pay for the stock, but simply wants to buy it " on a margin," as it is called. He may do this simply to carry the stock until some future period, when he expects to be in funds, or he may do this merely with the intention of selling the stock at higher figures. In that case he gives the broker with his order a deposit of ten per cent, on the par of the stock ; that is to say, he hands him a thousand dollars. Now, when the stock is de- livered, the broker must pay for it instantly its full market price, five thousand dollars, so that he pays out four thousand dollars of his own money, in addition to the one thousand deposited by his customer, and retains the certificate for his client's account. That is a small sum, and every considerable broker's firm has a large capital. But if a house has many clients for whom it is buying a large amount of stocks every day, it is clear that it would need more capital than any firm possesses to pay for all these securities outright. What does the broker do? When the stocks are delivered to him he takes them to his bank, deposits them as collateral security and borrows the necessary money on them. The banks usually do not lend within twenty dollars 342 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. per share of the market value of stocks. Con- sequently on Mr. Brown's one hundred shares of Smith ville the bank will lend only three thousand dollars. This, with the one thousand deposited by Mr. Brown, leaves only one thou- sand dollars which the firm must supply of its own cash to carry the stock. It is customary for a broker to draw checks to pay for stocks which are to be delivered to him that afternoon and take these to his bank and have them certified in advance, although he has on deposit no such sum as they call for. Later in the day, when the checks come in for stocks, which he in turn delivers to other brokers, he sends these checks at once to his bank, and the balance is once more on the right side of his account. Moreover, the stocks which he is to receive are sent to the bank as collateral. This practice of Wall street banks over-certifying checks has been the subject of much criticism, and not long ago Congress passed a bill absolutely forbidding it. The bankers and brokers argued that the system had been in vogue for a quarter of a century with phenomenally few losses resulting therefrom and pleaded that they could conduct their business in no other way. But the law was passed just the same, and they at once proceeded to evade it by drawing " drafts " instead of checks and having the banks " accept " them instead of WALL STREET. 343 certifying. The law has already become a dead letter and the practice continues as of old. Assuming that Mr. Brown has been fortunate in his choice of a stock and that in the course of a reasonable time it advances ten per cent, on its par, or ten dollars per share, he has a profit of one thousand dollars in his hundred shares of stock, from which must be deducted the broker's commissions and the interest on the capital invested for the time it has been carried. Desiring to realize this profit, he orders the broker to sell his Sniithville at the advance. The broker goes on 'change and sells " one hundred, Smith ville." It must be ready for delivery by 2.15 the following afternoon. On the following morning the broker goes to the bank which holds the stock in question as collateral for his loan and substitutes some other security of equal value, or else makes a deposit in cash, reducing his loan by that amount, and receives the certifi- cate, which is duly delivered to the, new pur- chaser, and the broker, on receipt of a check for the amount, credits Mr. Brown's account with the proceeds. But suppose Mr. Brown believes that Smith- ville is going down, and instead of buying it de- cides to " go short of it." What is the pro- cedure ? His broker in that case sells one hun- dred shares and obtains them for delivery by bor- rowing either from an investor who has the stock 344 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. or from some broker who is carrying "long" stock for a customer. Since Mr. Brown or his broker must one day return these shares to the lender, he is actually and technically short of one hun- dred shares of that stock. When he borrows the stock the broker hands the lender a check for its full market value. Should the price of the stock advance in the market after that, the lender is at liberty to call upon him from time to time for additional money sufficient, with his original pay- ment, to make up the full, current value of the shares. Assuming that Mr. Brown's speculation is successful in this case, when the stock has fallen say ten dollars a share, his broker then buys one hundred shares, hands them over to the person from whom he borrowed originally, and receives back the amount of cash which .he has advanced. As one share of a given issue of stock is just as good as another, the original lender is indifferent as to whether he receives the identical certificates which he loaned or the others which are bought in the market at the reduced price and tendered to him. Unfortunately, how- ever, the Mr. Brown whom we have taken to typify the average outside speculator, loses money more frequently than he makes it. When he has bought a stock it goes down more frequently than up, and when he goes short of a stock it is very likely to rise, and in either case of course he loses monev. WALL STREET. 340 It is an axiom among professional speculators that trie mob is always wrong. Charles Reade, in his novel " Love me Little, Love me Long," makes the successful banker formulate this axiom : When the herd sells, buy ; when the herd bu3^s, sell. The late Baron Rothschild was once asked how it was that his operations on the Bourse were almost invariably successful. He replied : " It's because I puys tear and sells sheap." This remark is frequently quoted er- roneously. The baron is made to say " I buy cheap and I sell dear." What he meant was that he bought usually at a time when stocks were regarded by the mass of people as " dear " when everybod}'- was looking for a still further decline and he sold when they were " cheap; " that is, when after a considerable rise the great mass of people were looking for a still further advance, and consequently were inclined to regard stocks at that moment as cheap. That the great mass of people who dabble in speculation must lose money is clear enough from the fact that the few who are on the inside, and who are more cunning or more unscrupulous than their neighbors, amass great fortunes. When the average speculator who stands watch- ing the stock ticker hears a point to buy a given stock, it is ten to one that the insiders at that moment are prepared to sell. The good news, whatever it may be, which reaches the mass of 346 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. speculators, whether it be a consolidation of rail- roads or an increase in the earnings of a given line or any other favorable fact which would naturally cause an appreciation in price, it is safe to assume, must have been known to those on the inside of the company long ago, and that they have in consequence bought stock at lower prices which they are prepared to unload on the outsiders as soon as the good news is permitted to transpire. The reverse of all this, of course, is true of news calculated to cause a depreciation in the market price of a given security. There are 1,100 members of the New York Stock Exchange. The membership of each of these represents an investment of a good many thousand dollars. Each of these brokers in a time of speculative activity makes a very hand- some income. The more prosperous members of the Stock Exchange have handsome houses in the city and fine country seats and big bank ac- counts. Their wives wear rich dresses and dia- monds and in winter occupy boxes at the opera, and in summer drive and dress with the bravest at Newport or travel in princely style in Europe. In spite of the enormous expenditures necessary to this style of living, the successful Wall street broker accumulates a vast fortune, and when he dies leaves millions, like the late Charles F. Woerishofer, the late Charles Osborn, the late D. P. Morgan, or any one of half a dozen Wall WALL STREET. 347 street millionaires whose names will occur to any close reader of the newspapers. Well, our Mr. Brown is now launched on the sea of Wall street speculation. Aside from the ten thousand tricks and traps adopted by the pro- fessional manipulators and speculators to deceive the. lambs and our Mr. Brown, being compara- tively unsophisticated and without any means of ascertaining the inside movements of Wall street cliques, is a fair example of a lamb there is al- ways the broker's commission of one-eighth each way and the interest charged for carrying stocks to count against him in every operation he makes. Just as at a game of poker the " kitty " receives a certain percentage of each game, no matter who wins or loses, so the broker's commission of an eighth each way, or twenty-five dollars on each one hundred shares that the speculator turns, must in the long run make the commission broker a winner and his customer a loser in the game. As he loiters about his broker's office awaiting the results of his latest purchase or sale, Mr. Brown is not left without entertainment. Be- hind the screen he hears the ticking of telegraph instruments. His broker, if he does a large business, has private wires to Chicago, Boston and other leading cities connecting with brokers' offices therein, and in each of these are groups of lambs whose orders are instantaneously trans- 348 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. mitted to New York and executed. In a corner of the office a ticker of somewhat different design from that which bears the quotations of securities is continuously reeling out a narrow tape, and on this he reads the news of the arrival and depart- ure of ocean steamers, the result of the latest race at Brighton Beach, Long Branch or Sara- toga, the latest traffic returns of leading rail- roads, the gossip of the street nearly every item of which, by the way, is inspired by some operator to create a sentiment which will bull or bear certain stocks to forward certain speculative interests the names of buyers and sellers of large amounts on the stock exchange, and a thousand and one items of news, fact and fiction, having direct or remote bearing upon Wall street affairs. It is scarcely worth while to pursue this theme any further. Occasionally one hears of an " out- sider " who has made money in Wall street, just as one may chance to be acquainted with a man who has won the capital prize in a lottery ; but such instances are very rare. The clientele of a broker is almost constantly changing. Go into his office to-day and make the acquaintance of the men who are striving to get rich in a hurry by speculating in stocks. Enter the same office a year later and you will probably find not one of the original set there. They have gone. You may find one running an elevator in some WALL STREET. 349 tall building down town on a princely salary of ten dollars a week, or another acting as conductor on a street railroad for very little more ; those who have homes in the country have long since departed to them, wiser and sadder. One of a nervous temperament and who has had heavy losses may be dead of a broken heart, or possibly he has been desperate enough to end his life by his own hand. Fortunately such tragical finales are comparatively rare, for the average specula- tor is of a sanguine temperament, and although driven to the last ditch to-day, he fondly hopes that fortune's wheel may give one more turn and bring him on top to-morrow. There are in Wall street no end of shabbily-dressed, wretched-look- ing fellows, with haggard faces and hungry eyes, who live heaven only knows how or where, who come and go like ghosts. Who are they ? Ask some old habitue of the street and he will tell you, " That man was once a king of the street. Hundreds flattered him and toadied to him. A point from him to buy or sell a given stock was regarded as almost equivalent to a fortune. He could draw his check for a million and it would be honored. Everything he touched turned to gold. But at last his luck changed. A property in which he had invested the bulk of his fortune in the hope of making a grand coup, went to smash. Grown desperate, he plunged in the 350 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. effort to retrieve his fortunes, and before long he was almost penniless. For a time he could bor- row money from his former fair-weather friends and flatterers who fancied that by some brilliant stroke of genius he might recoup and once more become a leader of the street. As it became evi- dent that he was playing in hard luck, they turned from him one by one and now he has fallen so low that he will beg the loan of a quar- ter of a dollar to pay his car fare to his home in the suburbs." The arbitrageurs now constitute an important class in Wall street. Since so many American stocks and bonds have become listed upon the London Stock Exchange and are held by invest- ors and speculators in Europe, there is an oppor- tunity for these keen-eyed financiers to turn an honest penny by trading on the differences in price of securities here and on the London Stock Exchange at any given moment. They are usually connected with some foreign banking- house having a branch in New York, and very many of them are Hebrews. Owing to the five hours' difference in time between London and New York, the Exchange of the former city is open some five hours before that of the latter. Suppose some important news develops in New York in the evening which is calculated to ad- vance the price of a railroad stock say, Union Pacific or Erie, which are traded in both in New WALL STREET. 351 York and London. The guileless Mr. Browns of our story hasten down to Wall street before ten o'clock in the morning to buy at the very moment of opening, supposing that they are thus reaping the fullest possible benefit of the infor- mation. The stock opens perhaps one dollar a share higher than it closed the night before, and they buy at the advance. But the professional arbitrageur, while they were still asleep, has been buying the stock by cable message in London, and now sells it to Mr. Brown at the advance. In like manner, if news of a depressing charac- ter develops, the arbitrageur sells the stock by cable at. the higher price in the London market and subsequently buys it in New York at the depreciation. Of course it is not every day that such developments occur, but, owing to causes local to London or New York, the speculative temper constantly varies between the two, and the Wall street arbitrageur, being kept constantly advised by cable of the current prices of stocks in London, is able, by buying in one market and selling in the other, to scalp fractional profits which in the aggregate offer him a handsome livelihood. Another institution of Wall street is the United States sub-treasury, where an enormous amount of government money is kept on hand. The receipts at the port of New York for customs and all other Federal moneys are daily deposited 352 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. here, and merchants or bankers who have occasion to export gold are enabled to obtain it there. The stib-treasury is a member of the bank clearing- house, and consequently checks drawn by the sub-treasurer for the payment of moneys or checks made upon him for interest on govern- ment bonds or other government disbursements are settled through that institution. Adjoining the sub-treasury is the United States Assay Office, where bullion may be de- posited and a draft drawn for its value given on the sub-treasurer after the metal has been duly assayed and its value calculated by the officials. When the balance of trade is largely in our favor and Europe is sending us gold in settlement, whether in the form of gold bars or British sov- ereigns or French coin, it is all sent to the Assay Office, put into the smelting-pot, and its ascer- tained value returned to the depositors in the shape of a draft on the sub-treasurer. After the bankers and the brokers and specu- lators and the government institutions, perhaps the most important people in Wall street are the men who sell privileges on stocks, of whom Mr. Russell Sage is the wealthiest and most impor- tant. Everybody has heard of Mr. Sage and the twelve or fifteen million dollars he is supposed to have accumulated largely through the sale of " puts " and " calls " and " spreads " and " strad- dles " on railroad stocks. Everybody has heard WALL STREET. 353 of his loss of about four millions of dollars through these same privileges when the failure of Fish & Ward, and the bankruptcy of the Marine Bank and the suspension of the Metro- politan Bank, precipitated the panic of 1884. Last, but not least, among the features of Wall street are the " bucket-shops," wherein the petty speculator, whether he be a silly adult or a broker's clerk or office-boy, may gamble in stocks on a margin as small as five dollars. The men who manage these institutions neither buy stocks nor sell them for their clients, but practically make a wager that the petty speculator is wrong by simply booking his bet. As they are wrong nine times out of ten, the bucket-shop often flourishes for a time and its proprietor pockets large sums of money. But a time comes when the stock market has a definite and prolonged advance. In that case all of its clients are sure to go long of stocks. To pay their nominal win- nings in this event is no part of the bucket-shop proprietor's programme. When his books show this condition of affairs he simply omits to open his doors one morning and the next day the newspapers chronicle the failure of another bucket-shop. Of course his dupes have no redress. CHAPTER XXIII. TRUSTS. "The communism of combined wealth and capital." IT was a very happy phrase which President Cleveland coined in his last annual message to describe the inherent character of the giant com- binations and trusts which have sprung up in this country in the last few years. And not in this country alone, but in all the countries of the Old World, the control of leading industries has passed into the hands of these combinations. The most important one which has attracted most wide attention in Bngland is the Salt Trust, which has been made the subject of parliamen- tary inquiry. The most gigantic of all is the proposed trust, with $500,000,000 capital, to con- trol the coal and iron products of Great Britain. From present appearance, however, this will not be carried through. The American people are thoroughly aroused to the danger of these mammoth aggregations of power and capital, each controlled by clear- headed and cunning men. The investigations, (354) TRUSTS. 355 legislative and congressional, that have been set on foot, and the universal clamor in the press against them, seems to indicate clearly that the American people have hung out a sign similar to those which one still sees occasionally in country stores " No Trust Here." But the trusts are here just the same, and it is becoming more evident every day that it will be a very difficult matter to get rid of them by legislative means. It is only a little more than a year ago since the public awoke to the importance of this sub- ject and began to look into these nefarious con- cerns. The extraordinary multiplication of trusts about that time forced the matter upon the attention of the people. Since then State Legis- latures and both Houses of Congress have dis- cussed laws for their suppression. One of the latest utterances of David Davis, a statesman whom all corruptionists feared, called attention to the existing dangers in the following ringing words : " Great corporations and consolidated monopo- lies are fast seizing the avenues of power that lead to the control of the government. It is an open secret that they rule States through pur- chased Legislatures and corrupted courts, that they are strong in Congress and that they are unscrupulous in the use of means to conquer prejudice and acquire influence. This condition 356 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of things is truly alarming, for unless it be changed quickly and thoroughly free institutions are doomed to be subverted by an oligarchy rest- ing upon a basis of money and of corporate power." Congressman Anderson, of Kansas, only the other day said : 'The communism of combined wealth is a favorite subject with me. I recognize the home thrust which President Cleveland made at the head of that commune. I mean Jay Gould. He is, in my opinion, the greatest communist in the United States, and I have never failed to openly express myself accordingly. He represents the great body of communists who seek to control legislation and legislators, and who know the power of money in shaping acts of Legislatures." While the word " trust " is comparatively new in its present sense, yet the principle involved in them is very old. What is a trust ? It is a combination of men for the purpose of fixing the price of any article or of destroying competition and in restraint of trade. It is a joint stock company, each mem- ber of which is a corporation, and each of these practically surrenders its charter and places the full power in the hands of certain trustees who are under no direct legal restraint. The object of a trust is, of course, to advance the price of a product. The plea is that they enlarge their TRUSTS. 357 own profits by greater economies in the cost of production, but this statement is contradicted by experience, for the price of an article is raised directly a trust is formed, as was recently demon- strated in the case of sugar. No individual, nor even a single corporation, can stand up against the vast aggregate power of capital of the modern trust. The first of the present trusts, and the one upon which all others have been modelled, is the Standard Oil, which was organized about eight years ago. The marvellous success of this con- cern in crushing out competition and destroying all rivals and making each and every one of its projectors a multi-millionaire has been the in- centive to the formation of all the others. It has been spoken of as the type of a system which has spread like a disease through the commercial system of this country. Now there is scarcely an important article which is not con- trolled by a trust. The food, fuel, light, heat and clothing of the people must to-day be bought at prices fixed by these monopolies. One of the latest and greatest of trusts is that in the manufacture of sugar. The production of even such apparently insig- nificant articles as tooth-picks is controlled by a trust, and the price of peanuts is actually regu- lated by one. It has been accepted as an axiom in all ages 358 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and among all people that a free, fair and open competition in the manufacture and distribution of commodities is of prime importance to a free people. In England, in the Middle Ages, the monarch for a consideration would grant to cer- tain persons the exclusive privilege of carrying on particular trades, giving them a monopoly within a certain territory. This was the origin of the great guilds. These in time became so oppressive and odious to the people that appeal was made for relief. As wealth and intelligence increased, individuals outside of the favored class would be tempted to infringe upon their privi- leges, and in this way the question came up be- fore the courts. In the course of Hdward the Third's fifty years' reign he incorporated no less than fifty guilds in London. The grocers, the mercers, the fish-mongers, the goldsmiths, the weavers, the masons, the leather-dressers, the butchers and all the rest had each a separate association. The monopolies granted by Queen Elizabeth during her later years were so numerous and in- excusable that Parliament protested against this proceeding in 1597, and received in reply a mes- sage from the queen in which she hoped that her dutiful and loving subjects would not take away her prerogatives of granting this " which was the chief flower in her garden and the principal head- mark to her crown and diadem." The popular TRUSTS. 359 clamor, however, was so great that* Parliament refused to leave the matter iu the queen's hands. Lord Bacon wrote against monopolies, saying " monopolies, which are the cutting off all trading, must not be admitted under specious color of the public good." The Salt Trust of that day had raised the price from sixteen cents to fourteen shillings a bushel. One of the speakers in Par- liament said : " I speak for a town that grieves and pines, for a country that groaneth and lan- guishes under the burden of monstrous and un- conscionable monopolies of starch, tin, fish, oil, cloth, vinegar, salt, and I know not what aye, what not ? The principallest commodities both of my town and country are engrossed into the hands of these blood-suckers of the common- wealth." While professing to be grateful for having her eyes opened to these abuses, the queen, however, withdrew only some of the most obnoxious, and others were destroyed under sub- sequent reigns, and the laws passed during this period, together with the old Roman law on which the body of the English law is based, to- day constitute the mass of precedent which is cited against permitting these monstrosities to exist, although the chief and basic argument is now, as it was in the days of Pliny, that they are contrary to public policy. " No business," says the New York Herald, " is either honest or legitimate which limits the ii60 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. production of a necessary of life, and thereby adds to the living expenses of every poor family in the country. " To do that is a crime, from the consequences of which we all suffer, and if there is any penalty known to the law it should be meted out with a mailed hand. " We don't profess to be over-squeamish about commercial methods. We are inclined to take the world as it is, and let things go their own gait, shrugging our shoulders, perhaps, but not indulging in any fit of scolding or fuming or fret- ting. We are not living in Paradise, and as lineal descendants of the man and woman who began life with petit larceny and were ' snaked ' out of house and home, we rather expect to see a great many queer doings. " Still, when a dozen powerful corporations combine for the sole purpose of adding to their millions by making it harder for the wage-earner to live that is pure, unmitigated robbery. It is not honest business, but a shrewd, cunning and diabolical attempt to swindle helpless people out of their rights and their comforts. " Talk about communism, socialism and an- archism! Why, you are breeding these evils, suckling them, feeding them, and giving them new strength every day. " The ' dangerous elements,' as they are called, are not to be found in the Bowery, Five Points, TRUSTS. 361 and the slums of the city. Not a bit of it. The sooner you get over that nonsense the better. They are to be found at the other end of society, and don't you forget it." The story of Aladdin and his lamp is not more wonderful than the story of the parent trust, the Standard Oil Company. It was in Cleveland, Ohio, that John D. Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews, the founders of the Standard, began life, the former as book-keeper for a small produce commission house on a salary of fifteen dollars a week, and the latter as a porter in a small store in the same city. When Rockefeller was thirty- six years old he and Andrews became partners in a small oil refiner}'- and their combined capital did not exceed five thousand dollars. Then Wil- liam Rockefeller, the brother of J. D., became a partner, and they started a larger refinery and established a warehouse in New York for the sale of their oil. Then an important event occurred. A wealthy whiskey distiller advanced the concern sixty thousand dollars and put his son-in-law, John M. Flagler, into the firm. They were all sharp men, and developed their trade very rapidly, being assisted by the tre- mendous increase of consumption of petroleum at home and the enormous export demand for it. They were enabled to make exceedingly favora- ble terms with the railroads for the transporta- tion of their product, and in this way obtained a 362 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. great advantage over smaller firms. Their suc- cess in obtaining these discriminating rates for the carriage of their oil is one of the most im- portant elements in the career which they achieved. In 1870 the business was incorporated as the Standard Oil Company, with a capital of $ i ,000,000. Mr. Rockefeller is generally credited with the idea of this combination to control the industries throughout the whole country. The new corporation was powerful enough to " see " railroad officials and to make deals with the railroad companies by which they secured larger advantages than ever. By means of secret contracts with the railroads they were able to do business in such a way as to drive individual pro- ducers, and in fact all competitors, into accepting whatever terms the Standard chose to make with them. Oil lands were bought and refineries were purchased, and others built in the vicinity of New York. Great warehouses and tanks were con- structed, pipe lines were acquired and iron cars for the transportation of oil were made and a cooper shop was established to turn out nine thou- sand barrels a day. Keeping pace with this de- velopment, the capital stock was increased from $1,000,000 to $90,000,000. Smaller concerns and individuals were coerced into selling their lands and refineries to the Standard, or were driven out of business by the latter, and thousands of innocent persons who had been caught in the TRUSTS. 363 relentless onward march of the giant trust raised their voices in prayer for relief from the Legisla- tures and the courts. But the brains and millions of the Standard Oil met them everywhere. Hundreds of thou- sands of dollars were spent at Harrisburg and quite a respectable sum at Albany to " influence legislation." Even the judiciary was not alto- gether free from the suspicion of being influenced by this terrible devil-fish. The investigation of last year for the first time brought to light the nature of the trust agreement, and the fact that the few men who constituted the executive board of the Standard Oil Company controlled one hun- dred and forty-eight millions of property and employed five thousand men. Mr. James F. Hudson, author of " The Rail- ways and the Republic," says : "The Standard Oil Company, indeed, embodies the commercial crimes of the past decade. Its vast wealth has been accumulated in less than fifteen years by speculative manipulations, by bribing legislators, and by distorting law to deny to one man the privileges given to another. Its history illustrates, step by step, the extent to which the greed for wealth can corrupt commer- cial morality, pervert law, and betray the interests intrusted to its protection. The methods by which this company acquired and exercises its power show the baneful results of permitting the 364 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. exclusive control of a great commercial interest to be vested in a monopoly which can oppress the producer and consumer alike. " Throughout the course of intimidation, cor- ruption, defiance of commercial and statute law and contempt of public justice that marks the rise of the Standard monopoly one fact rises prominent. This monopoly was called into ex- istence and sustained in its odious tyranny by the persistent and deliberate discriminations of the railways in its favor. Not only the one hundred million dollars which that corporation has gath- ered out of the oil trade in the past fifteen years, but its dictatorial power, its unscrupulous crush- ing of opposition, its corruption of public servants, its control of the speculative features of the busi- ness, and the favoritism and sycophancy which are essential accompaniments of its absolutism, are the direct results of the advantages which the leading railways of the country gave it by carry- ing its freights on terms which made competition practically impossible." It is some consolation to think that the Stand- ard Oil Company has passed the climax of its power. The passage of the interstate law pro- hibiting the making of secret contracts by ship- pers with the railroads and forbidding discrimina- tions in rates goes very far to prevent the devel- opment of trust monopolies, and makes it possible for smaller concerns or individuals to engage in TRUSTS. 366 business. Still, the Standard's special facilities in every department of the industry, and the contracts it has outstanding with distributors and consumers give it great advantage. A great deal of information and misinforma- tion about some of the larger trusts was elicited by the New York State Senate last year through a committee appointed to investigate them. The report of the committee was very weak, but the testimony it obtained threw considerable light on the Sugar Trust, the Milk Trust, the Cotton- seed-oil Trust, the Elevator Trust, the Oilcloth Trust, and so on. In its report the Senate com- mittee said : " However different the influences which gave rise to these combinations in each particular case may be, the main purpose, management, and effect of all on the public is the same ; to wit, the aggregation of capital and power of control- ling the manufacture and output of various necessary commodities, the acquisition or destruc- tion of competitive properties, all leading to the final and closing purpose : annihilating competi- tion and enabling the industries represented in the combination* to fix the price at which they would purchase the raw material from the pro- ducer and at which they would sell the refined product to the consumer. At any rate, the pub- lic at each end of the industry (the producer and consumer) is and is intended to be in a certain 366 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. sense at the mercy of the syndicate or combina- tion or trust. In recent years the people have seen the mines, the railroads, the telegraphs, and the telephones under corporate management yield great returns to their projectors. Colossal for- tunes, easily accumulated, are always abhorrent to the people, and even in the hands of private individuals are often considered a menace to good government. "The people of this State have become alarmed at the constantly growing power of the railroads, pipe lines, telegraphs, and other corporations, and the ease and boldness with which the great and powerful destroys or assimilates its weaker competitive neighbor, common carrier, or manu- facturer, has become the scandal of the age. The end, if not the purpose, of every combination is to destroy competition, and leave the people sub- ject to the rule of the monopoly. " The Standard Oil and other trusts have grown by means like these, and the little com- binations that fill every avenue of trade, and in little ways carry out the same purposes on a smaller scale, tax the people and levy their re- lentless tolls on the pint of millf, the pound of meat, and even on the loaf of bread. "And for these things what is the remedy ? We are not unmindful of the fact that this State, easily first in point of commercial importance, has always called capital into its borders by the TRUSTS. 367 wise and useful laws here enacted for its protec- tion. No departure from this rule is necessary. A wise people will always find a remedy con- sistent with its own prosperity for every great vice of the State. In this case capital should be subjected to the rule, of which it has always claimed to be the strongest advocate, that no com- bination or conspiracy should be tolerated in the State which would interfere directly or indirectly with the exercise of completest competition in every industry and calling." At the time this report was made to the New York State Senate, a committee of the House of Representatives at Washington was investigating the Standard Oil and Sugar Trust, and made a report calling the attention of the House to the form of organization of these two trusts. They pointed out that there exists a certain number of corporations organized under the laws of the dif- ferent States and subject to their control ; that these corporations had issued stock to various in- dividuals, and that these individual stockholders had surrendered their stock to the trustees named in the agreement creating the trust, and accepted in lieu thereof certificates issued by the trustees named therein. The agreement provided that the various corporations whose stock was sur- rendered to trustees should preserve their iden- tity and carry on their business. In the Sugar Trust the agreement was that the several 368 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. corporations should maintain a separate organi- zation and each carry on its own business. In the Standard Oil Trust agreement it was provided that all properties should be transferred to and invested in the several companies. The duties of the trustees were restricted to receiving divi- dends declared by the various corporations and distribution of the aggregate to the holders of the trust certificates pro rata, and to holding and voting upon the stock of the corporation. The trustees of both these companies specifically de- nied upon the witness stand that they ever did any other business than to receive and distribute these dividends and exercise the only other func- tion given to them by the trust agreement ; that is, to hold the stock of the various corporations and exercise the right of stockholders in each corporation. " This form of combination," said the Con- gressional committee, " was obviously devised for the purpose of relieving the trust and trustees from the charge of any breach of the conspiracy laws of the various States, or of being a combina- tion to regulate the control or price of production of any commodity. Hence they assert that the corporations themselves, which control and regu- late the price of commodities to the extent of production and have tangible property, remain with their organization intact and distinct, and not in combination with each other; that the TRUSTS. 369 stockholders, who owned only the stock, and by well-settled legal rules had no legal title in the property of the corporations, entered into the agreements and sold their stock in the corpora- tions and accepted in payment trust certificates, and that the trustees received and held only the stock of corporations and have no legal title to any of the property of the corporations, and neither buy nor sell anything nor combine with any one to fix the price or regulate the produc- tion of any commodity." Meanwhile the leaders of the Tammany Hall organization in New York, perceiving the deep popular feeling against trusts, was shrewd enough to adopt resolutions condemning them, and framed a bill for their suppression and ad- vocated it before the Legislature. The latter, however, failed to enact any law against the trusts, and Tammany then appointed a commit- tee who appeared before the Attorney-General of the State and argued that the existing laws were sufficient for the suppression of the obnoxious monopolies. After arguments pro and con, At- torney-General Tabor decided last summer that there was ground for action. As the Sugar Trust was particularly unpopular, because it had raised the price of that necessity, it was resolved to begin by bringing action against that. Gen- eral Roger A. Pry or was appointed counsel to as- sist the Attorney-General in prosecuting the civil 21 370 OUR. COUNTRY'S FUTURE. suit. The North River Refining Company had been closed by the trust soon after its formation, and it was resolved to bring suit to have its char- ter annulled. The decision on which the Attor- ney-General decided to bring this action set forth that the company was a corporation, organized under the laws of the State for the purpose of manufacturing sugar, and that it had violated the provisions of the law in several ways : first, that it did not carry on the business for which it was incorporated, but on the contrary it had become a part of the unlawful trust ; secondly, that the concerns of the x company were not managed by its own trustees, but by a body of men called the Sugar Refinery Company in other words by the trust ; thirdly, it had violated the penal code by engaging in this unlawful combination to advance and control the price of sugar; and lastly, it had ceased to maintain its identity and ceased to ex- ercise the function for which it was incorporated : therefore its charter failed. Moreover, the Attor- ney-General was asked to restrain the Sugar Re- fineries Company from acting as a corporation, since it had no legal existence. It was alleged to the Attorney-General that the trust was a cor- poration, inasmuch as it had a corporate name, and could still contract obligations in such name, made by-laws, had perpetual succession, held meetings and elected officers and held property, issued negotiable stock certificates, and generally TRUSTS. ,371 exercised a monopoly in the production of sugar, and that such monopoly was a public nuisance. The suit was brought to trial in the fall. Able lawyers defended the trust, and the case pro- gressed for several weeks before Justice Barry, of the Supreme Court of New York. After a careful consideration of all the facts and evidence, Judge Barry, early in January, ren- dered a decision which sent a shock down the spinal columns of all the trusts throughout the United States a decision which, if sustained on appeal, would seem to ring the death-knell of those oppressive monopolies. Judge Barry an- nounces the combination as a mischievous and wicked conspiracy against the people, declared the charter of the North River Company to be forfeited, and pronounced the trust itself to be il- legal. Not only did his decision annul the char- ter of the North River Company, but declared that every corporation in the deal had forfeited its separate charter that is to say, every one of those companies, and including all but five of the sugar refineries of the United States, and repre- senting a share capital of $50,000,000, had com- mitted an unlawful act in entering into a con- spiracy to advance the price of this necessary of life. The judge's opinion included an exhaustive review of the case in all its aspects. After ana- lyzing the position of the trust, he said : ' Thus we have a series of corporations exist- 372 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ing and transacting business under the forms of law without real membership or genuinely quali- fied direction mere abstract figments of statutory creation without life in the concrete or underly- ing association. Every share of stock has been practically surrendered and vital membership re- signed. With the transfer to the eleven trustees the shareholders cease to occupy the position of cestuis que trustent with regard to the directors of the various corporations. In lieu thereof they accept substituted membership in an unincorpo- rated board, and an entirely new, independent and exclusive trust relation with the trustees of that board. " Nor are the trustees, as transferrees of the capital stock of the various corporations, in any just sense genuine members thereof. They have no beneficial interest therein. Dividends are not declarable thereon, and, if they were, would not be payable to them in their own right nor as trustees for the shareholders in the partic- ular corporations which had earned the dividend. .... It is the first time in the history of cor- porations that we have heard of a double trust in their management and control one set of trustees elected formally to manage the first the shareholders in seventeen corporations leav- ing their functions with regard to their regular directors to be thought out and performed for them by what amounts to a board of guardians. TRUSTS. 373 .... Any combination, the tendency of which is to prevent competition in its broad and general sense and to control and thus at will enhance prices to the detriment of the public, is a legal monopoly. And this rule is applicable to every monopoly, whether the supply is restricted by nature or susceptible of indefinite production. The difficulty of effecting the unlawful purpose may be greater in one case than in the other, but it is never impossible. , Nor need it be perma- nent or complete. It is enough that it may be even temporarily and partially successful. The question in the end is, Does it inevitably tend to public injury ? . . . . " Fortunately the law is able to protect itself against abuses of the privileges which it grants. And while further legislation, both preventive and disciplinary, may be suitable to check and punish exceptional wrongs, yet there is existing, to use the phrase of a distinguished English judge in a noted case, 'plain law and plain sense' enough to deal with corporate abuses which, if allowed to thrive and become general, must in- evitably lead to the oppression of the people and ultimately to the subversion of their political rights. "Again, the legal results justly follow for- feiture and dissolution" CHAPTER XXIV. SPECULATION: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. HvERY man is in some sense a speculator. The farmer who throws good seed into the soil in the spring speculates upon the chances of a profitable harvest. The dry-goods merchant who lays in a stock of prints in the belief that there will be special demand for them later on to admit of their sale at higher figures is a speculator. In short, everybody who produces commodities or distributes them tries to foresee the require- ments of the market, and is to that extent a speculator. The speculative spirit is born in man. The prospect of reward prompts men to exercise forethought, which in the long run is exceedingly beneficial to the whole community. In the hope of personal gain speculators study natural laws and conditions and movements, and so arrange for supplying a class or a whole com- munity with something which it will need in the future. In this way, too, sharp alternations in the price of commodities are prevented. If drouths or other unfavorable conditions promise to very largely (374) SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 375 curtail the wheat harvest, for instance, in a given country, long before the time for reaping arrives speculators have foreseen the result and calcu- lated the shortage, and the consequent demand for wheat from other sources, and provided for its supply. If the matter were left entirely to the community directly involved, it might be that they would not discover their true condition until they were upon the verge of famine, and the con- sequent sharp demand for wheat would double the price of their bread. The man who buys the securities of a rail- road or other corporation in the expectation that it will rise in value is no more guilty of a crime than the farmer who decides that he will change his crops in a given year because he believes there will be a better market for some other product than the one he has heretofore culti- vated. The word speculation is used in a very am- biguous way. In common talk it covers not only such legitimate operations as are here referred to, but the absolute gambling in stocks or in the necessaries of life, and skin gambling at that. There is a vast distinction between buying or selling a commodity or a product, expecting to profit by the change in value to come from the operation of natural laws, and the methods of professional speculators who proceed to force an 376 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. artificial rise or fall, regardless of the effect upon the community. Nobody blames a grocer if he lays in a large supply of sugar because he thinks there will be a shortage in the next crop, and he will thereby be able to sell at a greater profit. A man engaged in a legitimate line of business, who incidentally engages in speculation in the line of his trade, is manifestly in a different position from the pro- fessional" speculator, who neither produces any- thing nor distributes the products of others, but who simply stands in the market-place profiting by the fluctuations in prices. Yet even the pro- fessional speculator, as we have shown, has his uses in the economy of business. It is the buying and selling of products " on a margin," as it is called, which is the basis of most that is objectionable in speculation. This is very nearly allied to gambling, if, indeed, it is not gambling outright. When a man, for instance, buys railroad stocks, pays for them and puts them into his box, he is to some extent beyond the reach of the professional manipulator of values, w r ho occasionally " shakes " out the holder of stocks on a margin by artificially marking down the price. The multitude of men gambling thus on slender margins in Wall street constitutes the prey of the professional manipulator. It is to induce them to buy stocks at high prices or to force them to sell at very low ones that a pro- SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 377 fessional operator lays most of his plots. It is to affect their opinions that most of the lying rumors are set afloat. It is to rob them that the ten thousand stock-jobbing tricks and devices are invented and put into operation in the street. It is mainly their dollars that go to swell the ill- gotten fortunes of men like Jay Gould. When they have fleeced one flock of lambs, as the stupid gamblers upon margins are called in the parlance of the street, these financial free- booters will occasionally devote their attention to making a coup in some of the necessaries of life. The facilities afforded by the practice of carrying wheat, for instance, upon a margin enables them, with the aid of their millions, to make for a time a corner in the staff of life, and mark up the price of a loaf upon the table of every poor man in the land. Fortunately, however, most of the attempts in this direction have proved disastrous to the heartless plotters themselves. James R. Keene, who came from California to New York fifteen years ago with $8,000,000 in cash, swelled that large sum to $15, 000,000 in successful operations in stocks, and bankrupted himself in his famous attempt to corner wheat. Although personally a very popular man, and having a reputation among his friends of " playing square," he had nobody's sympathy when impoverished in this heartless game, and to-day he is little better than 378 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a hanger-on in Wall street, and lives in retire- ment in a country house on Long Island. " Old Hutch's " operation in wheat last year, although called a " corner," seems to have been made suc- cessful by the fact that there really was a shortage in the supply, and he did not press his market too far. Indeed, that operation had comparatively little effect upon the price of actual wheat, since the corner was confined to an option for a par- ticular month. The trade of stock-jobbing as we know it to- day is just two hundred years old, having begun in England with the advent of William the Third, and the establishment of myriad joint stock corporations. In 1692 was written Shad- well's comedy, " The Stock-Jobbers," in which the " Mouse-Trap Company " and the " Flea- Killing Company " were used to satirize some of the projects of the day. It is an amusing coinci- dence that Jay Gould, the giant Wall street manipulator of our time, made his first appear- ance in New York city with a mouse-trap under his arm, which he had invented and brought to the city for sale. The opportunities offered to dishonest men in the buying and selling of stocks appear to have been perceived at the very outset of the business. But a few years after Shadwell's time, Sir Henry Furness, a governor of the newly established Bank of England, is said to have established a SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 379 complete system of his own for obtaining news of the wars in which England was then engaged, for the purpose of utilizing the information in the stock market, and when he had no news it is alleged that his agents set afloat reports of battles lost or won according to the exigencies of his position in the market. That public men were as o*pen to the influences of kings of the market in those days as they are now would appear from the statement, apparently authenticated, that the Duke of Marlborough received a yearly salary of $30,000 from Medina, the Jewish banker, for supplying him with secret information as to his plans and prospects. In the beginning of the last century the growth of the gambling spirit had developed so as to make possible such disastrous projects as Law's Mis- sissippi scheme in France, and the South Sea bubble in England, by which thousands were brought to ruin and despair. Among the com- panies promoted during the prevalence of the South Sea mania in England was one " to import a number of large jackasses from Spain in order to propagate a larger kind of mule in England." But the scheme which historians of the time always hold up as the very acme of folly was one wherein speculators were requested to deposit ten dollars on account of shares in a company, the purpose of which was to be kept an absolute 380 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. secret. As might be supposed, the ingenious advertiser pocketed the mouey sent him and decamped. But are people any wiser to-day ? There has never been a time when there was not a market for the shares of Mr. Keeley's motor company, and it is only a few years ago that Mr. Henry Villard received $8,000,000 to be used for some purpose absolutely unknown to those who subscribed the funds. This was the celebrated " blind pool," and the money was spent in the purchase of Northern Pacific Railroad shares. It is true that in this instance the subscribers knew the man to whom they were intrusting their money. The public funds, the shares of commercial and manufacturing companies, however, afforded a comparatively limited amount of material for speculative manipulation, and stock speculation never reached its full development until the era of railway building was inaugurated in the earlier half of the present century. These enterprises were pressed in England, and a few years later here, with a vigor altogether unex- ampled in the history of any other class of undertakings, and the vast sum of money ex- pended in their construction and represented by stocks distributed among the public was some- thing almost fabulous. It may be remarked in passing, however, that the gambling spirit of the people always con- SPECULATION: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. oSl trived to find expression even before the time of joint stock companies, and led to quite as serious panic and loss and consequent suffering as our more modern crashes. Everybody has read of the famous tulip mania which broke out in Hol- land in 1634. For more than a generation the people of that country had been cultivating the tulip. It was the " fad " of the time. Men prided themselves more upon their acquaintance with the names and characteristics of different varieties of tulip than the modern connoisseur of paintings does upon his knowledge of great masterpieces of art. Higher and higher prices were paid for rare specimens. Men devoted their lives to the propagation of the plants, and spent years in experimenting so as to artificially pro- duce some new tint or form in the flower, and the prices they brought were quite as high as those paid now-a-days by some of our millionaires for rare orchids. Just as our rich financiers of to-day have men ransacking the forests of South America for curious specimens of that plant to adorn their conservatories, so the wealthy Dutch- men had lynx-eyed agents scouring the country to find a rare tulip. Finally the whole country went crazy on the subject. Professors abandoned their chairs, tradesmen left their shops, and merchants turned their backs on their counting- rooms to engage in buying and selling tulips. Serious and apparently thoughtful men of the 382 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. day predicted that Holland was going to get richer by the export of tulip bulbs than by the commerce which she had so laboriously built up. Thousands of dollars would be paid for a single small bulb, and the plants passed from hand to hand at constantly increasing prices, very much as a share in one of the bubble companies sub- sequently passed in England, and for all practical purposes it was quite as valuable. When the craze was over, the crash that ensued scattered ruin around quite as serious and lasting as that which followed any of the stock speculative panics which have occurred in recent years. In this country speculation was confined to stock representing the government debt until its extinction in 1835, when the coincident creation of a mass of railway securities gave a new stimu- lus to the business. The rapid extension of the system, opening up new territory and developing unthought-of wealth, gave ample scope to the enterprise and speculative faculty of the people and called into existence " kings of the street," men fitted by temperament, boldness, and, it must be admitted, unscrupulousness too, to take the lead of their fellows in the manipulation of the stock market. Daniel Drew's celebrated coup in escaping from the clique who had him apparently cornered in Erie stock twenty years ago, is often cited as an illustration of his tre- mendous shrewdness and acuteness, but Jacob SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. '>83 Little had done precisely the same thing in that stock, we are told, in 1834. He had gone heavily short of Erie sold the shares in the expectation of buying them back at a lower price for deliv- ery. His opponents on the Exchange had been quietly buying up the shares until they fancied they had secured nearly all of them and that Mr. Little would consequently be unable to deliver the shares which he had agreed to sell them and that they could then force him to settle on their own terms. But Little secured a quantity of Erie bonds which were convertible into shares a fact which his opponents either did not know or had overlooked and turned them into shares which he had proceeded to deliver in fulfilment of his contracts. After all, it would seem that there are com- paratively few new tricks evolved by the schem- ers of to-day. " It is a complete system of knavery," said an English writer in 1701, " founded in fraud, born of deceit, and nourished by trick, cheat, wheedle, forgeries, falsehoods and all sorts of delusions, coining false news, whispering imaginary terrors, and preying upon those they have elevated or depressed." It was the war with the South, however, with its frightfully inflated and depreciated currency, its alternations of hope and fear, according as the Federal armies were successful or were defeated, that brought speculation in Wall street to its 384 PUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. fullest development. It was the recklessness in money matters and the comparative lawlessness that prevailed for a time which made possible the almost incredible and disgraceful projects of such men as Drew and Jay Gould, and his partner, Jim Fisk. It was the premium on gold, caused by the war, which made possible the famous gold conspiracy of the last-named two, by which was precipitated the awful panic of Black Friday, which drove men to insanity and suicide and their families to beggary and shame. The career of Gould and Fisk in taking possession of the Brie Railway, entrenching themselves in a white marble palace in New York and sallying out thence to despoil the public, much as free- booters of the middle ages would dash from their strongholds upon unsuspecting travellers, has been graphically described b}^ Mr. Charles Francis Adams in his " Chapters of Erie." He says : " Pirates are commonly supposed to have been battered and hanged out of existence when the Barbary powers and the buccaneers of the Span- ish main had been finally dealt with. Yet free- booters are not extinct ; they have only trans- ferred their operations to the land, and conduct them in more or less accordance with the forms of law ; until at last so great a proficiency have they attained that the commerce of the world is more equally but far more heavily taxed in their behalf than would ever have entered into their SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 385 wildest hopes while, outside the law, the}' simply made all comers stand and deliver. Now, too, they no longer live in terror of the rope, skulk- ing in the hiding-place of thieves, but flaunt themselves in the resorts of trade and fashion, and, disdaining such titles as once satisfied An- cient Pistol or Captain Macheath, they are even recognized as President This or Colonel That. . . . " No better illustration of the fantastic dis- guises, which the worst and most familiar evils of history assume as they meet us in the actual movements of our own day, could be afforded than was seen in the events attending what are known as the Erie wars of the year 1868. Be- ginning in February and lasting until December, raging fiercely in the late winter and spring and dying away into a hollow truce at midsummer, only to revive into new and more vigorous life in the autumn, this strange conflict convulsed the money market, occupied the courts, agitated leg- islatures and perplexed the country throughout the entire year. These, too, were but its more direct and immediate manifestations. The re- mote political complications and financial dis- turbances occasioned by it would offer a curious illustration of the close intertwining of interests which now extends throughout the civilized world. The complete history of .these proceed- ings cannot be written, for the end is not yet ; indeed, such a history probably never will be 25 386 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. written, and yet it is still more probable that the events it would record can never be quite forgot- ten. It was something new to see a knot of ad- venturers, men of broken fortune and without credit, possess themselves of an artery of com- merce more important than was ever the Appian Way, and make levies not only upon it for their own emolument, but through it upon the whole business of a nation. Nor could it fail to be seen that this was by no means in itself an end, but rather only a beginning." Mr. Adams' prophecy has been amply fulfilled. Not only has the success which attended the high-handed rascality with which the Erie Rail- way was plundered incited no end of equally un- scrupulous, if less able, men to swindle the peo- ple and corrupt their legislators, but Gould himself, encouraged by his triumph, and aided by the millions which he obtained, continued in an unparalleled career of speculative trickery and oppression. Probably his example has done more to debauch American youth and blunt the sense of commercial honor than any other hun- dred influences. To the minds of many people his career seems to disprove the maxim that " Honesty is the best policy." It is a mistake, however, to speak of Gould as a stock speculator, or even as a stock manipulator. He has from time to time been obliged to manipulate the stock markets to accomplish some purpose of his own, SPECULATION: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. :>S7 but it is not as a manipulator of the market that his millions have been accumulated. And when he has gone into a purely manipulative campaign, those who know him best say that he has quite as often lost as won. It is as a manufacturer of stocks and bonds that Gould's millions have been accumulated. When in control of the Erie company, he and Fisk kept a press at work printing new stock certificates, and sat up o' nights signing them until he had almost contracted scrivener's palsy. They nearly doubled the capital stock in the first year after they got control of the road. True, when the English shareholders, with the aid of a corps of lawyers and most of the ex-generals of the army, succeeded in dislodging him from the Erie concern, they brought him into court, and, in settlement, he made an alleged restitution of some nine million dollars of securities. These, however, were, for the most part, of only nominal value. The cash which he had secured he never gave up. His next largest coup in bankrupting the Kansas Pacific road, picking up its stocks and bonds for a song and then saddling them upon the Union Pacific Company at par was quite in the line of his Erie experience. Again, in the Wabash Company he created millions of new securities, which were taken at high prices not only by investors in this coun- try but such a short memory has the public 388 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. in England also. The subsequent discovery of the worthlessness of their shares and the frantic denunciations of shareholders and bondholders on both sides of the Atlantic are still ringing in the air. His latest exploit has been in Missouri Pacific on the shares of which, until recently, dividends of seven per cent, were paid, and he claimed that the road was earning fourteen per cent. But suddenly it appears that the road is scarcely earning four per cent., and the shares go tumbling from away above par down to low in the sixties. There is scarcely an instance, except that of the late Charles F. Woerishofer, of a man who has retired from Wall street with a vast fortune as the result of a purely speculative career. The brokers who do a strictly commission business and take no risks get rich ; the fellows who, like Gould, buy some little railroad, load it up with new stocks and bonds, and proceed to work these off upon an unsuspecting public by paying divi- dends which were never earned, are apt to get rich ; and so too are the men who project new enterprises and promote them until they have sold out the securities ; but the men who have been speculators pure and simple, however clever and however unscrupulous in the methods they adopted to work the market, have usually gone broke. Even old uncle Daniel Drew, preter- naturally cunning as he was, was beggared at SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 389 the game. Heury N. Smith a few years ago became bankrupt and carrie'd down to ruin his brokers. Keene's downfall has already been referred to. In short, one cannot recall a single instance of a boua fide speculator who has re- tired with a million. Even Woerishofer was a very heavy loser in the last years of his life, and but for his sudden death might possibly have been added to the list of derelicts. Addison J. Cammack, the great "bear " of the street, is not, as the public generally supposes, a stock operator simply. It is not generally known even in Wall street; but it is a fact, nevertheless that Mr. Camrnack does, perhaps, the largest commission business of any indi- vidual on 'change, although he never puts his foot within the door of the Stock Exchange. His membership in the Exchange entitles him to have commissions executed by brokers for one-sixth of the sum paid by an outsider, and he often receives very heavy orders for the pur- chase or sale of a given stock from Gould or other powerful men who want to hide their hands, and who tell Mr. Cammack to buy or sell so many thousand shares of a certain issue. He distributes the orders to various brokers, and, should any of them be traced back to him, they are set down by the street to some speculative operation of his own. As he has a reputation of being always a bear, and of always selling 390 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. stocks short for a fall, the sale of a stock by him does not produce such uneasiness nor such a depreciation in price as would occur if it were known that the shares he was selling were long stock from the strong box of some big holder. Cammack is almost the only Wall street man left whose name is familiar all over the country. We have named above several of those who have gone broke within a comparatively few years, and the other members of the group of wealthy and powerful Wall street operators of a few years ago are dead. No new leaders have risen to take their places, and the transactions on the New York Stock Exchange, therefore, approach more nearly to a natural basis than ever before in its history. The tricks and traps of these great speculators of the past the swindles of Gould and his imitators by which so many thousands have been injured or ruined the dishonesty of railway directors who used the information ob- tained in their official positions to advance speculative movements of their own in the stock market and rob the unsuspecting investor and the outside speculator have either frightened or disgusted the general public so that it is loth to trade in stocks, and it looks as if Wall street is waiting for a new generation of lambs to rise before it will resume its old-time activity, if it ever shall. The great mass of the trading in Wall street of the past few years has been in SPECULATION : PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 391 bonds rather than in stocks, and in good truth the supply of these appears of itself to be quite ample to supply all the public needs. The introduction upon the Stock Exchange within the past few months of the shares of manufacturing concerns like those of electric light companies, cotton-seed oil manufacturing concerns, the gas companies, the sugar trust cer- tificates, the shares of the white lead trust and similar concerns, seems to indicate that the de- velopment of speculative activity in the future will be along these lines rather than in securi- ties of railways, for our railway system has now entered upon a period of reconstruction and regu- lation which will largely prevent the wild fluctua- tions which afforded boundless opportunities to speculators in the past. CHAPTER XXV. BANKS AND BANKING. WE are told by an old chronicler of the quaint and curious that in ancient times a number of Hebrews scattered in the cities along the shores of the Mediterranean conducted a most profitable banking business without the use of capital, by drawing one upon the other, in a perfect circle, the draft upon one being taken up by the next banker in the series, and so on ad infinitum. Perhaps it will not do to scrutinize this story too closely, but there are many instances of almost as odd and ingenious devices in the his- tory of banking. It was not until within a com- paratively recent period that banks began to issue circulating notes. The early bankers were for the most part merely lenders of money, and this species of banker was called into existence very early in the world's history. In fact, he was the natural result of the invention of money. "A simple invention," says Carlyle, "it was in the Old World grazier, sick of lugging his ox about the county until he cotild get it bartered for corn or oil, to take a piece of leather and (392) BANKS AND BANKING. 393 thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure of an ox (peats), put it in his pocket and call it pe- cunia, money. Yet hereby did barter grow sale ; the leather money is now golden and paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled ; for there are Rothschilds and English national debts ; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign to the length of sixpence over all men ; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him to the length of sixpence." It has been claimed on behalf of the bankers' craft that they date back to Abraham, because it is recorded that he weighed out four hundred shekels of silver as the purchase-money for the cave and field of Macpelah wherein to bury Sarah. But this is rather far-fetched. Livy, however, writes of the tables of the money-changers in the Roman forum existing 300 years before Christ, and later Latin writers refer to deposits, checks and drafts, with all the familiarity of a financier of the present day, as if they were in general use. In these days, when the capitalists of the world are puzzled to invest their money safely to yield them three per cent., it is refresh- ing to remember that the old Greek bankers or money-lenders exacted as much as thirty-six per cent, a year from the spendthrift youths or em- barrassed merchants of that day. Aristophanes, in one of his comedies, makes a money-lender bitterly bewail the fact that he has only been 394 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. able to get four per cent, on his loan. The Greek bankers used the temples as safe-deposit vaults for the storage of their treasures, and seem to have taken the priests into a sort of partnership. Something of the same sort prob- ably prevailed among the Jews, and it is not diffi- cult to believe that they were usurious, for the Saviour, when He overturned their tables in the temple, called them thieves " My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." During succeeding ages, however, the meth- ods of banking seem to have been lost until re- discovered and re-established by the Jews. A bank was established at Venice in the latter part of the twelfth century, another at Genoa in 1345, and they came into existence in several of the Dutch cities early in the seventeenth century. All of these were, in a sense, state banks, lending money to the state, and exercising their func- tions under its authority and protection. The Jews, and the Lombards, who had been taught in their schools, were almost the only money-lenders of Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth cen- tury. The first money-lender in England who at all approaches our modern idea of a banker was William de la Pole, a shipping-merchant of Hull, who loaned Edward the Third large sums to carry on his French wars, and in return the king BANKS AND BANKING. made over to him the collection of customs and internal revenues. He collected the royal rents and acted as paymaster of the army, and in a general way became the royal banker. Naturally a title was conferred upon him. The prefix of "Sir" was subsequently given to Dick Whittington, of cat celebrity, for similar ser- vices to Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth. The goldsmiths in those times acted as money- lenders and pawnbrokers. After Charles the First grabbed about a million dollars, which they had deposited in the mint for safe-keeping, the nobles began to deposit their money with the gold- smiths, who allowed them interest thereon, and from having the custody of their rents and their income it was a natural step for them to request the goldsmiths to collect the money. The gold- smiths gave written evidences of indebtedness for the sums intrusted to them, and these were often transmitted by the holders in settlement of debt. When one of these goldsmiths speculated unfortunately or his business went wrong, his depositors naturally had to suffer. Losses of this kind paved the way for the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694. It was planned by a Scotchman named William Patterson, who, however, derived many of his ideas from the Bank of Amsterdam, which was then in successful operation. In return for a loan of twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling 396 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. to the government the lenders, who organized the bank, were granted certain exclusive priv- ileges, and their concern became the depository of the government money and has remained such ever since. It has now the accounts of many thousand private depositors, pays the interest on the government debt, issues circulating notes, and to a certain extent controls the rate of in- terest on money in England. As to the establishment of banking, Congress- man Ben Butterworth, of Ohio, says : " In the forces of civilization we find the banker in the forefront. It was a banker that first taught the world the maxim of an honest commerce. It was the Bank of Venice that was the first to arbitrate commerce and control the seas ; it was a banker that first taught a nation that the pub- lic fidelity was the right basis of all successful effort in the business world. For six hundred years Venice maintained unstained her honor, elevating the civilization of the world. In course of time she was succeeded by Amsterdam and Antwerp, their bankers honoring every check and paying every piece of paper, teaching the world that there was a giant in trade and com- merce capable of strangling a nation. The bankers thus brought the world together, made the nations of the earth one man, one common- wealth." Savings banks originated in Switzerland, and RANKS AND BANKING. 397 were instituted mainly for the benefit of the poor. They were organized by benevolent per- sons, who received no salaries for their services, and no capital was required. The purpose was rather to induce working-people to save from their earnings something for a rainy day or to provide for their old age, and consequently but little effort at first was made to secure large earn- ings on the deposits. The first we can learn of in Switzerland was established in 1805. A dozen years later they were organized in Scotland and England, and shortly after in France. In this country the first was organized in Boston in 1816, and within a few years they were to be found in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and their success in these centres soon led to their establishment in all the large towns throughout the country. They were chartered by the States, and were held by the State authorities to account for their honest and pru- dent management. Naturally the ideas of legis- lators in the various States differed somewhat as to the nature and functions of the banks, and hence there was a difference in their organization at the beginning, which subsequent legislation has made still more marked. There are now in existence three different classes of savings banks : the first is of the primitive type, instituted with- out capital ; the second are joint-stock concerns, and the third are of the trust-company type, and 398 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. transact a banking business aside from the mere receipt and investment of deposits. As population increased and the banks multi- plied in number, and the desirability of estab- lishing these banks became more general, they were no longer required to have a special charter in each instance, but were permitted to organize under general laws. The deposits in these now amount to a thousand million dollars, and the number of depositors in the Northern and Middle States is about three millions. Objection has been raised in some quarters to the joint-stock type of savings bank, on the ground that its deposits must be loaned profitably for the pay- ment of dividends, and that consequently greater risks are incurred. This risk is still greater where savings banks are permitted to do a com- mercial business, as the paper which they dis- count may prove inconvertible in a time of commercial depression or in a panic. In some of the States the depositors are given the prefer- ence in such circumstances. Mr. T. H. Hinchman, a prominent banker of Detroit, says : u The change from the purpose and policy of original savings institutions has been progressive, but of questionable character. It was not the acquirement of experience or the result of greater wisdom, but of enterprise by those in pursuit of greater profit. Different aims and objects should be under distinct, separate, BANKS AND BANKING. 399 and appropriate laws. Benevolent institutions require different men and other management than those conducted on a commercial basis for profit." He argues that there should be separate enactments for savings institutions and for trust companies, and indeed a wise distinction is made by the laws of most of the older States. These undoubtedly prove advantageous to all banks and bankers, as they simplify and increase their business. Officers of banks doing a mixed busi- ness are thereby relieved from error, responsi- bilities, risks, and cares, and savings depositors escape commercial hazard, and are free from risks caused by mismanagement of persons who advertise as savings banks. Those who remember the frightful confusion that prevailed before the establishment of the Na- tional Banking system, when the notes of the old State banks constituted a considerable portion of the circulating medium, are among the most ardent admirers of the present system, at least so far as its method for the issue and guarantee of notes is concerned. In those days the laborer often went to his home on Saturday night carrying the wages of his week's labor in the shape of notes issued by banks in half a dozen different States, and when his thrifty wife went out to ex- pend them in purchase of the necessaries of life for her family she would be distressed to find that for some she could get but ninety cents on 400 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the dollar, for others eighty cents, and that still others were of too questionable a character to be accepted by the shopkeepers at all. The farmer often received for the fruits of his toil notes of which he could know nothing, and which would be subsequently declared by experts to be worthless because the bank which had issued them was in liquidation, and it was not at all uncommon to find a forged note or two among them, for in the myriad issues of bills of every conceivable design and character of engraving the forger had an easy task. The present National Banking system probably never could have been called into existence ex- cept for the difficulties in which the government was involved by the war with the South, for a scheme overthrowing, as it did, so many other systems organized by the authority of States would have met with an irresistible storm of op- position. As it was, the act authorizing it was fought not only by the opponents of the adminis- tration then in power, but by men like Roscoe Conkling, of New York, and Senator Collamer, of Vermont. Mr. Logan C. Murray, President of the United States National Bank of New York city, thus speaks of the National Banking system : " In 1863 the government of the United States, irrespective of State lines, took hold of the bank question and made it a national one, inaugurat- BANKS AND BANKING. 401 ing a state of perfection which I believe is un- paralleled in the history of finance among the nations of the world. ' This child of the war between the States, born in the very travail of the soul of the nation, is to-day full-grown, of five and twenty years, comely, substantial, and has not been disappoint- ing. Hard money was scarce in 1861. There had been built upon this limited supply, through the channels of credit, a massive structure ; sud- denly, as the storm arose, the sky became dark and the curtains of night were let down around State boundaries ; with these parcels of credit, known as State currency, far from home, with no foster parent hand near by to protect it, inter- course cut off, we found ourselves depending upon a broken staff which was as chaff in the mighty storm, commercial ruin on every hand, and our shores strewn with the wrecks of a dis- membered, useless and faithless medium. ; ' We found the Secretary of the Treasury knocking at the doors of our strongest moneyed institutions, asking from them aid in his great dis- tress, appealing to the wisdom, courage, patriot- ism and resources of an almost forlorn hope. How nobly he was met is a matter of history. " Not, however, until 1863, or two years after- wards, did the National Bank system have its birth born of despair, of want, blood-bought, yea, in the very darkness of that midnight storm. 26 402 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURK. Yet it is but the survival of the fittest. Aud now let us sees after the uses which have been made of the system, and after the unparalleled prosper- ity which has come to us as a nation under its influence, if the parent of all this prosperity, to a greater or less degree, is to breathe its last if its strong arm is to be stilled, and if we are to look for something better. Shall we wonder that men are bewildered when we look into the future and ask what is to supply the vacuum caused by the decay of the National Banking system ? I for one answer : " Do not fear, the National Banking system is not going to be destroyed. In the fulness of time it will be yet better established. " Let us divide the system into two parts, as it were, and treat them as they may be. First, there is the Treasury of the United States, the Secretary charged with certain duties, the Comp- troller of the Currency, the executive officer with each of the four thousand National Banks in every section of the land reporting to him, respon- sible to him, and he to the country at large- -and by far his greatest responsibility is the care, faithful preservation and safe return to the de- positors of the great mass of the deposits of the people made with these institutions. This is one part, and the great part of the system the care of the deposits of the people and the careful and safe loaning of these deposits to the commercial BANKS AND BANKING. 403 and manufacturing community by each institu- tion, all under its general supervision. " Now we come to the next part of the business of the system, and that is issuing note circula- tion. Does it occur to you how small a propor- tion of the circulation of the United States to-day the National Bank circulation is ? Let us say it is about one-fifth part. Now let us assume that this shall gradually be cut off, as undesirable as that is ; it is gradually declining, while other mediums of circulation are advancing in volume. We must remember that money, actual money, is about four per cent, only of all commercial transaction ; credit, and credit alone, supplies the other ninety-six per cent. " I do not think any National Bank or any other bank should emit any note or bill, for cir- culation without it is secured. Is it not true that there are very many National Banks in the United States to-day which do not issue circula- tion, even though banks of a capital of $150,000 and above are required to lodge but $50,000 of bonds with the Treasury, and some of these do not take out circulation on those bonds whereas a small bank in Dakota is required to lodge one- fourth part of its capital, say if it is $50,000, it is required to lodge $12,500 of bonds with the Treasury, whether it takes out circulation or not ? Why is it so ? If they issue no circulation, then no bonds should be required. If large banks to- 404 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. day are not issuing circulation on the small amount of bonds required, say $50,000, even though its capital be $5,000,000 (as is the case), then why require one-fourth part of the capital of a small bank to be invested in high-priced bonds before beginning business ? " Therefore, repeal that part of the National Bank act which requires a deposit of United States bonds from a bank which is to receive no circulation. If a bank choose to lodge bonds, then give it the privilege of issuing circulation on them, as of old." The reduction, and now the current purchase, of government bonds, which serve as a basis of circulation for National Bank notes, have driven the bonds to such a high premium that the banks some years ago began to surrender their circula- tion at such a rate as to seriously contract the currency and excite apprehension as to the result. But for the issue of silver certificates, which have largely taken their place, a crisis would, in the opinion of many financiers, have been reached long ago. The profit on circulation was so se- riously reduced by the high price of the bonds, on which it is based, that a number of banks in New York city and elsewhere surrendered their char- ters as National Banks and organized under the law as State institutions. They were largely im- pelled to do this by a desire to escape the restric- tions imposed by the National Banking laws and BANKS AND BANKING. 405 the scrutiny of the Comptroller of the Currency and the officials of his department. The passage of the law forbidding over-certification compelled a number of them to take this course. In Au- gust, 1883, the Wall Street National Bank was forced to suspend. An examination by the gov- ernment officials showed that it had certified checks of a firm $200,000 in excess of their bal- ance in cash and that this was the principal cause of the bank's failure. The cashier was in- dicted, but the bank was wound up, went out of existence, and the intention of making a terrible example of the delinquent official, who, however, acted with the approval of the president and di- rectors, appears to have been abandoned. Touching the opposition shown in Congress and elsewhere to National Banking systems, ex- United States Comptroller of the Currency John Jay Knox says : ' The system has been of immense benefit to the government in its disbursements and in funding temporary loans and also in the refund- ing of its debt which, but twenty-eight years ago, amounted to $2,845,000,000. The National Banking system rendered more valuable service to the government than any other human agency in the resumption of specie payments. The National Banks held on the day of resumption (January i, 1879) 125,000,000 of United States demand circulating notes. Sixty-two National 406 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and State banks in the Clearing House of New York unanimously voted to receive the legal tender notes upon an equality with gold, and on the day of resumption the banks of that city, which held $40,000,000 of legal tender notes, did not present a dollar then, or subsequently to this day, for payment in coin. As at the commence- ment of the war the banks parted with their gold for the benefit of the government, so at its close and upon the resumption of specie pay- ments they relinquished the right of again de- manding it, and were well satisfied to receive in- stead the demand notes of the government, which are redeemable in coin upon presenta- tion. Yet, notwithstanding these important ser- vices, the legislative department of the govern- ment has never been strong in its friendship for this system. The statutes of the government contain very much restrictive and very little friendly legislation toward the institutions which were created by its fiat. A few years ago, when the charters of most of the banks were expiring, it was only after a long contest that an act was passed authorizing a renewal of their privileges. If at any time favorable legislation has been granted by Congress, it has been given ' grudg- ingly ' and not as a ' cheerful giver.* " We have heard much of the surplus and the necessity of the reduction of the revenue. Both parties profess to be in favor of such reduction. BANKS AND BANKING. 407 Both parties have proposed to reduce the tax on the ' filthy weed,' and both parties proposed legis- lation granting relief to the whiskey manufact- urer and the whiskey drinker; but not one officer of the government, nor one man of either House, has had sufficient courage to propose the lessen- ing or the repeal of the tax on the circulation of the banks, which now amounts to less than $1,700,000 and which is. the last of the remain- ing l war taxes,' except the tax upon the two deleterious articles referred to, which are con- sidered by the leading civilized nations as the most fit subjects for ' high taxation.' " Yet no class of corporations since the organi- zation of the government have contributed so largely toward the support of the State and the nation, and no class of corporations have ever been so unmercifully taxed as the banking in- stitutions of this country. Not only have Con- gress and the different State Legislatures im- posed high rates of taxation, but the courts of the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States, composed as it is of able jurists who should be devoid of all prejudice, have con- strued the questions which have been brought before them with rigor worthy of the bitterest enemy of the system. While other corporations engaged in precisely the same line of business are authorized to do business almost without legislative restrictions and without taxation, the 408 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURK. very highest rates that can be imposed are placed upon these institutions, whose only source of profit is the loaning of money at the rates of in- terest fixed by the same high authority which imposes the taxation. Yet, notwithstanding the opposition of Congress and the unfriendly deci- sions of the courts and the bitter enemity of in- dividuals, the system has steadily and rapidly grown in favor, until the institutions organized under it from the beginning number nearly four thousand, some of which are located in every State and Territory as well as in every consider- able village in the land." As the steady reduction of the national debt proceeds, students of financial questions are cast- ing about for some substitute for the present out- standing circulation, which has now dwindled to about $150,000,000. Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, the well-known statistician and economist, presents this novel suggestion : " Will any Congress dare to reduce the revenue to such an extent as to leave any considerable amount of debt unpaid at the end of the present century, whether it be bonded debt or demand debt represented by legal tender notes ? I sub- mit these as the possible conditions which may make it an absolute necessity for the people of this country to invent a new instrument of ex- change, to take the place of the legal tender notes and of the bank notes secured by United States BANKS AND BANKING. -509 bonds, unless the whole circulating medium is to consist either of bullion, or of certificates of the government backed by bullion, dollar for dollar. The tendency of events is to cause the withdrawal from circulation of uncovered paper, to wit: National Bank notes and legal tender notes, leaving only in circulation certificates of deposits of gold or silver, backed dollar for dol- lar by actual coin, and also gold and silver coin in specie. " No position could be stronger than this ; but the difficulty will arise in the fact that even were the annual revenues and expenditures of the government equalized, the working of the Sub- Treasury Act in dealing with such large sums as now constitute the financial transactions of the government might seriously interfere with the money market at times. Under present con- ditions it is becoming apparent that it is impos- sible for the government to adjust its transactions to the ordinary conditions of the money market ; it is also impossible for the government to perform the functions of a bank of issue ; the tension is now very great, and the conditions cannot pos- sibly be continued for any length of time. The issue of certificates of deposit of gold or silver would not meet the varying conditions of sup- ply and demand for instruments of exchange or circulating notes, and there will soon be no government bonds available as securities for HO OUB COfXTRY'S FUTUKK. bank notes. There is a volume of other securities in existence Railroad, State and City bonds which would form an absolute security for a circu- lating medium covered in part only by a reserve of actual coin. Can the arrangements be made and the authority established for a selection among these securities of those which ought to be made available to secure the notes which might serve as instruments of exchange ? Can a central bureau, bank or other form of adminis- tration be established by a permissive act, with branches in different parts of the country, to supply an elastic, safe and suitable paper currency convertible into coin on demand, on a separate foundation and under a separate administration from that under which banks of deposit and dis- count may continue to be organized ? " The New York banks are naturally the richest and most powerful in the country, and New York, no doubt, always will be the monetary centre of this country. But her absolute domi- nancy of the rest of the country, which she held for so many years, is passing away. The severest blow to New York's banking supremacy perhaps was the passage of the law permitting the impor- tation of foreign goods in bond direct to interior points. Formerly the grain from western fields was consigned to New York, and the contract for its shipment abroad made there. The New York banks were drawn upon for funds, and earned a BANKS AND BANKING. 411 commission upon every bushel of wheat that went out through the Narrows. In like manner, all goods brought from abroad found a resting-place there, and the duties were paid in New York, and it was New York capital which forwarded them to their destination. But all that has been changed. The merchant in Chicago or St. Louis now buys his goods in Manchester or Paris and consigns them direct to his own city. The West reaches out over New York's head and helps herself to whatever she wants in the Old World. So, too, with what she has to sell in Europe. A single rate is made from the western prairie to the dock at Liverpool. Wheat is rushed through without the inter- vention of any New York factor. As new towns and cities have sprung up in the interior, and new manufacturing centres have been established, and the mineral wealth of the country has been developed, the West has grown rich, and many of the banks in the interior now carry lines of deposit which would have seemed very large to the most important institutions in the East a few years ago. The increase in the number of " re- serve cities " made by act of Congress two years ago was regarded at the time as destined to increase the amount of funds in the western banks at the expense of those on the coast. Up to that time there were but sixteen " reserve cities " in the United States. Each of these was 412 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. required to keep on hand at all times, in loanable money, twenty-five per cent, of its deposits, while every bank outside of these cities was required to keep but fifteen per cent, of its deposits on hand. Any of these fifteen per cent, banks were permitted to keep three-fifths of this fifteen per cent, in the banks of any of the sixteen cities referred to, and any bank located in the reserve cities might keep, if it wished to do so, one-half of its loanable money reserved in the city of New York. The theory was that New York was the monetary centre of the country, and the other fifteen cities were the respective centres of the sections in which they were located. The law, moreover, made provision for counting, as a part of the required reserve, a portion of the balance which it was supposed the conditions of trade would require them to keep at the local centres, and at the general centre. The new law of 1887 added a number of other cities to the list, with regard to reserves which New York had held up to that time. The amendment, however, left money free to seek its natural channels and reservoirs, assuming that the drift of the current had changed since the passage of the original act. But experience since has shown that trade requirements bring a large proportion of the reserves to New York, and so the new legislation has wrought compara- tively little change. The tendency to withdraw BANKS AND BANKING. 41o funds from New York under the amended law has been checked by the fact that as soon as any city takes on its new dignity of a central reserve point, it can no longer keep a portion of its re- serve in New York, but must keep its full twenty- five per cent, reserve in its own vaults idle. Chicago and St. Louis have become full central reserve cities like New York, and, as higher in- terest rates rule in these cities than in New York, it is natural that many accounts should be transferred from the latter city ; and this has happened, as is demonstrated by Chicago bank returns. The drift of currency from New York last fall for the purpose of moving the crops, demonstrates that, while the western banks hold more money for current wants, New York must still be drawn upon for the large sums needed to move grain and cotton harvests. The frequency of paragraphs in the daily papers announcing the departure of another cashier for Canada demonstrates that there is something loose in the methods of banking insti- tutions. The president of the bank does not give sufficient attention to the actual transaction of business. He is usually too familiar and easy- going with his cashier and other important offi-* cials. It is seldom that he emerges from his parlor to go behind the counter and see what is actually going on. As for the so-called examina- tions made from time to- time by directors, they 414 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. are in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred simply farcical. The president of the bank tells the cashier some fine morning : " Get things straightened up now, Jimmy, the directors are coming to-morrow, and we want everything in good shape." The advent of the directors being thus heralded, everything presents a fair ap- pearance on the occasion of their visit. They chat and chaff each other, glance casually over the statements presented by the president, and then adjourn to indulge in a luxurious luncheon on the floor above. So ends their examination. It is because cashiers are relieved from all practical surveillance that so many of them are led to ultimately test the climate of Canada. A broker, speaking to the cashier some fine morn- ing, says : " By the way, Jones, Brie is going to have a big rise ; you'd better buy yourself a cou- ple of hundred." " Oh, I never speculate," says Jones; "haven't got the money to do it with." " That's all right," says the broker, " I'll buy a couple of hundred for you, and if there's any loss you can make it good ; but I'm sure you'll make money on it." Possibly the cashier ac- cedes to this proposition, but mbre frequently, if he be a cautious and circumspect man, he uses the broker's point in a different way. He has possibly seen the broker grow rich within a few years and envies him. Here is a tempting op- portunity to make a handsome turn, for his sal- BANKS AND BANKING. 415 ary is comparatively small, and he could put a few thousand dollars to exceedingly good use. It may be, then, that he borrows from a friend, or draws upon his own savings for money which he secretly deposits as margin with some stock firm and buys two hundred Erie. It goes down. His margin is exhausted. The brokers tell him it will probably decline very little more. But they want more margin. Right under his hands are big fat packages of bills of large denomina- tions. What shall he do ? If his brokers sell him out, the savings of years are gone in the twinkling of an eye. If he is a weak man, he argues, " Why not take a thousand dollar bill out of this package marked $50,000 ? It would never be missed." Erie is sure to go up to-morrow, when he can withdraw the amount from his brokers and put it back in the bundle. He will be saved from every loss and nobody the worse for it. Unfortunately, things do not turn out that way. Erie goes lower. The thousand dol- lars is gone. What shall he do ? His theft, for such it now plainly has become, will probably not be discovered for some time. What shall he do? Speculate in some other stock and try to make up the loss. And he does it. It is useless to pursue the theme any further. Grown more desperate from day to day, he plunges ; his losses become too large to be longer concealed, and one day, fearing exposure, he takes to flight, possibly 416 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. carrying off additional funds of the bank. It may be that the first money he took was not to speculate with but to pay some household bill. But it leads to the same result in the end. Now, if the president were in the habit of casually dropping around to the cashier's desk and looking over his cash, the initial step in this march to ruin would be prevented. Suppose the president picks up hap-hazard any one of the many packages of bills and counts them over to see that they tally with the total marked on the wrapper. The knowledge that he is liable to do that at any time will deter the cashier from abstracting that first bill, and he is saved from the subsequent crime and disgrace. Unfortunately, dishonesty in banks is not con- fined to cashiers. Many a bank director amasses large sums by means which are quite as dis- graceful as embezzlements, although they are not so harshly punished. Mr. Moneybags, for instance, is a director in several large banking institutions. He is also in all probability a very heavy speculator in the stocks of railroads in which he has inside information. As director of bank No. i he sees that a certain man has pledged a block of the stock of a certain corpora- tion as collateral security for a heavy loan. As director in bank No. 2 he perhaps learns that the same man is borrowing largely from that institu- tion and on another block of the same stock. It BANKS AND BANKING. 417 is clear that the speculator in question is very heavily loaded probably carrying more of that stock than is prudent. Anything which would seriously depreciate the market value of that stock would probably force him to throw over- board a considerable portion of his holdings. The director of easy conscience quietly puts out a line of shorts in the stock in question at the ruling high prices. At the next directors' meet- ing of bank No. i he tells his fellow-directors that he hears rumors affecting Mr. Speculator's credit, that he is overloaded with the stock of the road in question, and suggests to the president that it would be prudent to invite Mr. Speculator to return the money he had borrowed and take away his stocks. Possibly he causes similar ac- tion to be taken by the other bank of which he is a director. Mr. Speculator, so unexpectedly called upon to return very large sums of money, is embarrassed. He is obliged to go into the market and sell a large amount of the stock in question. The price falls sharply in consequence and the director covers his shorts at a handsome profit. It is doubtless true that a majority of bank directors are above this sort of thing ; but there are bank directors, and not a few of them either, who contrive to turn their official positions to their personal profit. 27 CHAPTER XXVI. OUR CITIES. A GREAT city is a great sore a sore which never can be cured. The greater the city, the greater the sore. It necessarily follows that New York, being the greatest city in the Union, is the vilest sore on our body politic. If any one doubts it, let him live in New York awhile and keep his eyes and ears open. The trouble about great cities is not that they have any impetus or influence especially their own, but that every one, from the vilest all the way up to the best, is compelled by circum- stances of city life to often conduct his own daily- walk and conversation on lines which are not entirely natural, and which never can be made so. It would be useless to deny that in every large city may be found a number of the best men and women that humanity has been able to evolve. In the great cities are found many of our wisest statesmen, our greatest theologians, our best business men, and a host of lesser, but perhaps not less important individuals, whose influence (418) OUR CITIES. 419 for good upon the world is known and recognized everywhere. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the rule. They are not what they are because of the city ; they are in the city simply because it gives them a better centre and starting-place for whatever woik may be incumbent upon them. The first deadening influence of the city is that no one knows any one else. Of course every one has some acquaintances, and some people are said to be in the best society and to know every- body, but " everybody " is a relative term, and it never means as much in the largest city as it does in a village of a thousand people. The postman knows everybody by name, and so does the tax-collector and the man who brings you your gas bill, but individual acquaintance the touch of elbow the touch of nature that makes the world akin, must not be looked for in any large city in the Union, least of all in New York, which in spite of two hundred and fifty years of existence, is still so new comparatively that al- most all of its prominent citizens were born somewhere else. The names of prominent Americans who reside in New York will natu- rally occur to any one, yet it is quite safe to say that not one of these gentlemen know by sight and name, let alone by personal acquaintance, more than one person in five who reside within a two-minute walk of his house. An ex-cabinet officer, a gentleman whose varied 420 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. abilities have made him known throughout the civilized world, was once asked who was his neighbor on the right. The houses of the two men touched each other, as two houses must, in the city of New York, but the wise and largely acquainted gentleman was obliged to say that he did not know. When the questioner informed him that the person occupying the adjoining house was a notorious thief for whom the police had been long in search, he was astonished and shocked. Nevertheless, when he a few months afterward had his house robbed and drove about violently in a cab in search of the police captain of his precinct, it took him an hour to discover that the said police official resided next door to him on the left. Afterward he was teased about his lack of knowledge of his neighbors, and he admitted frankly that, although he was a man without " airs," and had always made it a custom to fraternize freely with his fellow-men, he knew but two individuals who resided on the same block with himself, and one of these was his own grocer, who occupied a store on the corner. " If this is so wjth the green tree, what must it be with the dry ? " Men whose sole business is to earn their daily living are glad to find a de- cent roof over their heads anywhere in a large city and drop into the best place they can find, regardless of who may be their neighbors, and utterly unable to devote any time to their neigh- OUR CITIES. 421 bors, even should they be fortunate enough to become acquainted with them. Neighborhood feeling and sentiment, which is of incalculable benefit in all communities not thickly settled, has no influence whatever in a large city. A man may not only live in a house between two people of whom he knows nothing, but the great value of ground in the city of New York and the limited area has compelled the erection of a number of buildings known as " flat " and "apartment" and "tenement" houses, and very few men know the people who live under the same roof with themselves. An amusing story is told of a couple of editors, who were questioned about each other and each replied that he had not the honor of the other's acquaintance. The answer seemed to puzzle those who heard it, and the subsequent remarks elicited a demand for an explanation, when it was learned that these two men, members of the same profession, and both entirely reputable citizens, had been residing in the same building for six months ; but as one was at home only by day- light, and the other only at night, they had never chanced to meet under their own roof. Of course, if such ignorance may come in the ordinary course of events regarding entirely re- spectable people, cities must form an admirable hiding-place for disreputable and dangerous characters of all sorts. The time was when a 422 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. man detected in crime thought it advisable to run away from a large city. But nowadays he knows better. He stays as near home as possible, know- ing that there are numberless opportunities for keeping himself entirely out of sight and out of mind of every one who ever knew him. De- faulters who have a great deal of mone^ in their pockets, and also those who have none at all, oc- casionally find it desirable to go to Canada or Hurope, but the rogue who has two or three thousand dollars to spare knows perfectly well that by keeping in-doors in New York he can ab- solutely escape detection. The police may know him by sight, but the keepers of boarding-houses do not, neither do their servants ; and so long as he will remain in his room, have .his meals sent to him, and take his exercise and outings only after dark in such disguise as any one can im- provise at very short notice, he is entirely safe from detection. One of the bank defaulters who ranks as one of the most successful in the annals of such crime in the city of New York, was looked for in Canada and all over Europe for eight months, and finally by accident was discovered in a boarding-house only two squares away from his original place of residence. Criminals when not actually plying their vo- cation generally go to large cities, for two rea- sons : first, to spend their ill-gotten gains in pleas- OUR CITIES. 423 ure, and secondly, that as a rule cities are the best hiding-places. For the same reason that causes desperate criminals to hide in the larger cities, all persons who have in their lives any features which they wish to conceal, find the cities preferable places of residence. One man of large property and some national prominence died a few years ago in the city in which he had been doing business for thirty years, and after he died it was discovered that he had nine wives living, from no one of whom had he ever separated through the for- mality of a divorce. Each of these nine women imagined herself his own and only wife. Any man, who has formed an undesirable alliance in business or in love or otherwise, knows that with very little trouble he can hide all traces of his mischief by going to a large city to live. An inevitable consequence is that the number of able but undesirable characters who exist in the cities, having left other places for the good of those who are left behind, have a depressing influence upon the moral atmosphere of other classes of residents. Men meet men whom they never saw before, and whom they are obliged to judge entirely by appearance and professions. It is the same in business as it is in society. Not a year passes in which some adventurer does not impose himself for a time upon the best society of New York and of other cities. And 424 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. although, it would seem that his antecedents might easily be discovered upon the basis of such information as he may feel obliged to give about himself, the fact remains that society is " taken in " quite as often as banks and business men and private individuals. Several years ago a notorious scamp, who had been in several State- prisons, came to New York, organized a business firm, took a large store, was discovered in the course of time to be carrying on operations closely akin to stealing, and when his record was thor- oughly searched and sifted by the police, it was discovered that his victims were principally the largest wholesale establishments in the city of New York establishments which employed a number of men for the sole purpose of investi- gating the character and resources of any one applying to them for credit or for any business relations beyond ordinary purchases for cash. These smart scamps, who are a hundred times as numerous as the newspaper disclosures would lead the public to imagine, have a terribly de- moralizing influence upon the young men who flock to the city from all parts of the rural dis- tricts as well as upon those who are brought up in the city. To see a rascal succeed has a bad effect upon any one. Even the most righteous man will mournfully quote from Scripture that " the wicked shall flourish as the green bay tree;" that " their eyes stand out with fatness; OUR CITIES. 425 they have more than heart can wish," where the respectable man has to lie awake nights to devise ways and means of paying his coal-bill and avoiding trouble with his landlord. Business enterprises containing any amount of promise are organized, forced upon the public by smart schemers of whom no one knows anything, and all of them succeed in obtaining a great deal of money. When discovery comes, as of course it must come sooner or later, the villain never makes restitution to any extent and is never ade- quately punished for his crime. So, the citizen who pretends to be respectable, but always has an eye out for the main chance, is moved by such examples to see whether he cannot do something sharp himself, and get away before the crash comes. Society in large cities is said to be exclusive. It must be, for its own protection. It cannot possibly be too exclusive. People with and with- out letters of introduction succeed in forming acquaintances, becoming part of one or another social set, even get into the churches, open bank accounts, go into business, and a year or two afterward are discovered to have antecedents which would make a person of ordinary respecta- bility hold up his hands in horror. Such occur- rences have been so common, and the individuals concerned have so often been not only men but women, that the exclusiveness of city society 426 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. extends even to the churches and school-rooms. The half-grown child attending a public or pri- vate school is warned against making any ac- quaintances whatever except with the children of families whom its parents already know. The member of a church may have a stranger shown into his pew again and again on Sundays, and extend to him the courtesy of an open prayer- book or hymnal, but in self-defence he is com- pelled to stop at that. The cordiality, freedom of speech, and general recognition, which is the custom in small towns and in rural districts throughout the world, is denied the prudent in- habitant of a city, no matter how hearty his inclination may be to extend a welcoming hand to every one whom he may meet. Young men entering society, young women seen for the first time in- some social circle, are at first regarded very much as a stranger entering a mining town in the West, where it is supposed no one goes unless he has good reason to get away from his original home. Nowhere in the world are there more charitable hearts with plenty of money behind them than in large cities, yet nowhere else is there more suffering. Your next-door neighbor may be starving to death and you not know anything about it. You know nothing of his comings and nothing of his goings ; he knows nothing of you, and if he has any spirit whatever, and any OUR CITIES. 427 respect for himself, he would rather apply to the police or to the authorities in charge of the poor than to the people living nearest to him. When- ever the newspapers of a city make some startling disclosure of destitution and suffering a number of purses open instantly, and frequently some of the sufferers have received gifts from their own landlords, who actually did not know of the name and existence of the tenant. A judge of the Supreme Court of the city of New York has long been known as a frequent and prompt visitor in person to all individuals reported as in destitute condition and deserving of immediate assistance, yet he said once to his own pastor, and to his own physician also, who chanced to be present, that the great sorrow of his life was, that he was utterly incapacitated by the conditions of city life from discovering for himself the whereabouts of individuals whom he would gladly assist with his pocket and his counsel. As nobody knows anybody in the large cities, what is called the floating population have every- thing their own way, each one for himself. Busi- ness wrongs that would not be tolerated for an instant in a smaller community are perpetrated with entire impunity in the large cities. The poorer classes have no strong friend or acquaint- ance to complain to. Were they in a smaller place they would know some one ; probably they would knew everybody of any consequence, and 428 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. also be known, and could quickly bring public sentiment to their aid, but in a large city there is no such opportunity. The only hope of the oppressed is in the courts, which always are over- crowded with business, and can give very little time to any one, and in the press, which is also overcrowded with work, and should not be charged with this sort of responsibility. Temptation will exist wherever humanity is found, but for a concentration of all temptations, graded to suit all capacities of human weakness, the great city stands pre-eminent. There is no vice that cannot be committed in it committed with reasonable assurance that it will not be dis- covered. A man whose habits are apparently correct, who has no known vices, whose daily manner with his fellow-men seems all that it should be, may with entire safety change his manner at night, and re-enact the drama of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is worse than that. He not only may, but in a great many instances he does. Any man whose business compels him to know a number of persons by sight, and whose hours of duty keep him out-of-doors in the " wee sma' hours," occasionally sees things which stag- ger him. He sees citizens of good repute in company which any village loafer would be ashamed to be seen in by his own acquaintances. He sees policemen taking charge of men who by daylight the police of their own locality regard OUR CITIES. 429 with extreme respect. He sees the high and the low mingle on the same level, and from their manners he would not be able to know one from the other. Newspapers are sometimes blamed for publishing sensational stories, which reminds me of a remark once made by the famous Parson Brownlow, of Bast Tennessee. He was called to account one day for using profane language, he being a minister of the gospel. "If you knew," said he, " how many cuss words I hold in, you would not blame me for the few I let out." If the newspapers were to print all the sensational stories which come to them they would have to double the size of their sheets, and still they would have no room for any decent news whatever. I repeat it, great cities are great sores, and it is to the interest of every one that they should in some way be extracted from the body politic and be allowed and compelled to maintain a sep- arate existence. I know that the parallel is not exact, but such things have been done in some cases. The city is a millstone about the neck of the State in almost all cases. Whatever may be the political preference of the reader, he must ad- mit the fact that the single city of New York po- litically dominates the State, although containing only about one-fourth of the population, and that the expressed will and intention of a large major- ity of the voters of the State outside the metrop- 430 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. olis is steadily neutralized by a great majority composed principally of ignorant persons who in- fest a great city. The evil has impressed itself strongly upon the minds of publicists and jour- nalists of all degrees to such an extent that the suggestion has often been made that the city should be allowed a separate organization by and in itself, somewhat analogous to the position once held by the free cities of Germany. In such case, whatever may be the ultimate political results, the fact would remain that each portion of the divided community would have its own will distinctly expressed, whereas at present one neutralizes the other. New York has been mak- ing the attempt for years by a series of special governments by commission, the origin being in special enactments by the legislature at Albany. The results have not been successful, but the trouble was not lack of principle in the enact- ments, but in the individuals selected to carry on the experiment. The suggestion however con- tinues to be made. Similar plans have been men- tioned regarding some other large cities of the United States. And it is not impossible that all of them may be granted " home rule " in the strictest sense, and that the States at large will thus escape the city rule to which at present they are being subjected. OUR CITIES. 431 THE DARKER SIDE. What already lias been said about the evils of city life and influence may seem bad enough, but there is another side that is worse. Crime and license affect the human mind strongly when brought before it as the cause of a large amount of irregularity, but the public heart is more quickly and firmly impressed by the knowledge of suffering. The amount of suffering that exists in all large cities merely through enforced conditions of life passes power of expression. No one has ever yet been able to do the subject justice. Many who have worked among the poor have lost life and hope, and mind itself, in contempla- tion of the suffering and sorrow which they have witnessed and been unable to relieve. To attempt to care for the poor of a large city affects one very much like an effort to pour water into a sieve ; the demand is continual, yet nothing seems to be effected. Almost everywhere outside of the cities it is assumed at the beginning that those who suffer through their poverty in laige cities are either indolent or vicious. A more cruel mistake could not possibly be made. There are many idlers in any large city, as a matter of course, but the great majority of the people work hard to keep soul and body together. The largest gathering 432 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of idlers that any occurrence can bring together does not equal in numbers the procession which one may see in five minutes' time on any thor- oughfare during regular hours of going to work or returning home. A full half of the population of the largest city in the Union reside in tenement houses. The tenement house at best is unfit for human residence if the people who inhabit it expect to enjoy good health, and if the children who are part of almost every family are expected to grow and develop properly in body and soul. Yet the bald fact is that more than half a million of the inhabitants of this country live on several square miles of land in one single city. Land is costly, builders' work is expensive; the cheapest-built houses cost a great deal of money, and conse- quently the space in them must be divided and subdivided with great skill and detail if the poorer classes are to find habitation at all. Almost all of this half million people are honest, hard workers. The heads of families are among the first to go to work in the morning and among the last to go to their homes at night. They are those who work for the smallest wages and do the hardest work. They and their families need just as much food to support life as any of the well-to-do portion of the population. But in any large city the necessities of life are costly, and they are particularly so in our largest city. OUR CITIES. 433 The wages of an ordinary mechanic or working- man will barely pay the rent of the cheapest apartment and buy food for five people. Clothing must be left to chance, luxury must be unthought- of, and the only possible relaxation is that to be found in the streets or at places where entertain- ment is free. More heroism is displayed in some of these humble homes than ever was witnessed on any battle-field of which the world has knowledge. The wolf at the door is a thousand times worse foe than the enemy on the frontier. The soldier always has glory to look to in case he dies. The suffering laborer dies, if die he must, in abject misery at the thought of his family's future. Whatever his health, however numerous his dis- comforts, however small his pay, he must work and go on working, or his family must starve. He has no friends who are rich or influential ; if he had, he would not be a poor working-man ; his only friends are those of his own kind, and while almost any of them would in time of neces- sity share their last loaf with him, there are times when the most friendly of them have no loaf to share. A day or two of sickness of the head of the family imposes a stern chase which lasts long and costs frightfully. The death of a member of their family means absolute ruin. This would seem bad enough, but there is worse behind it. The necessity of sending the remains of the 28 434 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. loved one to the burial ground of the paupers is one of the terrible experiences which are very common in large cities. Some of them cannot afford even the small time necessary to do that much ; so, with many tears an4 prayers, perhaps sometimes with many curses upon the hard luck to which fate or fortune has reduced them, the remains are quietly carried to the river-side at night and there dropped from sight, though not from memory. A few years ago a newspaper at- tache, attending one of the large excursions given by charitable persons to children of the poor, overheard a mother and daughter talking about a sick babe which the daughter was to carry on board the boat. The mother could not go. She had to work or the family must starve. She took her child in her arms, again and again kissed it, cried over it, and then began a skilful conversa- tion with her daughter leading up to the possi- bility and advisability, in case of death during the trip, of dropping the little darling's remains overboard, saying that the deep, clean sea was a cleaner burial place than the dark ground in the cemetery. The child listened with wondering face and finally agreed with her mother. As for the reporter, he was so horrified that he was utterly unfit for work for a year after, .although he imagined himself hardened to scenes of suf- fering. The wildest imagination cannot possibly exceed OUR CITIES. 435 some actual facts of tenement-house life. The story has been told again and again, until there is no novelty in. it, of families crowded together so closely that all the decencies of life were for- gotten, because it was impossible to observe them, of bad associations formed, of children wilting and weakening unto death because the air they breathed was unfit to support life, of food pur- chased at cheaper and cheaper prices until that finally used was little better than poison to those who ate it, of poverty induced by payments de- ferred, of the wretchedness and semi-starvation that exist through some of the long strikes of some of the laboring classes ; but none of it fully equals the truth. There are happy, virtuous, well-fed, well-clothed families in tenement houses, and it is probably fair to say that these are per- haps in the majority, but the ^minority is so numerous that the heart is appalled at contem- plating it. Out of their wretched homes these people cannot go. There is no other place for them. While a man and his wife are young and before they have children, they may roam about if they choose as tramps in pleasant summer weather, until some happy chance finds work for one or the other in the rural districts. But once anchored in the city by a family of children, and the opportunities of the laboring man of small income to ever change his condition are almost nothing. Some men say that the influence of 436 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. religion is declining. The strongest refutation, and an absolute one, of this statement is that the miserable people in large cities do not arise in frenzied mobs and destroy everything which they cannot steal. The long, patient and then de- spairing struggle against the inevitable is enough to reduce any man to frenzy, were it not, as Long- fellow says, that poverty "Crushes into dumb despair One-half the human race." It nevertheless is true that as large a propor- tion of these people as of any other class in the city are religious by instinct, training and prac- tice. The churches which they attend are more crowded on Sundays than those of the better classes, and the painter who wishes to find models of patience and resignation and determination can find them better at the doors of these churches than anywhere else in the world. Still the misery goes on. It increases. The tenement-house population grows larger and larger every year. The accommodations become smaller because the tendency of the rents of such property is steadily upward. There is no way of escape. Little by little the parents of the family of young children prevail upon themselves to allow children to help support the family. There is no cruelty about it in the intention of the parents. The children have little enough to OUR CITIES. 437 interest them. Their parents are too busy to talk with them or answer any of their questions. During the day the children are in the way, and to the father and mother comes the suggestion that if the entire family were at work together there might be a closer family life. The children are quite willing to take part in whatever their parents are doing. Indeed, it is hard to keep them from doing so. So the transition for chil- dren from utter indolence to child labor is very short and easy. There are a great many businesses in a large city in which children may help their parents. Among these, the most prominent probably will be found among the clothing manufacturers and the makers of that much-abused article, the tenement-house cigar. It isn't necessary for the reader to be frightened at the idea that cigars are made in tenement-houses, because a respectable man or woman with their children are less likely to have any habits or surroundings which will make the tobacco leaf deleterious than the work- man in any famous factory in Havana. There are diseases among the operatives in Cuban cigar factories of which the less said the better. Whatever other ailments there may be in tene- ment-house life, these particular diseases are not to be found there. Nevertheless the idea of a man and woman and several children working ten or twelve or fourteen hours a day in a room 438 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ten feet square with, a lot of decaying vegetable matter which is exactly what leaf tobacco in the course of manufacture really is to pollute the atmosphere about them, is not a pleasant thing. Tobacco has powerful medicinal qualities, most of which are of a poisonous nature. A small amount of nicotine, the essential principle of to- bacco, has been powerfully effective either as a narcotic, or stimulant, or a germicide. The effect upon persons who handle it incessantly during a full half of every day can consequently be imag- ined. Every one in the room becomes irritable unless the food supply is abundant and care- fully selected ; every one finally becomes ex- tremely nervous. Men and women do not well endure the life of tobacco manufacturers. To children the constant handling of the leaf is frequently poisonous. Nevertheless, a certain amount of money ought to be earned ever}'- day by the family ; the father and mother are not able to do it ; the children help ; the family earn- ings are as much for the child's sake as for the parents, and so the work goes on. In the manufacture of clothing the details, so far as they affect human life, are not so injurious. But one commercial result is always perceptible in a short time. Those operatives who can avail themselves of child labor are enabled to underbid their associates, who are also their competitors. Consequently it is a very short time before the OUR CITIES. 439 income of the family is no larger than it already had been, while the number of persons occupied in earning it has doubled and perhaps trebled. Just think a moment what all this really im- plies. A number of people are excluded from all possibility of exercise or recreation and excit- ing themselves to the utmost to accomplish a given amount of work in a specified time. Chil- dren are quicker than grown people to respond to any exciting influence, and the most enthusi- astic workers in tenement-house rooms will always be found to be the children. Sometimes this amuses the parents, occasionally it interests them, but more often it is extremely pathetic. To see a child at an early age absorbed in the details of the battle of life would horrify any one of us, yet 100,000 children of this kind can be found in the city of New York, and a large num- ber of them can be found in any one of forty or fifty specified blocks. There is only one end to this sort of thing. Persistent stimulation and entire lack of recrea- tion or exercise must have a debasing and dan- gerous effect upon any physique. Much more must this be the case regarding children. Boys and girls are not driven to work as they were in England forty or fifty years ago. They are not flogged if they do not accomplish a certain amount of work in a given time, as they used to be under the good old English -customs. But they 440 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. are just as thoroughly destroyed, physically and mentally, as if they were under task-masters who were not their own parents. Children in the country frequently work very hard. A farmer's life is hard at best, and be- tween necessity and sympathy his children early learn to take part in their father's endeavors. They rise early in the morning and work per- haps quite late in the night, but they are in pure air even while they are at work. They have an abundance of food and they always see something before them, just as their parents do. Perhaps it is that there is a war abroad and the price of wheat will probably go up a few cents a bushel. Or a railroad is coming in the vicinity of the farm, and acres which have been devoted to common crops and pasture are expected sud- denly to attain to the dignity of town lots. There are evening festivities in which all the children take part, and there is also the great and comforting and uplifting American senti- ment that each one of them is as good as any one of their richest neighbors, and the fact that they may live in a pporly-built house and not wear quite as good clothes on Sunday as some of their associates can always be overlooked in view of the possibilities of the near future. But before the children of the poor in the large cities there is no prospect whatever of advance- ment or pleasure or recreation. The old dull OUR CITIES. 441 grind goes on day by day. While every one is well and every one is at work, the family probably has enough to eat and has a roof over its head; and to that extent it can congratulate itself, for some of their acquaintances and neighbors are not so well off. But the first day that sickness comes into the family the entire aspect of things changes. The work must go on or there will be nothing to live on at the end of the week. The invalid may be put to bed in one of the little closets which are dignified by the name of rooms, but the adult members of the family must continue to work, and so must all who are old enough to assist. If there is a sewing-machine in the room it must go on clicking, no matter if some member of the family is dying. There is no lack of sympathy, no lack of affection, no lack of longing; but all these put together do not take the place of proper medical attendance, pure air and good food. If in any single town of the United States the death rate were as large as it is in the city of New York, the best citizens would pack up their things and run away, no matter at what cost. But New York can lose thirty or forty of every thousand of its inhabitants every year, and the only comment of those who know best about it is that it is a mercy of heaven that the loss is no greater. The customary way of city people, in avoiding 442 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. responsibility and deep thought on this subject, consists in saying that the people who live in this way are of low organizations any way, and that they can exist and flourish and grow fat amid surroundings which would kill any decent person. There is some truth in this so far as certain low organizations are concerned. Unfor- tunately, however, there is no race, sex, nation- ality or creed among the very poor in the large city. All of them are people who either were born very poor or who, having been reduced to poverty, are endeavoring to make the best of their lot. There are Americans of good name and good family now serving in the commoner me- chanical capacities in the city of New York, and only a little while ago it was discovered that the wife of a gallant Major-General, who served the United States faithfully during the late unpleas- antness, was " living out " as a domestic servant. It is not a result of poverty, misfortune, sickness or anything of the kind. All those horrors are the results, first of all, of city life, of living where no one knows his own neighbors and where the person who falls into embarrassments or is overwhelmed by misfortune has no one to whom to turn, and takes to anything at short notice and in utter desperation, to keep the wolf from the door. Cities should be suppressed, but that is impos- sible. They should be properly policed by per- OUR CITIES. 443 sons competent to discover and report those most in need of assistance ; but that also seems im- possible. The only chance left seems to be that the larger the city the greater shall be the mis- sionary work done in it by all denominations. When Jesus was alive and was anxious to secure the attention of the people, he did not bemoan their sad condition, but on one occasion, when some thousands of them followed him, he him- self supplied them with food. ^The servant is not greater than the master, and religious people, regardless of differences of creed, can find no better work in large cities than to search out the needy and endeavor to lift their feet out of the mire and put them in a dry place, to quote from the inspired psalmist in one of his most eloquent passages. One good and pressing reason though a selfish one for closer and more sympathetic attention to the poor of large cities, is that the great mass of criminals come from the poorer classes, and that when criminals are once made it is hard to unmake them. The famous Inspec- tor Byrne, of New York, the man most feared by wrongdoers everywhere, spends annually a great deal of his hard-earned money in trying to persuade criminals not to drop back into their old ways, but he believes that he only retards their return to crime not that he effects any reformations. The following words from a man 444 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of his stern experience and sympathetic nature are terrible in their warning against neglect of the class from which most criminals spring : " My personal opinion is that it is utterly im- possible to reform criminals. There are certain fancy measures pursued in this city for the reformation of criminals, but they are all bosh ; they do not reform the outlaws. To some extent such efforts are made for the purpose of public notoriety. I know people in this city who claim that they want to reform thieves. They get hold of notorious scoundrels when they come out of state-prison, and so long as the thief is a good 1 star-actor,' and goes from place to place and tells all sorts of things that are villanous and bad about himself (no matter whether they be lies or the truth), he is lauded around by these people as a great attraction. The moment he discontinues that kind of performance they throw him out in the street because he is of no use to them ; he doesn't ' draw.' " So far as the efforts of religious people are concerned in this matter of criminal reformation, I say that their efforts are laudable. They cer- tainly mean well. They devote time and money to the work ; but they have no practical experi- ence with criminals, and their efforts count for very little. It is sometimes claimed that, under the influence of prayers and preaching, the crim- inal's heart is touched, he sees the error of his INSPECTOR BYRNES. OUR CITIES. 445 ways, he is converted ; I do not believe it. As the word ' reformation ' is ordinarily used, I know there is no such experience among thieves." It will not do to dispose of the subject by saying that there must be criminals in the world, and that we pay policemen to take care of them. No police force can entirely suppress crime ; there are too many evil-doers to be watched, and each has his own style. Inspector Williams, of New York, an officer almost as widely known as Inspector Byrne, and who has had charge of the most dangerous precincts in the city, wrote re- cently : ' The general public, who look upon criminals as a class by themselves, are apt to think that one criminal is very much like another. This is not a fact. I have been a policeman for nearly a quarter of a century, and I have never seen two criminals who were very nearly alike in charac- ter. A Siamese-twinship in the annals of crime is unknown. When we enter the criminal world and seek to deal with its members from any point of view, we must look upon them indi- vidually, not collectively." All of which means that the only way to lessen the number of criminals is to see to it that wretchedness of the masses of population in our large cities shall not be allowed to send new recruits to the ranks. CHAPTER XXVII. RELIGION. OURS is the most religious country on the face of the earth. There are more churches to the square mile of city and village area than any other part of the world, not excepting the grand old city of Rome. They may not be all of the same denomination, but their attendants worship the same God. They may quarrel a great deal about points of faith, but on essentials they are, if not exactly one, so closely related that there is room for any amount of hope. About baptism and regeneration and sanctification and adoption and perhaps damnation they may differ fright- fully ; but all of them base their belief upon the Apostles' Creed, and look for their spiritual in- spiration to the law of the Old and New Testa- ment, preferably that of the four gospels. Religion is a life, whatever else it may or may not be. No person who makes any pretence of being religious declines to -admit that his creed is the basis of the life which he would like to lead, whether or not he may succeed in making his practice conform to his principles. (446) REV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE. RELIGION. 447 That religion consists in proper life with a view to a life to corne, or at least that it is so re- garded, is proved by the custom which becomes more and more prevalent of judging men and women according to their religious professions. There was a time when, if a man assented to a given form of faith, his life might be almost anything he pleased ; and some of the most ac- tive " Defenders of the Faith," as they styled themselves, whether they were Catholics, Prot- estants, Trinitarians or Unitarians, have been found among men who would nowadays not be considered fit to introduce into respectable society. The time when such things were has departed, and shows not the faintest sign of ever returning again. To-day a man's religious profession is re- garded as an assertion by himself of what he would have his life, and what he proposes that his life shall be judged by. A cheering sign of the earnestness and sin- cerity of religion in modern times is that there is very little proselyting now. People who smile cheerfully at one another during six days of the week, do not glare and frown at one another on Sunday, as they used to do when meeting on their ways to their respective churches, and from the manners of members of different denomina- tions meeting in business or polite society, no one could imagine or discern to what particular creed any one of those people subscribed. The Meth- 448 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. odist, the Baptist, the Catholic, the Episcopalian, meet each other cheerily in business and in so- ciety, their families intermarry, they have busi- ness relations with each other, and no one in in- dorsing or cashing a business man's note ever thinks of asking to what particular church he may belong. In a number of country towns this fraternal feeling has been largely stimulated and strength- ened by what are called " union meetings," in which all the members- of all the congregations in the town unite at appointed dates in general services of prayer and worship. Occasionally the pastor of some church in the vicinity may object to taking part in such services, but pastors in congregations are frequently like Congressmen and the people the followers are ahead of the leader. Only a little while ago a Catholic priest of high repute in his own denomination, and held in high esteem by the entire community in which he was known, ascended the platform at a west- ern camp-meeting, in which denominations differ- ing from his own had united, and made a most earnest undenominational and spiritual address to the entire audience before him. Revival meetings, however they may be laughed at by the more refined and fastidious of church people, have had the effect in late years of at- tracting a great many thousands of people toward religious life. The most noted of these were RELIGION. 449 conducted, as every one knows, by Messrs. Moody and Sankey, two men who were never regularly ordained as clergymen by any author- ity whatever they are simple laymen and un- denominational workers. Yet these men never went to any city or town to begin their peculiar system of work until all, or nearly all, the pas- tors of churches had united in calling them and had promised to assist to the best of their ability. No effort was made by these men to make con- verts for any denomination whatever. Their sole purpose was to cause men and women to change their manner of life from that of the or- dinary every-day selfishness of the unregenerate man and to compel him to recognize an over-rul- ing Providence who should also be the guide of his daily life in every respect. Mr. Moody, however " shaky " he may have been according to any theological test, was earnest and sincere enough to say to all the clerical fraternity of any town in which he worked, that he came only to sow seed and that it was the business of others to reap the harvest, and that he cared not into whose flock the lambs were led, so long as they were rescued from the wilderness. The Moody and Sankey movement is open to a great deal of criticism, and probably no one has regarded it with more jealous eye than newspaper editors, yet the editorial fraternity throughout the coun- try has been compelled to admit that the agita- 450 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. tion begun by these meu had a marked influence for good on whatever community it was exerted. Such a movement would have been utterly im- possible fifty years ago, perhaps twenty-five years ago. To attempt to lead men to God without outlining a road which traversed a great many other roads said to lead in the same direction would have united against the leader all the churches in the vicinity. There are no fights between denominations now-a-days. A church may fight within its own borders as furiously as a gang of worried dogs, but for the occupants of several different pulpits in any given town or in any portion of a great city to call each other bad names and intimate that the followers of any one but the speaker would find themselves after death in a most un- comfortable and irremediable condition of soul and body is no longer the case. The principal feeling now excited by large success in any par- ticular congregation is one of emulation. If one church holds a successful mission or revival meeting or series of special efforts, and succeeds in persuading a number of people to enroll them- selves formally among any band of persons pro- fessing to be Christians, the only competitive result that can be seen or heard of is an effort of the neighboring churches to go and do like- wise. Why, it is no longer necessary for churches to RELIGION. 451 be built solely by those who are members of the congregation which is endeavoring to erect the edifice. A subscription for the building fund of a church of any denomination is passed around among people of all faiths and no faith, and money is subscribed as freely and as unreservedly as if the effort was being made simply for the relief of some individual in embarrassment. It has come to be considered in the United States that a church, no matter of what denomination, is a good thing to have in the neighborhood, and the more churches the better. Any man of pub- lic spirit or Christian feeling who has any money to spare can be depended upon to subscribe to the erection of a church of any denomination, the Mormon church always excepted. All this is immensely encouraging to men who regard religion as the greatest moral influence of life, as well as a promise of things less seen yet more important in which the majority of people believe more or less blindly. The change has come about through the different pulpit method that has come in vogue within a very few years. Men have learned to look upon religion of any kind as infinitely preferable to no religion at all. No man who keeps his eyes open has failed to see changes, such as can be accounted for by no other theory, as to the possibilities of human nature, suddenly and quietly achieved through the practice of religious life as indicated by some 452 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. particular creed. So far as changes in the lives of individuals are concerned, creed seems to make very little difference. Within the lines of all denominations men can be found who, according to every rule and precedent of human nature, should be dishonest, indolent, vile, and brutal, yet who have suddenly become respectable and in all things visible entirely decent. Any at- tempts to break down religion, as such, are stoutly combated by the entire intelligent portion of the community, barring the few dilettanti who are not certain about anything, and least of all about whatever will make themselves amenable to the moral law. Colonel Bob Ingersoll can draw a large crowd in a large city, but never in his life has he had as large an audience as can be found a.ny Sunday in any one of twenty churches in the city of New York, and were he to enter some of our smaller towns he would find himself with the same proportion of hearers. Most religious people who think and most of them do think have periods of doubt on a great many topics which in the earlier portion of their new life seemed to them essentials. Nevertheless they have learned by experience not to change their faith, much less to abandon it, because of some things which they do not understand. Since re- ligion has become a life instead of a mere belief, all men who sincerely practice it have learned that there is a great iinknown of human expe- RELIGION. 453 rience beyond which their own lives cannot reach except at certain times and under certain influ- ences, and to abandon what they doubt would mean to them to also forego the fruits of what they already know and believe. There is not the slightest fear that the United States will become an irreligious nation. Some church pews may be empty, some men may go very seldom to service, or .confession, but that most men think and feel the influence of religion upon the young and upon the family circle is too well known and established to admit of any doubt. The heads of families who are most careless about their own personal lives are often most earnest in urging upon their families all the ministrations of whatever churches they may chance to attend. It matters no longer from what denomination is selected the clergyman who shall ask grace at a large public dinner, or open a solemn public gathering with prayer, or as to what may be the creed of the spiritual teacher who may be asked to take part in deliberations upon grave moral interests of the community. All this is immensely encouraging, and prom- ises lasting good to the nation. CHAPTER XXVIII. CHURCH WORK. Laborare est orare " to work is to pray " as good St. Augustine said. The best proof that the good saint was right is that the most successful churches nowadays are those that do most work. Rev. Russell H. Conwell, pastor of a working church of the Baptist denomination in Philadel- phia, says : "A house of worship is a hall, or barn, or tomb, with no workers in it. Idleness is gloom, dampness death. Push every church member, or pull him, into some work. Pile it about him and on him. Let him dig out and he will be a healthy Christian. But you need to keep him digging out. The more he does in consistent benevolence in any direction the happier and more prosperous he is. I try to get every mem- ber of the church to work for some special mis- sionary or charitable enterprise, and the more he works for that the more he is able and disposed to give to the church. Once in a while one finds a member so selfish and lazy that it takes a whole Dorcas society to pull a two-cent piece (454) REV. RUSSELL H. CONWELL. CHURCH WORK. 455 out of his pocket. But lie must be made to give it for his own growth in grace. His heart will go with the two-cent piece, and his hands will work. Then he will be a valuable church mem- ber and a good citizen. A church should be a bundle of missionary societies in order to be prosperous, united and spiritual. Work is the wise man's play. Wide, helpful sympathy is the magnet to draw men and God." Church work used to be addressed entirely to the soul; nowadays it takes considerable notice of the human body, and, according to a pretty good authority, to wit, St. Paul, the body is the temple of the living God. Consequently church work has made a decided step forward in the right direction. In old times a large congregation was proof that a pulpit orator of great ability or renown was the centre of attraction. Nowadays the largest congregations are found where there is most work being done in the direction of improv- ing mankind, and reaching the soul through the body. The live churches almost everywhere can be discovered at once by asking in which congrega- tions the greatest amount of what is called out- side work is being done. Very often the pastor is not an orator at all, and his sermons are the simplest of homilies, and yet the pews are crowded, and nobody makes the common and 456 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. somewhat scandalous criticism that only women go to church. In working churches men are as numerous as women, and the hardest-headed of business men are among the most constant of the attendants. Comparisons maybe odious, yet for sake of illustration it may be said that such dissimilar men as Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. John Hall, Rev. Dr. Rainsford, Wayland Hoyt, Russell H. Conwell, Edward Everett Hale, Father Fransioli and Felix Adler talk every Sunday to enormous congregations. Some of these men are genuine pulpit orators, but more of them are not. The centre of attraction is the great human soul and human interest of the man who, in spite of unusual spirituality, has also a practical eye to the welfare, temporal as well as spiritual, of his entire congregation. Rev. Wayland Hoyt says : "Aside from the influence of its regularly recurring services, what is the Church doing for the people, even for those who may not mingle much with its throng of worshippers ? The Church is doing things like these among multitudes of other things : " First. Amid the material the Church is as- serting the fact and presence of the spiritual. It will not let men lose the thought of some- thing higher and nobler than the common round of getting, spending, eating, sleeping. Simply by its presence it appeals to and awakens the moral consciousness. Even the most sodden REV. WAYLAND HOYT. CHURCH WORK. 457 man must find, every now and then, reproof for his soddenness, as he stumbles, as he must, against the Church. Nothing can be more gracious and benignant than this steady minis- try to the spiritual in men, and this compulsion to, at least slight, thought of the reality of it. " Secondly. The Church is the conserver of the Sabbath. It is because churches are that the Sabbath is. What prevents the Sabbath, with its periodical rest and chance for thought of higher things, and its sheathing of the sword of unremitting toil, from drifting swiftly and utterly away upon the mighty current of the world's business and pleasure, is the anchor of the Church. ' Thirdly. The church is the fontal spring of all kindly charities, for it is in the Church that men are taught the Fatherhood of God and so the brotherhood of men. Blot out these truths and your world becomes but a grasping selfish- ness where the strong seize and the weak are crowded to the wall remorselessly. The Great Brother of us all is the founder of the Church. And as long as his church forbids that men lose vision of the pierced Hand, that hand must impel, and does, to ministry to others." It was once sneeringly said of Mr. Frothing- ham, who in his day was the centre around which all the liberals and dissatisfied among roligious people clustered, that he began with a theology 458 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and ended with a kindergarten, but no man who is head of a family could listen to this charge without protesting and exclaiming that the last days of that man were greater than the first. These men all have realized that religion is more a life than a belief, and a proof of their sincerity is in the effectiveness of their church work. Church work takes in everybody ; it is one of the few nets that never hurt the fish. It calls for and obtains the sympathy of the people of all classes and every congregation. However men may differ about points of doctrine and all intelligent men do differ on such subjects in their own minds there is no difference of opinion about what should be done for those who are needy in any respect. One famous old divine of New York was once troubled a great deal by what in old times was called a church fight. Some of the solemn and sanctimonious souls of his flock were given to quarrelling on single points of belief about which the religious world is still differing, and for some years the pastor suffered a great deal in his endeavors to reconcile the conflicting factions. But it occurred to him one day that his best method would be to intro- duce some new interest; so, whenever there came up a new question of doctrine, he would call a church meeting and suggest a new plan of effort for the individual good of the church and con- gregation. The warring factions laid aside their REV. GEORGE RAINSFORD. CHURCH WORK. 459 differences for the time being, worked together, learned from each other how much good there is in humanity when the limits of human intelli- gence are not exceeded, and the threatening fight ended about as quickly as an April shower. Edward Everett Hale, a church worker of national reputation, says : " Separation of class from class, calling from calling, race from race, the parting of the stranger from those to the manner born, of the ignorant from the learned, of the rich from the poor, is the patent terror of city life, its great misery and disadvantage, to be held in mind as the general source of the sin, disease, and misery which the Church is appointed to remove. " Very fortunately for the Church in her duty in these lines, her traditions and theories are all right. Trust the Four Gospels for that, with their unflinching radicalisms ! Not the grandest marble pile, of the most exquisite upholstery, and the most comfortable provision for the luxu- rious worship of the rich, but pretends that these accommodations are intended also for the poorest and the vilest. Nay, as to the appointed minis- ters of that church, the word * pretend ' would not be fair. They really want that such common use of the noblest and most beautiful facilities, if I may so speak, shall be open to all. Nothing need be said about the improvement of the the- ory ; the difficulty is in practice. Let us, how- 460 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ever, once admit that the difficulty is very great, and is central, and the fact that the theory is right is a very great help to us. While it is true, as it is strange, that to a considerable ex- tent professional people go to one church and mechanics to another, and day-laborers, if they go at all, to another, and rich people, when they go at all, to yet another this is not absolutely true. It is true only ' to a considerable extent.' And, with regard to other classifications, nothing of that sort is true. Strangers in the town and those born in it go to the same church. Old people and young people go to the same church. Happy people and unhappy people go to the same church. People without children and peo- ple with children go to the same church. So that even the existing life of any church in any city now does give opportunities by which all its members may go to work to bridge the horrid chasms of city life, and even to fill them up. " The Sunday-school of a church, its organized charities, the accidents of meeting in the porch and in the pews, even the much-ridiculed but essential Christian ' parish sociable,' are all so many means by which A and Z, B and X, may leap from their preordained place in some formal alphabet, and come into real communion and vital sympathy with letters quite at the other end of the same alphabet. The Church, probably, is better provided, even in its worst estate, with ihe CHURCH WORK. 461 machinery for bridging such gulfs than is any other social organism of our time" The only limit to effective church work is found in the comparatively small number of pas- tors and other persons who know how to organize such efforts, in proof of which let any one go through the churches of any town and note how many empty pews will be found. When a com- petent worker is found or discovered, or discovers himself in any denomination, the people flock around him at once almost as people twenty cen- turies ago surrounded Jesus when He was alive. Every one depends upon the leader, and conse- quently the leader frequently finds himself un- equal to the task which he has set for himself. Great church workers are continually compelled to drop out of harness and retire for long periods of rest. The inability of the general mass of religious people to comprehend that in the out- side work of the Church consists the principal fulfillment of the injunctions of the Master, re- calls the saying of Jesus that the harvest verily is abundant but the laborers are few. At the present time two at least of the well-known men mentioned above are in unwilling retirement on account of overwork. One of them a few years ago took a church in which the attendants were so few that it was almost dismal to go into it, and in a few years it was almost impossible to find a seat in the edifice. People flocked about 462 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. him and asked what they were to do to help him, but according to his own statement not one was able to make a suggestion on his own part. All were willing to follow, but none were competent to lead. At the risk of offending some souls who mistake doctrine for the whole of religion, it must be said in passing that the best work of this sort done in the United States, and perhaps anywhere on the face of the earth, is done by the Catholic Church. In almost all other denominations the pastor is alone, but in the oldest of the Christian churches it is the custom to give assistants as fast as the pastor requires it, and in many a church, which may seem small to those who do not attend it, and which worships perhaps in an humble edi- fice, there will be found at the pastoral residence some assistants, all ordained clergymen, who help the pastor in the unending round of duties among the sick and afflicted and poor and troubled of the congregation. There is need of similar assistance in all Protestant churches if all the work which the founder of Christianity ordered is to be properly done. The religious world at large is satisfied that the duty of the Church is not fulfilled simply by holding Sunday services, but those who select the paid clergy have not yet realized this in its full practical bearing. Whenever it is suggested in a large congrega- tion that the pastor should have an assistant CHURCH WORK. 463 there is likely to be a long discussion before he succeeds in obtaining one, and at the same time the nearest Catholic church has probably two or more clergymen, some one of whom can always be found by any parishioner who is in trouble. The Protestant churches would do well to take a leaf from the book of their Catholic friends. As for the range of duties of the clergy, it never has been better outlined than in the fol- lowing paragraphs from the pen of Cardinal Gibbons : " The moral power exercised by a good priest in his parish is incalculable. The priest is always a mysterious being in the eyes of the world. Like his Divine Master, he ' is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted.' Various opinions are formed of him. Some say of him as was said of our Saviour : ' He is a good man.' And others say : ' No, but he seduceth the people.' He is loved most by those who know him best. Hated or despised he may be by many that are strangers to him and to his sacred char- acter ; but he has been too prominent a factor in the civilization of mankind and the advancement of morality ever to be ignored. ' The life of a missionary priest is never written, nor can it be. He has no Bos well. His biographer may record the priest's public and official acts. He may recount the churches he 464 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. erected, the schools he founded, the works of religion and charity he inaugurated and fostered, the sermons he preached, the children he cate- chised, the converts he received into the fold, and this is already a great deal. But it only touches upon the surface of that devoted life. There is no memoir of his private daily life of usefulness and of his sacred and confidential relations with his flock. All this is hidden with Christ in God, and is registered only by His recording angel. " ( The civilizing and moralizing influence of the clergyman in his parish,' says Mr. Lecky, ' the simple, unostentatious, unselfish zeal with which he educates the ignorant, guides the erring, comforts the sorrowing, braves the horrors of pestilence, and sheds a hallowing influence over the dying hour, the countless ways in which, in his little sphere, he allays evil passions and softens manners, and elevates and purifies those around him ; all these things, though very evi- dent to the detailed observer, do not stand out in the same vivid prominence in historical records, and are continually forgotten by historians.' "The priest is Christ's unarmed officer of the law. He is more potent in repressing vice than a band of constables. His only weapon is his voice ; his only badge of authority his sacred office. Like the fabled Neptune putting Eolus to flight and calming the troubled waves, the priest quiets many a domestic storm, subduing CARDINAL GIBBONS. CHURCH WORK. 465 the winds of passion, reconciling the jarring elements of strife, healing dissensions, preventing divorce, and arresting bloodshed. " He is the daily depository of his parishioners* cares and trials, anxieties and fears, afflictions and temptations, and even of their sins. They come to him for counsel in doubt, for spiritual and even temporal aid. If he cannot suppress, he has at least the consolation of mitigating the moral evil around him." It is through Church work alone not merely the Sunday services of the Sanctuary that what is called " the Sabbath question " can ever be settled. For many centuries the churches have failed, through their stated services, to in- crease respect for Sunday ; but here is a " more excellent way," suggested by Bishop H. C. Potter, of the diocese of New York. " No discussion of the Sunday question will touch the nerve of the matter that does not recognize the fact that if Sunday, as it at present exists in America, is to be successfully defended, it must be with the help of others than those only who make up what are called the privileged classes. In the present state of public opinion it is an ominous fact that the working people, as a body, have in this country shown no interest in the question on the one side or the other. Their attitude can best be described as one of profound indifference, and though it is true that the re- 30 466 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. markable statistics of recent petitions presented to Parliament in Great Britain would seem to indicate that the sentiment of working people was largely against any relaxation of the Sunday laws,* we have no such statistics to which to appeal in America. Including, as do our working classes, especially in cities, a large foreign element, educated in, or with traditions derived from, Ger- many and other countries of Continental Europe, it is probable that if any expression of opinion could be obtained it would be less favorable to the present Sunday restrictions than in England. People who come from Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, and the cities of Italy and France, in which the one distinction of Sundays, in the case of the museums, is not merely that they are open, but open without charge, may not be safely counted on to favor restrictions which seem to curtail their own scanty privileges and to violate the usage of their own land. "It is just here that the connection between the labor question and the Sunday question be- comes apparent. If those who are not working men would have working men on their side in protecting Sunday from encroachments which mean, first, play for some, and then by an inevi- * In England, in 1882, 62 trade unions and other working men's societies, representing 45,482 members, voted in favor of the Sunday opening of museums, etc., while 2,412 societies, representing 501, 705 members, voted against such opening. CHURCH WORK. 467 table deterioration, to which in the history of European nations there has been no single ex- ception, work for almost all, theirs must be the first move not wrung from them by the clamor- ous demands from the millions who toil, but freely given by them to those whose lives are starved of privilege and pleasure which shall make Sunday more sacred for rest, and so for those who shall be minded to use it for some- thing higher than rest, because some other hours than those of Sunday are freely and universally conceded not for rest but for play. ' Don't play ball under the windows of the babies' ward,' said the matron of an institution of charity, anxious to protect the slumbers of her infant charges, to a group of boisterous boys. ' Teacher, give us a place where we can play ball, and then we wont wake the kids,' said a gamin, speaking for the crowd. It is the answer which the working man may well make to the somewhat dry and austere Sabbatarianism which warns him off the Sunday parterres of the ' rich and pious,' and gives him neither play-ground during the week, nor time in which to enjoy it. There have been meetings in New York in the interest of the Saturday Half- Holiday Movement, but the composition of those meetings was such as might well make thoughtful people discouraged as to that for which they stand. For, thronged as they have been in every in- stance, those who have composed them have been 468 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. almost wholly those who were to be benefited by the proposed half-holiday. Those whose in- fluence and example are most potent in bringing about that change were, however, conspicuously absent, and the capitalists and people of wealth and leisure, whose one gift often is the gift of ' setting a fashion,' were not to be seen. Yet these, in many instances, are the people who sign remonstrances against opening museums on Sunday, and protest against paving the way for a ' continental desecration of our American Lord's Day.' " That protest, to be effectual, must take an- other and more consistent form. It must, in the first place, take the form of example. The man- ners of a people take their tone, by an invariable law, from the customs and usages of the privi- leged classes. But what are these, so far as Sun- day is concerned, and how far do they tend to conserve Sunday as a rest-day, especially for the servants of the rich, and all who are called upon in any way to minister to their pleasure ? Cer- tainly it cannot be claimed that there is, as a rule, much consideration, in our present Sunday ob- servances, of the law of periodic rest, whether from pleasure in the case of the pleasure-seeking and pleasure-taking classes, or from labor in the case of those whose livelihood is earned in min- istering to them. And until the former can con- sent to call a halt in the ordinary life of the week CHURCH WORK. 469 when Sunday comes, and give a pause to those whose Sunday labor is often the most arduous of the week, it will be in vain that they close the doors of libraries and museums, and refuse to others a license which they take unreservedly for themselves. " But more than this is needed. When men turn to the example of Christ on the Sabbath day as emancipating them from ancient and out- worn Sabbatarian restrictions, they would do well to remember by what acts He disallowed, so far as He did disallow, the elder Sabbatic law. They will be found in every instance to have been, whether they were acts of healing, or helping, or feeding, acts of mercy and beneficence to others. In no single case was there any departure from the old usage for any merely selfish or personal end. In one word, the noblest day was hallowed anew by the noblest deeds. One who came to proclaim in a language intelligible to the hum- blest comprehension, the law of human brother- hood, and who so wrought and spoke that, of all others, the common people heard Him most gladly, transformed the rest-day of Judaism into the healing-day of Christianity. By miracles, such as that wrought on the blind man and the paralytic, He taught, once for all, that those who to-day have, in their more favored circumstances, in their finer culture, in their ampler means, gifts with which may be wrought new miracles 473 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of healing and enlightenment among the sorrow- ful and unfortunate, may well take that day which, with unconscious significance, the Chris- tian world is wont to call ' the Lord's day,' and do in it, if they never do so at any other time, the Lord^s work. His work was to reveal to men the fatherhood of God, and in Himself the sonship of all mankind. It was to draw together severed classes and alienated races and hostile hearts. It was to teach by the one incomparable gift of Himself that it is more blessed to give than to receive. It was, in one word, to heal the strifes and hatreds that held men apart from one another, and to make of them one family. And when those who have most to enjoy and most to give begin by using Sunday for ministries such as these, they will find in them that which best conserves its truest sacredness, and which will make its preservation from merely secular en- croachments the common interest of ' all sorts and conditions of men.' l Rest,' says Hooker, ' is a change of labor.' If it cannot be quite that to the tired and over-taxed laboring man, it may well be something like it to his more favored brethren. Society to-day, disturbed and divided by the mutual hatreds and suspicions of employer and employed, of rich and poor, of the idle and prosperous on the one hand and the needy and ill-paid on the other, waits for some gracious sol- vent which shall at once reconstitute and unite CHURCH WORK. 471 our whole social life. There is but one. ' Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well ; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one an- other's feet. For I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you.' It will not be by Sunday proscriptions, baring hard- est upon those who are least privileged, that we shall save Sunday from desecration, but by Sun- day ministries in the sanctuary, most surely, but outside of it, far more actively and universally than we have ever yet dreamed of and in ways that to some of us may seem at first not quite congruous with venerable traditions. We want, with our brethren of the working class, that which we have largely lost the Church, I fear, not less than those who are outside of it that expressive thing which we call ' touch.' And we can only recover it by going among them and seeking to understand and help them, not with doles, or in a spirit of condescending patronage, but with an honest purpose to know them as men and to treat them as brethren. If to this end all the congregations of all the churches of our great cities could be turned out of their comfort- able sanctuaries for one Sunday and left to find their way among those of whose lives and homes they know at present absolutely nothing, this at least would come to pass, that they would learn enough to set them thinking with unwonted 472 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. earnestness. * Saunders,' says an English noble- man, in a modern work of fiction (having been advised to cure his hypochondria by cultivating the acquaintance of people more unfortunate than himself) , ' do you know any of the working classes ? ' "' Yes, my lord.' " l Then bring me some, Saunders.' " It is a very common mistake in dealing with more than one of our social problems. Unfortu- tunately, the ( working classes ' will not be 4 brought.' But they can be sought and known. And if we would have them on our side in de- fending Sunday from secular encroachments, we may well use some part of it in cultivating their acquaintance, and so in learning of wants which, once owned and met, they, too, will join hands with all lovers of their kind in the defence of Sunday and of those common interests which it has so mightily helped to conserve. It may be that we cannot at once persuade them to esteem it for its highest uses ; but if we can begin by making it the day of human brotherhood a day for promoting its spirit and fostering its expres- sion we shall have taken the first step toward rescuing it from dishonor and redeeming it for the good of man and the glory of God." This would be " church work " indeed. CHAPTER XXIX. RECREATION. ONE great misfortune with the American is that he has not enough recreation. The next is like unto it, for what recreation he has is not good enough. We have fewer holidays than any other people in the world. If we could be persuaded to ob- serve saints' days, it would be a very good thing for this country. It is said that in Italy every other day is a festival. Considering the rate at which Americans work while they are at work, it would not seem much out of the way if every other day were a holiday here. We work so hard, and so thoroughly make work of everything, that even our sports have the appearance of labor. Take for instance the na- tional game, by which any one will understand baseball is meant. It is an honest, rough-and- tumble, muscular game in its original form ; but no sooner had men begun to play it well than it was turned into a business. What had been straightforward pitching and batting and catch- ing developed slowly into a combination of sharp (473) 474 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ways and tricks. Nowadays a pitcher does not amount to anything unless he attempts to trick the man at the bat ; and the man at the bat in turn is expected to be wide-awake for all sorts of unexpected games. We cannot even take our conventional amuse- ments as they were designed. The principal di- versions offered the public for pay are music and the drama. But no sooner does any one attempt to enjoy a good concert or opera or play for its own sake than there arises a series of men who persist in reducing all to the school-room level and take them out of the realm of amusement. The plays and operas and all musical composi- tions are treated as serious studies by the major- ity of critics who" stand highest in the public estimation and in that of the newspaper and magazine press, and it is demanded of us that we shall sit about as university students do in a lecture-room and make notes, mentally or other- wise. If we go to a yacht race, we are not expected to intei ist ourselves so much in a spirited struggle of sailors as in smart tricks to get into assisting currents or tides, and we are expected to take more interest in the model of a yacht than in her performance in all sorts of weather. Even a college boat-race can no longer be a matter of momentary strife between a couple of crews, but we have to hear beforehand theories of rowing RECREATION. 475 and shapes of boats and comparative strokes, until what used to be one of the commonest of boyish amusements has become, like music and drama, a science. In America the horse-race used to be a strife between two or three horses, rode by their respective owners, but very seldom nowa- days does a gentleman ride his own horse in a race and depend upon the sympathetic combina- tion of the two to win. His horse is carefully groomed by stable-boys and trained by an expert who gets as large a salary as a college president, and when it gets upon the race-track it is bestrode by some under-sized, spindle-shanked fellow who is hired to ride it. The late John Minor Botts, of Virginia, long a prominent figure in the na- tional Congress, and for thirty years a patron of the turf in his native State, once retired from horse-racing in utter disgust at the fact that, al- though he himself was quite a heavy man, he could find no gentleman who would ride against him in an ordinary country race. Weights were carefully calculated and balanced, a horse which the owner would treat almost as tenderly as if it were his wife was lashed and spurred by some hireling, and Mr. Botts declared that horse-racing had gone to the devil. Sport has not only become a study and science in the United States, thanks or blame to the prac- tical tendency of the American mind, but it has become even a business. All the great ball 478 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. games now are played for money and the players are professionals. The horse-race is a big gam- bling game. Even a couple of university crews cannot go out to row against each other without hundreds of thousands of dollars being bet on one and the other. This perversion of an honor- able sport has gone so far that very few people nowadays believe there is any honesty in apparent competition in sport at all. The question seldom is as to which horse or which man or which crew will win, but which is the likeliest to sell out to the bookmakers. The infection extends all the way from the top to the extreme bottom. Prize- fights used to be half-way respectable, because two fellows with a great deal of muscle and very little brains would stand up face to face all day for the sake of discovering which was the better man, but nowadays the fight is decided by the comparative length of pocket of the backers of the contestants. Nevertheless, a large number of the American people are in earnest pursuit of amusement of some kind and are immensely glad when they can find it. They are not particular. In fact, they are obliged to be in the condition of the hungry man at a stage station on the plains who, when he was told that there was nothing for dinner except fried rattlesnake, said it was a question between that and nothing at all, and he had made up his mind he would enjoy fried rattle- RECREATION. 477 snake. Theatre companies are going about the country with a lot of the worst trash that possi- bly can be put together by the pen of man ; but tired business men and even some professional men of high intellectual calibre visit these shows and wait patiently through two hours' winnowing of chaff with the hope of catching some grain of fun or pathos at which they can laugh or weep. The old classical dramas which delighted our forefathers are no longer in high repute. It is not safe at the present day for Booth or Barrett to produce Shakespeare's masterpieces except at a theatre where the scenery costs more than the playing. The plays which take are those which quickest provoke a laugh. The humor may be coarse, but it is better than none at all. Besides, it is all forgotten within twenty-four hours, and perhaps no harm comes of it. In fact, the encouraging feature of it all is that humor is more in demand than anything else on the stage. A piece that is funny and contains a funny man can always draw. Humor has come to take the place of charity in covering a multi- tude of sins. People who work must laugh or they must go crazy. A famous physician, con- sulted a little while ago by the bank president of quite a large village in the central part of the country, said to his patient, " The best thing you can do is to go to every comedy that is put on the stage in your town." " But," said the man, " no 478 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. comedy companies come to my town ; it is too small a place." "Ah, well then," said the phy- sician, " I don't see what there is left except to put ice on the back of your neck." The Ameri- can brain is overworked and must find relaxation, and humor is its first demand. It is pleasant to record that the rule of supply following demand does not fail in this country. We have more humorists than all the rest of the world combined. The people flock eagerly to them, no matter through what medium their fun is offered the public. Such men as Bill Nye, James Whitcomb Riley and Bob Burdette are in demand all over the country as lecturers, and every funny thing they put into print is copied by hundreds of newspapers at once. A great corporation lawyer of the city of New York was once complimented by the author on his selection of the daily newspaper which he habitually read. " Well," said the legal light, " I don't read it for its editorials or its news, but because it contains the best funny column in the city. I could not go without this paper every day any more than I could go without my breakfast, and when T chance to be out of town I look more eagerly for the trains which will bring the paper than for the hours of sitting of a court in which I am obliged to make an argument." This demand for humor has made itself so thoroughly felt in dramatic circles that at present RECREATION. 479 the best theatrical company in the United States is undoubtedly one in New York, which devotes itself entirely to comedy. People sometimes complain that the plays have a family resem- blance, and that the actors have the same old parts over and over again. Nevertheless the theatre is always full and the manager has a most consoling bank account, although when he paid equal attention to what are called strong dramatic works he found no little trouble in filling seats. Salvini is perhaps the greatest of living tragedians, but it is a sad day for Salvini when Buffalo Bill plays in the same town. When General Grant was alive, he was very fond of going out evenings to some public performance, but those who knew him best never saw him where a great tragedy or a French emotional drama was being produced. He went instead to the circus, if it chanced to be in town, and if there was no circus he went where the best comedy was being played. Senator Conkling, one of the most dignified and unapproachable men in the United States, could easier be found at the circus in the evening than at his own quarters. The late Henry Bergh, one of the solemnest-visaged men ever seen in the metrop- olis, was a most inveterate first-nighter at comedy theatres, and within speaking distance of him could always be found the most distinguished members of the State legislature, as well as 480 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a large number of legal luminaries of equal fame. There is a great deal of moaning in religious circles over the prevalence of what is called Sabbath-breaking, but it can generally be traced to the fact that there are no holidays but Sunday. The majority of people, and some of them are very good and held in deserved respect by the most religious, are oftener found on Sundays amusing themselves in some way than in attend- ance on divine worship. It is not that they need religion less, but that they need relaxation more. There seems no way of providing new holidays. We have taken in all the birthdays of distin- guished men that the public seem inclined to respect. We respect two or three great religious feast days of the year by refraining from work, but there are fewer people in church on Christinas day than on Sunday. On the Fourth of July the most patriotic citizen is more likely to be found out fishing than listening to an oration on the purposes of the founders of the republic. The laboring men of the country succeeded some time ago in establishing a new holiday to be called Labor day, and they succeeded also in getting, in a number of States, a half-holiday on Saturday afternoon. It is a pity that further movements of the same sort have not already been suggested. We work too hard, we live too fast, we think too much, we wear out at an early RECREATION. 481 age. Our wisest and brightest men are contin- ually breaking down at a period of life in which the foreigner at the same age considers himself just reaching his prime. Nobody ever hears of a great foreign financier going about the country in charge of his physician, as Jay Gould and some other noted Americans have done frequently in late years. Nobody ever hears of a foreign cler- gyman trying to enjoy a long period of enforced rest, but the custom is very common here and is growing more so, to a degree that calls for serious thought. There must be a change. Men drop dead too frequently. The functional disorder is always that of the heart. The circulation is over-taxed. It is nursed and stimulated by every known method until at last there comes a time when there is nothing left to work upon. The man drops dead. His friends say that it is the most comfortable way of dying, but dying is not wHat we came into the world for. It is an unpleasant duty that must be attended to at some time, but the valuable period of a man's life is that in which he has put into practice the lessons of experience. About the time we reach it here a man is prematurely old. He must retire ; Worse still, during the time of his abnormal activity, he has probably been progenitor of several children, who in the social circles of any other nation would probably be looked to to manifest and develop the qualities which made 31 482 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. their parents great, but here distinguished pa- rental quality seems to have been exhausted in the first generation, and the children who follow either are good-for-nothing or strike out for them- selves in entirely new and less important lines of effort. Galton, in his famous work on heredity, explained that the bad reputation of clergymen's sons was due to the unnatural mental excitement and strain with which their parents were com- pelled to labor. The same may be said of the children of almost all prominent men in the United States. We are wasting our energies frightfully, or rather we are dissipating them. It is not fair to the public, it is not fair to the owners of these energies, it is still less fair to their posterity. We must work less and enjoy ourselves more, if we are to be a strong nation intellectually, and if the human seed which is sown shall bring forth the harvest which may rightly be expected of it. CHAPTER XXX. THE AMERICAN PHYSIQUE. IF the people of the United States dou't take care, they will suddenly find themselves obliged to call upon barbarians to strengthen up the na- tional physique. Our women are not what they should be phys- ically. They are better perhaps than those of a generation ago, but that comparison does not imply much in their favor. Our men are still worse, at least those of them who live in cities and towns, and, as the census reports will tell any one who takes the pains to examine them, the proportion of city to country population has suddenly jumped from about one- twentieth to nearly one-fourth. Numerous natural causes lead to this end, but the effect is of more immediate importance than the cause. People are frequently astonished on meeting some young or almost middle-aged business man to discover that he is grandson, or perhaps son, of some man who had a superb physique, while the descendant can best be described by the con- (483) 484. OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. temptuous American appellation, " runt." Our cities and towns are full of young men but slightly over five feet in height and weighing but little more than a hundred pounds. Perhaps you will say that these little fellows have at least a great deal of nerve. Yes, so has the inbred terrier dog, but every breeder knows that it is only a question of time when this par- ticular strain must entirely disappear, the latest specimens being afflicted by every ill to which dog-flesh is heir. Humanity is in the same condition, and the degeneration ought to be stopped quickly. The people in our cities have too little blood and muscle and too much nerve. It seems all right while you see them at work, but working time is only an incident of the daily life of a respectable human being, and the small, slight, large-headed man or woman who works hard all day long is not likely to rest well at night, and any physician of large experience will tell you that he is not likely to live out half his possible three-score years and ten. If imperfect physical organizations could go out of the world and carry all the effects of their misfortune with them, there would be enough to mourn over, but they seldom show any inclination in that direction. They are all possessed to per- petuate their species, and the physical results are deplorable. A boy or a girl of twelve or fourteen THE AMERICAN PHYSIQUE. 485 years in the country frequently threatens to be larger than any of his progenitors. A boy or girl of the same age in the city is usually under- sized. The graduating classes in our grammar- schools, consisting entirely of children of ages at which young people of both sexes are sup- posed to enter college if they wish a higher edu- cation, show us a deplorable assortment of under- sized human beings. Most of them have very large heads ; among the intelligent classes of all civilized communities the head is too large any way, and the purpose of physical life should be to supply the proper blood, bone and muscle. Fortunately it is much easier to educate the body than the mind, and a change can be brought about in any family or in any social circle that can really be alarmed about its own condition. I do not say this on my own authority. I was talking a few days ago on this subject with William Blakie, a New York lawyer, who when- ever he finds himself entirely tired out with the duties of his profession starts off for a few days' walk, with the intention of covering forty miles a day in the open air. Blakie used to pull stroke- oar in the Harvard crew and he can pull a mighty oar now, although he is a working lawyer, a Presbyterian deacon and a man who forgets his profession once in a while for the sake of running off two or three hundred miles and lecturing to a 486 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. town-full of people on the necessity of proper at- tention to physical culture. He said : " For many years we give six or eight hours of the best of each day to training boys' and girls' minds and moral ' natures ; and nine boys and girls out of every ten in this country, do not have even half an hour daily of real bodily exercise. This makes it easy to account for the big heads and poor bodies of most American children. Look at the world's greatest workers in any gen- eration, and see if you find many with first-class heads, third-class stomachs and fourth-class liv- ers. That is not the way to make really strong men or women, and it will be a godsend to this race when we not only find it out, but see to it that every boy and girl has a trained body as well as a trained and well-stored rnind. Fortu- nately, while the latter takes six hours a day, one hour a day will do for the former, but this precious hour ought to be spent under wise and vigorous teaching." What Mr. Blakie has said was the result of close observation of communities, families and individuals, and it cannot be too closely taken to heart. There have been many differences in the opinions recorded by foreign visitors and observ- ers about the American people, but on one sub- ject they all agree, and that is, that between the spirit of equality, the rage for wealth, the com- petition in business circles and the stimulating WM. BLAIKIE. THE AMERICAN PHYSIQUE. 487 influence of our air, the American people, from the oldest to the youngest, are being steadily ex- cited to the extreme of their capacity. This mistake should be put an end to. One tourist, who wrote a book a few years ago, gravely ad- vanced the theory that the American Indian was the result of evolution from a high type of civili- zation affected by a stimulating atmosphere in a country of immense possibilities and without physicians. He pointed to the Indian as an ex- ample of what the entire population of the United States must some day come to, unless aroused in time to a sense of their physical dangers. There may not have been sufficient basis for the lucu- brations of this gentleman, but it certainly is true that within three generations people in most of our centres of knowledge have been able to see an entirely earnest, nervous, high-strung mental organization deteriorate in a family until the grandson no more resembled his grandfather than the Indian pony resembled the thorough- bred. He may have had a great deal of physical endurance of the baser sort, but the energy, the impulse, the mentality and the earnestness which characterized his ancestors were entirely lacking. It is easy to find such specimens in almost any prominent family in the United States. The greater the name in old times, the more insig- nificant appear the members of the present gen- eration. 488 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. The American physique ought to be taken care of. It is the only one we have. Possibly we may improve it from time to time by crossing the blood with that of some of the coarser foreign nationalities who flock to our shores, but this method is so popular with the aristocratic families of England and the continental nations that it would never do in the world for us to drop back upon such a precedent. CHAPTER XXXI. WOMAN AND HER WORK. FOR a whole generation the public has been hearing a great deal of woman's rights. Already, however, woman has secured one of the greatest rights in the world. She has the right to labor in any capacity in which men hitherto have been employed. Some close observers have dignified this change by calling it the liberation of woman. But closer observers realize that it is also the liberation of man. Woman is doing a great deal of work which man used to do and which it was supposed only man was competent to do, but woman has stepped in and done it just as well as man ever did, and men, sometimes with thanks and occa- sionally with curses, have retired to other kinds of labor more fit for strong arms. The opinion of men on this subject would probably receive no consideration from the gentler sex, but a journal recently started specially to advance the interests of women, declares that at the present time there are over three hundred occupations in the United States, aside from (489) 490 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. housekeeping, in which women find abundant and remunerative employment. What woman has said, man would be a brute to unsay. There has been a decided gain to the world by this change, but the greatest gain has been to the sex to which the world has been, if not cruel, cer- tainly indifferent. Woman has been the slave, the plaything, the toy of man so long that it is hard to get out of the public mind the idea that woman is simply an appendage to the ruder being, and that whatever she is or is to have de- pends upon the generosity of man. The gen- erosity of man is no more to be depended upon by the gentler sex than it is by men themselves. All men are generous when they are not likely to lose anything by it. All men also are selfish, and woman would not now have her present chance in the United States were it not that men saw a gain for themselves in the change. Woman may not be getting as much money for some kinds of work as man would were he doing the same work himself. But the beginning counts for a great deal in this world. Everybody knows the old saying that the first step is half the battle, and woman has taken the first step. According to the authority above quoted she has taken over three hundred of them, which is more than man can say for himself during the same period. No matter what may be said by the men who WOMAN AND HER WORK. 491 have been displaced by women in the various de- partments of business ; no matter what may be said by unpardonable gossips about women stepping aside from the family circle to do work which has no appearance of domesticity about it, the truth is that the appearance of women in the business world has been of immense ser- vice to the gentler sex, and indirectly of great benefit to the lords of creation. It is absolutely necessary to the civilization of the world that the great mass of mankind should realize that woman is something better than a mere dependent on man, and there is no quicker way of teaching this lesson than that of demonstrating that woman is quite competent to take care of herself if she has a fair chance. A fair chance has been offered. It has been embraced, and some hundreds of thousands of women in the United States are doing for them- selves far better than they would have been done for by the men into whose power they would have fallen under the old custom of making a woman's maintenance and existence entirely dependent upon the male members of her own family. A large department of industry in which wo- men are employed, outside of household duties, is that of work at the government offices at Washington. Irresponsible newspaper para- graphers used to write a great many ugly things about treasury clerks and pension office clerks 492 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and other feminine employes of the government. But that sort of writing has gone entirely out of practice. Seeing is believing, and the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who have yearly visited the national capital are satisfied from their own observation and still more by their personal acquaintance with attaches of the dif- ferent departments that woman not only knows how to work, but can prolong her efforts and maintain regular hours quite as well as any man ; and, to put it mildly, that she is quite as respectable as man. Still more important, woman has not yet found it necessary to go out to drink. It is a severer joke and comment upon the stronger sex than any man yet has been willing to admit that, while clerks in all departments of the govern- ment service at the national capital may be found who deem it necessary to stimulate themselves during business hours, women work the cus- tomary hours prescribed, do their work well, and find no need of artificial stimulation. Does this mean that for sixty centuries the world has been mistaken as to which of the two sexes is the stronger? This is a good conun- drum to think over when you have some spare time on your hands. It has also been reported by the aforesaid irre- sponsible paragrapher that women clerks at Washington have very little to do, and that the WOMAN AND HER WORK. 493 work with which they are charged could be at- tended to by men with equal celerity and accu- racy ; but the fact seems to be, according to Cabi- net officers of half a dozen successive adminis- trations, that the men work neither so fast nor so well, and cost a great deal more money. More money probably will come in time. No slave can shake off all his chains at a single blow. Old Samson himself, when he had broken the manacles that bound him, was still blind and had to be led about by the hand. And woman, perhaps, may yet need some instruction and friendly counsel, but where in a single city a great many thousands of the gentler sex are performing arduous labor and living up to exact- ing restrictions, it is far too late to say anything whatever about the incapacity of woman for per- sistent labor. Reference has been made quite freely in this screed to the feminine employes of the govern- ment at the national capital, but only because this is the most prominent instance and illustration of the capacity of women to work. Any observer, however, can satisfy himself, if he will, on the subject by looking through prominent business houses in any large city. Where once every desk had a man behind it and all the sales-coun- ters were lined with masculine salesmen, the word now in New York and some other cities is that no man shall be employed at any work for 494 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. which a woman can be found. Woman has some qualities especially attractive to the management of a large business. She never gets drunk, she seldom goes into speculation, and still less fre- quently does she look around for something else to do. Male clerks and salesmen are continually on the lookout for something better. They are likely to put their savings into Wall street or some other gambling den. They expect to make a great Career in business somewhere, somehow, some time ; but woman has the superior quality, or so it seems to her employer, of being satisfied to do well what work she has in hand, and look for nothing else. Consequently, marriage is almost the only influence that can ever remove her from whatever may be her chosen sphere of duty. But woman no longer is satisfied to work for poor wages. There are in the United States thousands of feminine physicians. There are a few female lawyers, and indeed two or three pul- pits have been satisfactorily filled for a number of years by women. Other women can be found as principals of large business enterprises. Ev- erybody in Wall street knows Mrs. Hetty Green, one of the sharpest and most successful specula- tors in railroad securities that Wall street ever has known. If she has made any losses nobody knows of them. On the other side her gains may be counted by millions by any broker on the street. She and her husband were mutually in- WOMAN AND HER WORK. 495 terested in a large railroad enterprise. Her hus- band has dropped out of sight. The wife remains, and no broker or operator who is not very new at the business ever attempts to get the better of Mrs. Green. Her fortune has been rolling up steadily until it is estimated almost as high as that of any but the three most prominent men in Wall street, and it continues to roll up. If she has any outside advisers, nobody has ever been able to discover who they are. Her methods are so quiet and straightforward that she mystifies the very elect among railroad men. The business of editing a newspaper is sup- posed to call for at least as high a combination of intellectual qualities as that of being President of the United States, and there are men who imagine that the first-class editor would let him- self down were he to accept the Presidency. Yet several prominent newspapers in the United States are not only edited, but managed in their business departments by women. They are not those most talked about; nevertheless their stock is not in the market, and it seldom changes hands. , Woman is said to be of quicker sensibilities than man. No one will doubt it who has seen a woman count currency at the Treasury Depart- ment at Washington, or handle a type-writing machine in an office in a large city. Recently there have been some exciting contests between 496 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. type-writers, and most of the winners have been women. In the city of Cincinnati, which con- tains more artistic furniture probably than the city of London or Paris, the work has been done almost entirely by the eyes and hands of women. A few years ago Hood's " Song of the Shirt " i was quoted as frequently in America as it once was in England, but nowadays only the stupidest of women, or those caught most suddenly in em- barrassments and without any preparation for the battle of life, give themselves to the needle. Men do that sort of work now. Reduced gentle- women who support themselves by sewing still exist, but they are not easy to find. Instead of making shirts or other cheap clothing at starva- tion wages, the woman out of employment nowa- days turns herself to some specialty of needle- work if she knows no other tool or method, and there are " exchanges " at which her work may be displayed and at which orders are given ac- cording to the samples shown and at prices which would astonish the old-time slaves of the needle. Women are in all the telegraph offices. They are clerks in thousands of business houses. They are mechanics, artisans and artists all over the country. It has become so much the fashion for women to work that nowadays there are signs in London, Paris and New York of common busi- ness enterprises presided over by women with titles. The Princess de Sagan, one of the bril- WOMAN AND HER WORK. 497 liant lights of the court of the last Napoleon, manages a dress-making establishment in Paris and New York. Other ladies, equally illus- trious, are well known in trade circles in London and on the Continent. All this looks strongly like the emancipation of women, but it does not at first sight convey its full meaning to the observer or reader. The most important result of it all is that woman is thus made independent of man. A woman of brains no longer needs to marry in order to have a home. It would be difficult to suggest the pro- portion of unhappy marriages which have been due to the fact that admirable women have been utterly unable to care for themselves in the world, and consequently have attached themselves for prudential reasons, although by a revered form and sacrament, to some man. But no longer is this necessary. There are all kinds of women as well as all kinds of men in business, but it is far safer in society to attempt a romantic flirtation with a woman than to make similar attempts in any business circles where women are employed. There are a great many handsome and spirited women in the departments at Washington, but no sentimental young man is fool enough to lounge about these places with the hope of getting up a flirtation. The woman who knows how to sup- port herself is not going to be in haste to marry. When she marries she is going to have a hus- 32 498 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. band, in fact as well as in name, as well as a home. She can afford to wait. She has entire control of her own destiny and she cannot be taken at a disadvantage. Instead of marrying for a home, the tables have been so turned that nowadays a large number of men are on the look- out for women who can give them a home. Plenty of men can be found who are desirous of marrying in order to be supported, instead of marrying for the purpose of supporting somebody else. The gain to woman in this change of affairs is simply inestimable. It is unnecessary to call any one's attention to the comparative great- ness of risk which woman sustains in entering the marriage relation now, and the helplessness in which she found herself under the old rule, when man was the only wage-earner. Women are working for themselves, even married women, all over the United States. In many of the New England manufacturing towns there are hun- dreds, and in some of them thousands, of women, already married, working at the same trades as their husbands, but keeping their own separate bank accounts at the savings banks. A man can no longer afford to abuse a woman because she is dependent upon him, and dare not complain, for fear of losing her source of maintenance. A woman of any brains in any industry can care for herself quite as well as any husband is likely WOMAN AND HER WORK. 499 to care for her. The consequence is that divorces are very infrequent in New England manu- facturing towns. If either member of a married couple is given to lounging and bad habits, it is likely to be the man. It is only fair to say in man's favor that the temptations are principally on the masculine side. Women have not yet to any extent taken to drink, billiards and politics. They do not bet on horse-race^ or buy pools on sparring matches or go on excursions to neigh- boring towns for the sake of indulging habits which are unsafe to make public at home; so the woman of the house is far less likely to be out of work or to be away from her post than her husband. What the effect of this change in the indus- trial outlook may be upon children is yet un- known. But it is a fair question, whether the woman whose daily hours are employed at me- chanical or clerical occupations is likely to bring up her children \vorse than the woman whose leisure moments are consumed in small talk and social dissipation. No child can be less cared for than that of the society queen. The com- monest washer-woman, who leaves her home at early dawn and does . not return until darkj can give her offspring more attention than can be expected by the children of many ladies whose names appear in the fashionable columns of newspapers which give considerable space to that 500 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. sort of thing. Whether each family should not contain one member whose duties and interests are entirely confined to the home circle, is also a question upon which a great deal can be said upon both sides. But the fact to be brought into prominence at the present time is that woman has already acquired the right to earn her own living and is doing it, to the extent of some hun- dreds of thousands of women, most admirably. Women are presidents of large colleges in the United States ; colleges, it is true, intended solely for the education of members of their own sex ; nevertheless the course of study and the subse- quent social and literary standing of the gradu- ates shows that the work done in these institu- tions is well done. The best proof of this is in the better colleges for girls in the United States. The demand for scholarships far exceeds the supply, and there are millionaires in this country who have not yet been able to put their daugh- ters in any one of the three or four best femi- nine colleges in the land. * In literature woman has made her way to an extent which every one knows, if he reads at all. Our most popular novels are all written by women. Women write a great deal of our poetry. It is impossible to find a first-class mag- azine which does not contain a number of con- tributions by women, and those contributions are quite as much talked about and quite as fre- WOMAN AND HER WORK. 501 quently read as anything written by the most prominent masculine minds in the land. As a novelist, the young woman is immeasurably the superior of the young man. No young man ever wrote a novel as famous as " Charles Au- chester " at as early an age (seventeen years) as that of the young lady who is the author of this still much-read book; and our publishers are flooding the market with other novels by women who have not yet reached their majority. If quick perception, facility of expression, and piquant comment are sufficient to make the novelist, our future novels must be written prin- cipally by young women. That they make some dreadful blunders is very true. Some of the most abominable books that have been inflicted upon a much-suffering public during the past year have been from the pens of young women who ought to have known better, if they had known anything at all. Nevertheless, it is a great deal easier in literature to tone down than to tone up, and somehow the necessity for toning down has not been apparent to any great extent in fiction and poetry written by young men. The " restraining force," to which social phi- losophers attribute the sudden rise of some family, nation and tribe, may account for the sudden prominence and brilliancy of women in many departments of life. There may be such, a thing as inheritance by sex, and a sex long suppressed, 502 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. as woman certainly has been, in all but the do- mestic virtues, may have a great deal to give the world and then suddenly fade out of prominence. But at present all odds are in favor of woman. She has made her way so rapidly, though unob- trusively, and so pleasantly, that every man who has the proper manly heart within him will be glad to see her go a great deal further, and be- lieve that she is quite competent to do it. CHAPTER XXXII. THE KITCHEN. IF the blood is the life and the Bible says it is then the kitchen deserves to be regarded with more respect than it ever has received from Amer- icans. Nevertheless we are the worst fed people upon the face of the earth. If any one doubts it, let him compare any hundred American men and women upon Broadway, New York, with a hun- dred foreigners, immigrants, from any one of the poorly fed nations of Europe who may chance to stroll from Castle Garden up the Metropolis' prin- cipal thoroughfare. The trouble is not that we do not have sufficient raw material, but that no one seems to know what to do with it. Of course there are homes with a genius presiding over the household destinies who knows how to prepare food fit to be turned into desirable and admirable human nature, but they seem the exception that proves the rule. Our food products and food materials are the best in the world, otherwise all the nations of the earth would not be so desirous of obtaining them. (503) 504 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Our wheat is held in highest esteem in all the markets of Europe. Our beef and mutton are sent over by the ton, indeed, by hundreds of tons every week; and even our pork, the flesh of the despised pig, is shipped to every portion of the world from American ports. Even our fruit is found in almost all the commercial ports of the old world. If England could not get American apples to last from early autumn till late spring, there would be almost a riot in some portions of the British Isles. Yet what do Americans have to live upon and what have they to show for it ? Whatever the kitchen may prepare and send up to the dining- room, the fact is, that the physique which results from it is not such as any country should be proud of. We are a nation of undersized men and slight-waisted women. Even in the farming districts where men live out of doors and have the benefit of the free air of heaven, which is a remedy for all sorts of physical disorders, dys- peptics are found by hundreds of thousands, and any one who can devise a nostrum affording the slightest relief from the national disease may be sure of making a fortune. Indeed, some scores of fortunes have been made in this way alone. " God sends food, but the devil sends cooks." It is an old saying that never was better exem- plified than in this country of ours. What is the reason ? There are several, but THE KITCHEN. 505 in the end they resolve themselves into one. The American kitchen is the one neglected portion of the house, as a rule. It seems unnecessary that this should be; so long as man is human he must live by eating, and will have an appetite. Woman is like unto him in these particulars. The custom of de- manding food three times a day is about as old as civilization and promises to continue as long as humanity lasts. The human appetite is a constant quantity, as mathematicians say, no matter what may be the conditions surrounding the owner. Men and women, boys and girls, aesthetes and bullies, divines and prize fighters, all agree that three solid meals a day are neces- sary to proper physical and mental development. But we Americans have so much else to think about, we have so many demands upon our time and attention, that it has come to be regarded as a matter of course that, so long as the table is set three times a day and something is put upon it, people are properly fed. This is a dreadful mis- take, and the whole nation has to suffer for it. It is not at all to the point to tell us upon what small fare and hard fare certain other peoples of the world live and thrive. We are not those people; we are Americans. We have a great deal more to do than they. If we never used our hands and feet at all, we would require more nourishment than the majority of people of any 506 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. other civilized nation, for every American has a great deal to think about as well as a great deal to do. He has more rights, so he has more responsibilities ; therefore he has a great deal more to think about and needs a great deal more of substantial, well-nourished gray matter in his brain. There is no way to get it except from the blood ; the blood can't get it except from the food, and the food must come every time from the kitchen. If the kitchen fails, the nation must fail. This may seem going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it is nothing of the kind. The honor is as great, though of a different kind, of supplying the stomach as of supplying the soul : for the inter-communication of soul and body are so close and frequent that the most spiritually- minded man or woman will be free to admit that his conduct cannot be according to the inner life unless his physique is also supported from the inner source of vitality. It would seem that there is no need for com- plaint on this score in the United States. Books of instructions in cookery are about ten times as numerous as commentaries on the Bible, which otherwise are the most frequent and familiar books in American literature. Any one who wishes to vary the daily bill of fare of his family, and has no personal knowledge on the subject, can easily be supplied to any extent by indulging in any one of two or three hundred books, no one THE KITCHKN. 507 of which is bad and most of which are very good. And yet we continue to be an ill-fed, badly nour- ished people, and the consequences go forth, down to the third and fourth generations, as promised in the Scriptures regarding the iniquities of the fathers also the mothers. The origin of all this trouble to the American inner man and woman may probably be found in our * national impulses and aspirations. We seem to think that nothing material in humanity is worthy of great consideration. We are so hard at work in improving our minds and brightening our intellects and making ourselves the equal of any one else, intellectually, mentally and finan- cially, that we affect to despise the ordinary means of reaching such ends. Nothing can exist without a foundation. Nature and nature's God has decreed that the mind shall depend upon the brain, and the brain shall depend upon the body, and unless the body is properly nourished the brain cannot be equal to whatever its owner would have it do. This is so old and so commonplace a fact that it seems almost necessary to apologize for re- stating it here, yet the great body of the people do not seem yet to understand it. It appears to be the impression of many that the body can take care of itself, and that there is some mys- terious, inexplicable, but providential means and methods by which the mind shall fare satis- 508 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. factorily, regardless of any human and material attention. The sooner we get over notions of that sort the better. Because occasional ascetics have succeeded in proving themselves exceptions to the rule of the survival of the fittest, it does not follow that the rest of us can act accord- ingly. If any one wants evidence to this effect, he can find it in some hundreds of New England ceme- teries. The early New Knglanders were almost all mind. To state it more properly, they were almost all soul, with a little mind as tender and assistant to the higher and more ethereal power. They were the descendants of a religious colony. They expected a speedy end to all things, and the body was held in contempt and the soul ele- vated to the extreme capacity of the owner, to make it fit for the joys which were awaiting it and which were expected very soon to be con- ferred. That all this was well meant will be ad- mitted by any one. That it was a shocking mis- take is proved by long rows of head-stones, recording the deaths of nearly all the members of one family after another. " The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away," is a common inscrip- tion upon such tomb-stones. A truer statement would be, " Killed by the kitchen." During the civil war, which is conventionally alluded to as the " late unpleasantness," it was my fortune or misfortune to spend some time in THE KITCHEN. 509 a camp of soldiers and to partake of the daily fare of the defenders of the Union. Looked at in the aggregate, it was dreadfully poor stuff, yet when cooked under the supervision of officers who had the power to place the cook in the guard- house, or punish him more severely for neglect of duty, the several articles of food-supply emerged from the camp kettles in palatable form, and with such effect that the men who ate them were in finer physical condition than they ever had been seen at home by the writer of these lines. It is useless to say that they were men who never had decent food before ; for many of them were from very good families, families whose means and intentions were quite as good as any one could ask for, but somehow the army pork and beans and flour were worked into nu- tritious shape and turned to such good effect by the chemistry of nature, that most men who ate them were healthy, strong, and in high spirits, three conditions of physical life which had seldom been noticed in them while they were in- habiting their own homes and enjoying all the comforts of civilized life. What can be done by a lot of stupid fellows cooking over open fires in the open air can cer- tainly be accomplished by American women on improved ranges and gas stoves and oil stoves, with all the appliances that modern ingenuity has been able to devise, and with the great variety 510 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. of raw material which it was utterly impossible to obtain in the field during the war. When the soldiers got their pay and were able to go to a neighboring village with a market basket and bring back a few vegetables, fresh meats, and so forth, the meals that were served in some camps were absolute feasts. . Civilians visiting there at the time were delighted, and expressed themselves almost willing to undergo the military life, with all its special duties and dangers and responsibili- ties, for the sake of being so well fed. A more severe, though unconscious sarcasm, was never heard regarding American housekeeping ; but it had the merit, sad it is to say it, of absolute truth. Probably a great deal of the misery to which the American digestion is subjected is due to the supposition that cooking is menial duty, and that it ought to be done by menials. There are por- tions of the world where this mistaken idea would be laughed at. There are English, German and French ladies almost without number ladies of large means, fine taste and high education who do not consider it beneath their dignity and intelligence to superintend their kitchens and inspect every meal before it is placed upon the table. They would no more think of trusting the preparation of food for their families to a common, ignorant servant in the kitchen, than THE KITCHEN. 511 they would think of trusting uncounted money to a tramp. But the American woman appears to look upon the matter from an entirely different standpoint. Cooking is drudgery ; drudgery should be done by servants ; consequently, servants should do all the cooking, and be able to do it without any in- struction from their mistresses. Consequently, the principal business of the American woman who has any ambition and any regard for her family, is the selection and frequent changing of servants. Why it should be otherwise is hard to see. The classes from which servants are se- lected in the United States are not those who have had any great experience in preparing food in the best manner for the table. In their own families they have not been able to afford it, and they have had few opportunities of learning ex- cept at the expense of some one else. The old- est servant is generally the safest so far as the superintendence of the kitchen is concerned. What can any one expect from peasants just out of the humblest abodes of Germany or the mud- floor huts of Ireland, or the still ruder cabins of the colored people of our own South ? Yet it is from these classes that American housekeepers are compelled to select their servants, and it is to these classes that they intrust the very respon- sible duty of preparing the food which is to make 512 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the body and brain of their husbands and chil- dren, to say nothing of their own. There must be an immense change if we are not to degenerate into a feeble, undersized, small- brained people. If Americans are to fulfil what they regard as their manifest destiny, they must be a great deal better fed than they are at the present time. To call attention to the splendid physical specimens of manhood and womanhood that have come down to us from the past genera- tion or two is not at all to the point. Most of these people lived in the open air, a most excel- lent palliative of all sorts of physical disorders ; but at the present time a fourth of the Ameri- can public live in towns and confine themselves to sedentary occupations, and the other part is endeavoring to do the same as quickly as possi- ble. House plants require more attention than out-of-door plants, as any one knows who has done any experimenting in amateur gardening. The house plant which consists of physical human nature is the most delicate specimen of all to take care of, and it should be managed with more intelligence than ever yet has been exhibited regarding it. If Americans are to be well and properly fed, American women must attend to it. The work may be hard, but it certainly should not be re- garded as degrading. In France, in England, and even in the United States to a large extent, THE KITCHEN. 513 there are a great number of intelligent men who pride themselves on details of cookery. They've been obliged to do so, for dishes which they wished prepared they were unable to obtain by any amount of instruction to underlings. Nothing but close personal supervision and an occasional hand in the details give them the result which they desire. If men, whom all women know to be stupid about such matters, can become accom- plished and successful cooks, turning the com- monest of raw materials into delicious and nutri- tious dishes, certainly woman should not allow herself to be outdone. I have been told that during a certain period of the civil war, when a board of examination was sitting at Washington selecting officers for a number of new regiments which were under the immediate control of the United States, instead of State authorities, a common question put to candidates was, " What would you consider your first duty were you commander of a company of soldiers ? " This question was answered differ- ently by a great many different men, but one day a private soldier who had applied for promotion answered by saying, " I would never let a meal be dealt out at the cook-house until I had my- self tasted each article and satisfied myself that it was properly cooked and would make good bone and muscle." That candidate, although, as al- ready said, he was a private soldier, received a 33 514 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. very high commission. The men who examined him knew the relation between cause and effect, and that properly fed men would make strong and reliable men. If we had only men to think of, the problem would not be so serious, and its solution so im- mediately demanded ; but for every man alive there are two or three children, beings who them- selves are helpless, without control or without authority over the conditions of their own lives. Their physical development, which is to fit them for such portions of the battle of life which they must fight, depend largely upon the kitchen, and the duty of humanity to these helpless beings is too serious and too unmistakable to admit of any excuse for neglect. The result to the child of under-feeding or improper feeding is one upon which physicians have discoursed at great length and with great intelligence, and the facts may be obtained without any trouble by any one who is interested in them. Is the duty of supervising the kitchen, or even doing the work, disgraceful to women of the higher order of mentality ? The late Theodore Parker, who, whatever may be thought of hjis theological views, was certainly a man of high intellectual character and abounding in human sympathy, was once asked by one of his parish- ioners, who was a woman, to define the unpar- donable sin. " It's making bad bread," said he ; THE KITCHEN. 515 and the poor man evidently spoke from the depths of his own indigestion. Hundreds of thousands of American men every day make a mere apology for breakfast at their home tables, trusting to make up the deficiency at dinner at a restaurant somewhere in the city or town at mid- day. This is not as it should be, for the women of their families cannot accompany them to the aforesaid restaurants, neither can the children. Good food is a necessary requisite of good health and good mentality. Its preparation is beneath the capacity and destiny of no one. To confide its preparation absolutely to underlings, to people who never have had any experience with unlim- ited quantity and good quality of raw material, is a greater fault than it seems ever to have ap- peared to the American mind. When our people have better food we will have fewer theologies but a great deal more religion, fewer political fights but much purer politics, fewer household quarrels but more home joys. CHAPTER XXXIII. OUR SERVANTS. " HE who would be the greatest among you, let him be the servant of all," says the Bible. The injunction seems to be very literally and persistently fulfilled in America, for whoever is greatest among us, by wealth and social position, is sure to have the greatest number of servants, and the more numerous his servants, the more is he the servant of them all. The probable outcome of the servant question is at present as much a matter of doubt as the re- sults of searching back for the cause of all things. Domestic service in the United States is uni- versally admitted to be universally bad. There are degrees of badness, but very little good is to be discovered in it. A jewel of a servant is sometimes reported, but in a very short time the report is corrected, some- times in language unfit for publication. American women ask one another indignantly why we cannot have servants in this country such as people have in Europe. It never seems to occur to them that in Europe most servants (516) OUR SERVANTS. 517 are trained by their employers, whereas in the United States the mistress expects to have her servants come to her fully trained. There is something pathetic in the universal American outlook and expectation for good ser- vants. Why should they be expected ? Where are they to come from ? The only sources are the peasant classes of the Old World and the colored people of our own. None of these people have had the training requisite to the proper care of any American home, yet the American woman seems determined to set the standard of profi- ciency and perfection. She knows through her own unaided reason, unless she is an imbecile, that the classes from whom she selects her do- mestic assistants have had no opportunity to learn to cook well, and still less to care for the contents of large, handsome, well-filled houses. Yet, one after another, our women go to the in- telligence offices, select women of various classes, take them to their homes, and put them in entire charge of their kitchens, dining-rooms, parlors, and bed-chambers, and then wonder why the re- sults are not what they had fondly expected. Why they should have expected them, deponent knoweth not, for why should people intuitively understand that which they nor their ancestors never came in contact with, and why should any one be expected, for wages, to do that which the owner is unable or unwilling to do for herself? 518 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. If experiment and change could be of any avail, American housekeepers would soon have the best servants alive, for their experience is one of con- tinual change. The owner of a handsome resi- dence, requiring the attention of three or four assistants, will first try Irish servants, then change for a little while to German, make a hope- ful grasp at two or three Swedes, change again to colored people, and then make the entire round once more with the hope that in some particulars she was not as careful as she should have been in the selection of her people. But the results are generally the same : slowness, carelessness, waste, lack of attention and lack of interest. Seriously, why should it be otherwise ? What is there in the wages and treatment of the Ameri- can household servant to justify any person of experience and self-respect in continuing at such work ? There never was a time or a country in which a woman fully competent to do housework could not better her condition, at least in appear- ance, by marrying ; and all servants who are worthy of respect for the manner in which they fulfil their duties, can depend upon marrying quickly and marrying well. A young man of good family once shocked his acquaintances by marrying one of his mother's servants, and when held to account for it he explained that he wasn't very wealthy, and that if he had married an American girl he would have been obliged to hire OUR SERVANTS. 519 a foreigner to take care of her, so he preferred to go back to first principles and marry a servant, so as to have one less person to support. It may have been a brutal and materialistic way of look- ing at the subject, but facts are facts, and it is certain that the average American woman is not so brought up as to be able to care for her own house, no matter how small, unless she has out- side assistance from some other member of her own sex. Herein lies the secret of the entire trouble. All work connected with household economy ap- pears menial to the American, and the woman who has done most of it and done it best is deter- mined that her daughter shall not go through what she has done, so she does all in her power to have the girl marry well, as the saying is, the meaning of it being that she shall so marry as to be supplied by her husband with plenty of ser- vants. It is bad form in most American social circles for a native born woman to do her own work. Unless she can hire some one else to do it for her, she is not considered fit for good society. Of course the woman who is incapable of man- aging her own household properly is also unfit to instruct servants and keep them properly at their work. In any business house requiring several assistants, the principal would think him- self unfit to conduct the business unless he were 520 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. competent to instruct all his clerks in their re- spective duties and to oversee them in such man- ner that they should neither be neglectful nor wasteful. To demand as much of his wife would probably bring about an unpleasant family scene. It is not that American women are not willing to carry their share of the burdens of life, but that, as a body, they are incompetent to do so. They have had no training in this direction. That a woman who is born, reared, and married in pov- erty should not wish that her daughter should go through all of her own experiences is quite natural arid motherly, but that she should not give her necessary instructions in household economy is not so explicable, nor is it defensible from any standpoint whatever. Looking at the subject from no standpoint but that of entire sel- fishness, it is advisable that a young wife should know how to care for herself and all that belongs to her, and unless she obtains her information from her own parents, it is quite unlikely that she will ever get it anywhere else. The period of the honeymoon is a very bad one in which to take lessons in any matter concerning the prin- cipal affairs of life, and her experience in obtain- ing her first and most important lessons in this subject under the eye of her husband, is, to say the least, humiliating. That men also should know a great deal about such subjects cannot be denied, but that their OUR SERVANTS. 521 education in domestic affairs has been neglected is no reason why the same should be said regard- ing that member of the family most of whose life is spent within the four walls of home, and who, by the authorization of society since the world began, has been responsible for the conduct of home affairs ; while the man is charged with the obtaining of the necessities of life and the pro- tection of his family from ills from which appar- ently women are unable to protect themselves. When " the late unpleasantness " ended, great hopes were expressed by those who had suffered from incompetent servants that the freeing of the blacks would give Northern housekeepers an op- portunity to obtain first-class servants to any ex- tent. But soon the housekeepers of the North discovered, to their horror, that the African- Amer- ican woman had no special genius for that sort of work, and little by little the truth was divulged that those who knew anything about it had ob- tained their information directly from white women, who, regardless of wealth and social po- sition, had paid very close attention to all the details of caring for their own homes. Just as bad meals could be obtained in South- ern palatial mansions during the good old slavery days as in any farmer's house in the American backwoods. The condition of the house, from the kitchen and dining-room to the parlors and chambers, was not at all dependent upon the col- 522 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ored people who did the details of the work, but upon the head of the family, or perhaps her daughters, who followed their people from place to place, gave them minute instructions as to what to do, and remained to see that the work was properly done. There are fine old aristo- cratic Southern ladies still alive who tell with great pride of the number of jars of preserves which they " put up," and of the pies and cakes which they made with their own hands about Christmas time, and of the close attention they paid to the stuffing of a turkey or the dressing of a bit of meat or the preparation of vegetables which were to go on the table at a time when some distinguished guest was expected. It was by such means, not merely by industrious colored hands, that the South earned its reputation for elegant hospitality, and intelligent Southerners themselves are authority for the statement that such hospitality was no more common below Mason and Dixon's line than it was north of that mythical boundary. At the present time, in all the large cities and in some of the large towns also, the cooking school is doing a great service to future genera- tions by preparing a large number of young women for some responsibilities of their coming married condition. But, though the harvest is abundant, the laborers are few in comparison with the great number who are standing idle. OUR SERVANTS. 523 To American women of every class cooking and other household work still is regarded as drudgery, and no attention is paid to it, except upon com- pulsion. This is a disagreeable fact, but facts must be looked in the face, no matter from what source they may be derived. Occasionally a few bright, brave souls rise in revolt and declare that they will settle the ques- tion by having nothing more to do with servants of any kind. Were their courage equal to their spirit they possibly would find great relief in acting according to their convictions. To care for one's home is not always an impossibility. Perhaps no woman can properly look after a large city residence full of elegant furniture and containing a great many articles which require daily attention, besides all the duties of the cooking department and the dining-room ; still to women the suggestion has so frequently oc- curred that will not be regarded as impertinent on the part of men, Does life consist in keeping up such appearances ? Whatever the future may have in store for us, our earthly life consists only in what we may have here. And to spend twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years in constant apprehen- sion and trepidation about household affairs is certainly to live a very unhappy life, no matter how much the torment may be assuaged by the affections of husband and children and friends. It is possible to so live that all the work of a 524 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. house can be done by one person and still give some leisure for recreation and for employment not of the class commonly, though often mis- takenly, called menial. An army officer's wife living in a house of three or four rooms at a fort or post often is quite as much of a lady in appearance, has quite as charming a home and quite as much time to enjoy herself as the wife of the most envied millionaire in any of our large cities. The difference of condition is re- sponsible for her good fortune. It consists simply in the inability to have a very large house, and consequently she has time to have essentials as well as appearances managed entirely by her own hand and has the satisfaction of knowing that whatever is done is well done a satisfaction which is enjoyed by very few of the women whose lives seem most to be envied by young women who are unable to see below the surface of household affairs. Among the wives of American mechanics, laborers and farmers there are some hundreds of thousands who have good taste and high intelli- gence, yet nevertheless do all their household work with their own hands, and from appear- ances it is impossible to believe that they suffer either mentally or physically by this sort of re- sponsibility. Of course in a cottage of three or four rooms it is impossible to give a large and elegant reception, much less a ball. Neverthe- OUR SERVANTS. 525 less a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth, and many a woman of wealth and social position has ad- mitted to herself and occasionally to her ac- quaintances that the abundance of possession is the greatest drawback from the happiness of life. Ambition, and not desire for genuine comfort, is at the bottom of a great deal of the trouble of American housekeepers, and until it is looked squarely in the face and its responsibilities de- liberately accepted or successfully dodged, it is not fair to attribute its penalties to some other cause. False pride is one of the commonest of the human faults that are talked about, and cer- tainly there is room for a great deal of com- ment on the subject regarding the present stand- ard of ambition among women who are at the head of American homes. If life consists solely in keeping up appearances, women ambitious for social position are right in enduring all the tor- ments to which they are at present subjected by their troubte in obtaining competent domestic servants. But, if the pleasure of life is in living, it may be well for some of them to pause a while and ask themselves whether it would not be pleasanter, better, happier and more ennobling to go back to the manner of the old patriarchs who considered themselves fortunate when they had a tent consisting of one single apartment to shel- ter them and all of their household goods. They 526 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. may not have been able to feel very proud in such circumstances, but certainly the comfort for which the majority of wide-awake American women are sighing at the present time was theirs in larger degree than can be boasted of by any class of American women of the present genera- tion. There are but two methods of overcoming the current and widespread discontent and torment of American housekeepers regarding domestic service. One is to select servants as carefully almost as a woman would select a husband, and then give unlimited time and attention to their training. The other is to have fewer large houses, live in few and small apartments and charge themselves with all the work necessary to be done. That the latter plan will be followed is too much to hope for, and probably the blame for not adopting it, should any blame be de- manded, should fall as heavily upon husbands as upon wives, for what one has not to do himself seems what is easiest done. Husbands are not necessarily brutes, but they have their own ideas of what their home should be, and as the person who doesn't have to do a thing is the one who ap- parently knows most about doing it, they fre- quently have a way of assuming that whatever they wish about a house can be accomplished as a matter of course by their wives. Some thou- sands, perhaps some millions, of untimely graves -" OUR SERVANTS. 527 have been filled in deference to this amiable but mistaken supposition. As to the training of persons to be servants, and as to their further treatment so that they will be willing to maintain their humble position, the subject is far too large to admit of proper dis- cussion here, let alone of any conclusion. It re- quires a high grade of intelligence, patience and perseverance to impart the rudiments of educa- tion to small children ; but far more is required to make a fit servant out of such raw human ma- terial as can be obtained without too much trouble from the ordinary sources, in the United States, of such specimens of human nature. Even after raw material is obtained it is not certain that it will receive proper treatment at the hands of those who consider themselves immensely su- perior to it by nature, education and position. In the meantime, the great mass of the Ameri- can people, those who are too poor to keep ser- vants at all, are not realizing how great a torment they are escaping. Poverty has its bad features, but one unspeakable blessing goes with it, and that is that the wife of a poor man does not have her temper and sense and pocket wounded many times a day by incompetent hirelings. Housework is hard even at the best, and it does not end between daybreak until bed-time, but the poor man's wife has at least the consolation of knowing how everything in her house really is, 528 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a consolation which is denied the wife of the mil- lionaire all over the country. " I never knew," said a poor journalist once, " why it was that the wife of Blank, the millionaire, a lady of good birth, education, refinement and happily married, sometimes had an air of settled melancholy on her face, even when she was in brilliant com- pany, of which she was herself an ornament, but I found out the secret of it one day when she called in her carriage upon my wife we were liv- ing in a cheap flat in a rather poor portion of the town and made inquiries regarding a servant who had once lived with us. The solicitude in her countenance I never shall forget. I spite of all her husband's money she couldn't be happy, and it was all on account of the servants." Most wives don't know what torment they are missing. CHAPTER XXXIV. OUR LITERATURE. AMERICANS are the greatest readers on earth. Any one can tell you this any one from a col- lege president down to the newsboy on a railway train. They read pretty much everything, and never are at a loss for ways of obtaining something to read. Books are cheaper here than anywhere else in the world, thanks to immunity from arrest and punishment for theft of literary property. We can take the brains of all Europe, as expressed in printed pages on the other side of the At- lantic, and reprint them here without fear of the sheriff, and what man can do without fear of the law he is likely to do GO long as he sees any money in it. There is no section, State or town so poor that its people cannot find something to read when they want it. The inhabitants of a township whose centre is nothing but a post-office, a store and a blacksmith shop, may be too poor to buy 34 (529) 530 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. a paper of pins, unless they have credit with the storekeeper, but they always are able to find something to read. If there is nothing else, they can fall back upon the Sunday-school books, and nowadays Sunday-school libraries are not as bad as they used to be. Almost any book that is respectable and has any feature of interest can be worked into a Sunday-school library by an enterprising publisher. A Methodist parson, who was congratulated a short time ago on his great success in organizing a Sunday-school in a sparsely settled district in one of the West- ern States, said, with a long sigh : " These chil- dren don't come here to learn the truths of the Gospel ; they come to get books for their families to read during the week." Perhaps the old man was right in his fear that the religious work of his parish was not going on as well as he wished ; he certainly was entirely correct regarding the demand for the books. Children who were dull and listless while the prayers and singing and lessons were going on brightened up quickly when the librarians came in to distribute the books which had been asked for, and the worst boys in town would cheerfully forego base-ball, swimming parties, watermelon stealing, cock- fighting and card-playing for an hour or two on Sunday for the sake of borrowing a book upon which to spend the spare hours of the week that was to follow. A good many people were drawn OUR LITERATURE. 531 to Jesus by the loaves and fishes, but books are the most successful bait of the modern church. But the Sunday-school library is the most modest of the many sources from which the poorer class of Americans draw their reading matter. There are at least a dozen series of novels being published in the United States at the present time on a plan which enables the publishers to dodge the postal laws regarding printed matter by assuming to be serial publica- tions. Under the law any book sent out by a publisher should pay postage at the rate of half a cent an ounce ; but a library, so called, may send out its publications under the rules govern- ing serials of every kind, which can be paid for at the post-ofEce at the rate of two cents per pound ; consequently for several years there has been an absolute inundation of fiction. Stimulated by this feature of the law, a number of enter- prising men have reprinted all the standard novels of the past century in cheap form and distributed them broadcast over the entire coun- try; and, to do them justice, have also issued a number of histories and other standard works in the same manner, and as people have pur- chased them, it is reasonable to suppose that they have read them. But books are not all that is read by that great portion of our people who have a great deal of leisure time and no sufficient means of 532 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. enjoying it beyond reading. A million maga- zines are circulated every month, and twice as many weeklies. Some time ago the newspapers began to realize this fact, and straightway they supplemented their Saturday or Sunday editions with additional sheets containing miscellaneous reading-matter of all kinds, some of it as good as any that appears in the magazines. The worst of it is quite as good as the majority of current novels ; and as the highest price of a newspaper in the United States is five cents per copy, and the supplementary sheets of some papers contain as much as an entire magazine, there is no lack of reading matter for any one who has the price of a glass of beer or a cheap cigar. Not only is the supply of printed matter great, but the demand is being increased in many ways that are entirely admirable. There are now sev- eral societies which at a very trifling cost advise people what to read, and in what order to take certain books in hand. Some of them notably the well-known Chautauqua Society have read- ing circles under advice and partial supervision which number as many people as the students of all the colleges in the country. A number of societies of similar purpose are scattered about the country, each with its list of books which its members are advised to read books which are carefully selected by men whose literary judg- OUR LITERATURE. 533 ment would be accepted in any intelligent circle in the Union. One result of the American avidity for read- ing matter is that the guild of American authors is becoming quite as numerous as that of any other country in the world. The American who does not write a book is almost a curiosity at the present time, and generally thinks it necessary to explain why he has not already done some- thing of the kind, and when and how he would be able to do it. The stories which are pub- lished in cheap form in the United States are largely from foreign pens, but it is known to those who observe the subject closely that the number of American authors is increasing more rapidly than in any other country. Any one here who knows anything on a particular sub- ject, or who has any reputation or prominence for any reason whatever, is asked to write a book, and such invitations are very seldom de- clined ; for if the man cannot write, he can at least hire some one to put his thoughts into words. Men who in older countries would be ashamed to take pen in hand at all to produce anything for publication, have here received enor- mous compensation for single volumes on sub- jects with which they merely were acquainted, not those upon which they had any reason to be quoted as authority. Even in the serious department of history we 534 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. have recently seen numerous books from men notoriously unfit in point of judgment to inflict anything of the sort upon a confiding public. But money is offered as an inducement, pen and ink are cheap, type-writers are plentiful, so the work goes merrily on, and it may need all the wisdom of another generation to correct the mis- takes which have been made in print by writers of the present time. Nevertheless, the steady demand which seems to be profitable to both authors and publishers is inciting the intelligent and educated class to efforts which once would have been impossible except to the very small number who were suffi- ciently well off to regard their literary work as a labor of love, and to expect no compensation except what might come from approving con- sciences. The modern novelist frequently gets more for a single volume than the elder Haw- thorne received for all the books of his incom- parable series. Literature has become a business as well as an intellectual occupation. Mr. Ban- croft probable expended more money upon his well-known "History of the United States" than was received by those who sold his books at retail, but nowadays the writer of an alleged history can count upon as much pay for a has- tily prepared book as a prominent lawyer would expect to receive for handling a case requiring long study and effort. OUR LITERATURE. 535 These things being true and authors and publishers will assure the public that they are it is entirely safe to assume that we are soon to have a highly successful and valuable class of writers in the United States. " The coming book," an expression which must soon go out of date, may be a history, a poem, a biography or a novel, but there will be so many more books than heretofore, that a work of great merit in any de- partment of literature will possibly have to wait until another generation for proper recognition. There is so much to read that no book-worm can keep pace with the publishers' presses. The last new novel may be very good or very bad, but whichever may be the case the general public stands very little chance of knowing, for before it has had time to reach the hands of many readers a dozen more have come from the press, and it is only chance or an exceptional degree of merit, which it is unfair to expect of any one more than once in a century, that will bring a book properly to notice. For instance, some years ago Gen. Lew Wal- lace wrote a story entitled " Ben-Hur," which sold fairly for a little while, but made no great ex- citement in the literary world. Fortunately for the author and the book, which certainly was an original and meritorious production, Gen. Wal- lace had an immense host of personal friends who little by little had the book brought to their 536 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE notice ; they read it and talked about it, until finally, by this unsolicited and unpaid advertis- ing, his story became famous and is now in its third hundredth thousand of circulation, with a promise of going on perhaps indefinitely. Two years ago Mr. Edward Bellamy wrote his " Looking Backward." It was a thoughtful, able story, touching many of the nearest interests of humanity, but it sold only a few thousand copies, and seemed making its way to the backs of book- sellers' shelves, when two or three essays upon the general subject recalled attention to it. The people of a single city which, of course, was Boston took it up first as a fad, and afterwards as a serious study, and now the book is in gen- eral demand and promises to renew and widely stimulate public discussion of a very old sub- ject which must come to the surface once in a little while until perhaps it becomes a recognized principle of human conduct and existence. These are merely two of many books of great value, or at least great interest, which have been saved from the general literary deluge by means which seem merely accidental. Of the many which have been lost perhaps irre- vocably the public has no idea. Hawthorne himself, to whom allusion has already been made, was not read one-twentieth as much by the people of his own day as now. Carlyle, who probably is more read in America than in OUR LITERATURE. 537 Europe, owes his popularity here and the great sale of his works to the personal efforts of his friend, Mr. Hnierson, who insisted that the book should be published in this country, but who would not have succeeded had not his own publishers had reasons for wishing to oblige him personally. These facts regarding literature are not pecu- liar to America. Many years ago an English- man named Charles Wells wrote a dramatic poem which did not pass its first edition of a few hundred copies. About a quarter of a century later Swinburne chanced upon a copy of the book r and wrote a review of it, which set all lovers of dramatic poetry to looking for the poem itself, and now it is making its way through edition after edition. Only ten years ago Brown- ing's latest long poem, whatever it may have been, was refused successively by nearly all reputable American publishers, yet the Browning craze is now a matter of history. The meaning of all this is that books come from the press far more rapidly than people can read them, but the ease of circulation of litera- ture in the United States promises to change all that. There is now scarcely a town of two thousand people in the United States which has not its circulating library, and which has not also some people who are thoughtful, intelligent and influential. A book getting into such a library 538 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. is sure, sooner or later, to find a large number of readers. The individual reader is the best advertisement that either author or publisher can ask for, and though the first edition may be very small, so small that the publisher hesitates to reprint, nevertheless in time a book of any value is sure to be brought properly to the attention of the public. There is every reason, therefore, to believe that our native authors, and many people who can write and should write but have not yet felt en- couraged to do so, will yet be stimulated to do their best work. A prominent publisher in New York was once asked the question being suggested by a poor book which he had published on a very interesting subject why he did not secure a bet- ter man to write it ? " For the best reason in the world," said he; "the men who could do justice to the subject are all making their living in some other way and have to pay close attention to their business. They can't afford to write books." This lack of financial encouragement is rapidly disappearing. The man who has anything to say in this country and knows how to say it properly can now afford to give time and thought to his subject, with the assurance that, when he is ready to write and tc print, he will find readers. It does not follow that everything written with earnestness and sincerity of purpose is worth at- tention. " Great minds think alike," but not all OUR LITERATURE. 539 great minds are properly educated, and we get an immense number of books, supposed by their authors to be original, whose contents are mere skeletons of what has been better expressed by some one else. The publisher often finds him- self in the position of the patent office ex- aminer. It is well known that at the patent office applications in large numbers are received every week for letters patent on supposed inventions which were made long ago by some one else, but of which the latest applicant was entirely ignor- ant. Men of thoughtful and inventive minds reproduce each other in every clime. There is not a savage tribe on the face of the earth which did not find out for itself the art of making cutting tools, building houses, constructing boats, cooking utensils and whatever else might be necessary to domestic life and its many necessities. The same holds in literature. Certain self-evident truths of philosophy or ethics, certain plots and situa- tions in fiction, are common to all classes of people ; and the consequence is that our literature is burdened with material of every kind, from the highest theology to the lowest sensation, which seems mere plagiarism on something which has preceded. Even Longfellow, who is nearer the American heart than any other of our poets, was persistently accused of plagiarism because he ex- pressed thoughts and ideas which had been said as well, sometimes better, by older poets ; yet 540 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Longfellow was supposed to be a man of wide reading. But American facilities for reading and for learning all that lias been said by the wiser minds and more brilliant wits of other times is bound to change all that, and probably within the lifetime of the present generation. Besides from the in- cidents, peculiarities and necessities of our own national life, our literature is now extending into all fields heretofore monopolized by the wiser minds of the old world. American essays, poems and novels are now frequently reprinted in Europe and translated into many languages. Many American novels may now be found in several of the older languages of Europe, and the popular author of the present day does not con- sider his work done until he has sent copies of his original manuscript to at least two European publishers. The French Revue des Deux Mondes, which is supposed to be the most fas- tidious of foreign publications in its selection of material, has given a great deal of space to American novelists and poets, and again and again English novelists have complained that some upstart American was crowding their books off of the railway station news-stands. Emer- son's essays, Longfellow's poems, and Howell's novels may be found in any bookstore in Eng- land, and it is not hard to find them on the con- tinent. There are half a dozen different editions OUR LITERATURE. 541 of Poe's poems in the French language alone. American historical works not entirely on Ameri- can topics may be found in several European languages, and are held in high esteem by foreign historians. One historical work published in the United States two or three years ago has al- ready been translated into every language of Northern Europe. How many more there may be deponent knoweth not. All this is cheering, not only to national pride, but because there are features in American liter- ature which are superior to those of any older nation. This is noticeably true of our fiction, in which there are elements of cheerfulness, hope and humor, which are almost entirely lacking in the light literature, so-called, of other countries. When one speaks of a foreign novel from any press but that of Great Britain the supposition naturally is that it relates entirely to the closer relations of the sexes ; that the end of it will not be entirely pleasing ; and that, however strong its plot and diction, it will iiot be what is called " entirely proper," it will not be a book which one can safely take home without reading and leave on the table of his sitting-room for wife, children and visitors to pick up at random. Some of that sort of stuff has come from the American press of late years, more's the pity, but it promises to be rather sporadic and accidental than a prominent feature of our literature. It 542 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. resembles an outbreak of yellow fever in a North- ern port something which may get there by accident and do mischief for a little while, but which cannot effect a permanent lodgment. The mass of unclean stories which ventured into the daylight of print after the publication of Amelie Rives' sensational novel is already begin- ning to disappear. When for a day or two a city chances to fall under mob law, the world seems turned upside down for the time being ; but the better sense and strength of the community soon come to the rescue and the dangerous -element is suppressed. A similar result is already being accomplished regarding pernicious fiction. Pub- lishers who have hastily accepted stories which their professional readers pronounced " strong " are beginning to apologize for offering such stuff to the public. American literature will be marked by a hopeful, cheerful, clean, energetic spirit, and as such it will give our people what they cannot easily obtain from the presses of foreign countries. We have faults enough, of which mention has frequently been made in this book, but lack of respectability and of hopefulness are not among them. Our novels are cleaner than those of any other land ; our history in the main is decided^ cheering and stimulating in its influence ; our poetry, although perhaps not as elegant as that of Europe, has a great deal more of inspiration in it for readers, and our OUR LITERATURE. 543 fiction is based upon the life of our own people, which is in the main respectable. Incidents and scenes as bad as any that the world can supply may of course be found in American life by those who choose to look for them, but they are not likely to be written up or read to any extent, except by the vulgar classes. Books about which intelligent and cultivated people on the continent will talk freely in social circles are scarcely toler- ated here ; some of them are reprinted, but the editions as a rule are very small. Translations of continental novels have generally failed dis- mally in a commercial sense in the United States. There are a few exceptions, but the rule is so distinct that no one of literary taste, ability and intelligence now wastes his time in translating foreign novels in the hope of securing American publishers. The native writer as a rule is not as skilful as his foreign brother, but he successfully tells our people of what they wish to know. He is in sympathy with their thoughts, tastes, customs and aspirations, so his stories and essays are found in all our weekly papers and magazines, while more skilful productions of foreign pens, which might be had for nothing, are generally excluded. There is no longer any question as to whether we shall have a literature of our own. We have it. It is increasing in volume more rapidly than our people can follow it. It is a good sign. It means that we are a " peculiar people " not per- 544 OUR COUNTRY \S FUTURE. haps in the sense in which the expression was used regarding the ancient Hebrews, yet in some respects it means the same. Conceit aside, it really means that we are better than other people. Long may we remain so ! CHAPTER XXXV. OUR THEATRES. AMERICA is the world's greatest patron of the drama. Religious people may disapprove of this, but they cannot alter the fact. The play has come, and come to stay. It cannot be driven away, and those who do not like it may as well begin to make up their minds as to what they are going to do about it. It is a live influence in every part of the coun- try. The multiplication of railroads has made it possible for theatre companies to visit almost any town of five thousand people and make a living, so theatre companies are going to visit such towns hereafter steadily. It must be admitted, sadly and promptly, that the drama is not all that respectable people would have it. A great number of the plays going about the country contain much that is unfit for any one to see, or to think about after seeing. No one has stated this fact more distinctly or in severer terms than America's most famous actor, Mr. Bdwin Booth, whose utterances on the sub- 35 ' (545) 546 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ject a few years ago brought the entire theatrical world about his ears without injuring him a particle or disproving a word that he had said. Still, facts are facts, and regarding the drama we may as well sit down and look them coolly and calmly in the face. The people demand amusement and they are going to have it. If it is not good, the mass will accept the best they can find. Not everybody goes to the theatre, nevertheless there are enough to make the busi- ness pay or men would not go into it. There is no other human interest in which there is so little likelihood of expensive philanthropy being in- dulged in as the drama. Some men will go about lecturing and preaching for nothing and pay their c v vn expenses, but the same has not yet been heard about any theatrical company. We often hear of dramatic " combinations " coming to grief far from their starting-point and walking home on the railway ties, but they did not im- poverish themselves for love of the public. They went out strictly for business purposes and they would not have gone had they not supposed there was money in it. The drama is going to be exactly what its patrons choose to make it, and it is a lamentable fact that the patrons of the drama in the United States are not drawn from the classes which look for or desire improvement. The better class of people do not attend theatres very much. Even OUR THEATRES. 547 in the largest cities the managers will tell you, if they don't think you are going to print it, that their main dependence is the floating population, what they call the " hotel people," persons who are away from home, have no acquaintances in the city, and must find some place to spend the evenings. Very large cities with small floating population have but few theatres ; a small town which is merely a stopping-place may have many. The proportion' of places of amusement in Boston to New York has no resemblance to the propor- tion of population. New York is not twice as large as Boston but has five times, as many places of amusement, all of which are better filled than those of the Hub. But, on the other hand, New York has five times as many hotels and probably ten times as many strangers in town. Aside from the better class of theatres, where the rates of admission are high and the expense is great, the largest profit is found in houses that require only a small rate of admission and which are patronized by that portion of the lower classes which has no special inducement to remain at home during the evening. No matter how what are called the " Broadway houses " that is, the large and fashionable theatres of New York are attended, a visitor can always depend upon seeing tiie house packed from floor to dome in any of tne places of amusement on the Bowery. 548 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. The reason is easy enough to find for any one who will look for it. People who would enjoy a good presentation of one of Shakespeare's dramas, or a well-written comedy, or a tragedy by any other noted name in the dramatic world, have a great deal beside the drama to interest them. Their leisure time is valuable, their social en- joyments are numerous and their homes are pleasant, so it must be a great feast for eye, head or heart, which will draw them to a place of amusement for two or three hours. Managers know this very well, and make their dramatic bills of fare accordingly. "They cater to the people who will attend the theatre, to the audi- ence of which they are sure. A prominent manager in New York once read a play written by a prominent writer and returned it, declining it with the statement : " It is too good ; that is the only fault that I have to find with it." Ques- tioned further about it, he said frankly that if he were in London or one of the continental capitals, where dramatic art is more respected than here, he might feel justified in producing a piece of that kind, but that in New York he would be obliged to bankrupt himself in playing it long enough for the better class of people to hear about it and become interested sufficiently to go to see it. As an illustration it may be safely said that while the musical comedies of Gilbert and Sul- OUR THEATRES. 549 livan are the most popular attractions that intelligent people have yet seen on the American stage, it required so much time to bring these entertainments to the attention of this class that when " Pinafore," the first of the series, was first put on the stage in New York, the attendance at one house was so small that the management, in order to avert financial disaster, revised the piece and turned it into a burlesque, and it was only after a persistent struggle by a better house against fate, and with the assistance of a very well-selected company, that the piece made its way to the favor of the better classes. Even after that, the succeeding pieces by the same author and composer seemed during their first weeks to be on the edge of failure. It was not until the man- ner of the makers of these operas became known through successive efforts that there was certainty of a full house during the opening week, and even then the managers, as a rule, were fearful. The performance was so utterly unlike anything that had ever succeeded with them before that some of them were really amazed that the people came at all, and wondered why they came. It seemed necessary to some of these enterprising and expe- rienced gentlemen, from what they knew of the stage and its patrons, to tone the pieces down a little they called it toning up by inflicting upon them a number of " local gags " whereby the movement of a piece was arrested and the 550 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. attention of the audience diverted from the plot and purpose by a lot of silly jokes entirely irrel- evant to the time, scene and plot. It may be said of Mr. Booth himself, now that he is eminently successful and respected, as well as a great success commercially, that he has often played to very poor houses in New York while a brainless mass of vulgarity and chatter was " turning away money " from the doors of a neighboring establishment. The trouble was not that Mr. Booth did not play well, but that the class who could appreciate good playing of noble tragedies could not be persuaded to leave their comfortable homes and social circles to go to the theatre until they were absolutely assured that there was something well worthy of their at- tention to be seen and heard. As for the other class, its taste, if not already understood, can be imagined from an experience which Buffalo Bill relates with great glee. Bill was playing a part in an extraordinary jumble of Western scenes and language which had been put together by his friend Ned Buntline. Salvini was playing in the same town, and just after the curtain had gone up a tired, rather seedy-looking person with a solemn- looking countenance came to the ticket-office and begged permission to go in and stand against the wall and see the show. He said he hadn't any money nor any place to go to, and felt aw- fully lonesome. The press agent of the Salvini EDWIN BOOTH. OUR THEATRES. 551 company chanced to be standing by at the time and was so sorry for the man that he said : " My friend, we are absolutely forbidden to give away any tickets here, but I am real sorry for you ; I have been friendless and penniless myself once in a while, and I know how to feel for such a man, and as I am pretty well off now, I don't mind giving you out and out fifty cents with which you can buy a ticket and come in." " God bless you, sir," said the fellow, " and seeing you have given me the money instead of a ticket, why, if it's just the same to you, I'll go round and pay for admission at Buffalo Bill's show." Both Bill and Salvini tell this story as an illustration of the taste of the masses. But the performance to which the recipient of fifty cents went was propriety itself compared with many which are seen every year in all American towns large enough to boast of an alleged " opera-house " or even a hall in which performances may be given. Plays are made de- liberately for the purpose of catching the general crowd, and, as the largest crowd is everywhere the commonest, they are made very common. In fact, the word " common" does not express it. Probably there is no word in the language that will comprehend the rudeness, vulgarity, gaudi- ness and immorality of a great many shows to which the class of young men and young wo- men who do about as they please go every night 552 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. in large numbers. Nothing that any minister has said against the theatre is strong enough to properly characterize the mass of performances at American theatres. What is to be done about it ? Well, we know what to do about anything else which we think threatens the well-being of the community in any particular. We abate it by law when we can, and if the law is insufficient or inoperative we fall back upon public sentiment instead. There is quite as much demoralization for the community in a bad theatre as there is in half a dozen rum- shops. Prohibitionists may not admit this, but they would if they were to attend certain places of amusement for a little while. A thing may not be bad enough to demand the attention of the police and yet be so vile as indirectly to demoral- ize all susceptible people who see it. There are books before the community which cannot be confiscated even by Mr. Anthony Comstock, with his narrow views and his strong backing of law, yet their influence upon the morals of the com- munity is worse than any one of a number of immoral resorts which have been suppressed by law. More harm can be done to morals very often by mere suggestion than by any overt act or vulgar expression, and such suggestion abounds in dozens of the pieces performed every night in the United States pieces which hurry from place OUR THEATRES. 553 to place by railroad through eight or nine months of every year. The only way to abate this nuisance is for the respectable citizens of any locality to take upon themselves financially the responsibility of managing places of amusement. There is no other possible way of doing it. It is not possible by law to elect a dramatic censor for each town who shall prescribe the length of the dress which the actress shall wear, or the sort of smile she shall give, or the extent to which a joke on the stage may have a double meaning. It is possi- ble, however, for any number of reputable citizens , to control places of amusement so that nothing shall be presented which has not received the stamp of respectability somewhere. This is not a theory but an accomplished fact in many places. There are towns in the United States in which any man may safely allow his wife and children to attend the local theatre, and there is no reason why the same should not be accom- plished everywhere else. The plan is simply for respectable men to get financial control of the place of amusement. To keep people out of the theatres is an utter impossibility. Law cannot do it. Ordinary public sentiment will not do it. The young people of the United States are so free of parental restraint at the age in which they are most impressible that they will continue to fill theatres no matter what may be presented, and if 554 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. they are to be saved from bad influences either their own parents or the class of people to whom their parents belong must formulate and prac- tice the necessary preventive measures. There is great reason however to hope for a gradual reform of the drama in America. Some respectable plays have been so immensely suc- cessful that even the worst class of managers are looking about for something of the same kind if they can find it. A prominent instance is the success of a play called " The Old Homestead," in the city of New York, which has been the only source of profit that has ever been found for the building in which it was played. It has run for many hundreds of nights and apparently can run on till the end of time, yet there is nothing indecent in it from beginning to end. It is one of the simplest things in the world too merely a careful representation of country life in a part of the United States, country life which is not at all unlike that of almost any rural locality in the Union. A dozen other pieces somewhat similar in character have been immensely successful and are still " on the road," as the theatrical people say. Two generations of actors have lived and died since " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was first produced, yet several companies are still carrying this venerable piece about the country and presenting it to paying audiences. Not only do pastoral plays attract people of every class, but the num- OUR THKATRES. 555 her of pieces based upon scenes and incidents of higher social life have been remarkably success- ful in large cities, so successful indeed that they have not been able to tear themselves away and visit the rural districts. All this has been immensely encouraging to American dramatists. Until within a few years no American with any sense and any knowledge of the stage would think of writing a play for the purpose of getting any profit out of it, but now-a- days some of our native dramatists have incomes which make them envied by successful lawyers, physicians, and other professional men. Mr. Bronson Howard, who is easily at the head and front of American dramatists, is annually asked for several times as many plays as he possibly can write, and his pieces seem to delight the better classes in all sections of the country. In- deed, so great is the demand for plays with American scenes, American characters, and American incidents that some men who are the veriest amateurs at dramatic work have aban- doned literature to give themselves entirely to play- writing, and even the critics treat them kindly. They will point to numerous defects of construction which any tyro of dramatic art would have instinctively avoided, and yet the admission is afterwards made that the per- formance was interesting, wholesome and per- haps exciting. How much more can be asked ? 556 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Mr. 1/awrence Barrett, a successful actor who has attempted everything from low comedy to high tragedy, has made it a practice to produce one new American play each year, and probably has found profit in so doing, otherwise he would not have temporarily given up the old stand-bys upon which any actor of ability may safely trust himself. If this sort of thing goes on, as it promises to do, we will soon be as successful in the drama as we are in literature. People enjoy most what they are best acquainted with. The most sensa- tional book or play succeeds nowhere near so well as something which the people call abso- lutely true to nature, which means simply that it agrees with their ideas and reproduces scenes, sentiments and situations with which they are familiar. Of course there is no lack of dramatic material in America. The manner of life of the people of the United States is so diversified by locality and circumstances that there is no end to the, number of incidents and situations available for the successful playwright. It is not neces- sary at all for an American writer of plays to look for a plot to dubious relations of the sexes, which is almost the sole basis of all English and continental dramas. After " Uncle Tom's Cabin," the play which has been oftenest performed in the United States is probably Rip Van Winkle. The LAWRENCE BARRETT. OUR THEATRES. 557 author of that piece, Mr. Dion Boucicault, has written at least a hundred others. Some of them were extremely sensational and most of them were what the prudent father of a family would call " somewhat off color " in some aspects. There is no one in America who so fully knows of eve^thing necessary to stage production as Mr. Boucicault. He is architect, artist, literateur, dramatist and novelist. Yet none of his highly colored productions ever achieved the success of this simple play based upon one of Washington Irving's amusing stories. And, speaking of Mr. Boucicault, his next successful piece was an Irish play, " The Shaugraun," in which also there was nothing offensive to the moral sense of the most respectable person. All this goes to show that the American people do not need plays which are in any respect repre- hensible. If author or actor will appeal to their hearts, he will have no excuse to grope for their passions or vices. As already said, the tendency to produce clean plays is becoming strong, and as the results are satisfactory to managers and authors we probably shall see considerable reform in a short time. The lower classes of the large cities, and that very large class of men who are quite willing to see and do when away from home what they would not dare attempt while among their own families or acquaintances, will continue to demand performances which make 558 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. " the groundlings laugh, but the judicious grieve." Such performances, of course, gratify only unclean impulses. Probably there always will be vice in the world until the dawn of the mil- lennium, and the theatre is no more likely than any other interest to escape its influence; but there is ample possibility and promise of so great an im- provement in this direction that we may yet see pastors leading their flocks to the theatre on week nights, and even announcing performances from the pulpit during the reading of the customary " notices of the week." Before this can be, however, our managers, actors, and lovers of amusement must have moie encouragement from the more prominent critics. Some of these reviewers of plays seem to write under the impression that the people should go to the theatre merely to study the drama. Not one person in a dozen goes to the theatre for any such purpose, or ever will. The tendency to turn a place of amusement into a school-room may be natural enough to the critic, for it is his busi- ness to study ; but the people go to the theatre to be amused, or at least entertained, and they resent being told that they should go for any other purpose. To spend an evening pleasantly at a performance of a simple piece which perhaps is more spectacle than drama and be told next morning by your favorite paper that it was 44 merely a show," or " a reminiscence of a school OUR THEATRES'. 559 exhibition," is enraging. Perhaps it was only this, but why hold it up to contempt on that ac- count? Critics must stop snarling at amuse ments that are merely amusing, if managers are to succeed and the people to be entertained ac- cording to their own taste. No one objects to there being the highest order of dramatic per- formances for advanced students of the drama, but so long as anything else is amusing, decent, and good of its kind no matter how humble the kind it should receive the stamp of approval from those who profess to speak with authority. CHAPTER XXXVI. AMERICAN HUMOR. THE burden of foreign criticism of the people of the United States may be expressed in the language of the vulgar by saying that we are " too fresh." Well, if we are, we have the salt that will save us, and that salt is American Humor. Whatever may be the. failing of any American, whether native or adopted, he may generally be depended upon for a sense of humor. If there is no other point of contact between him and the stranger who encounters him, it is quite safe to fall back upon humor as a common meeting ground. This is the only country in the world in which everybody indulges in joking. Other countries have their wits and humorists who are a special class among themselves. But here any and every man must have a sense of humor and know how to use it if he wants to get along with his fellow-citizens. Some of our most humorous men are solemn judges. Others are physicians. Editors are (560) AMERICAN HUMOR. 561 humorists as a matter of course, and even the clergyman with a level head leans to the belief that his education is incomplete until he can turn a joke as well as he can preach a sermon. We joke about everything. This does not mean that we make fun of everything, but that, as everything has its possible humorous side, we are competent to see it and call attention to it. There is no department of American history, political, military, social or religious, in which traces of the humorist may not be found. There was considerable sense of fun among the grim old fellows who came over in the May- flower, as any one may find out for himself if he will take the trouble to look to the original rec- ords, and in the many volumes of correspondence which have appeared in genealogical history of the first families of New England. There is quite as much sense of humor manifested as in similar records of the first families of Virginia. It is the custom in history to draw a sharp divid- ing line betv/een these two classes of American pioneers, but the line disappears as soon as one gets beneath the surface. Solemnity and serious- ness, whether counterfeit or genuine, can be maintained for only a certain length of time by any one. So Puritan and Cavalier speedily went back to a distinguishing trait of their common ancestors in the old country, and improved upon it. 36 562 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. In the United States no subject is too sacred to joke about; or, at least, too sacred to be exam- ined in the light of humor. Americans as a class are a reverent people. They would not for the world make fun of the Deity, but many of them talk of the most sacred sentiments and person- ages with a familiarity and play of humor which terribly shock some of the formalists from the other side of the water. When Mr. Lowell wrote his earlier series of the "Bigelow Papers" his verses were read with much curiosity and some delight in Burope, but suddenly the entire Eng- lish press was horrified by his lines : " You've got to get up airly E)f you want to take in God." This was pronounced by one high English liter- ary authority the most irreverent and blasphe- mous expression that ever had appeared in print ; but Mr. Lowell replied by saying that familiarity was not irreverence ; that the early American was intimately acquainted with his God he had to be. There was no other friend upon whom he could rely, and conscientiously he talked about Him in a half playful but always affectionate manner, which was the custom regarding the earthly parents of the period. It is impossible to go anywhere in American society, no matter how high nor how serious the subject under consideration may be, without en- countering, generally to the hearer's benefit, the AMERICAN HUMOR. 563 American spirit of humor. Congress may be in session and the country almost convulsed by some grave discussion which is going on, never- theless on the floor of the House and far more in the committee-rooms and in the lobby one is sure to hear the strongest arguments advanced in humorous form. They are called jokes, but some new word should be coined to give them the dignity which their usefulness has enabled them to attain. The most serious man in appearance in the United States, excepting none of the early Puritan divines, was probably the late President Lincoln. His visage was not only earnest and solemn but positively mournful whenever it was in repose. He was a debater of high order, he was a logician whom men who had held him in contempt for his homely ways and awkward manner learned to respect as soon as they crossed verbal swords with him, but Lincoln's strongest argument was always a joke. He said and wrote many things which were grand in their day, but which seemed to have been entombed in printed pages and diplomatic papers, for one seldom hears them quoted now-a-days ; yet his jokes still live. They are perennial, not merely those which were attributed to him, but those which he really made. " To clinch a point," which was one of his own favorite expressions, he tried the pa- tience of his Cabinet severely at times by per- 564 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. sisting in joking upon serious subjects matters of great moment at the time ; and it is said upon good authority that once he opened the Cabinet meeting called specially with the hope of aver- ting great disaster to the Union cause by reading the last printed letter of Petroleum V. Nasby on the Democratic doings at Confederit X Roads, State ov Kentucky. Before the meeting was over, however, Mr. Lincoln read his Emancipa- tion Proclamation. While Mr. Seward, as able and adroit a man as ever held the portfolio of Secretary of State, would be wondering how to reply to an annoying committee or deputation which had come from some one of the North- ern States to instruct the Government how to carry on the war, Mr. Lincoln was quietly con- structing a little joke or recalling one from his past experiences which would be appropriate to the occasion, and after the joke was inflicted upon the committee Mr. Seward was sure to find that his own carefully prepared speech was entirely unnecessary. But it is not only in political circles that humor has been made to serve the cause of good government, good morals and the highest degree of righteousness in the United States. The members of the Supreme Court of the United States are all practical jokers ; that is, they all are fond of avoiding a long-winded argument by telling a story illustrative of the question at AMERICAN HUMOR. 565 issue. Ministers do the same. A meeting of clergy- men of any denomination is likely to result in some very sharp discussion which closely ap- proaches to ill temper, but in such cases some one may always be depended upon to get up and tell a humorous story which gives point to the proceed- ings, and also gives them a new direction and acts like oil upon the troubled waters. Humor is tolerated even in the pulpit. The late Henry Ward Beecher frequently made his congregation- laugh on Sunday, and some of the newspapers criticised him severely for it, but he seldom lost a parishioner on that account, and thousands of people who never otherwise would have heard him were brought under his spiritual influence by appreciation of a faculty that drew them into closer sympathy with him as a man. A preacher of a very different stamp, the Rev. Sam Jones, of Georgia, never hesitates to tell funny stories, always illustrative of his subject, while delivering his talks, and Sam addresses larger congregations than any other American preacher of the present time. Humor makes its way everywhere in the United States. Newspapers are full of it, and the most high-toned and serious of them find it necessary to supply their readers with jokes. A New Yorker recently held a neighbor to account for reading habitually a very serious and almost bilious daily newspaper. " I don't read it much," 566 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. said he, " but I buy it because its fuuuy column contains a better assortment of jokes than any other paper in the city." The principal editorial writer of a large New York daily paper, a paper of wide circulation and great influence, once com- plained to the managing editor that all the point of a leading article to which he had devoted two days of thought had been expressed in the paragraph column by a joke one line long. The public meeting is the truest, the fairest expression of American opinion in any given locality, but in the public meeting it.is always the humorist who sways the audience and carries the day. He may be one of the stated speakers, a man of great wisdom and force, for wisdom and wit are closely allied in the American nature, however the celebrated couplet of the late Alex- ander Pope about " great wit and madness " may seem to indicate the contrary. In the great political discussions, now historic, which once were conducted by Abraham Lincoln and Senator Douglas, when both were comparatively young men, and the Democratic champion got his adversary into a corner, as occasionally he did, Lincoln always got out^of his predicament with a joke never with an argument and the audi- ence never failed to see the point. This shows the universality of the American sense of humor. In any other country of the world the peasantry, who are the nearest possible parallel to the AMERICAN HUMOR. 567 farmers of America, are stupid and dull of com- prehension, but an American crowd, no matter how far away from the centres of civilization, nor how solemn, and serious, and weary, and dull of comprehension their faces may seem, can always be depended upon to take the point of a joke. They are equally quick to resent an attempt at humor which is not correctly and sharply pointed. They are all humorists themselves. Get a seat on the wagon of a farmer driving along a country road and engage the man in conversation, and you will hear more sharp, pithy, humorous say- ings than you are apt to get from any professed wit in polite society. Let the man meet a brother farmer coming from the opposite direction, and, although the conversation will naturally turn on the crops, and the taxes, and local government, and family or individual misfortunes, the conver- sation is sure to be spiced with humor. In other countries it seems to require a jolly fellow, a man of high spirits, to say funny things ; but here, if you chance not to expect the man of solemn vis- .age, the man bowed down with care, to break out humorously, you are sure to be agreeably disappointed. Even in stated religiotrs meetings this quality of the American nature frequently displays itself unexpectedly, but always with effect. As solemn and religious gathering as can be seen in the United States is the camp-meeting in the far 568 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. West, where people come from many miles around to listen to the only form of religious service which they have the privilege of attend- ing. The sermons and prayers are intensely earnest. The speakers have an immense sense of responsibility of the duties incumbent upon them, but in sermon, and even sometimes in prayer, expressions break forth which show that in no circumstances can the native American be free from the domination of his sense of humor. The most powerful individual influence that ever existed in the Western camp-meetings, according to historians sacred and profane, was a man named Peter Cartright, a Methodist preacher. He would move audiences to tears and sometimes to groans by the eloquence and earnestness of his preaching, yet suddenly, at the most unex- pected times, he would say things that would put his entire congregation into paroxysms of laughter. The purpose of the meeting never was disturbed by these discursive efforts. They were as much to the point as the most earnest statements and exhortations which he had pre- viously made, and were entirely in keeping with the general intentions of the service. Passing from conversation to printed utter- ances, it may be safely said that the humorous writings of Americans have been more read than any other literature which has appeared from our press. We have many able editors in the United AMERICAN HUMOR. 569 States, but those most read are those who say the funniest things. There never was a more influential editor in the United States than the late George D. Prentice, who for a long time managed the newspaper which now is the Louis- ville Courier-Journal. Prentice was a Whig, but probably half of his readers were Democrats. They didn't like his politics, but they couldn't get along without his fun. His paper was pub- lished in a Southern State, a slave State, but more than half of its circulation was in the free States of the North. While Prentice lived there was scarcely a post-office in the Mississippi or Ohio Valle}' which did not receive copies of it by mail. Its influence extended as far North as Chicago and the North-western States, and the local paper which didn't repeat his humorous bits was likely to be informed by its readers that there must be a reform in that direction. For many years the most popular portion of the very good editorial page of one of the most prominent daily papers of New York was its humorous editorial. The topics of the writer were seldom those of the great interests of the day, yet people read it, turned to it the first thing, talked about it to their friends, compelled them to read it, and felt lost when the writer of those articles was transferred to a different field of labor. We have some popular poets in the United States, but it is doubtful whether the works of 570 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. any of them have been as much read as Mr. Lowell's " Bigelow Papers." Mr. Lowell is no mean poet himself; there are critics who insist that he has not an equal among American versi- fiers, but the humorous verses just alluded to have made him better known than all of his more serious efforts, and it is believed by intelligent men of all parties that it had immense effect in bringing about the political changes which im- mediately preceded the late civil war. During the civil war there were many editors who used to say, with some evidence of annoy- ance, that they wished they could be read as much as Nasby. Nasby was an Ohio editor who invented a scene and some characters in the South, and wrote about them so persistently and with such a realistic air that his effusions were copied regularly in almost all of the Republican papers of the land. Another man who was more read than any editor of the day was Artemas Ward. He did not go into politics to any great extent, but what he did say was so accurately satirical that nearly everybody read it and was the wiser for it. The mistakes of our generals, the blun- ders of our government and the crimes of many of our contractors were the subject of a great deal of vigorous editorial writing, but no one suc- ceeded in bringing them so forcibly to the atten- tion of the public as a wit who wrote under the nom de plume of Orpheus C. Ferr. During the JAMES WH1TCOMB RILEY. BILL" NVE. AMERICAN HUMOR. 571 same period there were facts in the local history of New York extremely uncomplimentary to one great political party, and the opposing party lost no opportunity to disclose them and criticise them in editorial columns and news columns, but one man was more read than all others combined. It was the man who wrote the satire entitled '' The New Gospel of Peace," in which the doings of the alleged Peace Party were set forth in humorous style. At the present time the men whose writings are most read are not the historians, editors, essayists, or even novelists. They are the hu- morists. Bill Nye is more read than any novelist in the United States. So is James Whitcomb Riley. In Chicago there are a number of able journalists, but the one most quoted by name not only in his own city but throughout the Union is Eugene Field, whose humor finds no subject too great or too small to dwell upon. A little while ago an edition de luxe of his humor- ous prose and verse w r as published at a very high price, and some of the later would-be subscribers found to their disgust that the list was full and no more books could be supplied. Is there any poet or novelist in the United States who has had a commercial experience like this ? Mr. John Hay, once a Secretary of President Lincoln, and afterward a hard-working journalist, is also a poet, and has perpetrated some graceful 572 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. verses, but when any one offers to quote a bit from John Hay, the hearers always understand that it will be something humorous. His dialect poems do not exceed half-a-dozen, yet they seem as popular now as when first written twenty years ago. They were not carefully elaborated ; the author is said to have dashed them off in a hurry as a relief from hard editorial work, but they struck the popular heart at once, probably be- cause, like most other American humor, there was a basis of seriousness and sense to them. The finale of his poem, "Little Breeches," a poetic story of a lost child who was saved, as his father supposed, by angels, will long be the most popular and effective protest against formal re- ligious ideas. He says of the angels : " I think that savin' a little child And bringin' him back to his own Is a durn sight better bizness Than loafin' round the throne." Was there ever a greater commercial success in literature than that achieved by Mark Twain ? The combined books of the most successful American novelist have not sold as many copies as one of Mark Twain's books. Why ? Because Mark Twain is funny because he knows how to say something in a way in which nobody else has said it. Scores of other men have written about the Holy Land and our own West, but it was not until " Innocents Abroad " and " Rough- AMERICAN HUMOR. 573 ing It " appeared that people in general began to manifest a livety interest in these portions of the world. Innumerable sketches have been written about life on the Mississippi River in the old days before railroads and emancipation, but all of them combined did not " catch " the public as successfully as " Huckleberry Finn." The latter was humorous, the others were not ; there was no other point of difference. It does not matter, to the American people, from where humor comes, so it really is humor- ous and has point to it. We will take it in any shape or dialect. One of the great successes of humorous literature during the civil war was that achieved by Col, Charles G. Halpine, who made a mythical Irish soldier, " Private Miles O'Reilly," his mouthpiece for a lot of humorous criticisms of the Government, the army and navy. During the same period there arose a Southerner, signing himself " Bill Arp," who made some hard hits, in humorous style, at the North ; somehow they found their way through the lines and were freely reprinted at the North. In later years another Southerner the creator of " Uncle Remus," put a lot of delightful stories into negro dialect, and a host of people at once began to quote them. In New York Mr. Julian Ralph wrote a lot of humorous sketches under the general head of " The German Barber," and the newspaper press began to quote them. 574 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Across the ocean Max O'Rell began to satirize the English people and customs, and straightway his books sold better here than abroad. On the stage and platform, as everywhere else, humor is the most popular and attractive feat- ure. A few years ago, before the theatrical companies could easily reach any city or large town, the lecture was a favorite means of enter- tainment, and more than three hundred Ameri- cans and foreigners were busy every winter in hurrying from town to town to deliver lectures. The three hundred have been reduced almost to three, but there is room there still for any one who has anything humorous to say. " Bob " Burdette, more popularly known as " The Bur- lington Hawk-eye Man" works himself almost to death every winter in going all over the United States to give his humorous recitations. He is a very religious man, and a working Bap- tist, but people never ask him for a religious ad- dress : they always want to hear his fun. An- other of the few successful men remaining on the platform is A. P. Burbank, a man who for ten years has determined every year to go upon the stage in legitimate comedy, but so humorous are his recitations and so effective his manner in delivering them that those who have heard him before insist upon hearing him more, and he goes again and again to towns where he has been a dozen times before, each time to find his audi- AMERICAN HUMOR. 575 ence larger and more appreciative, and each time to receive the assurance that they will want him again the following winter. Little Marshal Wilder, who never took a lesson in elocution in his life, and has been cruelly handicapped by nature, attempts merely to make people laugh ; he succeeds, so he seldom is allowed to have an evening to himself, and when the "platform " season is ended here goes over to England and has three or four engagements a night. Everybody knows that on the stage humor takes better than anything else. There may be a great tragedy well presented on the boards of a city theatre, or a brilliant spectacle, or a so- called emotional drama which appeals to .every- thing improper in human nature, but the theatre which is presenting a good comedy can always depend upon holding its own. No dead-head seats are to be had at such theatres. The man- ager can always depend upon getting money for all the room at his disposal. The fun may be very rough, sometimes it is decidedly vulgar, but people ask as few questions and make as few protests against fun, no matter what its kind, as drunkards do against the quality of their whiskey. American appreciation of humor may be found also in the number and wide circulation of periodicals devoted entirely to fun. There used to be a theory that there was no room for a 576 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. humorous paper in the United States because the ordinary dailies and weeklies indulged in so much fun themselves. But after the enormous success of Puck, Judge, Life, and some other periodicals, it is useless to argue any longer on the subject. After a political or social question has been apparently worn threadbare in editorials and essays, out conies one of these papers with a pithy saying or a good cartoon that carries more influence than all the serious talk combined. It matters little upon which side of the question, even in politics, these professional humorists are found. Their hits when well made are cheer- fully acknowledged even by their own enemies. During the palmy days of the New York ring, Mr. Nast, the cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, was offered an annual allowance several times larger than his salary if he would give up work entirely and go abroad. Humor and high character are often allied ; one of the strongest illustrations of the fact is that Mr. Nast without any hesitation refused this valuable offer. Some of the abuses of local government in New York have been more effectually fought by Mr. Keppler and his associ- ate artists in Puck than by all the work of editors, lawyers and judges. Puck's influence in politics became so great that before the last Presidential campaign began it became absolutely necessary for the party which it was fighting to start a humorous pictorial journal of their own, and it AMERICAN HUMOR. 577 was quite safe to suppose that it was influential in the political results that followed. A delightful thing about humorous writings is that no one seems jealous of their influence or afraid to give them greater prominence. The only complaint which the publishers of the humorous weeklies have to make against their brethren of the daily press is, that their own circulation might be better were not so many of their good things promptly reprinted every- where. No sooner does one of these papers come from the press than its best sayings are scissored and reprinted in a thousand or more papers. Almost any daily paper of large circulation seems to think it necessary to have a humorist of its own. They pay more for humorous contributions than for any other class of matter, and all of them are more keenly on the look-out for a new humorist than for a possible Presidential can- didate. The readers of the daily press quote for one another the funny sayings of their favorite paper long before they think of mentioning the other contents ; indeed, most of them are so absorbed by the fun that they don't seem to have remembered anything else. We cannot possibly overestimate the value of our national faculty of seeing the humorous side of things. It keeps us from making ourselves ridiculous ; it prevents us, both as individuals and a people, from being laughed at for anything 37 578 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. we may do in sober earnest. It is very hard, in this day and land, for any man, society, party or church to be a fool without hearing about it in a good-natured way that robs the rebuke of its sting. It is not so in other countries. But our sense of humor does still more for us. It smooths numberless rough places in the path- way of a people whose road is not easy to travel. It averts many a quarrel, closes dangerous breaches, and is balm to wounds that otherwise would smart. It is almost always harmless. There are men and women whose fun always lingers upon incidents that are vulgar, but this is a fault of perverted minds not of the humorous spirit. It is a better introduction, between strangers, than any letter or form of words, and it expresses much in little, doing it more effec- tively than any of the wise saws and proverbs of more serious races. It seems irrepressible and omnipresent ; a man or woman may be too tired or sick to reason or to think, but whoever saw an American too weary to see the point of a joke or to offer another in return ? We need to preserve our humor almost as carefully as if it were our character, for should we ever lose it our character will be the worse for the change. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE HIGHER EDUCATION. AMERICA has more colleges, so called, than all the other civilized nations combined. These institutions of learning are not results of accident, or accretions of church reverences and purposes, like the great universities of older lands. Most of them were founded and have been maintained by the people at large, and these, until recent times, were very poor. They are testimonials to the level-head and tenacity of pur- pose of the American people. Says President Gilman, of Johns Hopkins University : " That tenacity of purpose with which a few settlers in the wilderness held on to the idea of a liberal education, in spite of their scanty crops and scantier libraries, their wide separation from the old-world seats of learning, and their lack of professional teachers, is one of the noblest of many noble traits possessed by our forefathers, who were never so weary or so poor that they could not keep alive the altar-fires in the temples of religion and of learning. Their primitive founda- tions did not depend on royal bounty or on feudal (579) 580 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. liens ; they were supported by free-will offerings from men and women in moderate circumstances, by the minister's savings and the widow's portion. It is only within the present generation that large donations have reached their coffers. The good and the bad we inherit in our collegiate systems were alike developed in the straitened school of necessity. "The founders of the original colleges were not only high-minded and self-sacrificing, but they were devoted to an ideal. They believed in the doctrine that intellectual power is worth more than intellectual acquisitions ; that an education of all the mental faculties is better for the hap- piness of individual scholars and for the advance- ment of the community than a narrow training for a special pursuit. Accordingly, their educa- tional system did not begin with professional seminaries, for the special training of any one class, but with schools of general culture, colleges of the liberal arts, as good as could be made with their resources and in that age. Instead of an academic staff made up of those who professed to teach some special branch of knowledge, these colleges had a master and fellows (or tutors), men w r ho were fit to teach others those rudiments of higher learning in which they had themselves been taught. Moreover, as years rolled on, instead of concentrating personal and pecuniary support upon a few of the oldest and most THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 581 promising foundations, far-sighted men built up in every portion of the land colleges correspond- ing in their principal features with the original foundations, and depending for maintenance on the beneficence of individuals. " The history of the colonial foundations abounds in examples of the wisdom and self- sacrifice with which they were conducted under circumstances which called for devotion to a lofty ideal. No one can study the biography of their graduates without discovering that they were the men who moulded the institutions of this country. It is easy to point out deficiencies in* these academic organizations, as it is to criticise the defects of the emigrants' cabins and the foresters' paths ; it is easy to lament that a deeper impres- sion was not made upon the scholarship of the world ; easy to mention influential men who never passed a day within college walls ; easy to provoke a smile, a sneer, or a censure by the record of some narrow-minded custom or pro- ceeding. But, nevertheless, the fact cannot be shaken that the old American colleges have been admirable places for the training of men. Let the roll of graduates of any leading institution be scrutinized, or even the record of a single class selected at random, and it will be seen that the number of life failures is very small, and the number of useful, intelligent, high-minded and upright careers very large. It may, therefore, 582 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. be said that the traditional college, though commonly hampered by ancient conditions and by the lack of funds with which to attain its own ideal, has remained the firm and valiant sup- porter of liberal culture, and that any revolu- tionary or rabid changes in its organization or methods should be carefully watched. Neverthe- less, as we proceed, it will be evident that changes are inevitable and that most desirable improve- ments are in progress. The child is becoming a man." But we need more concentration of effort, money* and good men, both as instructors and students, in colleges where the highest educa- tion may be obtained. The great number of our colleges is a source of weakness not of strength. A great number of these institutions are mere academies, and seem to have been founded princi- pally to keep students within the denominational fences of their parents ; the college is charged with what should be the special work of parent and pastor. Says President Gilrnan : " Every important Christian denomination has come to have its distinctive college, and many an argument has been framed to prove that sectarian colleges are better than those which seek to pro- mote the union of several religious bodies. It has not been thought sufficient that a college should be pervaded by an enlightened Christian- ity, nor even that it should be the stronghold of PRESIDENT ELIOT (Of Harvard University). THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 583 a simple evangelical life and doctrine, nor that it should be orthodox as to the fundamental teach- ings of the Church ; but sectarian influences must everywhere predominate, among the trustees or in the faculty, or in both the governing bodies. Hence we see all over the land feeble, ill-endowed and poorly manned institutions, caring a little for sound learning, but a great deal more for the defence of denominational tenets." President Eliot, of Harvard, thus indicates the results of this spirit, added to another which is still less pardonable : " In the absence of an established church, or of a dominant sect in the United States, denomi- national zeal has inevitably tended to scatter even those scanty resources which in two cen- turies have become available for the higher edu- cation ; and this lamentable dissipation has been increased by the local pride of States, cities and neighborhoods, and the desire of many persons, who had money to apply to public uses, to found new institutions rather than to contribute to those already established a desire not unnatural in a new country, where love of the old and venerable in institutions has but just sprung up. In short, the different social, political and religious con- ditions of this country have, thus far, quite pre- vented the development of commanding universi- ties like those of the mother-country." As the greater colleges increase in financial 684 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and intellectual strength, the weaker ones must either drop out of existence, or be satisfied to im- part merely the high-school course of instruction, and prepare their more aspiring pupils to enter colleges worthy of the name. Ex-President White, of Cornell University, foreshadows their future as follows : " Our country has already not far short of four hundred colleges and universities more or less worthy of those names, besides a vast num- ber of high-schools and academies quite as worthy to be called colleges or universities as many which bear those titles. But the system embracing all these has by no means reached its final form. Probably in its more complete de- velopment the stronger institutions, to the num- ber of twenty or thirty, will, within a generation or two, become universities in the true sense of the word, restricting themselves to university work ; beginning, perhaps, at the studies now usually undertaken in the junior year of our colleges, and carrying them on through the senior year, with two or three years of special or professional study afterward. The best of the others will probably accept their mission as col- leges in the true sense of the word, beginning the course two years earlier than at present, and continuing it to what is now the junior year. Thus they will do a work intermediate between the general school system of the country and the THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 585 universities, a work wliicli can be properly called collegiate, a work the need of which is now sorely felt, and which is most useful and honorable. Such an organization will give us as good a system as the world has ever seen, probably the best system." There is no lack of money for institutions of learning which show special aptitude in any direction. A belief in thorough education is common to almost all progressive men, whether they themselves are college graduates or " self- made " men. President White, after naming many men who have given largely to different colleges, says : " Such a tide of generosity bursting forth from the hearts and minds of strong and shrewd men who differ so widely from each other in residence and ideas, yet flowing in one direction, means something. What is it ? At the source of it lies, doubtless, a perception of duty to the coun- try and a feeling of pride in the country's glory. United with this is, naturally, more or less of an honorable personal ambition ; but this is not all ; strong common sense has done much to create the current and still more to shape its course. For, as to the origin of this stream, the wealthy American knows perfectly that the laws of his country favor the dispersion of inherited wealth rather than its retention ;. that in two or three generations at most his descendants, no matter 586 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. how large their inheritance, must come to the level determined by their character and ability ; that their character and ability are most likely to be injured, and therefore the level to which they subside lowered, by an inheritance so large as to engender self-indulgence ; that while, in Great Britain, the laws and customs of primogeniture and entail enable men of vast wealth to tie up their property, and so to found families, this, in America, is impossible ; and that though the tendency toward the equalization of fortunes may sometimes be retarded, it cannot be prevented. " So, too, as to the direction of the stream ; this same common sense has given its main channel. These great donors have recog- nized the fact that the necessity for universal primary education will always be seen, and can be adequately provided for, only by the people as a whole ; but that the necessity for that ad- vanced education which can alone vivify and energize the whole school system, drawing a rich life up through it, sending a richer life down through it, will rarely be provided for, save by the few men wise enough to understand a great national system of education, and strong enough efficiently to aid it. " It is, then, plain, good sense which has led mainly to the development of a munificence such as no other land has seen ; therefore it is that the long list of men who have thus distinguished THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 587 themselves and their country is steadily growing longer." But in opposition to the spirit which founded and has supported our many institutions of learning there has arisen a pestilent theory, born of the sudden increase of wealth and love of luxury, that no* education is worth anything which does not enable a man to make more money and make it easier than his neighbor who has had no liberal schooling. Because technical schools of which the more we have the better off we will be teach men to use their wits about many practical things, there seems to be prev- alent a stupid notion that material things are all there are of life, and that sentiments, principles and aspirations are not worth cultivating. Such stuff might do if we were a nation of shopkeepers, but we are not that kind of people. For each man who is thinking and caring only for money and what it will bring him are half a dozen earnest, clear-headed people who know that all human needs are not satisfied when the stomach is full and the senses satiated. In a recent and admirable address to a college society Bishop Potter fairly stated and answered the current sneer at the higher education, as fol- lows : ' We are met by a spirit which it is time, I think, that we recognize, as there is a need that it should be challenged. We Americans are, of 588 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. all peoples under the sun, supremely a practical people. No mechanism is invented, no book is written, no theory is propounded, but that straightway there is heard a voice demanding: ' Well, this is all very interesting, very novel, very eloquent ; but what, after all, is the good of it? To what contrivance, to what enterprise can you hitch this discovery, this vision of yours, and make it work? How will it push, pull, pump, lift, drive, bore, so that, employed thus, it may be a veritable producer? Yes, we want learning for our young men, our young women ; but how can it be converted by the shortest road and in the most effectual way into a marketable product ? ' ' The man of the North,' says De Tocqueville, writing of our North, ' has not only experience, but knowledge. He, however, does not care for science as a pleasure, and only embraces it with avidity when it leads to useful applications.' And the worst of such an in- dictment is the fact that it is still so often true. " The conditions of this generation demand that we should be reminded that, beyond bodies to be clothed, and tastes to be cultivated, and wealth to be accumulated, there is in each one of us an intellect to be developed and, by means of it, truth to be discerned, which, beside all other undertakings to which the mind of man can bend itself, should forever be foremost and supreme. The gratification of our physical THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 589 wants, and next to that the gratification of our personal vanity or ambition, may seem to many people at once the chief end of existence and the secret of the truest happiness. But there have been men who have neither sought nor cared for these things, who have found in learning for its own sake at once their sweetest rewards and their highest dignity. ' The vocation of the scholar of our time be- comes most plain. He is to take his stand and to make his protest. With a dignity and a reso- lution born of the greatness of his calling and his opportunity, he is to spurn that low estimate of his work and its result which measures them by what they have earned in money or can pro- duce in dividends. Here, in his counting-room or his warehouse, sits the plutocrat who has amassed his millions, and who can forecast the fluctuations of the market with the unerring accuracy of an aneroid barometer. To such a one comes the professor from some modest seat of learning among the hills, minded to see his old classmate of other days, to grasp his hand again, and to learn, if it may be, how he fares. And the rich man looks down with a bland con- descension upon the school-fellow who chose the company of his books rather than the com- panionship of the market-place, and as he notes, perhaps, his lean and Cassius-like outline, his seedy if not shabby garb, and his shy and rustic 590 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. manner, smooths his own portly and well-clad person with complacency, and thanks his stars that he early took to trade. Poor fool ! He does not perceive that his friend the professor has most accurately taken his measure, and that the clear and kindly eyes that look at him through those steel-bowed spectacles have seen with something of sadness, and something more of compassion, how the finer aspirations of earlier days have all been smothered and quenched ! In an age which is impatient of any voice that will not cry, ' Great is the god of rail- roads and syndicates, and greater yet are the apostles of ' puts ' and ' calls,' of ' corners ' and pools ! ' we want a race of men who by their very existence shall be a standing protest against the reign of a coarse materialism and a deluge of greed and self-seeking. " But to have such a race of men we must have among us those whose vision has been purged and unsealed to see the dignity of the scholar's calling. One may not forget that among those who will soon go forth from college halls to begin their work in life there must needs be many to whom the nature of that work, and in some sense the aims of it, are foreordained by the conditions under which they are com- pelled to do it. One may not forget, in other words, that, with many of us, the stern question of earning our bread is that which most urgently PRESIDENT DWIGHT (Ot Yale University). THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 591 challenges us, and which we cannot hope to evade. But there is no one of us who may not wisely remember that, in the domain of the in- tellect as in the domain of the spiritual and moral nature, ' the life is more than meat and the body than raiment,' and that the hope of our time, or of any time, is not in men who are con- cerned in what they can get, but in what they can see. Frederick Maurice has well reminded us how inadequate is that phrase which describes the function of the scholar to be the acquisition of knowledge. Here is a man whose days and nights are spent in laborious plodding, and whose brain, before he is done with life, becomes a store-house from which you can draw out a fact as you would take down a book from the shelves of a library. We must not speak of such a scholar disrespectfully ; and in a generation which is impatient of plodding industry, and content, as never before, with smart and super- ficial learning, we may well honor those whose rare acquisitions are the fruit of painful and untiring labor. But, surely, his is a nobler understanding of his calling as a scholar who has come to see that, in whatsoever department of inquiry, it is not so much a question of how much learning he is possessed of, as, rather, how truly anything that he has learned has pos- sessed him. There are men whose acquirements in mere bulk and extent are, it may be, neither 592 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. large nor profound. But when they have taken their powers of inquiry and investigation and gone with them to the shut doors of the king- dom of knowledge, they have tarried there in stillness and on their knees, waiting and watch- ing for the light. And to these has come, in all ages, that which is the best reward of the scholar not a fact to be hung up on a peg and duly numbered and catalogued, but the vision of a truth to be the inspiration of all their lives." Among the departments of higher education at which the self-styled " practical " man turns up his nose are the mental, moral and political sciences. They are sneered at as a mass of mere theories ; good enough, perhaps, to help intellectual natures otherwise unoccupied to pass away the time, but of no practical good in the world. Yet President Oilman, whose mind runs largely upon applied science, says of these studies : ' They have twofold value their service to the individual and their service to the state. It is by the study of the history of opinion, by the scrutiny of mental phenomena, and by the dis- cussion of ethical principles, that religious and moral character is to be developed. The hours of reflection are redeemed from barrenness and made fruitful, like sand-plains irrigated by mountain-streams, when they are pervaded by THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 593 the perennial currents which flow from the lofty heights of philosophy and religion. Above all other educational subjects in importance stands philosophy, the exercise of reason upon those manifold and perplexing problems of existence which are as old as humanity and as new as the nineteenth century. For its place in a liberal education no substitute need apply. What is true of the moral sciences in reference to individ- ual character may be said of the historical and political sciences in relation to the state. That nation is in danger of losing its liberties, and of entering upon a period of corruption and decay, which does not keep its eye steadily fixed on the experience of other nations, and does not apply to its own institutions and laws the lessons of the past. The evils we complain of, the burdens we carry, the dangers we fear, are to be met by the accumulated experience of other generations and of other climes." Yet this distinguished teacher would not, like some men of equal note but less breadth of character, have the college student restrict him- self to these departments of study. He shows himself abreast of the times when he says : " A liberal education requires an acquaintance with scientific methods, with the modes of in- quiry, of observation, of comparison, of eliminat- ing error and of ascertaining truth, which are observed by modern investigators. Such an 38 594 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. acquaintance may be better secured by prolonged and thorough attention to one great department of science, like chemistry, physics, biology, or geology, than by acquiring a smattering of twenty branches. If every college student would daily for one or two years devote a third of his study time to either of the great subjects we have named, or to others which might be named, he would exercise his faculties in a discipline very different from that afforded by his linguistic and mathematical work. He would not only find his observing powers sharpened ; he would find his judgment improved by its exercise on the cer- tainties of natural law. He would never after- ward be prejudiced against the true workers in science, nor afraid of the progress of modern learning. Whatever might be his future voca- tion, ecclesiastical, educational, or editorial, he would speak of science with no covert sneer and with no suppressed apprehension. The more religious his nature, the more reverent would he become. In public affairs which call for a knowledge of science, he would know how to discriminate between the quack and the authority, and he would be quick to perceive in how many departments of government the liberal use of scientific methods is now impera- tively demanded." If no other purpose could be attained by rais- ing the standard and broadening the scope of THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 595 such of our colleges as aspire to the rank of universities, and of sending to them all of our young men who sincerely desire a liberal educa- tion, there would be the enormous gain, to each student, of association with men of his own kind. Such association elsewhere is almost impossible in this land of scattered population and' magnifi- cent distances. Many ill-balanced " cranks " might have been spared us could active, restless, inquiring minds have been placed amid congenial surroundings instead of chafing against barren environments and consuming their minds over trivialities. Edward Everett Hale is credited with the saying : " The main good of a college is not in the things which it teaches ; the good of a college is to be had from the ' fellows ' who are there and your association with them." President Dwight, of Yale, while dissenting from the sweeping first clause of Mr. Hale's assertion, admits : " But 4 the fellows ' did me much good in the way of my education. I had a most excellent and worthy set of friends, especially in the last year of my college life. My associations with them drew me out of myself, and gave me, in the best meaning of the term, the sense and the impulse of good-fellowship. As bearing upon my preparation for my life's work, this association did much to give me that common sense, and sympathy, and warm-heartedness, and love of 596 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. young men, and comprehension of their nature and their feelings, the value of which is so great to a college teacher. The college friendships, in their best development, came to me at the most fortunate period in the later years of the course. They came at a time when they could operate most healthfully and happily upon all that I had gained from my studies and my teachers, and rounded out for me, if I may so express it, the education which belonged to the university." One requisite to the greater, success of our higher colleges is a better class of students. When fees for matriculation and tuition formed an important part of the income from which a school had to maintain itself, an applicant's de- fects of preparation or personal character were winked at; but this no longer is necessary at Yale, Harvard or any of the half dozen younger universities which have been richly endowed. No one should be received as a student who does not " mean business " and who is not quickly responsive to the influences about him. Says Prof. Shaler, of Harvard : " It is very clear that the essential aim of our higher educational establishments is to take youths who have received a considerable training in preparatory schools, who have attained the age of about eighteen years, and have begun to acquire the motives of men, and fit them for the higher walks of active life. To the youth must THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 597 be given a share of learning which may serve to enlarge to the utmost his natural powers. He must be informed and disciplined in the art and habit of acquiring information. He must also be disciplined in the ways of men, in the main- tenance of his moral status by the exercise of his will, in self-confidence and in the faithful per- formance of duty for duty's sake. Every influ- ence which tends to aid him in putting away the irresponsible nature of the child should be brought to bear; every condition which will lead him to send forth his expectations and ambitions from his place in the school to his place among men should surround him. " Once bring a young man clearly to feel that his career in life is fairly begun when he resorts to college or the professional school ; let him but conceive that his place in life is to be determined by his conduct in preparation for it, and we bring to bear a set of motives which are morally as high as the ordinary motives of discipline are low in the moral scale. Just so far as the work of a student abounds in suggestions of his work in the world, so far as his teachers by their conduct, as well as by their words, serve to arouse his manly, dutiful sense, the education effects its true end. Every youth who is fitted to be a student in our higher colleges or universities will quickly respond to the stimulus he feels in passing from the disciplinary conditions of child- 598 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. hood to those which are fit for men. If he be in spirit capable of scholarly manliness, we may be sure that his ir igination has forerun the con- ditions he has met in his lower schooling. He has longed for something like the independence and responsibility of manhood ; for an advance to the place of trust to which he is bidden." Our higher colleges should not become retreats for that large, lazy, irresponsible class of young men and women who mistake fondness for read- ing for a desire to study. There is no more deceptive creature alive than the juvenile book- worm. He is like the English king who became noted as " the most learned fool in Christendom." Neither should feebleness of body be regarded as an indication of vigorous intellect ; this mis- take has filled colleges as disastrously as pulpits. The seriousness of ill-health is not an intel- lectual purpose ; it is a mental disease, and should be treated by the gymnasium instructor not the college professor. President White, in outlining the university of the future, said : "A long observation of young men and young women has taught me that there is infinitely greater danger to their health, moral, intellectual and physical, from lounging, loafing, dawdling and droning over books, than from the most vigorous efforts they can be induced to make; and I believe that most thoughtful teachers will agree with me on this point. In order to jet THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 599 any danger of the sort suggested, it will be ob- served that I have insisted on a proper examina- tion as to physical condition at ' he same time with the regular examinations for scholarships and fellowships, and also upon frequent reports from the successful candidates as to health as well as progress. The expectation of such examinations and reports would do much to guard and improve the health of ambitious young scholars in every part of the country." Our higher colleges contain some admirable instructors, but the average quality is not yet what it should be. President Gilman says : " For the ordinary instruction of under-gradu- ate students men of broad, generous, varied culture are needed ; men who know the value of letters and of nature in a plan of study ; men who understand their own views because they are watching the necessities and the transactions of to-day with the light of historical experience ; men who believe that character, intellectual and moral, is more important than knowledge, and who are determined that all the influences of college life shall be wholesome. Such teachers as these have hitherto constituted the faculties of American colleges ; their names may not have been made renowned by any new discoveries or by the publication of any great treatises, but they have impressed themselves on generations c pupils who have in their turn helped to form 600 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. the best institutions which maintain the nation. It will be a great misfortune to American educa- tion, if, in choosing specialists for collegiate pro- fessorships (as must be done in future), the authorities fail to make sure that these specialists are men of general cultivation, of sound morals and of hearty sympathy with the youth they are to teach." But what are college trustees to do ? Most of the great gifts to colleges are for special pur- poses the erection of buildings, the purchase of instruments, the founding of a library, the purchase of a telescope, but seldom for the pur- pose of securing a valuable addition to the faculty by an endowment which would yield a sum that would justify a man of high attainments in abandoning a lucrative profession and devoting himself to education. Says President Gilman : "Is it not time for all who are interested in college foundations to call for large donations for the increase of ' the wages fund ? ' Ought not the college authorities to keep in the back- ground their desire for better buildings, and insist that adequate means must first be provided for the maintenance of instruction ? It will be suicidal if a prosperous country like this suffers its institutions of learning to be manned by men of second-rate abilities because they are cheaper, and because the men of first-rate powers are turned away from the work of higher education THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 601 to the professions of law and medicine, to the ministry and to business pursuits, as giving more hope, more comfort and more freedom, with equally good opportunities of usefulness and with prospects of higher honor. It will be a shame if the hoary head in a college, instead of being a crown of glory, is a sign of poverty and neglect. A college professorship should be liber- ally paid, and with an augmenting salary, so that, in this respect, it may be at least as attrac- tive as other careers which are open to intel- lectual men. If the very best men are not secured for the work of instruction, and if they are not made so easy in their pecuniary circum- stances as to be free from care on that account, farewell to intellectual advancement, farewell to literary progress, farewell to scientific discovery, farewell to sound statesmanship, farewell to enlightened Christianity ; the reign of bigotry and dulness is at hand." Our colleges need more scholarships and more fellowships. It ought to be possible for any one desirous and deserving of a good education to obtain it, whether he be son of a prince or son of a pauper. It ought also to be possible for a brilliant and studious graduate to be specially rewarded and encouraged by being supported by his Alma Mater so long as he continues his studies to some purpose and for the benefit of the college. The " fellow " of an English university 602 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. may be a mere loafer ; his title and its accom- panying allowance of money call for no return ; they are merely rewards for what has already been done. President White says : " I would allow the persons taking fellowships to use them in securing advanced instruction at whatever institution they may select at home or abroad. Probably the great majority would choose the best institutions at home, but many would go abroad and seek out the most eminent professors and investigators. Thus, eager, energetic, ambitious young American scholars would bring back to us the best thoughts, words and work of the foremost authorities in every department throughout the world ; skill in the best methods, knowledge of the best books, familiarity with the best illustrative material. From the scholars thus trained our universities, colleges and academies would receive better teachers ; our magazines and newspapers writers better fitted to discuss living political, financial and social questions ; the various professions men better prepared to develop them in obedience to the best modern thought, and the great pur- suits which lie at the foundation of material prosperity agriculture, manufactures and the like men better able to solve the practical problems of the world. Every field of moral, intellectual and physical activity would thus be enriched. All would be anxious to train students THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 603 fitted to compete successfully for these fellow- ships, and the stronger institutions would be especially anxious to develop post-graduate courses fitted to attract these. I can think of no better antiseptic for the dry-rot which afflicts so many institutions of learning. The custom of shelving clergymen unacceptable to parishes in college professorships would probably by this means receive a killing blow." Bishop Potter writes as earnestly on this sub- ject, though from a different point of view: " We want place for men who, whether as fellows or lecturers, shall, in connection with our universities, be free to pursue original investiga- tion and to give themselves to profound study, untrammelled by the petty cares, the irksome round, the small anxieties, which are sooner or later the death of aspiration, and fatal obstacles to inspiration. It is with processes of thought as it is with processes of nature crystallization demands stillness, equanimity, repose. And so the great truths which are to be the seed of forces that shall new create our civilization must have a chance first of all to reveal themselves. Some mount of vision there must be for the scholar ; and those whose are the material treasures out of which came those wonderful endowments and foundations which have lent to England's uni- versities some elements of their chiefest glory must see that they have this mount of vision." 604 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. Higher education does not require that college discipline, direction and supervision should be abated ; on the contrary, it demands more active exercise of all these functions. Some quite good and earnest men go to college only to read ; their proper place is a large library in a city. Others, taking advantage of " elective " studies, want to plunge into a groove and remain there. Elec- tive studies have their advantages, but young men are seldom fit to select for themselves. Says President Bartlett, of Dartmouth : " From the fact that he has not been over the field, the youth is incompetent to judge what is the best drill and culture for him. And while diversity of ultimate aim may modify the latter part of the basal education, specialism comes soon enough when the special training begins. And those institutions seem to me wisest which reserve their electives till the last half of the college course, then introduce them sparingly, and not miscellaneously, but by coherent courses. A general and predominant introduction of elec- tives is fruitful of evils. It perplexes the faith- ful student in his inexperience. It tempts and helps the average student to turn away from the studies which by reason of his deficiencies he most needs. It gives opportunity to the lazy student to indulge his indolence in the selection of ' soft ' electives." Fortunately discipline is not so hard to main- THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 605 tain in American colleges as in European uni- versities. There are some " hard boys " at Harvard, and the Yale Cubs often make night hideous at New Haven, nevertheless the Ameri- can student is generally more respectable and law-abiding than his foreign brother. Says Presi- dent Eliot, of Harvard : ' The habitual abstinence from alcohol as a daily beverage, which the great majority of American students observe, explains in some degree the absence in American institutions of all measures to prevent students from passing the night away from their college rooms or lodg- ings. The college halls at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton stand open all night ; while at Oxford and Cambridge locked doors and gates, and barred and shuttered windows, enforce the student's presence in his room after 10 P.M., but are most ineffectual to restrain him from any vice to which he may be seriously inclined. There is more drunkenness and licentiousness at Oxford and Cambridge than among an equal number of American students ; but this fact is due rather to national temperament, and to the characteristics of the social class to which English students generally belong, than to anything in university organization or discipline. Among manly virtues, purity and temperance have a lower place in English estimation than in American." So sensible are the mass of American students 606 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. that when the question of undergraduate partici- pation in college management was raised at Dartmouth the college societies reported ad- versely on the plan, and the college paper, edited by students, manfully asserted, after a plea for strong government, " What our colleges really need is more of West Point." Between proper government and amateur police work, however, there is a wide difference. Ex-President McCosh, of Princeton, who was a studious, quiet man, whom no one could have suspected of sympathy with wild hilarity, said : " There may be colleges, but they are few, which are over-governed by masters who look as wise as Solomon, but whose judgments are not just so wise as his were. In some places there may be a harsh repression of natural impulses, and an intermeddling with joyousness and playfulness. I have known ministerial pro- fessors denounce infidelity till they made their best students infidel. The most effective means of making young men skeptics is for dull men to attack Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall, without knowing the branches which these men have been turning to their own uses. There are grave professors who cannot draw the distinction between the immorality of drinking and snowballing. It is true that we have two eyes given us that we may see, but we have also two eyelids to cover them up ; and those who THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 607 have oversight of young men should know when to open and when to close these organs of observation. I have seen a band of students dragging a horse, which had entered the campus, without matriculating, into a ^(^/y-student's room, and a professor with the scene before him determinedly turning his head now to the one side and now to the other that he might not possibly see it. I have witnessed a student coming out of a recitation-room, leaping into a wagon, whose driver had villanously disap- peared, and careering along the road, while the president turned back from his walk that his eyes might not alight on so profane a scene." But between mere fun and out-and-out brutality Dr. McCosh drew the line sharply when he said : "It is certain that there are old college customs still lingering in our country which people generally are now anxious to be rid of. Some of them are offsets of the abominable practices of old English schools, and have come down from colonial days, through successive generations. Thus American hazing is a modi- fication of English fagging. It seems that there are still some who defend or palliate the crime for such it is. They say that it stirs up courage and promotes manliness. But I should like to know what courage there is in a crowd, in masks at the dead of night, attacking a single youth 608 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. who is gagged and is defenceless ! It is not a fair and open fight in which both parties expose themselves to danger. The deed, so far from being courageous, is about the lowest form of cowardice. The preparations made and the deeds done are in all cases mean and dastardly, and in some horrid. I have seen the apparatus. There are masks for concealment, and gags to stop the mouth and ears ; there is a razor and there are scissors, there are ropes to bind, and in some cases whips or boards to inflict blows ; there are commonly filthy applications ready, and in all cases unmanly insults more difficult to be borne by a youth of spirit than any beat- ing. The practice, so far from being humaniz- ing, is simply brutalizing in its influence on all engaged in it. It does not form the brave man, but the bully. The youth exposed to the in- dignity this year is prepared to revenge it on another next year. A gentleman who knows American colleges well tells me that in those in which hazing is common in the younger classes the very look of the students is rowdyish. It is astonishing that the American people, firm enough when they are roused, should have allowed this barbarity to linger in our colleges, great and small, down to the last quarter of the nineteenth century of the religion of purity and love." Our universities and more progressive col- THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 609 leges are slowly but surely reshaping them- selves on the lines indicated in the foregoing pages, and the time is not far distant when no graduate can be excused for being merely book- stuffed instead of educated. 39 CHAPTER XXXVIIT. CULTURE. MORE nonsense is talked about culture than about any other topic of general interest, politics not excepted. People speak of culture as if it were something new, whereas it is about as old as humanity. Adam and Eve thought they were dipping into culture when they tasted the forbidden fruit. They got into it in earnest when they found themselves outside the gates of Paradise, and were obliged to make the best of all their facul- ties in order to earn a living and bring up their family. They didn't succeed very fast, but neither do their nineteenth century descendants who talk most glibly of culture. Culture is alluded to by some people as if it had to do only with matters of taste, whereas its rightful scope is so great that it includes every human faculty. The man who reads largely in what is called polite literature, sees noted pic- tures, listens to the great plays and operas, dresses in good taste, avoids shovelling food into his mouth with a knife, has an intelligent fond- (610) CULTURE. 611 ness for bric-a-brac, and avoids unpleasant topics of conversation, is called a cultured person. So he is in these particulars, but not necessarily in any others. The rage about culture has a great many ridiculous features, but in the main it is so genuine that those persons who are competent to criticise from the outside such developments of it as appear from time to time should also be able to see in it seed which in time should bear glorious fruit. All great movements' and im- pulses are likely to be contemptible in their be- ginnings and to start from something which after- wards may seem a mere side issue. Culture has begun in the United States in this way : that is, the culture that is being talked about. Of course if we regard the word in its truest signifi- cance, the impulse for which it stands has never been even dormant among us ; it has always been active and generally active for good. Cul- ture in its highest sense was the purpose of the hard-headed old fellows who came over in the Mayflower. The same may be said of the Catholic colonists who went to Maryland very soon afterwards. All these people saw, or thought they saw, in the conditions of life in a new world, opportunities for ridding themselves of the vices and excrescences peculiar to very old civilizations, and saw also an opportunity for fulfilling more perfectly the mental, moral and 612 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. spiritual duties which they believed were incum- bent upon them. " The tree is known by its fruit," and these early colonists of ours proved by their deeds that they were quite as earnest about culture as the most prominent member of our aesthetic set of the present day. Regarded from the standpoint of ideal human- ity, culture, as we understand it at present, is merely a seed, and the ordinary method of pro- gression must be patiently awaited. As the Scripture says, " First the seed, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." Culture, like the cholera, small-pox, yellow fever and other in- fluences not yet entirely subjected to the will of man, has a way of breaking out at unexpected places. In America's early days the impulse towards culture was found almost entirely among religious people. At present its developments are chiefly distinguished by utter lack of religion of any kind, but this is no ground for despair or even doubt. If the first step is half the battle, as we are told by a highly esteemed old saying, the impulse towards culture is so strong in this coun- try that, whatever its earlier and unguided de- velopments may be, it is quite safe to assume that these have been stimulated by the charac- teristic American impulse towards growth of some kind, and although the movement may not have been under intelligent direction at the start it will be placed there in the course of time "by CULTURE. 613 the solid sense of a nation whose people are always quick to recognize the signs of the times and intelligent in modifying them for their own benefit. It is useless to deny that some of the develop- ments of the alleged modern rage for culture are unspeakably ludicrous. In order to be " cul- tured " some men seem to have abjured their manliness for the time being, and some women have forgotten whatever is womanly. Neverthe- less, people who are laboring under extreme mental excitement on any one subject are likely to make blunders from which public opinion will pardon them in the course of time. To see a woman once known among her associates as a mother in Israel, going, in charge of her hard- headed husband, to an exhibition of a mythologi- cal picture, or to a meeting of a club whose principal interest seems to be in the turning of the moral world upside down, is not a pleas'ant spectacle, but neither are the beginnings of any- thing. We must creep before we can walk, and who is there who has not looked with pitying and sympathetic e} r e upon the efforts of the babe to make its way across the floor ? The majority of American apostles of culture are about in the condition of the aforesaid babe. They see a need of a change for the better in some respects, and so far as their minds are equal to the demands made upon them, they endeavor 614 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. to direct the change. As a rule they make fools of themselves and are heartily laughed at for it. The rebuke does them good, and it scarcely can be denied that their earnestness commands a certain quality of respect which is never lost among the people of the United States. There is no other part of the world in which sincerity of any sort is so heartily appreciated as here, and while a man who gives his entire thought to the manner in which he shall enter a parlor and address the various persons therein, or the woman who fills her sittiiig-rooin with blue china of antique pat- tern and prays Heaven three times a day that she may be enabled to live up to it, is very laugh- able, nevertheless the impulse which is behind these ridiculous movements is entirely in keep- ing with the spirit and purpose of our people, and sooner or later it must bear fruits far better than the parent stock seems to promise. A great deal of fun has been made of our alleged culture, and most of it has been entirely justifiable, but is it not time to look the matter squarely in the face and determine whether these people at whom we have been laughing are not after all in the right to the extent that they are looking and straining towards something better than they are accustomed to ? This is a matter-of-fact world, and nowhere is this truer than about the people of the United States. For two or three centuries we have been so busy at CULTURE. 615 making settlements, building houses and clearing land and cheating the Indians, that we have had very little time to give to matters of taste, and still less to devote to careful and broad dis- cussions of human character. Our early settlers, no matter from where they came or what religion they professed, were under the impression that they, like the early Hebrews, were the Lord's chosen people, and they were so entirely satisfied with this belief that they neglected to make some efforts which perhaps would have made them more satisfactory to the celestial powers that be. As time went on and the people, instead of being obliged to devote their whole time to keeping the wolf from the door, became so prosperous that the wolf disappeared entirely from their minds, they found themselves literally in a condition of gross materialism. Their necessities had been so absolutely bound to material things that there was no horizon for them which promised any- thing better. But as subsequent generations attended the schools and read a great many books and felt themselves free from the daily pressure of necessity, there were Teachings out for something better and less material. Some- times it was in a religious direction, but even in New England it was impossible to restrict the view to such limits. Taste in all matters began to assert itself, and, like everything else which has been down-trodden and abused, and compelled to HI 6 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. lie dormant for generations, matters of taste were the first to demand attention. The developments of this impulse were at times extremely funny. Young women who could find no other sug- gestion in their surroundings could at least tie ribbons about old-fashioned vases and bring a century-old family teapot to a position of honor among the family Lares and Penates ; old books, long tabooed by the family, were brought to light again, dress began to receive considerable at- tention, and men and women even wasted, as they conscientiously imagined, a great deal of time upon the aesthetics of house-building. Look- ing at the results it is impossible to compare them to anything except what the gardener or nurseryman finds when he looks to the blossoms or fruit of a number of plants of the variety known in the trade as " seedlings." All came from good stock, but in the endeavors to change from a certain quality or level to a higher, the mistakes and blunders were more numerous than the successes. From several hundred seeds of pear, or peach, or strawberry, the gardener is delighted to obtain a single new variety which is worthy of cultivation, and in American " culture" the same rule holds good. There have been enough of blunders to make a whole generation of our wiser and brighter intellects laugh as often as a new number of any of the humorous papers appeared from the press. Yet in spite of all CULTURE. 617 ridicule the good work has gone on, and once in a while some startling development has occurred to astonish and gratify those who are look- ing on. Ridiculous though many of the developments of so-called culture may seem, it is not fair to laugh at them. They are beginnings and noth- ing else, and should be so regarded by those who are observing the movement most closely. It is quite safe and proper and also inevitable to laugh at the young men and young women who assume that the culture of the present generation has been placed in their hands for management and development, but at the same time it should be remembered that everything which humanity has accomplished has come through slow and painful successions, and that there never can be a satisfactory end unless there is a beginning of some kind. We have novels of culture at which all well-balanced people laugh ; plays of culture which seem the weakest possible reflection of the life of intelligent people. Culture concerns itself with the dress of men and women and makes some of its exemplars as fearfully and wonderfully ugly as a similar number of scarecrows. But while all this is admitted, it must also be allowed that these people are sincere, that their impulse is right. Their energy is misdirected, but those who are without sin in these particulars 618 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. are the only ones who have any right to throw stones. There was a movement of the same sort in England some years ago. It concerned itself principally with literature. It made itself supremely ridiculous, and the " Delia Cruscans " have afforded material for the fun of two full generations of humorists. Nevertheless, the children of these peculiar people succeeded in ridding themselves of the faults of their parents, and some of the most delightful people in Great Britain to-day can trace their ancestry back to men and women who wrote ridiculous verses and egotistic essays which were remarkable for noth- ing in particular except their faults. Culture was once defined by a man of high attainments, large eloquence and large experience, as intelligence with the varnish rubbed off. A better description could hardly be given. It is the impulse of all earnest and ignorant persons who pay attention first to ornament and leave common sense to make its way at a convenient opportunity. The birth of culture may be observed at the present time among the native Indians of our own border. They never have washed their faces, and their bodies are as much worse than nature intended as successive coats of paint could possibly make them. Neverthe- less, the impulse of these wretches is entirely correct. They wish to improve their present CULTURE. 619 appearance, make themselves more attractive to their fellow-beings, and command more respect from persons about them. They are ridiculed even in their own tribes, for low though the North American Indian may be, he is not desti- tute of a sense of humor. Nevertheless, the effect of this display, or the impulse which pro- duced it upon the next generation, has been to impel young men and young women to exchange the breech-clout and head-dress of feathers for the garments of humanity. Perhaps they have not changed an entire suit at a time, but as time goes on the results become apparent. There was a time when all Americans of the families which were recognized as first in the land be- fore any white settlers reached here scorned the idea of work of any sort, but to-day some thou- sands of Indians can be seen handling the hoe, shovel, scythe and hammer, and assimilating their daily life with that of the white people about them. They used to display their religious sentiments by slaughtering their fellow-men, or subjecting themselves to tortures, but at the present time some thousands of them gather in churches of different denominations every Sun- day and receive the word in its purity from clergymen of different denominations. All this is culture, just as truly as the ability to criticise pictures, pick books to pieces or cover mantel-shelves with bits of choice bric-a-brac. 620 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. It may not be according to the taste of some advanced apostles of culture, but the truth regarding the impulse and its development and its manifest tendencies cannot be denied by any one. These remarks about the North American Indian are merely for purpose of illustration. The white man may not have begun so low, but, on the other hand, his progress is not so rapid. There are portions of the United States to-day in which the coffin-plates of deceased members of the family are the principal ornaments of the parlor-mantel. There are other families in which the " sampler," worked by a great-grand- mother, or some later descendant's " herring- bone " quilt is regarded with as much artistic reverence as is paid by some persons to an un- doubted work of art. Similar modest begin- nings and slow gradations may be observed in every department of American culture, from matters of mere taste to those intimately con- nected with the highest interests of the race. As already said, men must creep before they can walk, and so long as any development or stage of the progress of the race can be seen in active operation, it is no time to despair, much less to find fault. Against the current impression, however, that culture consists only in personal taste, it is time to enter a decided and indignant protest. Men CULTURE. 621 and women are numerous who speak of culture in such matters as if it were the sole end and aim of existence. They delight in a vile picture if its technique is absolutely correct. A novel, or an opera, or play which no one would read in the family circle, is praised unsparingly if it preserves artistic unity, and the spirit has so far degenerated into a craze that the word " sincere " is applied even to chairs and dining-room tables. Probably all new ideas must run mad during a certain period of their course. Unless generally accepted authority is incorrect, there was trouble of this sort among the early Christians ; for particulars see some of St. Paul's Epistles. All impulses which are not subject to direction are likely to run wild, and their exuberance is frequently in the wrong direction. But so long as clear heads and clean hearts exist they will be subjected to such criticism and comment as will compel all necessary reforms sooner or later. When the werd " culture " reaches its proper significance among American people, it will, if properly followed, raise us to a level which at present there are no indications of our attaining at once. There is no sentiment or impulse of the human mind which is not capable of culture, and when the full scope of this impulse is recognized there will be less to find fault with or to be the subject of sarcasm and satire. There 622 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. is nothing wrong about the word or the principle. The trouble at the present time is simply with its application. It is too late in the history of the world to make fun of culture. The word in its highest sense stands for all the progress that the world has made in any respect since the beginning. Every struggle of the human race towards something higher and better that is recorded in Holy Writ is culture pure and simple nothing more and nothing less. It was culture which Moses endeavored to force upon the early Hebrews, and which later prophets, priests and kings worked for, each in his own way. It was culture of the highest order for which Jesus labored during his active ministry on earth, and which the faithful believe he still is superintending. Every effort of conscientious parents in the family is in the direction of cul- ture. Every gain which law and order makes in nation or community is for the sake of culture. The name of the sentiment appealed to is of secondary consideration. Culture means im- provement. Whether of the soil, the material man, the spiritual man or his surroundings, there is nothing more nor anything less of it than may be described by the simple word " culture." To assume that it is nothing more than the dilettanti of to-day write about in the magazines and newspapers, and that some self-sufficient people endeavor to act out in their respective CULTURE. 623 social circles, is the veriest nonsense. There is nothing new whatever about culture. There never will be. So long as the world stands and men and women look forward to things better, higher and purer than those they now enjoy, the word culture will deserve an honorable place in every dictionary and in the minds of every man and woman. It is quite right to laugh at the blunders of those who mistakenly assume to lead their fellow-beings, but the fact never should be forgotten that even bad leaders are nseful in the world, if only to teach the mass of the people what to avoid. CHAPTER XXXIX. OUR GREAT CONCERN. OURS is the greatest land in the world, and we, the people of these United States, ought to be the greatest people. At the present time it does not require any great amount of conceit to make us believe that we are superior to our neighbors, but it will not do to forget that the faculty of being up and growing is not one of which we have a mo- nopoly. One of the founders of the Republic said : u Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." He might have added that it is the price of pretty miirch everything else worth having and keeping. We Americans have led the world in a great many respects in most unexpected ways and at unexpected times, but seldom does a year pass in which we do not discover that we have no mo- nopoly of the art of taking the lead. In one way or other, some nations of the earth are continually showing themselves superior to us in some re- spects. We have needed a great many warnings of this kind, and we will need a great many more (624) OUR GREAT CONCERN. 625 unless we act more promptly upon those which have already been granted us. We have had enough success in other days to make us very conceited, so it is natural that oc- casionally we fall behind our competitors through the blindness of our fancied security. There was a time when American sails whitened every ocean, and more American ships could be seen in foreign ports than those of two or three other nations combined. The man who would now go out in a foreign port to look for an American flag, determining not to break his fast till he found one, would stand a fair chance of starving to death. Whether the disappearance of our flag from commerce is due only to the ravages of the Alabama and her sister privateers, or to the navigation law r s now in force, is not to the point of the present situation, which is, that un- expectedly to ourselves and all the rest of the world we have taken the lowest position among the nations as carriers of what we have to buy and sell, and that we do not show any indications whatever of ever resuming our old position. Another instance : Within the memory of half the people now alive, the world heard that Cot- ton was king, and, as cotton was obtainable only from America, Americans proudly assumed to be the commercial rulers of the world. Owing to a little family trouble on this side of the water, the other nations began to look about elsewhere for 40 G-J6 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. their cotton. They found some in unexpected places, and have been finding it there ever since. We still produce more cotton than any other country, but we are not kings of the cotton mar- ket any longer. Then came the time when Corn was king. It is true we did not ship much of it in the grain, but between putting it into pork and putting it into whiskey, our corn became the first cause of the loading many thousands of ships to different foreign countries. Foreigners have eyes in their heads and they began to look about and see whether they could not produce pork and whis- key as cheaply as those people across the water, who had to send their products three thousand miles or more to find a market. They succeeded. At the present day, although our distilleries and pig-styes are in active operation, a great deal of distilled liquors and also a great deal of the meat of the hog comes this way across the ocean. The market still is good abroad for American hams, sides, shoulders, bacon and lard, but the bottom has dropped out of the whiskey market, and seems to show no signs of a desire to return. For a number of years, and until very recently, our wheat had made us commercially, in one sense at least, the superior of all the other nations of the world. The finer breadstuffs were not to be had in Europe except from American sources. Year by year the price of wheat increased until OUR GREAT CONCERN. 627 the American farmer became so enviable an indi- vidual that a great many merchants went out of business, bought farms, and attempted to com- pete with him. As is usually the case when any business is so flourishing that every one wishes to go into it, endeavors were being made by hun- dreds of sharp-eyed observers to see whether wheat might not be more profitably produced in other portions of the world, and the success which attended these observations has been any- thing but gratifying to the American farmer. Russia and Hungary are producing more wheat than ever before. Wheat is pouring into Europe from Asia, and even from Africa, and the Ameri- can farmer now is not quite so sure as to what will be the result of a good crop of wheat not sure whether it will yield a profit or fail to pay expenses. Even the reductions in freight rates, alike from the agricultural districts to the sea- shore and from America to Europe, do not com- pensate him for the great reduction in the price of what once he fondly believed was an enduring source of profit. The time when it was safe to put an entire farm into wheat has passed. Far- mers are studying mixed crops now with all the intelligence that is in them, for a man's first duty is to earn food for his family. Again, when it was discovered that, helped by some refrigerating process, we could send fresh meat to Europe, the whole country arose, cheered 628 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. and patted itself upon the back. Now, surely the whole world would be at our feet, for were we not feeding Englishmen, Frenchmen and Ger- mans cheaper than any of their home producers could do it ? Our self-satisfaction increased when it was discovered that live cattle also could be sent over to Europe in immense quantities and pay a handsome profit in spite of occasional losses due to storms and injudicious loading of the vessels which carried the animals. About this time ranches began to cover all ground in the far West that was fit at all for grazing, and the estates, nominally the property of those who managed them, came to be of baronial extent. But what America could do, Australia began to think she also could do, and even South Africa was not averse to experimenting in the same di- rection. We still send a great deal of meat to Europe, but ranch property is not as much in demand as once it was. There are ranches now to be had for the taking, but the takers are few. Just before the ranch fever began, we struck oil struck it in such immense quantities, and also found men so competent to make it fit for general use, that petroleum in some of its forms promised to be the leading export article of the United States. There was not a civilized quarter of the world in which one couldn't find the American kerosene oil can. Our oil still con- tinues to go abroad in immense quantities, but OUR GREAT CONCERN. 629 the fortunes which have been made upon it have stimulated prospectors all over the world, and, as it is known that oil is not restricted to any single hemisphere, or even grand division of the world, the prospects begin to look rather dismal for America retaining supremacy in this particular article of commerce. The Asiatic oil wells are far more valuable than ours and are worked at less expense, and the supply can be distributed in Europe quite as easily and cheaply as that from the American wells and refineries. Evidently we can't afford to depend upon oil alone. Large fortunes have been made upon it, but there is an old song which says : " The mill can never grind with the water that is passed." We need something new to keep us at the fore. What it is to be has not yet been discovered. Some few unfulfilled expectations of this kind, some great commercial disappointments, are probably necessary to divest us of part of the overweening self-confidence which is peculiar to the inhabitants of all new countries. Simple and unquestioning belief in manifest destiny and all that sort of talk has quite a stimulating ef- fect at times, but it also is likely to lull people into a false sense of security. It already has done so to a large extent in the United States. We have been so well satisfied that we were su- perior in intelligence and resources to any other land on the face of the earth that we have been ()30 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. inattentive to some of our greater interests. The shipping of raw materials of any kind is a reputable division of industry, but it is not the highest result at which a nation should aim, nor should any amount of success at it blind the people to their greater duties, responsibilities and opportunities. On the other hand, no other nation of the world has so much as we to be thankful for and to encourage them. We have no bad neighbors who are strong enough for us to be afraid of, and all the greater powers of the world are far enough away to take very little interest in us, unless we annoy them in some way. We do not have to squander the energies and sometimes the life- blood of our race by putting all our young men into armies and navies and teaching them dis- trust, suspicion, cruelty and the spirit of rapine. Our taxes are heavy, but, on the other hand, our national debt, once so enormous, is being re- duced with such rapidity that soon we will show the world the astonishing spectacle of a great nation without a debt. There is nowhere else in the world where a person with money to invest and desiring it to remain absolutely secure, no matter at how small a rate of interest, cannot quickly obtain the securities of his own govern- ment for his gold or notes, but here there is very little encouragement any longer to buy the na- tional bonds, for they are being redeemed at a OUR GREAT CONCERN. 631 rate which makes it almost impossible for any one to retain them with certainty for a long time as a permanent investment. Holders of the debts of other countries expect never to have their principal redeemed ; they are satisfied to get interest perpetually, as undoubtedly they will unless the debts are repudiated. There is very little possibility of any foreign country of the first class ever discharging all of its financial ob- ligations so far as principal is concerned, unless it provokes a fight with the United States and holds our cities for ransom. If we must, and certain economists say we must, continue to ex- tract a large amount of money from the pockets of the people, we will at least have the satisfac- tion of seeing it spent for something besides dead horses. We also are reducing the proportion of our uneducated and ignorant classes at a rapid and gratifying rate. Other countries are working in this direction with more skill, thoughtfulness and accurate appliances, but, on the other hand, they have to contend against the apathy of a large portion of the population, an article which, hap- pily, in this country is of very small proportions. Besides the vast mass of uneducated beings who have come to us as immigrants, we have also the entire colored population of the South, but schools are built so rapidly and all classes of our people, even the most ignorant of blacks, are so 632 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. ambitious to be as good as any other class, that it is not at all difficult to get children to school and to persuade parents to take a hearty interest in education. Whatever may be our faults in the future, ignorance promises not to be one of them. There is another side to this subject, and one which cannot too quickly begin to turn the thoughtful portion of the public. " A little learning is a dangerous thing," is a sentiment which has frequently been quoted. The inherent right of every citizen to reach the highest office of the government has so stimulated ambition that almost any one is willing to try for the posi- tion whether fit or not, and the same statement holds good regarding every other place of trust or profit in public or private life. Half-educated men, men of almost no education, have brought this country to great peril again and again. Their numbers are constantly increasing. We must be on guard against them. Misdirected activity is worse than no activity at all, but there is something worse than that, and it is the cease- less ambition of men whose conscience does not keep pace with their intelligence. The school supplies intelligence, but conscience is something which cannot be made to order, and no institu- tion under charge and supervision of a govern- ment can be expected to supply it. The nations of the Old World have attempted to do it for OUR GREAT CONCERN. 63.> centuries through the medium of the church, but good and noble and self-sacrificing though the church has been at many times and in many lands, its ministrations cannot be forced upon those who are unwilling to receive them. The only available substitute is a high stand- ard of public morality. This is voiced by the press, by the pulpit and in private life ; but, un- fortunately, when it reaches the domain of poli- tics, it immediately becomes confused and en- feebled. A higher standard must be set by par- ties and maintained by the leaders and voters and adherents of those parties. The hypocrisy of all political utterances has been proved over and over again during the past few years in the United States. No man of honesty and high purpose can help blushing for shame when he reviews the broken promises of his own political organi- zation, no matter what it may be. " Promises, like pie-crusts, are made to be broken," says the practical politician, and while for three years and six months of every four the respectable citizen protests against such shameful disregard of pub- lic and private morals, in the remaining six months he is likely to give his tacit assent and his active vote to the party with which he has always acted in politics, regardless of who may be its leaders and what may be its actual inten- tions. Until both parties line down this disgrace and dishonor there will be a weak joint in our 1)34 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. armor and our enemies will sooner or later dis- cover a way of piercing it. " Righteousness ex- alteth a nation," says an authority which most Americans regard with great respect except during a Presidential campaign. The stability and peace of our nation should be the great concern of our people, and as there is not a private virtue which may not be influential in this direction, each individual has it in his power to further the great purpose of the community. All the other nations envy us envy us our form of government, our freedom from conscription, large armies, privileged classes, vested rights, ugly neighbors, churchly impositions and hope- less debts. But we can maintain all these features of superiority only by maintaining an honest and intelligent government. We cannot do it by being blind, unreasoning partizans of any political organization. To be a " strong Democrat" or "strong Republican" is often to be contemptibly weak as an American. Loyalty to party often means disloyalty to the nation. Party platforms are seldom framed according to the will of the majority ; they are framed by the leaders, and often for the leaders' own personal purposes. In all other lands where constitutional govern- ment prevails the intelligent classes sway from one party to the other, according to their opinion of measures proposed. Loyalty is accorded to the nation first, the party afterwards. The party OUR GREAT CONCERN. 635 is regarded as a means, not an end ; it must be so regarded here, before we can rise to the level of our opportunities, and the number and great- ness of these opportunities make this duty more imperative here, even for selfish reasons, than anywhere else. It is peculiarly stupid and dis- graceful that any intelligent American should be able to say, with Sir Joseph Porter, in "Pina- fore : " " I always voted at my party's call, And I never thought of thinking for myself at all." No party should be a voter's ruler ; it is his servant, and if it is lazy, dishonest or does not obey him, it should be disciplined or changed. We must do much else, by way of vigilance. We must insist that American land be held only by Americans. A great many rich men on the other side of the Atlantic are willing and anx- ious to reproduce here a state of affairs that has made endless trouble in Europe. Said Presi- dent Harrison, while yet in the Senate : " Vast tracts of our domain, not simply the public domain on the frontier, but in some of our newer States, are passing into the hands of wealthy foreigners. It seems that the land reforms in Ireland, and the movement in England in favor of the reduction of large estates and the distribu- tion of the lands among persons who will culti- vate them for their own use, are disturbing the 636 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. investments of some Englishmen, and that some of them are looking to this country for the acquisition of vast tracts of land which may be held by them and let out to tenants, out of the rents of which they may live abroad. This evil requires early attention, and that Congress should, by law, restrain the acquisition of such tracts of land by aliens. Our policy should be small farms, worked by the men who own them." So says every thoughtful American. We must give closer attention to the army of the unemployed if we wish to avoid the bad in- fluence which discontent, of any class, has upon the prosperity of the community. The neglect of workers who have no work to do is a blot upon the fair fame of our people. Financially, we do not seem to be affected, one way or other, when a lot of men are thrown out of work. Says Mr. T. V. Powderly, long the most eloquent spokesman of the working class : "It matters not that the carpet-mills suspend three hundred hands, the price of carpeting remains unchanged. The gingham-mills and the cotton and woollen- mills may reduce the wages of employes five and ten per cent., but the price of gingham and calico continues as before." But the men who suffer they and their families by partial or total loss of income, feel keenly the apathy of the general body of consumers, and their indignation and suspicion will be sure to make themselves known T. V. POWDERLY. OUR GREAT COXCERN. 637 unpleasantly when least expected. We are all working men ; we owe practical sympathy to the least of our brethren. We must make more of the individual, and unload fewer of our responsibilities upon the government, whether local, State or national. As editor Grady, of Georgia, said recently to the graduating class of the University of Virginia : " The man who kindles the fire on the hearth- stone of an honest and righteous home burns the best incense to liberty. He does not love man- kind less who loves his neighbor most. Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of govern- ment, he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat. Make him self-respecting, self-reliant and responsible. Let him lean on the State for nothing that nis own arm can do, and on the government for nothing that his State can do. Let him cultivate independence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that humble things with unbartered liberty are better than splendors bought with Itf. price. Let him neither sur- render his individuality to government nor merge it with the mob. Let him stand upright and fearless a freeman bc'/n of freemen sturdy in his own strength dowering his family in the sweat of his brow loving to his State loyal to his Republic earnest in his allegiance wherever it rests, but building his altar in the midst of 638 OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE. his household gods and shrining in his own heart the uttermost teinpje of its liberty." On all this, and the general subject of this book, the editor begs to quote, in conclusion, from a well-known and highly respected authority. ; ' Men and brethren, think on these things." THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Scries !l I.--J QIC II VVV9 VJN*S o