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The WORLD'S WORK
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Volume V
<!>i4*r*»
NOVEMBER, igo2, to APRIL, 1903
A HISTORY OF OUR TIME
Copyright, tqoz-s, by
Doiibleday , Page <5^ Company
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
34 Union Square, East, New York
INDEX
A CCIDENTS on Railroads 2827
■'»■ Achievements, The President's Summary of Our
"Colonial" 20,52
Adventure of a Newspaper Man, An 2920
Agriculture, National Peculiarities in 325.5
America, Making Naval Constructors in 3 141
American Builder in England, An. .
An English Correspondent of The World's Work . 2786
America," " Europe versus Andrew Carnegie. 2797
America, One Effect of High Wages in 3144
American Aim, A Statement of the. . . .Austin Bierbower.3227
American and European Plows, The Difference between. . . . ,525.5
American Character Declining? Is. . . .George Perry Morris.2775
American Corporations, The Bonds of 2830
American Education, The Shortcomings of 3269
American Feeling Toward Germany .... (See Venezuela) . 3153
American Finance, The New Centre of Ivy Lee. 2772
American in Russia, An 3139
American Iron- Worker in Central America, An 2915
Americanism for British Trade-Unions. .
Alfred Mosely, C. M. G.3019
American Lemons, Growing W. S. Harwood. 3,515
American Life, The Moral Soundness of. .Julian Ralph. 2747
American Manufactures Edmund D. Jones. 301 2
American Opportunities in Russia 3139
American Public Education, The Needs of. .
Charles W. Eliot. 2894
American Railroad, The Continued Progress of a Great. . . .3367
American Residence, The Model .... Katherine C. Budd.3344
American Schools, A Great English Educator on 3268
American Society, Immoral Literature and 2714
Arbitration, A Means to Effective. .. .Frederick W. Job. 2856
Arbitration in Labor Troubles Be Effective ? Can (See Labor) .2789
Army, A Day in the Regular. ... Hamilton M. Higday.3007
Army and Its Future Commander, The Peace 2823
Army, The Character of the 5 159
Art, The New Era in Decorative Paul S. Reinsch.2779
Automatic Machines to Order, Making 2921
Automobile, The Advancing 3252
Automobile, The Coming of the Henry Norman, M. P. 3304
Award, The Lessons of the Samoan 2829
BANKRUPTCY LAW, The National
■*-' Barnard — Sculptor, George Grey. .
Alexander Blair Thaw.
Battle-ship of the Future, The Lewis Nixon .
Betterment, A Clearing-House for Practical
Betterment, A Force for Social
Birds, To Refill the Land with
Birthday, A Word on a
Books, The Small Circulation of New
Books, Views of Readers on Recent 2912, 3028,
Brazil and Its New President
Breakdown, The Prevention of Physical. .
Floyd M. Crandall, M.D.
British Unionists Saw, What the M. G. Cunniff.
Bronzes, The Art of Casting
Builder in England, An American. .
An English Correspondent of The World's Work .
Builder of the New York Subway, The . Raymond Stevens .
Building, The Biography of An Office. .Arthur Goodrich.
Business, A Nerve Centre of
Business Failures, Causes of
Business Methods, What We Can Learn from German. .
Louis J. Magee.
Business of Saving Trees, The
3264
2837
2969
3050
3053
3163
2695
3275
3135
3052
3124
3023
3370
2786
2833
2955
3031
3162
3114
3144
pABLE SYSTEMS, Two Pacific 2932
^-' Canada, Our Industrial Invasion of . .
Robert H. Montgomery. 2978
Canada Forging Ahead 3164
Canal in Sight, The Panama 3149
Candidate, Early Talk of a Democratic Presidential 3043
Capital? Why So Much Uninvested 3268
Capitalist, A Labor- Union Turned 3140
Carnegie Institute of Washington, The. .Dr. D. C. Oilman. 3166
Centre of Business, A Nerve 3031
Character and a Debauched City, A Model 2825
Character ? Does Poverty Help 3274
Child-Labor Legislation, Progress in 3264
Churches Losing Ground ? Are the 3047
Cities, Raising the Level of Wealth in 2711
Citizens for the Republic, New A. R. Dugmore.3323
City, A Model Character and a Debauched 2825
City and Country Population, The Proportion of. .
Frederic Austin Ogg.3003
City, The Human Atoms of a Steel-Built 2937
PAGE.
C^hangcs in Public Thought, Two Noteworthy. (See Tra<le) .2814
Character Declining? Is American .. Geort^c Perry Morris. 2775
Chicago, The Municipal Character and Achievements of. .
Frederic C. Howe. 3240
China, The Swarming Millions of 2830
Cholera, The Eastward and Westward Spread of 2828
Church Work, Twenty Milhons for Practical . .
Edmund M. Mills, Ph.D., D.D.3308
Clearing-House for Practical Betterment, A 3050
Coal Settlement, The Bituminous (See Labor) . 3270
Coal Strike, The Sum Total of the (See Labor). 2706
Co-Education, New Controversies About 2825
Collector, The Story of a Botanical 2920
College Drummer, The 3050
College Engineers at Work 3144
College Men, Business Training for 2922
College? What Is the Best Edwin G. Dexter. 3302
Collisions, The Prevention of Railroad 3162
Columbia and Venezuela in Convulsion 2828
Commander, The Peace Army aivl Its Future 2823
Commerce and Labor, The New Department of. .
Frederic Emory. 3334
Commercial Failures, The Instructive Aspect of 3273
Community Ruled by Primitive Methods, A Negro 33^8
Congress, The Large Work of 3261
Confession of a Foreign Newspaper Correspondent. .
Wolf von Schierbrand. 33 5S
Consumptives, Out-of-Door Treatment of Poor 3369
Continents, Clearing the Atmosphere of Three. .
(See Venezuela) . 3040
Control of a Vast Estate, The Quiet . Henry Harrison Lewis .2750
Corporation Investigators, The 3267
Corporations, The Law to Investigate 3267
Corporations, The Bonds of American 2830
Corporations, The Head of the International Shipping. .
Lawrence Perry. 2857
Cortelyou, George Bruce 3337
Craftsman, The Work of a Japanese. . .Herbert G. Ponting.3118
Crusade Against Tuberculosis, A 3163
Cuban Tobacco in the United States, Growing
Marrion Wilcox .3100
Curry, Dr. J. L. M 327s
■p^AY in the Regular Army, A Hamilton M. Higday.3007
^-^ Day, Portrait of Mr. Sargent and Justice 3164
Delaware, The Undoing of 2934
Delhi, The Durbar at 2940
Demand, Meeting the Foreign 3254
Democratic Presidential Candidate, Early Talk of a 3043
Despots and Freebooters, Financial 3165
Development, On the Threshold of Public School 3049
Diplomacy. Another Stroke of Wise (See Venezuela) 3038
Diplomatic Corps, The Way to a Better 2707
Drummer, The College 3050
■pARTH, Telephoning Through the 2916
■'-' Educational Movement, A New 3034
Education, The Needs of American Public . . .
Charles W. Eliot. 2894
Education, The Shortcomings of American 3269
Election, The November 2819
Employer and Employed, Right Relations of . (See Labor) . 3033
Employment, Humane Conditions of 2936
Engineering Feat on Lookout Mountain, An 2918
Engineers at Work, College 3144
England, An American Builder in. .
An English Correspondent of The World's Work. 2786
Epic, A Neglected Frank Norris. 2905
Era in Decorative Art, A New Paul S. Reinsch.2779
Estate, The Quiet Control of a Vast. Henry Harrison Lewis. 2750
Europe, Facts of Our Trade with 3255
" Europe versus America " Andrew Carnegie. 2797
Expenditure, A Call for Greatly Increased School 2825
pACTORY METHODS, A Lesson in 3140
Failures, The Causes of Business 3162
Failures, The Instructive Aspect of Commercial 3273
Families, About the Size of 3273
Farm, A German Electrical 3366
Farming, The Machinery of Modem 3 141
Finance, The New Centre of American Ivy Lee. 2772
Finland, The Russian Obliteration of 2708
Fires, Fighting Harbor 3256
Fisheries of Our Inland Seas, Saving the . W. S. Harwood. 2729
Fiske as a Popular Historian, John..H. Morse Stephens . 3359
Flat-Dwellers of a Great City, The. .Albert Bigelow Paine. 3281
I
u
INDEX — Continued
PAGE.
" Flats. " The Smothered Dwellers in 2938
Forestry, The Railroads and John Gifford.3347
Forests. Sa\-ing the Southern Overton W. Price. 3207
Freebooters. Financial Despots and 3165
Fuel, Another New Form of 3146
Funds. The Great Methodist Twentieth-Century 3oS4
Furnaces, Measuring the Temperature of 3142
(^AME OF LIFE, Those Who Lose in the. .
^-' Alfred Hodder.2999
German Emperor's Speeches, A Book of the 30S3
German Business Methods, What We Can Learn from . .
Louis J. Magee.3114
German Tariff Law, The Xew 3044
Germany, The American Feeling Toward . (See Venezuela) . 3153
German Interests and Tendencies in South America. .
Frederic Austin Ogg.3169
Glasgow's Novels and Poems. Miss 2791
Gold. Another Revolutionary Increase of. . .Chas. M. Harvey. 2737
Gold Standard, Silver Countries MoWng Toward the 3272
Goods for a Metropolis, Handling 3031
Government Still, How Two Men Talked the 3262
Government in New York City, The Outlook for Permanent
Decent 2932
Greene, General Francis V 304s
Growth, An Important Law of Social 2926
TJ AXDICRAFTS, Our Waste of Old World 2827
^ ^ Hatred in the Old World and in the New, Inter-
national 3273
Hay's Continued Triumph, Secretary 3149
Health in Cities, Raising the Level of 2 7 1 1
Health, The Teachings of 3049
Henderson's Retirement, The Effect of Mr 2701
Hero Worthy of Remembrance, A 3160
History for the Masses, Natural. . . Frank M. Chapman. 2761
Hopldnson Smith's "Oliver Horn," Mr 2790
Hotel, The Workings of a Modem. .Albert Bigelow Paine. 3 171
Hudson, Harnessing the ^ 3365
IMMIGRANTS! Whence Come Our..
•'■ Major W. Evans Gordon, M.P.3276
Imagination and Honesty 3274
Industries and Towns to Order 3032
Industry Has Developed, How a Small 2921
Industries: A Novel Profession, Reorganizing .
Minna C. Smith. 2871
Ingenuity, Contrasts in National 3145
Interfere Without Interfering," "To... (See Venezuela) . 3 1 s 6
International Trusts, The Era of the 2704
Invasion of Canada, Our Industrial . Robert H. Montgomery. 2978
Inventions in Naval Warfare, Wireless 291 7
Instruction, The Widening Scope of 3270
International Hatred in the New and the Old World 3273
Investigators, The Corporation 3267
Ireland. How the Change Has Been Wrought in 3270
Irish Land Question, The Possible End of the 3270
Iron-Worker in Central America, An American 291 5
J
APANESE CRAFTSMAN, The Work of a. .
Herbert G . Ponting .3118
IZ ELLER, HELEN 3164
•*^ Krupp, Friedrich Alfred 2944
T ABOR, The New Department of Commerce and. . . .
•'-' Frederic Emory. 33 34
Labor (See At Full Tide Yet) . 3037
Labor (See Can Arbitration in Labor "Troubles Be Effective?) 2789
Labor. . (See Right Relations of Employer and Employed) . 3033
Labor (See The Bituminous Coal Settlement) .3270
Labor (See The Political Sensitiveness About Trusts) . 2703
Labor (See The Sum Total of the Coal Strike) . 2706
Labor and Capital Against the Unorganized, The Combina-
tion of Organized 2705
Labor Troubles, The Cure for 293s
Labor Troubles Be Effective? Can Arbitration in 2789
Labor-Union Stories by an Employer 3256
Labor-Unions, The Human Side of the M. G. Cunniff . 2742
Labor-Unions, The Deep Seriousness of 2821
Labor-Union Turned Capitalist 3140
Land (Question, The Possible End of the Irish 3270
Law, The National Bankruptcy 3264
Law to Investigate Corporations 3267
Leadership, Mr. Roosevelt's Party 3261
Legislation, Trust -Regulating 3164
Legislation, Progress in Child-Labor 3264
Lemons, Growing American W. S. Harwood.3315
Lecture System VVorks, How a Great Free. . . .George lies. 3327
Libraries, The Rapid Growth of Public. .Helen F. Haines. 30S6
Life-Boat, A New 3143
Life, Those Who Lose in the Game of Alfred Hodder. 2999
Life, The Moral Soundness of American Julian Ralph. 2747
Literature and American Society, Immoral 2714
Lloyds Chalmers Roberts. 3295
Locomotives, Improvements in 3368
London, The Rebuilding of Chalmers Roberts. 2719
MACHINE for Social Betterment, A Vast . .
Raymond Stevens .
Machinery of Modem Farming, The
Machines to Order, Making Automatic
Machinery, One Use of
Man, A Moral Reform in the Industrial
Man That Failed, The Thomas R. Dawley, Jr.
Man Who Found Himself and His Work, The
Manufactures, American Edward D. Jones .
Marconi' s Triumphs and Cheaper Telegraphy
Masses, Natural History for the Frank M. Chapman.
Medicine and Surgery, The Recent Advances in . .
A.T. Bristow, M. D.
Men, Business Training for (College
Methods, A Lesson in Factory
Methodist Twentieth-Century Fund, The Great
Metropolis, Handling Goods for a
Military Organization of Our History, The Best Peace
Mormons: a Successful Cooperative Society, The. .
Glen Miller.
Mountain, An Engineering Feat on Lookout
Movement, A New Educational
Municipal Character and Achievements of Chicago, The. .
Frederic C. Howe.
■M^ AST'S Immortal Donkey, Elephant and Tiger, Mr
•'• ' Nations, The New Attitude of the
National Ingenuity, Contrasts in
Naval Constructors in America, Making
Navy at Work, The New. .
Lieutenant -Commander Albert Gleaves, U.S.N.
Negro Community Ruled by Primitive Methods, A
Negro-Controversy Local in Its Political Effects, The
Negro Himself, The
Newspaper Correspondent, The Confessions of a Foreign . .
Wolf von Schierbrand .
Newspaper, Conducting a Russian . Wolf von Schierbrand .
Newspaper Man. An Adventure of a
New York, The Geographical Readjustment of
Nile, Subduing the Chalmers Roberts.
Norris, Frank W. S. Rainsford.
Norris, The Death of Mr. Frank
Novels, Guessing at the Popularity of
Novelists of Sincerity and Charm, Three
Nurse, The School
334t
3141
2921
3257
2826
300s
3369
3012
3044
2761
3202
2922
3140
3054
3031
3160
2881
2919
3034
3240
2939
2813
3145
3141
3059
3368
3262
3158
33SS
2975
2920
3046
2861
3276
2830
2715
2790
3258
QFFICE BUILDING, The Biography of an..
^-^ Arthur Goodrich. 29 55
Officers, A Programme for Selecting Public 2932
Ohio, A Hundred Years of Charles M. Harvey. 3229
Opera in New York 3275
Opportunities, The Saving of Individual 2926
Organization in Our History, The Best Peace Military 3160
Outlook, A Year That Has Brought a Wider "2813
Owen Wister's Stories of Americanism, Mr 2792
pAN.\MA Canal in Sight, The 3149
Panics and Depressions, The Individual Responsibility
for 294 1
Philanthropy, Definite Progress of 3047
Philanthropy, Precision in Patriotic 304S
Physical Breakdown, The Prevention of. .
Floyd M. Crandall, M. D.3124
Pit — A Story of Chicago," "The Owen Wister.3133
Plows, The Difference Between American and European. . . . 3253
Politics, A New Chapter in Southern 2820
Politics, Larger Forces Than Race 3157
Politics Narrows the Horizon, How Race 3158
Population, The Proportion of City and Country. .
Frederic Austin Ogg. 3003
Postal Stories of Growth and Prosperity 2828
Post-Office, The Traveling Forest Crissey . 2873
Poverty Help Character? Does 3274
President, A Day's Work of a Railroad. . . .F. W. Barksdale.3313
President and the Tariff, The 2702
President, Brazil and Its New 3052
President Has Staked His Fortunes, How the 2931
President's Summary of Our "Colonial" Achievements, The . 2932
President on His Tours, The Lindsay Denison. 2754
Problem, Deep Waters of the Race 293s
Problem, Sol\"ing a Social 3032
Problems and the New Year, Old 2925
Problem That Grows Under Discussion, A 3043
Professions — Public School Teaching, The Present Status
of the William McAndrew. 3187
Professions — the Law, The Present Status of the. .
Harry D. Nims.3082
Profit-Sharing, What Employees Say of . Fullerton L. Waldo. 2853
Progress from the Bottom 3271
Prohibition, The Practical End of 3160
Public Officers, A Programme for Selecting 2932
Public Schools, Trade Apprentices in 3366
Public School Influence, The Enormous Extension of 3269
Public Schools Do Their Work? How Well Do the 271 i
Public School Development, On the Threshold of 3049
Public Servants, The Pay of 3161
Public Works, Preparing for Two Great 2824
Pulpit, Economic Sermons from the 2937
Pupils Becoming Teachers 3034
INDEX — Continued
ffi
Q
UESTION. Changed Opinions on the Race.
PAUB.
. .3156
13 ACIC Politics Narrows tlio Horizon, How 31 SH
^^ Race Politics, Larger Forces Than 3157
Race Problems, Uoe|) Waters of the 29J5
Race Questions, Changed Opinions on the 315')
Railroad Collisions, The Prevention of 3162
Railroad President, A Day's Work of a. . , .P. N. Barksdale. 331 j
Railroad Prosperity and a $43,000,000 Increase in Wages. 2930
Railroad Rebates, The More Stringent Laws Against 3267
Railroad System, Trollev Lines in a. . Sylvester Baxter. 30Q3
Railroad, The Continued Progress of a Great American 3367
Railroads, Accidents on American 2827
Railroads and Forestry John Gifford.3347
Railroads, Elevating and Straightening 3142
Railroad's Provision for Its Employees, A . , 33^7
Readjustment of New York, The Geographical 3046
Reed, Mr 293Q
Reform in the Industrial Man, A Moral 2826
Relations of Employer and Employed, Right. (See Labor). 3033
Republic, New Citizens for the A. R. Dugmore.3323
Residence, "The Model American .... Katherine C. Budd.3344
Restoration of the White House, The 2827
Results at Any Cost, Getting 3145
Retirement, The Effect of Mr. Henderson's 2701
Roosevelt's Party Leadership, Mr 3261
Rumania, A Wholesome Word to the World — Through 2707
Russia, An American in 3139
Russia, American Opportunities in 3139
Russian Newspaper, Conducting a . .Wolf von Schierbrand. 297 s
Russian Obliteration of Finland, The 2708
C AMOAN Award, The Lessons of the 2829
"^ Sargent and Justice Day, Portraits of Mr 3164
Schools, A Great English Educator on American 3268
Schools Do Their Work ? How Well Do the Public 2711
School E.^cpenditure, A Call for Greatly Increased 2825
Schoolhouses, Widening the Use of Public . .
Sylvester Baxter. 3247
School in the Slums, The 3033
School Nurse, The 3258
Sea Power. Our Rapidly Increasing 2929
Seas, Saving the Fisheries of Our Inland. .W. S. Harwood.2729
Senator from Utah, The Apostolic 3159
Servant, Governor Taft as an Example of the Successful
Public 3150
Servants, The Pay of Public 3161
Shakspere Is Not Understood, Why 3249
Ship Afloat, Another Largest 3365
Shipping Corporation, The Head of the International. .
Lawrence Perry .2857
Ships, Modem Methods of Saving. .Morgan Robertson. 2946
Silver Countries Moving toward the Gold Standard 3272
Social Betterment, A Force for 3053
Social Betterment. A Vast Machine for. Raymond Stevens. 3341
Social Growth, An Important Law of 2926
Social Problem, Solving a 3032
Society, Immoral Literature and American 2714
Society, The Mormons a Successful Cooperative .Glen Miller .2881
South America, German Interests and Tendencies in
Frederic Austin Ogg.3169
South American States, The Future of 3040
South Carohna, The Matter with 3iS3
Southern Politics, A New Chapter in 2821
Speeches, A Book of the German Emperor's 3053
Spencer, Herbert George lies. 3107
Station, A Talent-Saving 3033
Steel-Built City, The Human Atoms of a 2937
Steel Corporation's Profit-Sharing Plan, The United States. .
Arthur Goodrich.305s
Stories of Growth and Prosperity, Postal 2828
Story of a Botanical Collector, The 2920
Strike, The Sum Total of the Coal (See Labor). 2 706
Subway, The Builder of the New York. Raymond Stevens. 2833
Success, The Little Things That Count for 3141
Suffrage, The Standstill of Woman 2826
Surgery, Recent Advance in Medicine and. .A. T. Bristow.3202
Survey, A One-Man 2919
Systems, The Pacific Cable 2932
'TARIFF Discussion,
The Plain, Large Facts about. . . .
(See Trade) .2702
Taft as an Example of the Successful Public Servant,
Governor 3150
Tariff Law, The New German 3044
Tariflf, The President and the 2702
Tasks, Social — Not Structural 2925
Teachers, Pupils Becoming 3034
Telegraphy. Commercial Wireless Lawrence Perry. 3194
Telegraphy, Marconi's Triumph and Cheaper 3044
Telephone, A Wireless 2917
Telephoning Through the Earth 2916
Thought, Two Noteworthy Changes in Public . . (See Trade) . 2814
Thrift in the Middle West, An Era of .Charles Moreau Harger309i
Tide Yet, At Full (See Labor) . 3037
Tours, The President on His Lindsay Denison. 2754
Town Made Idle by a Trust, A Franklin Matthews. 2972
Towns to Order, Industries and 3032
PAOE.
Trade Apprentices in Public Schools 3366
Trade. .. .(See One lilTcct <if IIi«li Wages in America) .3143
Trade (See The New Cicriiian TanlT Law) . 3044
Trade (See The President ami llic Tariff). 2702
Trade. (See The Plain, Large Facts about Tariff Discussion) .2702
Trade.(See The Probable Programme for Trust Regulation) .2K23
Trade. .(Sec Two Noteworthy Changes in Public Thought) . 2814
Trade-Unions, Americanism for British..
Alfred Mosely. C.M.G.3018
Trade with Eur(ii)e, Facts <>( Our 3255
Trees, The Business of Saving 3144
Trolley Lines in a Railroad System ..Sylvester Baxter. 300}
Trust, A Town Made Idle by a. .. .Franklin Matthews. 2972
Trust Boot on the Other Foot, One 2705
Trust Regulation, The Probable Programme for. .
(See Trade). 282 3
Trust Regulating Legislation 3164
Trust, The Era of the International 2704
Trusts as Their Makers- View Them. . . .James H, Bridge. 2782
Trusts in Agreement, The Builders, the Regulators and the
Enemies of (See Labor) . 2703
Trusts or by Their Help? The People Rich in Spite of the. . . . 3268
Trusts, The Political Sensitiveness about 2703
Tuberculosis, A Crusade Against 3163
I JNIONISTS Saw, What the British M. G. CunnifT.3023
'-' United States Steel Corporation's Profit-Sharing Plan,
The Arthur Goodrich . 30s S
United States, Why Zola Was Never Popular in the 2715
United States, Growing Cuban Tobacco in the. .
Marrion Wilcox. 3100
Utah, The Apostolic Senator from 3159
yANDERLIP'S Consen,-ative Warning, Mr 2819
' Venezuelan Trouble, Great Questions Out of the. .
John Callan O'Laughlin.3223
Venezuela in Convulsion, Colombia and 2828
Venezuela (See Another Stroke of Wise Diplomacy) .3038
Venezuela. (See (Clearing the Atmosphere of Three Conti-
nents) 3040
Venezuela. .(See The American Feeling Toward Germany) .3153
Venezuela. . (See The Future of the South American States) . 3040
Venezuela. .. .(See "To Interfere Without Interfering") . 3156
Von Stemburg — the German Envoy, Baron 315s
■\X7'AGES in America, One Effect of High
•' Wages, Railroad Prosperity and a $43,000,000 In-
crease in
Warfare, Wireless Inventions in Naval
Warning, A Conservative Word of. . Frank A. Vanderlip.
Wars, The Debauching After Costs of Our
Washington, The Carnegie Institute of. Dr. D. C. Oilman.
Waste of Old World Handicrafts, Our
West, An Era of Thrift in the Middle. .
Charles Moreau Harger.
White House, The Restoration of the
Woman's Suffrage, The Standstill of
Word to the World — Through Rumania, A Wholesome.
Workmanship, An Example of Exact and Delicate. .
Philip Prescott Frost .
Workman, The Weil-Paid and Well-Treated
Works, Preparing for Two Great Public
World Is, How Small the
World Is, How Large the
3143
2936
2917
2906
2929
3166
2827
3091
2827
2826
2707
3129
3161
282s
3051
3051
■y EAR, Old Problems and the New 2925
* Year That Has Brought a Wider Outlook, A 2813
7 OLA Was Never Popular in the United States, Why 2715
INDEX TO PORTRAITS.
Addams, Miss Jane 2930
Arnold, F W 2760
Astor, John Jacob 2753
Barnard, George Grey 2843
Cannon, Joseph G 2924
Cleveland, Ex-President Grover 2812
Conried, Mr. Heinrich 3266
Cortelyou, Mr. George Bruce 3260
Crane, Governor W. Murray 2709
Cummings, Governor A B 2698
Day, Mr William R 31 51
Duse, Eleanora 2816
Fritz, Mr. John 2818
Garfield, Mr. James R 3263
Glasgow, Miss Ellen 2792
Greene, General Francis V 3041
Griscom, Clement A 2859
Hanrahan, J.J 2760
Hays, Charles M 2992
James, Dr. Edmund J 2817
Keller, Miss Helen 3152
Krupp, The Late Herr Friedrich Alfred 2927
Leipziger, Dr. Henry M 3329
Marconi, -Signor 3198
iv
INDEX — Continued
PAGE.
Mascagni, Pietro 2700
McCann, Mr. George .3290
McDonald, John B 2835
Mills, Rev. Dr. Edmund M .5265
Moody, W. H 3o.?6
Namikawa, Y 31 20
Nash, Governor George K 3234
Norris, Frank 2815
Norman, Henry 2697
Parker. Chief Justice Alton B 3039
Reed, The Late Thomas Brackett 2928
Reader, Captain 3072
Russell, Dr. James E 3042
PAGB.
Sargent, Mr. John S 3148
Shaughnessy, Sir Thomas G 2989
Smith, F. Hopkinson 2796
Smith, Joseph F 2887
Spencer, Herbert 3109
Stewart, James C 2712
Tower, Charlemagne 2710
Tuttle, President Lucius 3099
Van Home, Sir William C 2993
Von Stemburg, Baron Speck 31 54
Wister, Owen 279s
Wright, Carroll D 2694
Whitney, Henry M 2988
CARROLL D. WRIGHT
UNITtD STATES COMMISSIONER OF LABOR — PRESIDENT OF
THE COLLEGIATE DEPARTMENT OF CLARK VNn'ERSITY
THE
World's Work
NOVEMBER, 1902
Volume V
Number i
a TOor^ on a :i6irtbbai?
WHILE we are young it were wrong
not to celebrate a birthday, espe-
cially if it fall in the Thanks-
giving month. Since The World's Work is
now two years old and its dominant mood is
thankfulness, why should it not frankly speak
its birthday gratitude? For it was luckily
born — born of a strong impulse tempered
with not too much deliberation.
" We must make a magazine," it was said
two years ago — "must for the sheer love
of it"; for the owners and the con-
ductors of The World's Work (and its
owners are its conductors) had had a con-
siderable experience, and had for many years
got growth and pleasure in the practice of the
magazine craft, or art, or profession (what-
ever you choose to call it, for it is all three) ;
and men who have pleasantly spent the first
half of their lives going in one direction are
likely for the second half to travel the same
road.
"But is the time opportune?" we asked
one another. Since almost any time is oppor-
tune for doing anything if it be done well
enough, there was nothing to discuss in that
question. Yet not only must a magazine
serve the public, but the public must consent
to be served by it ; and so much of the public
as could be found by personal interviews
showed no great eagerness for further service
or for further suffering.
" Another magazine ! " exclaimed one friend.
"Another magazine!" exclaimed another.
So a third — so all. The late Mr. Charles
Dudley Warner, when he heard a rumor of it,
wrote in his friendly jocose way: " I hear that
you are going to put out a new magazine.
I had just been thinking how much we need
another — there are so few." In fact, the
paper makers are the only members of the
community who showed a becoming eager-
ness about it.
But the lack of definite encouragement in
no way touched the root of the matter; for
the purpose was not simply to make a maga-
zine, but a magazine that should carry out a
particular idea ; and everything depended on
how well it should be made. There could,
then, be no intelligent discussion of the enter-
prise till the magazine should appear, nor any
definite idea formed of its chance to do a use-
ful service. The work of getting it ready,
therefore, took the place of discussion.
One thing was clearly settled in the begin-
ning. If the idea were a good one it would
prove itself quickly. If it did not prove itself
quickly, it should be abandoned. A modest
sum of money was set aside (enough to pay
for only a few numbers of the magazine).
If, when that were spent, it did not show
vitality, it should be stopped. If it had to be
kept alive by the sheer force of money, it were
not worth keeping alive. There should be
no halting life. Of struggling magazines
there surely were already too many.
2696
A WORD OX A BIRTHDAY
It turned out that there was just at that
time no well-equipped printing house in New
York Cit)' that had room to take it in and to
do the work with the degree of mechanical
excellence that was demanded. A part of
the magazine was, therefore, printed in
Massachusetts, a part of it at one place in
New York, and it was sewed (sewed, mind
you; not wired) at still another place in New
York — with some physical difficulty and with
a great deal of trouble, all which has long
ago been forgotten; for presently a printing
establishment appeared, as if made for this
very purpose. And other good and necessary
things began to appear — and they have
been appearing ever since.
But when the first number was published,
it made very different impressions on different
men. "I cannot see any reason for its exist-
ence," said one of our foremost men of letters,
with friendly frankness. "It has no definite
idea, and it isn't literature." A year later
the same man said: "I now see what you
mean. You really take our pushing American
life seriously, as a thing that has a deep moral
meaning, and not as a mere method of gain.
I now see the tremendous earnestness of the
magazine and its real faith in our democracy.
Other people say that they believe in all our
activity and in what it leads to. You really
do believe in it, and you have converted me."
A change of opinion like that was w'orth wait-
ing a year for surely !
On the other hand, Mr. Andrew Carnegie,
who also is a member of the Authors' Club
in New York, took the trouble to write that
the first number was so good that "you can't
keep it up." Mark Twain, who is a philoso-
pher as well as a man of letters and a man of
experience in life, wished it mighty well by
an apt story, but he did not entangle himself
in prophecy. There is a copy of the first
number on which Mr. Kipling wrote illumi-
nating and helpful comments from beginning
to end — advertising pages and all. The con-
flicting opinions that sensible men form about
the same magazine is one of the most astonish-
ing phenomena of human society.
But with all respect to the opinions of
eminent men, and grateful as their apprecia-
tion is, they are of less value regarding a
magazine whose aim is to interpret the
activity of the people, than the judgment of
great numbers of the active people them-
selves. The soundness of the idea that under-
lies The World's Work began to find proof
at once in expressions like these from thou-
sands of such men: "Its a working maga-
zine." "It believes in the American man
who does things." "It gives new energy to
its readers." In other words, the people took
to reading it ; and their approval of its serious
purpose was the final proof of its service. The
great commercial public, too, quickly showed
its appreciation. "It's practical." they said;
whereby, of course, they usually meant that it
made an appeal to their imagination.
By reason of its earnest sympathy with all
men who work to some purpose, even the little
sum of money that the magazine was bom
with was not needed for its rearing; for it
quickly made its own way. It is amusing now
to look over the carefully drawn estimates of
its cost, for the cost turned out to be very
much greater than the estimates. Luckily
the income, too. was greater than the esti-
mated income, else this page would never
have been printed to tell this story.
The broad idea of the magazine is that
efficient activity by the whole people is the
basis of all sound and beautifiil growths in a
democracy. It is the basis of social health, of
political sanity, of literature — of everything;
and the efficient activity of men now living
is, therefore, the most interesting subject in
the world to make a helpful magazine litera-
ture about. Or, to say it in another way, the
magazine that adds to the well-balanced
energetic impulse of our times is a useful force
in American life.
But a birthday party is not a fit time for
a sermon, especially the birthday party of a
magazine that believes little in sermons as a
means of grace, and much in work. But it is
an occasion to thank one's good friends.
From every part of the world they have come,
in unexpected numbers, and many of them
are the foremost men in almost every kind
of useful work. To say thanks to them is
the purpose of this page stolen from its usual
use. The contributors to The World's
Work have made its conduct a constant
pleasure by their courtesy and by their
earnestness. The managers of the business
of the magazine, too. have met the most
courteous appreciation in the commercial
world, and its advertising patronage has out-
run the largest expectations.
During these two years the great events,
it has so happened, have been industrial
HENRY NORMAN, M. P.
EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH " WORLD'S WORK
GOVERNOR A. B. CUMMINS
[" The Republicans of my State believe the time has come for certain changes in the tariff. . . . We know that there are monopolies which
could not stand for a minute if there were nothing but legitimate protection in the Dingley \3v;."—From an interviewwith Governor Cummint
in The New York Times, September 24th. \
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
2699
events; and the emphasis has naturally been
laid on them. But the emphasis will be
changed as events change, else it would not
be emphasis at all, but only the tom-tom of
class periodical literature ; and class periodical
literature, whether it be of the industrial or
of the political class, or of the literary class,
or of the educational class or what not
well, that is another story.
And suggestions have not been lacking
for The World's Work to become a class
periodical if it had been so minded. Early
in its career one of the political machines
became suggestively cordial. (The amusing
thing is that anybody should think that a
political magazine could have any political
influence.) More than once plans have been
proposed for a great service to literature by
the publication of many critical articles.
(The amusing thing is that anybody should
think that "literary" articles have any effect
on literature.) ]\Iany propositions have been
made for great "industrial features," for
" departments " of all sorts, for more attention
to women's work — for many plans to further
social progress by machine methods — all well
meant, all plausible, all sound except for the
fatal fact that the moment you become a
special pleader you lose your moral influence ;
and the ossification of magazines begins in
their "Departments." A sort of melancholy
gaiety has been given to life also by the offer
at low prices of many other magazines which
need only "a little pushing" to roll over the
line that separates sheer toil from achieve-
ment. "Push a magazine!" once exclaimed
a very successful editor; "I wouldn't have
one that didn't i)ull. Can you push a horse
by the reins .''"
In other countries as well as our own
The World's Work has been most kindly
received. "It is accepted here as the best
interpreter of the American spirit" — so worfl
has come time and again Ijy personal report
or by letter from almost every country in
Europe, from Japan, from South America,
from South Africa; and there have been pro-
posals to publish editions for several foreign
countries. Many such suggestions were re-
ceived from England ; and the owners of the
magazine were glad last summer to see the
best possible plan take shape in an English
World's Work, which begins a vigorous
career this month under the editorship of
Mr. Henry Norman, the distinguished writer
and journalist, with Mr. William Heincmann
as publisher, a magazine independent of this
one, but with the same name and the same
aim, and on a basis of practical cooperation
with The World's Work.
And now, these festivities ended, let us again
turn to work under the pleasing excitement
of the march of events — work that from one
year's end to another is a high pleasure,
because the events of our time are so interest-
ing that we do not envy the past, and we may
even be content that the future must belong
to others since we may help to shape it. So
interesting is our time and our country that
we are most fortunate who happen here and
now to be passing through the world.
Zbc flDarcb of invents
THERE has grown up in the now long-
dominant party at Washington a
stolid solidity of comfortable old-
party managers. They are not what is usually
called a political machine. But they are
formed into an impregnable phalanx of
privilege. Most of them are old, rich, com-
fortable, famous, each in his own area and in
his own way, and they are powerful. They
control the party machinery in many States.
By temperament they stand for all vested
interests. They have so long regarded them-
selves and have been regarded by others as
"the party" that they feel a proprietary
interest in it and in the government. Most
of them are past the age of adaptability to
new conditions or of the ability to see new
conditions. They prefer the comfort of
being let alone and of letting everything else
alone. Reciprocity trade treaties ? Some
of their constituents are opposed to them.
The economic relief of Cuba? That disturbs
a few tariff schedules. The tariff? Are we
not prosperous? The trusts? What can
anybody do with the trusts ? Moreover, the
great corporations and the protected interests
»^
riETRO MASCAGNI
COMPOSER OF "CAVALLER.IA RUSTICANA," ETC.
rill<: EFFECT OF MR. II EN UERSON'S RETIREMENT
2701
contribute to campaign funds. This stolid
solidity of inaction is the natural result of
long prosperity and power as they affect the
Elders of any party or sect.
On the other hand, the President is an
exceedingly active man, an executive who
wishes to bring things to pass, independent,
courageous, restless. An inactive part of the
government is to him a dead part. Our
word once given to Cuba, we must literally
and instantly make it good. If the trusts are
dangerous, they must be regulated. If tariff
schedules become in time unequal, as regarded
from a protectionist standpoint, there must
be some means of changing them. And,
above all, no subject is too sacred for open
discussion.
Here is a clash of temperaments that can
never be reconciled. The Vested Interests
made Mr. Roosevelt Vice-President in order
to take him out of the Governor's chair at
Albany. He was too "indiscreet" and ener-
getic and independent. The Elders and the
Vested Interests would like to keep him out
of the Presidency, and they will if they can.
But they cannot wage an open warfare. He
is the head of the party. He is uncommonly
popular. One Republican State convention
after another has indorsed him for the next
nomination. The Elders cannot be quite
frank with him or they dare not be. Few
persons are quite frank with any President
when they think that he is in error. They
speak half truths. They soften criticism with
flattery. A party of Senators will confer
with the President about his speech-making
and fall just short of expressing all their fears
of disturbance to the party. But they will
subsequently meet and storm and rage
among themselves. The Speaker of the
House will retire from the next Congress
because of a divergence of opinion about the
tariff without conferring with the President.
In the meantime there is evidence that the
President is as popular among the masses as
he is unpopular among the managers. Neither
he nor the Elders will make an open rupture.
The silent struggle will go on — sometimes it
is even an unconscious struggle — till one side
or the other succumb ; and there will never be
public evidence that there ever was a struggle.
The most important contests are often the
least noisy. Upon this silent struggle prob-
iably hangs the fate of the Republican party
The qualities of the President as a success-
ful party leader on a national scale must be
proved. So far he has surely made a most
efficient executive and gained to a remarkable
degree the favor of the people. The chance
that he will win now seems overwhelming.
As for the Republican Elders, if they should
have their way, as soon as the Democrats find
an able and earnest leader who can command
the confidence of the business world, the
Republican party would be in grave danger
of defeat. The turning point is the public
feeling against the trusts and the tariff.
THE EFFECT OF MR. HENDERSON'S RETIREMENT
MR. HENDERSON, of Iowa, the Speaker
of the House of Representatives, has
refused to run for Congress again (although
his election was certain and his reelection to
the Speakership probable), because he is too
stalwart a Protectionist to stand comfortably
on the Iowa Republican platform. His
declination was the frank action of an honor-
able small man ; and the political flurry caused
by it soon passed, for he is not a commanding
personality in national politics.
But it emphasized the restlessness of the
Republican party under the tossing of tariff-
reform opinion, especially of the anti-trust
feeling; and this feeling is stronger in the
Western States than in the Eastern. In
Iowa, in particular, it will not subside. While
a general protective policy seems assured for
a long time to come, and we are not in sight
of anything like free trade, and while even a
tariff solely for revenue is remote, yet the
rates of the present Dingley law are not going
to stand indefinitely. A modification of them
is as inevitable as any legislation can be.
The impulsive action of Mr. Henderson has
done more to emphasize the strong demand
for tariff reform than his whole career has
done to promote high protection.
Politically, the matter stands thus: the
Republican organization, except in a few
Western States, is firmly set against dis-
turbing the tariff as it is — even against dis-
cussing it. The Democratic party is in favor of
revision, but it has in recent years so aroused
commercial distrust in its judgment that it
has not yet regained the confidence that the
business world gave it in the days of Tilden
and of Cleveland ; and it is not likely to get a
chance to revise the tariff till it finds leaders
who can regain this confidence.
2/02
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
In the meantime the Republican party has
an admirable opportunity, under the leader-
ship of the President and of men like Senator
Spooner and Governor Cummins of Iowa,
to provide for reasonable revision and thus to
keep in power.
THE PRESIDENT AND THE TARIFF
WHEX the President came to express
himself on tariff revision (in his
speech at Logansport, Indiana, on his inter-
rupted journey to the West), he held to the
fixed policy of protection, "in which," he
said, "I think the nation as a whole has now
generally acquiesced ' ' ; but he recognized the
necessity of changes in rates of duty from time
to time. He would keep a "stabilit}^ of
economic policy," but he would prevent any
"tendency to fossilization." As "our needs
shift," it may be found "advisable to alter
rates and schedules."
This is not as specific a declaration as
Governor Cummins, of Iowa, made when he
said that "the practically unanimous senti-
ment " of the Republicans of Iowa is that "the
time has come for certain changes in the tariff ;"
and that "there are monopolies which could
not stand for a minute if there was nothing
but legitimate protection in the Dingley law —
we abhor the idea that the Republican party
should stand as a shield for monopolies."
But it shows a radically different temper from
Mr. Henderson's when he declined a renomina-
tion to Congress, saying that he did not believe
that a single item in the Dingley tariff could
be changed without harm.
The President's personal preference of
methods to ascertain what schedules need
change at any time is the method of a com-
mission of experts who should get accxirate
information for Congress. In a word, he
regards the policy of protection as fixed; but
he would readapt rates to changing condi-
tions ; and he suggests that such a plan might
be carried out so as to take the subject out of
party politics. It ought to be done scien-
tifically and not by partisan action.
Well, it never will be done scientifically;
nor will it ever be taken out of party politics.
There is a Utopian touch in this part of the
President's programme. In fact, he took up
the subject apparently only under the pressure
of party division and discussion, and perhaps
with some reluctance — reluctance for two
reasons: it is not primarily an executive but
rather a legislative matter; and economic
discussion is not Mr. Roosevelt's strongest
inclination. A remarkable executive, he has
a mind rather for action and for events than
for analysis and philosophic discussion.
But there are common sense, open-minded-
ness and good party leadership in this atti-
tude. It is the attitude that his party must
take to keep its hold on the restless and
earnest and intelligent part of it that is repre-
sented by Governor Cummins. The President
does not diverge from traditional party policy.
But in general terms he refuses to be a fossil.
As regards tariff reform as a method of
regulating trusts, the President in another
speech expressed his conviction that the
regulation of the trusts could not be accom-
plished by taking away tariff protection from
them. His reasoning is that some of the
trusts are not helped by the tariff; that in
the case of others that do profit by it, if the
duties that help them were removed, their
removal would do hurt also to independent
producers; and that such a policy would do
harm to good trusts as well as to bad ones.
In other words, while many trusts profit
by the tariff, they cannot be regulated by
changes in the tariff.
This course of reasoning, which is true as
a general proposition, but to which there are
exceptions (namely, protected trusts that
enjoy a practical monopoly), lands us at once
into the endless complexity of the whole sub-
ject of the tariff. The moment you use it as
an aid to producers (whether they be trusts
or private persons) you open the way to con-
sideration of its repeal as a punitive measure.
If it be a method of help, it is also a method
of punishment. When you begin to aid, you
aid more persons and more kinds of produc-
tion than you meant to ; and when 3'ou begin
to punish, you will punish more persons than
you mean to. The President's argument,
which is essentialh" sound, would, if turned
around, be essentially sound also against the
imposition of any protective tariff.
The practical complexities of the subject
drive men mad or — into sweeping theories,
and these fates are much the same !
THE PLAIN LARGE FACTS ABOUT TARIFF
DISCUSSION
BUT two or three general truths may be
set down with some certainty. There
are but two permanent states of mind about
THE ENEMIES OF TRUSTS
2703
a protective tariff — one is a belief in it, the
otlier is devout denial of it. A few men (per-
haps many men for a short time) may hold
the position that Governor Cummins, of Iowa,
now seems to hold: he is a Protectionist, but
he favors a reduction of certain duties. But
when the decisive contest comes, men become
Protectionists or Free-Traders (as far as
fiscal conditions will permit).
Among thoughtful men this is now the only
important ditference between the two great
parties. They have fought on this line of
battle for many a year, and for many a year
they will fight on this line again. Talk about
taking the tariff out of politics is futile.
There would be no politics left. As long as
the Republican party keeps in power we
shall have Protection, and whatever tariff
changes may meantime be made (if any are
made) will not satisfy the Democrats nor
silence them. Whenever the Democrats again
win control of the National Government, they
will win it as radical tariff reformers; and
they will never win it in any other way.
There may be much marching to and from
and endless talk between these two camps.
But they are two separate camps, and two
separate camps they will remain. But for
the near future no revision of the tariff need
be expected.
THE POLITICAL SENSITIVENESS ABOUT TRUSTS
THERE is a strong feeling, very much
wider spread than most conservative
men think, in favor of the government owner-
ship of mines — coal mines in particular. It
is a much stronger feeling in some Middle-
Western than in the Eastern States. For this
reason it caused very general surprise that
the Democratic State Convention of New
York adopted a declaration in favor of the
government ow^nership of coal mines
The explanation is simple. The party
leader who was the dominant personality
in that convention has always played the game
of politics as men play chess. If this move
will catch votes, that is a sufficient reason
why it should be made. There is no moral
quality in chess-men. The influence of a
moral quality in a political contest he has
never seen. This plank was thought to be
a good bait for a certain section of the "labor"
vote. Other men know that it is mere
buncombe, and tiiat there is no more proba-
bility of the government ownership of coal
mines than there is of the government owner-
ship of sand pits.
The meaning of the incident, rightly
interpreted, is that the Democratic party in
New York needs leadership, but it also shows
the great popular sensitiveness about trusts.
Just as the Democratic State Convention
thought this a good card to play in the present
public mood, the Republican Convention
gave evidence of the same sensitiveness in
another way. Mr. Sheldon, who had been
"slated" for the nomination for Lieutenant-
Governor, was violently forced off the slate
because he is identified in the public mind
with the promotion of trusts. In other words,
this subject is the very centre of popular
excitement and suspicion.
Not only in our home politics is the trust
the centre of sensitiveness, but in European
discussion also. Just when this is written the
news comes, for instance, that a former Italian
]\Iinister of Finance "suggests a conference
of statesmen and economists of all industrial
European countries for the purpose of arriv-
ing at an understanding concerning trusts
and commercial treaties." He declares that
customs tariffs and commercial treaties are
fragile armor against trusts, which destroy
natural conditions and upset the economic life
of nations. He urges the triple alliance to
convoke a conference to take common
measures to meet the American danger."
Such proposals are so frequent that they now
hardly attract attention. Nor are they likely
to lead to any definite action.
THE BUILDERS, THE REGULATORS AND THE
ENEMIES OF TRUSTS IN AGREEMENT
THE interesting fact is made plain in Mr.
Bridge's article in this magazine, that
the builders of many of the great "trusts"
favor a national corporation law. On the
general proposition of national supervision,
then, Mr. Bryan, Mr. Roosevelt and the
masters of the trusts themselves are of one
mind. But they are hardly of one purpose.
Mr. Bryan's motive (at least, the motive of
most of those for whom he speaks) is punitive;
Mr. Roosevelt's motive is fair play; the trust-
builders' motive is to save trouble. The men
who have guided the formation of great aggre-
gations of capital and of activity know that
these aggregations are the inevitable results
of economic forces. They will survive any
law or any regulation or supervision that is
704
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
likely to be put into effect. But the super-
vision of the Xational Government would
be V ry much less troublesome than the pres-
ent conflicting supervision and interference
of the several State Governments.
The opposition to Federal supervision would
not come from the big corporations so much
as from the little ones if the matter were put
to a test. But the strongest opposition of all
would come from that large public opinion
which looks with disfavor on the extension of
the power of the Xational Government — it
is a directly political rather than an industrial
opposition. The very fact that many of the
great trust-builders would prefer a national
corporation law and the supervision of the
National Government would make the adop-
tion of such a law and of such regulation the
more difficult. A large mass of the people
are suspicious of the trusts. Whatever the
trusts want they are opposed to granting.
Out of such a temper scientific legislation is
not likely to come — at once ; but it may come
on the rebound.
As matters now stand, the most interesting
thing to the student of public opinion is the
curious fact that the makers of trusts, the
regulators of trusts and the enemies of trusts
all favor the same method of procedure. The
trust-builders, it may be observed, have the
advantage over the other classes of greater
experience and, it may be, of better knowledge
of how a national corporation law would
work.
THE ERA OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRUST
IN the meantime, the growth of trusts has
definitely entered a new era. The trans-
Atlantic steamship "combine," formed some
time ago, has an American charter — the
amendment of a charter already existing —
and definite information about it has been
given to the public. It includes six lines —
the White Star, the American, the Red Star,
the Leyland, the Atlantic Transport and
the Dominion. Each compan}^ keeps (in a
way not clearly explained) its own integrity,
so that the control of each British line remains
in English hands; but the general company,
which includes them all, exists under this
New Jersey charter, and eight of the thirteen
directors are Americans and five are English-
men. The capital stock of the company is
Si 20,000,000, which has all been privately
subscribed. Agreements satisfactory to "the
Morgans," as Mr. J. P. Morgan and his
American and English partners are called in
England, have been made with the British
Government; and a favorable traffic arrange-
ment, it is given out, has been made with
the great German trans-Atlantic lines.
The public had already accustomed itself
to the thought of this international "trust,"
and it has indulged in much speculation
about it. The popular excitement has been
very much more intense in England than it
has been here, because of the fear that it
might mean the transfer of trans-Atlantic
shipping from English to American control.
The combine seems to be a step, but only
a step, in that direction.
But another international trust — more
directly international and more significant —
is an American-British tobacco company.
The American Tobacco Company and its
strongest rival in England had for some time
carried on a sharp and costly rivalry in the
English market. They are now combined
into one company, with the agreement that
the American Tobacco Company shall have
the American and Cuban market, that tlie
English branch shall have the English market,
and that the centralized company will work
for the market in all other countries except
those, of course, whose governments have
a tobacco monopoly. In other words, there
is now one world-wide tobacco manufacturing
and selling company. There are, of course,
independent manufacturers, but this great
company controls much the larger part of the
tobacco trade in all countries where there is
no government monopoly.
This last step in its organization is in all
essential respects a repetition of the first step
that was taken in the organization of the
American Tobacco Company. Fifteen years
or more ago, Mr. J. B. Duke, the president
of this new international company, was a
member of a firm of manufacturers in the
Southern "golden tobacco belt." The rival
manufacturers (working at first only for the
American market) found competition costly —
so costly that the remarkable organizing and
executive powers of Mr. Duke found exercise
in combining them — at first slowly, one at a
time. He proved himself to be one of the
great captains of industry of our time, and
under his presidency the American company
invaded all countries that had no government
tobacco monopoly. The combination with
ONE TRUST BOOT ON THE OTHER FOOT
2705
the big English company was an easier task
llian the combination of the first two factories
that went to make the American company;
and it was brought about as naturally and
by precisely the same economic forces.
The international trust of this kind is not
economically different from the trust that
confines its activity to one country — if there
be any that now does thus confine its activity.
Hut great changes of some sort may follow
the world-wide working of such great combi-
nations of capital and industry. Here, at any
rate, is a vast field for speculation. The
most interesting fact is that both these inter-
national "trusts" have been organized by
Americans and are under American control.
They are the products of two strong con-
structive minds working under modern
economic conditions. Their example is sure
to be followed by others. We have definitely
entered the era of the international trust.
THE COMBINATION OF ORGANIZED LABOR AND
CAPITAL AGAINST THE UNORGANIZED
WHATEVER else stands still, the trust
does not; for Prof. John B. Clark, of
Columbia University, one of the most practi-
cal and instructive economists that we have,
has pointed out the inevitable approaching
alliance of consolidated capital with consoli-
dated labor. If a consolidation of manu-
facturers of any given commodity can secure
a monopoly of the market or an approach to
monopoly, and if the labor union of that craft
can secure a monopoly of that kind of labor
or an approach to monopoly, there is nothing
to hinder a combination of the manufacturing
consolidation with the labor union. If the
labor union demands an increase in wages,
it is easier to add the increase to the price of
the commodity than it is to suft'er a strike.
Professor Clark explains the situation thus:
What men in a particular industry can get
depends on what the industry as a whole can get,
and that depends on the prices of its products; and
the disquieting fact in the situation is that where a
trust alone cannot exact from the public more than
a moderate amount, it can get far more when it is
backed by a strong trade union. When it comes to
taxing consumers, the interests of employers and
employed are at one. The men may say, " Give us
more pay and charge it to the pubHc. Put up the
prices of your goods"; and if this can easily be
done, the employers have no strong reason for refvis-
ing to do it.
He cites the case of the glass-blowers.
Skilled men at this trade are scarce and thev
are well organized. The manufacturers can
not get labor enough. Although the union
and the employers have certain differences of
their own to settle, it is to their common
interest to keep at work, and they keep at
work on terms which force the public to pay
roundly for its glass.
If tlie trusts succeed in securing monopoly,
and the labor unions so restrict their member-
ship as also to secure a monopoly of skilled
labor, such a combination of them against the
public will be inevitable. The conflict will
then be less between labor and capital than
between organized capital and labor on one
side and the unorganized independent pro-
ducers and unorganized labor on the other.
"A proletariat such as America has not here-
tofore seen," says Professor Clark, "may
easily be created by the joint effort of trade
unions that keep men out of their own fields
of labor and trusts that keep down the output
of goods within those fields."
When thus set forth in broad economic
terms this combination of the organized
against the unorganized part of the commu-
nity may foreshadow dire results. But how
natural it is every man may see for himself.
If he be a skilled glass-blower, for instance, he
wishes to get as high wages as he can— as
high "as the traffic will bear"; or, if he be a
glass manufacturer, he is willing that his work-
men shall receive higher wages than (we will
suppose) workmen at other such trades
receive — provided his own profits be large
and the public will pay the bill. The wiiole
question is : How can the public defend itself ?
A man who thinks to solve either the prob-
lem of trusts or the problem of labor has to
make a new adjustment of his remedies before
he can fairly formulate them — so swift are
the changes in the problems. In fact, there
are no solutions. We are rushing forward —
or are rushed forward — by great industrial
forces at so swift a rate that we have not 3'et
got our bearings.
ONE TRUST BOOT ON THE OTHER FOOT
TALKING about American trusts invad-
ing Europe — in one matter at least
the boot is on the other foot. To develop
great transportation systems, to organize
industry, to shift the financial centre to our
continent — are tasks of sheer strength and
are easy. But to change the centre of fashion
is an undertaking of such delicacy and diffi-
culty as our industrial leaders have never
2706
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
attacked. Yet the Association of American
Dressmakers in their recent convention had
the courage to propose such a programme.
The Paris and Vienna gowns, we are told,
do not hold their supremacy only by their
beauty, but quite as much because of a long-
established habit of thought. The "" crea-
tions" of the famous Parisian "artists" are
not things of permanent aesthetic value, and
the industry undergoes changes year after
year that are suggested by purely commercial
reasons. But the reputations of these dress-
makers prevent the "artists" of other
nations from contributing an^-thing to the
greater beauty of women's dress. The art,
therefore, becomes stagnant under the mon-
opoly of the industry. Women of fashion do
not receive the same value in artistic results
as they would receive if there were competi-
tion for their patronage. Both beauty and
profit for American dressmakers, then, require
the breaking down of this monopoly.
Granted — yet how are the American "art-
ists" going about changing the situation?
If some of them were to open shops in Paris
and first win great renown there, they might
then convince their countrywoman of the value
and beauty of their products. American
painters have done this ; why not American
dressmakers ? The way to invade is to
invade. The American woman of fashion
must be convinced in Paris itself. Else the
French monopoly seems likely to continue
indefinitely.
But, after all is said and done, it is consoling
to reflect that the number of American
women who wear Parisian gowns is smaller
than — for instance — the number of American
men who drink Scotch whisky. It would be
an absurd narrowness to confine all our
pleasures to home-made indulgence.
COMPULSORY PUBLICITY IN LABOR TROUBLES
OXE great diflficulty — perhaps the greatest
— in the settlement of labor troubles
tliat seriously affect the public is the lack
of authentic facts about therri. We are con-
stantly saying that the public is the third
party involved in such disputes; but the
public seldom knows the merits of any case.
Consequently public opinion seldom acts with
precision or force. Consider the coal strike.
Millions of words have been printed about it.
Many capable students of social and industrial
subjects have studied it and written about it.
Yet out of the mass of conflicting testimony
few men have been able to form a perfectly
clear judgment ; and for months public opinion
exerted no pressure for its settlement. One
clear-cut authoritative statement made by a
Board that had power to subpoena witnesses
and to compel the giving of testimony would
early in the summer have cleared the atmos-
phere and enabled public opinion to assert
itself.
The State of Illinois now has machinery
for just this kind of enforced publicity; and
there is no more interesting experiment in all
our social governmental activity. The State
Board of Arbitration, by a recent amendment
to the arbitration law. is required to make an
investigation and to publish the results of it
wherever a labor trouble affects transporta-
tion or communication or the supply of food
or of fuel, if the parties to the dispute are not
willing to submit the matter to arbitration.
In this way public opinion ought to get a
chance to assert itself. Compulsory publicity
is a most interesting experiment.
THE SUM TOTAL OF THE COAL STRIKE
IT seems safe to say that everybody has
lost by the coal strike and no good has
come to anybody. The miners have not won
their contention; they have taxed friendly
organizations of labor great sums for their
maintenance ; their union is not stronger ; and
]\Ir. ^litchell has not gained prestige by the
long struggle. The operators have lost at
least this — that a large section of public
opinion has no confidence in their tact, nor is
there general confidence that they can prevent
recurrences of such troubles. The State of
Pennsylvania has been put to an enormous
expense, and Governor Stone was not prompt
enough in his efforts to suppress disorder to
stand out as the energetic master of a great
emergency, for the feeling will always be that
he waited for vigorous action until the Presi-
dent had " forced his hand. " The President's
well-meant and, we think, well-managed
efforts to end the strike were not directly suc-
cessful; and he did not have the satisfaction
of bringing the trouble to an end. He went
to the extreme limit that a very proper and
eager concern for the public welfare suggested
and warranted; and he provoked criticism
from many sources that are friendly to him.
The public has lost and lost and suffered
and suffered, brought to the very verge of a
A WHOLESOMK WORD TO THE WORLD
2707
severe state of a fuel famine. Politics has
gained nothing — Governor Stone is regarded
as a hesitant executive, and Mr. Hill, of New
York, committed the Democratic party of his
State to a doctrine that weakens its moral
fibre ; but the popular feeling in favor of gov-
ernment ownership of the coal mines has
undoubtedly been strengthened. And worse
than all, no assurance comes out of the situa-
tion that another such strike may not occur.
The question of the danger to the public wel-
fare, both from labor unions and from organ-
ized capital that borders on a monopoly, have
been acutely raised in the public mind.
Is there a moral weakness in our social
and economic life that forebodes grave dis-
aster? Are we never to find a way to make
certain that the regular supply of fuel for
millions of people may be assured? If we
break down at so fundamental a task as this,
there must be some inherent weakness.
But despair is met at last by the fact that
we have not yet broken down; for public
opinion did increase its pressure enormously
under the action of the President (and this
fact justified the President's action); and
the end became visibly nearer. And it is
fair to remember that the conduct of the
whole business of coal mining illustrates the
very worst relation of labor and capital. We
have no other difficulty of the sort that is so
grave. If, when the trouble is ended, our
practical economists can find a way, during a
season of peace, to quiet this constant menace
to our social order, they will put the nation
under permanent obligations to them.
THE WAY TO A BETTER DIPLOMATIC CORPS
THE reproach of our diplomatic service
has long been that men are selected
for all but the one or two most important
posts chiefly and often only because they have
rendered their party some service in practical
politics or because they are politicians out of
jobs. Then, with a change in party power,
the whole service is upset. The men who
have had experience are recalled, and a new
group, without experience, are sent abroad.
We have not had anything like a permanent
nor consequently an experienced diplomatic
corps ; and in this respect we differ from every
other great government in the world.
Very commendable, therefore, was the
action of the President when he came to
supply the place of Mr. Andrew D. White,
whose resignation as Ambassador to Germany
takes place this month. Instead of apjjointing
a man new to the service to this high place,
he appointed Mr. Charlemagne Tower, now
Ambassador to Russia; and in his place he
appointed Mr. Robert S. McCormick, now
Ambassador to Austria-Hungary; and in his
place Mr. Bellamy Storer, now Minister to
Spain; and in his place Mr. Arthur S. Hardy,
now Minister to Switzerland ; and in his place
Mr. Charles Page Bryan, now Minister to
Brazil; and in his place a new man, Mr. David
E. Thompson, of Nebraska.
This whole group of ambassadors and
ministers thus get a wider range of experi-
ence and become more useful members of the
service; and to every one of these important
European countries a man of experience goes.
Thus gradually we may build up a diplomatic
corps worthily. The principle shown in this
shifting about and in these promotions is
sound and right. Mr. Hardy, for instance,
having already been Minister to Persia, to
Greece, and to Switzerland, now goes to Spain
— a continuity of service that enables a man
to bring a varied and ripe experience to his
task.
A WHOLESOME WORD TO THE WORLD-
THROUGH RUMANIA
THE Kingdom of Rumania is a govern-
ment that was created in 1876 by the
Treaty of Berlin to which the chief European
Powers (but, of course, not the United States)
were signatory. Rumania is, therefore, the
creature of the principal European Powers
and they are responsible for it.
The persecution of the Jews in Rumania is
more cruel and persistent, perhaps, than in
any other country. The testimony is uni-
versal that they are deprived of civil rights,
debarred from the professions, from the
schools, from land-holding, and from most
gainful occupations — even from peddling;
and they have been practically expelled from
the country. They come to our shores as
paupers — economically and in ever}' other
way unfit material for making American
citizens.
These are the facts that caused Secretary
Hay to address a note of courteous but strong
protest to every European Government that
signed the Treaty of Berlin, and is therefore
responsible for Rumania's conduct. Mr.
Hay's protest stands on two strong legs — the
2708
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
necessity of self-defense by the United States
against such forced enaigration to our shores
(which is the main matter), and a declaration
against the inhumanity of such persecution
and expulsion. It was shrewd and well-taken
and perfectly proper to single out Rumania
for such a protest instead of Russia or Austria-
Hungary, and very much better diplomacy,
because Russia and Austria-Hungary and all
the other European Governments are thus put
on the defensive, not only for the conduct of
the country that is in a sense their ward, but
for their own similar conduct as well.
Mr. Hay's note has precedents and it has
warrant in international dealing. But it
created surprise at every Continental capital,
consternation at most of them, and open
official approval only in London; for the
English Government quickly addressed a note
to the other signatory Powers to the Berlin
Treaty in the general tone of Mr. Hay's note.
So far (when this is written) the other Powers
have done nothing, although it has been
reported that Rumania has ceased to issue
passports to Jews, thus in one way complying
with the American protest by trying to stop
emigration, but in another way making the
lot of the Jews in Rumania worse than ever.
The definite effect of the note is yet to be seen.
But its general influence has been as whole-
some as the effect of any recent international
event. The Continental press has cried out
loudly against American interference in the
internal affairs of a European Government.
The editors and cartoonists have made quite a
hubbub. But there has sunk still deeper
into the consciousness of Europe the knowl-
edge that the United States, at least under the
Foreign Secretaryship of Mr. Hay, is a just
and active as well as powerful Government;
it knows the game of diplomacy and it puts its
knowledge to the highest uses. In a perfectly
courteous way all Europe has been informed
of our unwillingness to receive undesirable
immigrants — to be a dumping ground for a
population that nobody wants — and the
public attention of the world has been called
to the inhuman treatment of the Jews. It
would be hard to do more by one polite
diplomatic note or to do better things, what-
ever the definite result may be.
Rumania has a population of about
6,000,000, of whom about 400,000 are Jews.
The State of New York has about the same
number of Jews in a population of somewhat
more than 7,000,000. All the governments
of Europe are stirred up about the " problem"
of no more Jews than a single State of our
Union peacefully contains !
The Rumanian side of the contention (for
there are two sides even to questions of perse-
cution) is that the Jew, if left with unrestricted
action, so gets the better of the peasant in all
economic ways as to reduce him to poverty
and to keep him there. Rumanians main-
tain that it is an economic conflict and not pri-
marily a religious or a race conflict.
THE RUSSIAN OBLITERATION OF FINLAND
IT is a tragic thing in this age of the world
for a people who have enjoyed a more
or less free government to be hopelessly put
back under tyranny; but this is what has
happened to Finland. The worst of it is,
there seems to be no help for it.
The Finns have had an approximately free
government. The Czar was the Grand Duke
of Finland, and he made treaties and decided
war and peace and had the appointment of
officials, who were to be natives. But in the
management of internal affairs it was a prac-
tically independent State. The Czar was
pledged to maintain this degree of indepen-
dence and to preserve the language, the
religion and the laws. But now the country
has been made simply a Russian province.
The internal affairs and the administration of
justice is put into the hands of the Governor ;
and the autocratic method of Russian pro-
vincial administration prevails. The Gov-
ernor is reported to be a peculiarly tj^rannical
man of low origin and brutal temper.
Remonstrance and petition have had no
effect. Even the language of the people is to
be set aside for Russian as far as it is possible
forcibly to make such a change. Great
numbers of the 3'oung men are emigrating,
and industrial and agricultural disaster is
threatened. The Czar breaks the solemn
pledges made by the throne — at any rate,
they are broken ; for there is always doubt to
what extent the Czar himself knows the exact
character of the official acts done by the
corrupt bureaucracy that is the curse of
the Russian Government.
Events like this have been common in other
times; but the passing of a patriotic and
intelligent European people under semi-
Asiatic tyranny grates on civilizaticm, all the
more because there is no help for it.
GOVERNOR W. MURRAY CRANE OF MASSACHUSETTS
WHOSE QUALirraS AS AN EFFICIENT PUBLIC SERVANT HAVE MADE HIM A TRUSTED ADVISER OF THE PRESIDENT
CHARLEMAGNE TOWER
FORMERLY UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA ; NOW AMBASSADOR TO GERMANY
MOW WELL DO THE TIMUJC SCHOOLS DO TIIICIR WORK? 2711
RAISING THE LEVEL OF HEALTH IN CITIES
ON IC pliysical ideal that civilization works
toward is the elimination of contagious
and infectious diseases. Theoretically, such
an ideal is attainable. But during the long
period that will be required properly to
educate the mass of mankind, we must be
content with what progress we can make. In
New York City, where overcrowding, and the
presence of many ignorant immigrants from
many lands, and the almost complete rebuild-
ing of the city, overground and underground,
make against a clean bill of health, there are
many encouraging facts; for the municipal
care of the public health under this admin-
istration is greater and wider than ever before.
For instance, during the first half of this year
more than 51,000 inspections of ]jlumbing
were made; 6,500,000 pounds of bad food
were destroyed; 7,500 inspections of mercan-
tile establishments were made; and 700,000
free vaccinations were given. These preven-
tive activities raise the level of health. Eight
years ago nearly 3,000 children died of croup
and diphtheria; for the first half of this year
less than 600; and the Health Depart-
ment examined 16,000 "cultures" — that is,
matter from the throats of sick children to aid
the physicians in their diagnoses. It is even
estimated that there has been such a reduction
in the deaths from consumption in New York
during the last fifteen years as to amount to a
saving of 3,000 lives a year.
The head of the Department of Health,
Doctor Lederle, has begun a definite method
of popular education in the prevention of
disease. The careful examination of school
children and the exclusion of thousands of
them because of contagious ailments has led
to the giving of instruction to parents about
the treatment of simple diseases; and it is
already clear that courses of free lectures on
the prevention of disease will be given in
connection with the public schools. One of
the best agencies for the spread of such
information is the school, especially in the
densely settled parts of big cities.
In larger ways, too, prevention is taking the
attention that used to be given to cure. The
reclaiming of considerable areas about New
York from mosquitoes — for this has now been
proved practicable — has lessened if not
eliminated malaria, and it has diminished
other diseases as well.
Such work in and about New York is
tyi)ical of what is done in other cities and
other communities — preventive activity tak-
ing one special ioriu in one i)lace and another
in another. But the cheerful fact is that
Boards of Health and similar agencies are
almost everywhere doing more than they
ever did before. The complete success in
abolishing spitting in street cars in most of
our cities shows how easy a sanitary reform
can be made when the municipal authorities
are in earnest about it. That single simj)le
act of decency and precaution has taught the
country a lesson of far-reaching importance.
HOW WELL DO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS DO
THEIR WORK?
HOW good is the training given in the
l>ul)lic schools and what effect does
it have on character ? To get a volume of
evidence bearing directly on this subject,
the New York State Teachers' Association
sent a well-prepared set of questions to
business and professional men in New York
City about public school boys that they
employ. Four hundred and nine answers
were received, and they contained not a little
interesting information.
Most of those who answered these inquiries
say that public school boys now spell better
than the same class of boys used to spell,
and that their spelling is satisfactory for most
practical uses. The school men accept this
as proof of the wisdom of the present method
of teaching children to spell the common
words of the language rather than the "hard"
words, which they seldom use; and they
think that it shows that better results are got
by the omission of drills in spelling isolated
words. Most of those who answered the
questions say, too, that the boys write legibly,
and that they are quite as accurate in arith-
metic as boys used to be — perhaps more
accurate ; but there was some criticism about
their speed. According to this testimony,
then, the three R's seem to be satisfactorily
taught in the New York public schools —
better, in fact, than they once were.
There is a significant preponderance of
opinion in favor of teaching all boys the
elements of bookkeeping. Nearly all the
ariswers lay great stress on the advantage of
learning at an early age how to keep accounts
neatly and accurately; and a majority think
that boys should be taught in school some-
thing about actual business transactions.
JAMES C. STEWART
THE AMERICAN ENGINEER WHO HAS PI T AMERICAN ENERGY INTO ENGLISH WORKMEN
li
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
27«3
I
I
There is even a strong preponderance of
opinion that the public school course should
aim directly at preparing pupils to earn a
livelihood. But it is not meant that they
should become merely commercial schools
or "clerk factories" — only that the studies
should be utilitarian as well as "cultural."
The judgment evidently is that the two kinds
of studies need not be wholly divorced, and
that by right teaching both results can be
gained from the same studies.
There is a decided opinion that some
commercial training should be given as a
preparation for the professions; and that boys
who propose to enter commercial careers
should begin commercial studies at fourteen
years of age. As regards foreign languages,
emphasis is laid on the desirability, first of
knowing German, then Spanish; French
comes third. The longer a boy has school
training the better his chance of employ-
ment, too. There is a strong preference for
high school graduates.
Concerning morals and manners — a boy's
school record counts for much in his getting
employment ; and most men will not have
boys who smoke cigarettes. The public
school boys are satisfactory as regards truth-
fulness, cleanliness and ambition to succeed,
and less satisfactory in punctuality, relia-
bility, manners, and ability to follow instruc-
tions. They are deficient in economy of time
and in economy of material. The recom-
mendations that those who answered these
questions made to the Teachers' Association
may be summarized as a preference for
thoroughness in a few studies rather than a
smattering of many.
As things go in this imperfect world, these
answers show that the public schools of New
York do fairly well with the section of their
pupils that this inquiry touched; and it was a
piece of good sense to make such an inquiry.
It settled no important questions, but it
showed the practical world's appreciation of
the schools and the school men's apprecia-
tion of the point of view of the practical
world.
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
THERE is no other subject so important
to us — perhaps no other so important
to the whole world — as the moral tendency of
American life. Is it losing its sterling quali-
ties under the influence of great prosperity?
Is the struggle for physical comfort and for
wealth undermining it and substituting lower
ideals for the ideals of the earlier and simpler
days of the Republic ?
The compilation of despairing opinions that
appears in this magazine is worthy of notice,
because of the high character and the thought-
ful nature of most of the men who expressed
them. They speak with seriousness and from
high motives and with great sadness. But do
they speak well-balanced judgments ?
What is the right method to measure so
large and so complex a thing as the character
of a whole people ? A trustworthy conclusion
can be reached only by the careful study of an
almost endless series of social phenomena.
Such a study would embrace the whole wide
range of facts that show the physical, the
intellectual and the moral well-being of the
population, and no man could make an
exhaustive study of it. But in the census
reports (to go no further) are so many evi-
dences of an orderly social development and
right-mindedness that any candid student
who masters their meaning is almost sure to
conclude that American character is rising,
and not falling. Every such direct study
lifts higher the hope of the man who makes
it. The men who are in American life, and
not mere spectators of it, believe that an
accurate measure of the deeds done today in
the homes and in the institutions, in the
markets and in the workshops, in the fields
and on the roads, by the active millions of
men between our two oceans would show
higher character and sturdier qualities than
were ever before displayed by so large a part
of mankind living in contiguous territory.
The mistake that the pessimists make is in
their failure to take into account the moral
value of successful every-day labor. There
is no other discipline so good, no other force
that so surely makes men strong. Men at a
distance from productive work look upon it
too much as a mere means of getting a liveli-
hood. But men whose work is good, and
therefore successful, grow by it; and when
success is attained they have had the disci-
pline of the struggle. This is essentially true
of the mass of Americans today ; for they take
pride in what they do. It is fair to say that
most of these despairing teachers have not, in
recent years at least, gone among the masses
in many States, and they are likely to get
their impressions from books and from the
2714
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
criminal and inaccurate columns of news-
papers.
It is unfortunate, too, that most of them are
teachers of youth, as instructors, or preachers,
or writers. If they regard the rush and noise
of modern industry as unhallowed things, and
labor as a hard necessity, put upon men to
earn their bread, the youth that catches their
spirit has a condescending attitude toward
every day life. He sees no moral value in
achieving a practical success. For that kind
of man the world has already gone wrong ; for
it is he that lacks character. He lacks stom-
ach for the only thing that can nourish him.
The literature most needed for youth-
ful reading today is. not general moral dis-
sertations — least of all sermons on the
depravity of the Republic and on the dangers
of wealth — but a social literature that shall
accurately show the spirit of the Americans
at work and the value of successful labor in
the building of character. The great book
of democracy is not in any man's library;
but its generous pages open over the wide
areas of our commonwealths, and it must
be studied by constructive effort, and with
that personal sympathy born of work with
one's fellows which is the very essence of
democracy.
IMMORAL LITERATURE AND AMERICAN SOCIETY
THE most skilful playwright now at work
in English keeps steady to his use of
immoral situations as material for his plays.
Mr. Pinero is perhaps not guilty of using such
material, as it is used in many French plays,
for the love of it, but rather as it is used by
Ibsen and the great contemporaneous German
dramatists, because it is the natural matter of
tragedy. The only eternally tragic things are
the sacrifice of character and the sacrifice of
life. The loss of most other things — of
fortune, for instance, or of any mere con-
ventional advantage — is to a modern, demo-
cratic audience a subject of little concern.
The one central tragedy of life that has always
appealed most strongly to pity, and appeals
now even more strongly than ever, is the
wreck of womanhood. There seems yet no
way, therefore, if a way will ever come, for
the dramatist and the novelist who would use
the strongest material of modern life for his
work always to avoid this subject, even if he
would.
But such plays as Mr. Pinero's "The Second
Mrs. Tanqueray," and his newest play, "Iris,"
which turn on the fall of women, whatever
their dramatic excellence, do not commend
themselves to the large and wholesome
American public. The skill of dramatists
and of actors (or of both) interests the
class that appreciates the art of it; and the
subject itself doubtless attracts a class that
simply takes pleasure in the forbidden; but
the mass of American society belongs to
neither of these classes. The puritanical
attitude toward evil is passed. The indul-
gent attitude also is out of fashion. But it is
probable that a larger proportion of Ameri-
cans of this generation lead clean lives than
of the people of any other country. Now,
since immorality feeds on suggestion, there is
a very general disapproval of books and of
plays that deal openly with immoral subjects.
The fiction that finds the greatest favor is
morally clean. The popular magazines are
clean. The American home defends itself
resolutely against immoral suggestion.
It has therefore been said that American
fiction and (to an extent, also) the stage are
in danger of becoming pale and tame — with
some truth — except that part of them which
on the rebound becomes frankly gross. It is
the old question whether good people are
interesting — rather whether great masses
of good people can permanently interest one
another; or whether the irregular and the
unrestrained must at times be called in.
But, since conduct is so much more impor-
tant than literature or the drama, the ques-
tion is really an academic one — a thing of
little value. Moreover, to raise such a ques-
tion with reference to the future is to judge
a new order of society by the standard of an
old one. If our democracy, in its full develop-
ment, does at last lift the wide stretches of life
to a very much higher moral level, not by
suppression but by normal social develop-
ment, literature and the drama and all the
other arts will take care of themselves. In
such a society they may find new material.
Since social conditions in the United States
are fast becoming essentially difi'crent from
the social conditions that any great mass of
mankind ever before lived under, it is fair to
suppose that its literature and its art will
show the change. You must look for your
literature to come out of your social develop-
ment, not your social development to come
out of your literature. The wholesome
GUESSING AT THE POTULARITY OF NOVELS
2715
American public will have clean things even
at the risk of tamcncss, but it does not
grant that tameness is a necessary result of
cleanness.
WHY ZOLA WAS NEVER POPULAR IN THE
UNITED STATES
THE death of Zola suggests the same
subject, from a little different point
of view, that is suggested by Mr. Pinero's
plays. His great novels (for the best of them
are great pictures of life) have never found a
very wide reading in the United States because
the subjects are forbidding to a population
that takes its chief pride in a wholesome
family life. Acceptable realism among the
mass of American readers is not the work of
Zola, but the work of Mr. Howells. The
"Silas Laphams" and their like are the
American counterparts to the unspeakable
family in "L'Assommoir " and " Nana. " While
Mr. Howells is no longer among the most popu-
lar novelists that we have, and while his philos-
ophy of fiction has not found general accept-
ance (for we read Scott — tiresome passages
and all — in spite of him), it remains true that
he more accurately represents the American
moral conception of fiction than any other
writer who has produced a large volume of
excellent work. The long shelfful of his books
are all about good people — tame and pale,
some think, as they are exemplary. But these
books are all written with grace and literary
good breeding and an unfailing serenity of
style, and not a line in any one w^ould bring a
blush to any cheek in any company. They
are a large part of the literature of their time.
While Zola can never be Americanized,
Mr. Howells's work will stand in fiction for a
long time, as Longfellow has stood in verse,
as the best response to the moral demands
for literature by a democracy that, having
thrown off its Puritanical mood, is yet unwill-
ing to give free scope to suggestion. It prefers
morality to tragedy, even at the risk of getting
the commonplace. And it may get the com-
monplace from all except the greatest hands.
But the realism — the literalism — of both
Zola and Mr. Howells perhaps belongs to a
literary mood that has passed.
GUESSING AT THE POPULARITY OF NOVELS
T
HE novel has become two different
things and serves two different uses.
It may be a worthy and important kind of
literature, or it may be a mere means of idle
amusement. The novel that has literary
value is, of course, also a means of enjoyment
and of very keen enjoyment. But a novel
that is a mere diversion and nothing more
may achieve a great popular success, as a
"topical" song does at a cheap theatre; and
it has no significance whatever except that it
shares for a few months the time that might
otherwise be given to reading newspapers or
to playing ping-pong or spent in idleness.
Yet the extraordinary success of a few such
novels has a tendency to disturb the literary
equanimity of serious writers and of pub-
lishers. The disturbance is made the worse
when it happens once in a long while that a
novel of real value also achieves an enormous
popularity, as it is undeniable that an occa-
sional really worthy novel does.
But a few great facts are worth holding to.
The popularity of a novel means neither that
it has or that it lacks serious merit; and it is
a short-sighted writer or publisher who draws
either conclusion. Good fiction will have
recognition — of this there is no doubt; and
this is the only fact that it is worth while or
profitable to remember. But a novel of no
serious merit may or may not become popular.
There is no certainty about it. Only one in
a thousand has the quality that carries it into
favor, and the other nine hundred and ninety-
nine represent wasted labor and false hopes
of author and publisher alike.
The writer who sets out deliberately to pro-
duce a book that shall achieve an unusual
popularity is not as likely to succeed as the
writer who goes forward and honestly does the
work that is in him. Nor is the publisher as
likely to succeed who works with a set purpose
to force a particular novel on the public. He
will fail twice or thrice or a dozen times for
every time that he succeeds. Both writer and
publisher, too, will be likely to forget real liter-
ary values, and they will soon find themselves
on the level of the composers and publishers
of popular songs whose value is of the
slightest and whose vogue is but ephemeral.
But the main point suggested by Zola's
death and the discussion of fiction that it
provoked is that whatever be the silliness or
the wisdom of American novel writers and of
American publishers, and however great be the
appetite of the public for fiction, the stories
that are most popular in our democracy are
morallv wholesome
THE REAL RULERS OF RUSSIA
AN EXPLANATION OF THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CZAR'S
POWER, APROPOS OF THE ABRIDGMENT OF FINLAND'S
FREEDOM — AN ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN CHARACTER
BY
WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND
AUTHOR OF " GERMANY OF TODAY "
WE, Alexander III., Czar of all the
Russias," is the formula with
which the mighty Emperor signs
his ukases to his fivescore millions of more or
less obedient subjects. But the phrase carries
an exaggerated implication : that the power
of the nominal ruler of Russia, although not
narrowed by any constitutional barriers, is
in reality not nearly so absolute as the phrase
sounds. The limitations of his power are
variously stated to be due to nepotism, cor-
ruption, nihilism. This, however, is so far
a mistake as to confuse causes and effects.
The whole world applauded when Alex-
ander n. decreed the abolition of serfdom;
and those not acquainted with Russian life
were amazed when the hoped for results did
not follow. When Alexander IIL declared
solemnly after his accession to the throne that
he would reign strictly according to law, and
would deal out his rewards and punishments
in the same manner, even thoughtful Russians
hoped for better government. But Russia
remained as she had been. None of the time-
honored abuses were reformed nor even appre-
ciably lessened.
The reasons are simple. The Czar is not
the sole ruler of his people. Three other
autocrats divide with him the power, and his
share of it is not the largest. Despite all his
efforts to assert his own as the sole authority,
he is handicapped, even almost paralyzed, by
the greater power of his co-regents. Who are
these fellow-despots? It may sound like a
paradox to say that they are three words in
the Russian language — Xitshewo, Wiiion'at,
Natshai.
The first of these tyrants — N'itsheitv —
means simply Nothing: never mind. He is the
real autocrat in the great empire. The word
means many things, but the meaning that
has direful importance for the whole nation
corresponds to our "What are you going to
do about it?" If 3'ou are a foreigner and a
visitor in Russia, you will be amused by the
frequency with which this word recurs in a
conversation carried on between Russians,
no matter of what rank or status in life.
According to the intonation, the gestures or
the facial expression of the person using it,
it acquires constantly a different meaning.
Two merchants meet in the street.
A. — "How is your health and that of your
family, Xicolai Ivanovitch?"
B. (cordially)— "A'?75/z<?wo" ("Quite well").
A. — "What do you think of the chances of
a war?"
B. (shrugging his shoulders) — " A'itsheu'o"
("Don't know").
A. — "Do you think our new Governor will
benefit trade in this section?"
B. (shakes his head)— " Nitshewo" {"I'm
doubtful about it").
A. — " I understand you met wath severe
losses on 'change vesterday."
B. (sadly)— "A^i/5/r^'o"("Can't behelped").
A. — "Well, I'll be able to meet my engage-
ments on settling day."
B. {oh\igmgh-)—''Nitsheii-o" ("I'm quite
sure of that").
And thus the conversation runs on. There is
no harm in so useful a word, you'll say. But
there is. This careless dismissal of every
disquieting thought with a nitsheivo is trans-
ferred to the most serious duties and enter-
prises. When, during the last war with the
Turks, the contractors furnished the poorest
fare and the most miserable clothes for the
troops ; when, during the passage of the
Balkan Mountains, whole companies fell right
and left into the bottomless abysses, the
superior officers had for all these woes and
wrongs but one answer — an indifferent shrug
and a " nitshewo!" — "Can't help it — go on!"
i
THE REAL RULERS OF RUSSIA
2717
When wc turn to nihilism, we find again
the reflection of our own acquaintance —
nitshcwo. Not even the Kismet of the Turk,
which bids men resign themselves stoically
to the inevitable, is to be compared witli
nitsheivo. The essence of it is disgust with
everything in existence, negation of good and
evil alike. For the believer in this word there
is neither murder nor devotion, love nor
hatred. Russian youth is not seduced into
extreme but honest convictions by its ardent
love of liberty — as is the case in other coun-
tries— but is poisoned and stunned by the bale-
ful influence of nitshcwo, which honeycombs
the body politic and unsettles society. And
it is also nitsheivo which makes the Russian
judge send the convicted nihilists in droves
to the wastes of Siberia or to the gallows.
Why not ? There will be enough subjects left
for the Czar. Nitshcwo.
The other two despots, less tyrannical in
appearance, aid greatly to make the power
of nitshcwo so absolute. The first of these,
loinowat, means literally, "I am guilty; I own
up to it. " It is another cancer in the national
character of Russia. At first it might seem
as if the frequent use of this word were a
proof of the truthfulness of the Russian, but
it is not so. The Russian who has been guilty
of a crime and says, when confronted with the
proofs, ''Winowat" ("I am guilty") — means
by that merely: " What is the use of my deny-
ing it ? If I did so I should be bothered all
the more; I should have to stand an elaborate
trial and that's a great deal too much trouble.
Nitshcwo, let's simply eay: Winowat. That
ends the whole business, and I have no further
bother." There is no such thing as remorse
or grief in this attitude winowat — that settles
it ; that is all the satisfaction you need expect.
No matter if he has killed your son, dishonored
your family or broken your choicest vase,
winowat is the only balm applied; the only
medicine taken for a troubled conscience.
The injury this word does is not, however,
to be compared in extent to that wrought by
the third one of these despots — Natshai. No
matter where in the boundless land of the
Czar you may be, you will meet with the same
keen appreciation of the beauties of natshai.
Originally the word was a compound and
meant "for tea," like the French poiirboire
(for drink). But its first sense has been
broadened and extended, until its significance
is multiform. Ordinarilv, it is true, natshai
is used, as "for vodka" (corn brandy) instead
of as "for tea." Hut as the word creeps into
higher and still higher strata of the social
structure, it means more and more. It is, in
fact, the very essence and personification of
the national (not merely official) corrui)tion.
There is no better way of illustrating the all-
pervading influence of natshai than to describe
briefly a typical day in the life of an average
Russian.
Gawril Nicolaievitch, a well-to-do merchant
from Kiev, has come up on a business trip to
St. Petersburg. With some degree of irrita-
tion he struts beside the burly porter whom he
has just engaged to carry his small leather
trunk and valise to the fiacre stand outside the
railroad depot. The man allows every other
passenger and every other porter to pass him
by. Perhaps it is his excessive modesty;
perhaps it is a lack of "tea." Gawril
Nicolaievitch becomes convinced that he will
hardly catch even the last one of the sleighs,
which is always drawn by a lame or otherwise
incapacitated horse, and thus spend an hour
on the trip to the hotel. Suddenly he dives
into his pocket, brings forth a coin and puts
it into the hand of the porter and — watch the
result ! The meek porter is instantly trans-
formed into a daring hero. Brandishing his
trunk high above his head, he chases the
crowd before him. Gawril follows and has
obtained a moment later a seat in a good
sleigh.
For taking the merchant to the hotel the
driver demands twice the usual fare, and
swears by all the calendar saints and by the
grave of his mother that this is the lowest
figure. Gawril ofifers less, and a compromise
is finally made. The driver in his long blue
coat has made a poor bargain, and his style of
driving shows it. Although the usual speed
of vehicles in St. Petersburg is like a flash,
this man's horse crawls along at a snail's pace.
The weather is intensely cold, and Gawril
soon becomes chilled to the bone. " Quicker,
fellow, and I'll give you natshai!" he says.
"Good, little father!" replies the driver; he
whistles to his horse, and the sleigh shoots
forward.
Arrived at the hotel, he thaws out in his
room and then starts forth on business. Before
he leaves he says to the doorkeeper: "Don't
let me wait to-night on my return. It may be
late, but you will get a natshai." The door-
keeper bows low^ and remarks: "It is very
27i8
THE REAL RULERS OF RUSSIA
cold, little father. Do you wish to find a good
cup of tea when you come home?" Gawril
nods assent, and then he goes to find his
customers, with whom he has business to
transact. The first one is not in, and his
clerk cannot tell where he is. All at once a
rouble note lies before the clerk on the desk,
and just as suddenly he remembers where his
employer is. He himself is unable to leave,
but the errand boy might be sent for the
merchant. This is done, and five copeck do
for the boy.
Soon the merchant appears and welcomes
his visitor. After a few introductory phrases,
they go to the Trakfir (the "tea-house"), and
there they may be seen seated behind a steam-
ing samovar, flanked by several bottles of
vodka. But as yet business has not been
mentioned at all. When a Russian intends
to buy a dog he begins the proceedings by
assuring the seller that he has never in his life
harbored the intention of buying a cat. Thus
it is in this case, too. But at last the haggling
begins. Gawril asks 20,000 roubles for his
goods; the other bids 12,000. After awhile
the figures contended for approach each other
more nearly. Finally a point is reached
where neither will yield another rouble to the
other. The tea and the vodka have both been
put where they " do the most good, " and now
the two merchants gaze at each other silently.
At last Gawril pulls himself together and says :
"After all, Fll give you five rouble, natshai,
and that we will drink up together. But
that's the best I can do. Is it a bargain?"
The St. Petersburg man, overpowered by so
much good nature — and vodka — mutely
squeezes Gawril' s hand in token of surrender,
and thereupon the latter sings out, "Another
couple of bottles and a fresh samovar!" Thus
the business is concluded.
It has grown late when Gawril parts with
the merchant. Shall he now go home?
Never ! But where can he go ? He looks
about for a cab. In vain; not one is in sight.
But hold on; there he sees a policeman strut-
ting up and down majestically. But how
can he get to him? The vodka begins to
work its spell, and his legs are none too sure.
Gawril knows a way. With stentorian voice
he calls out: "Officer!" That functionary
at once obeys the call, but he does it with a
mien that bodes no good to the ruthless dis-
turber of the public peace. As he approaches
Gawril and, by the dim glimmer of the lantern.
sees the costly quality of his fur coat, a
benignant smile takes the place of his scowl.
"Why do you let me wait so long?" growls
the Kiev merchant. "Tell me where I can
find a theatre — where I can laugh and have
some furi. I want to enjoy myself."
"Ah, well, that's a long distance off," says
the officer doubtfully.
"Nonsense," Gawril exclaims; "take me
to a cabman and tell him the address of the
theatre!"
The officer feels a rouble note glide into his
hand, and immediately, with the tender
solicitude of a mother, he escorts the half-
tipsy stranger to the nearest fiacre stand and
helps him into the sleigh. Then he calls out
a few words in a gruff voice to the driver
salutes the merchant very politely, and a
moment later Gawril is on his way to the
temple of amusement. The ride is a brief
one, and although on his entering the theatre
he is told with a profound bow that all the
places are taken and there is not even
standing room left, we soon see Gawril
seated on a comfortable chair behind the
scenes. Katshai has once more done its work.
At five o'clock in the morning Gawril returns
home, sips tea with the pleasure which all
Russians seem to feel in drinking it, fortified
with another stiff admixture of vodka, and
then with the assistance of the doorkeeper,
who has been faithfully keeping watch for the
traveler, he falls asleep, dimly conscious of
the conviction, before closing his eyes, that
nowhere else the world over is life half as
pleasant as in " Holy Russia. "
The following anecdote, which passes cur-
rent in Russia, is a neat bit of persiflage on the
natshai nuisance : After the Lord had created
the world and the nations to people it, he
asked of each of them if they still had an
unfulfilled wish. They were all satisfied
except the Russian, who, taking off his cap
with a polite bow, said: "Oh, good Lord,
you see you have made such a nice, handsome,
good-natured fellow of me, that I think you
might start me off with a little natshai, if you
please !"
And this, the third autocrat in the land of
the Czar, is perhaps the mightiest of them
all. Without natshai you will be unable to
accomplish anything in Russia, all the orders
and the decrees of the nominal Czar at
St. Petersburg to the contrary notwith-
standing.
THE REBUILDING OF LONDON
HOW THE METROPOLIS OF THE WORLD IS BECOMING MODERN— THE DIFFICULTIES OF
REMODELING THE CENTURIES-OLD CITY— THE PART AMERICANS ARE PLAYING IN THE
CHANGES— RAPID TRANSIT AND "SKY-SCRAPERS" IN THE MIDST OF LONDON'S TRADITIONS
BY
CHALMERS ROBERTS
I
WHILE London is not torn up from
end to end for a "quick change,"
as New York is today, the city is
gradually becoming modernized. It is merely
a new comparison of American and English
methods — the former rapid and radical, the
latter slow and conservative. When Queen
Victoria came to the throne the London of
the Stuart kings was almost as they left it.
Her death marks another period in the life of
the city, for with all its progress during the
last sixty years London remains perhaps the
most backward of civilized capitals. It is not
difficult to name many reasons for this tardy
rejuvenation. The disinclination to take
advantage of latest municipal inventions is
but a reflection of the mind of the man who
lives there. The enormous growth of London
has been out of all proportion to its means
or its methods of government. And any-
thing like a general scheme for its rebuilding
could not be thought of until some sort of
consolidated municipal government was ar-
ranged— an accomplishment only of the
most recent years.
It is not fair to make disadvantageous
comparisons with modern cities which have
been created by municipal experts. In their
perfection they are apt to forget how like to a
day their lives are as compared to the lives
of her they mock. The population of ten
millions must content itself with the same
streets which served the population of one
million. No scheme of the many proposed
and the few in execution has ever devised
substitutes for the Strand or Fleet Street or
the many tunnel lanes of the city proper or
for Bond Street or Piccadilly. These thor-
oughfares may be widened time and again
and yet be far too narrow to serve the multi-
tudes which persist in traversing them. One
may compel the heavy traffic to take side
streets, but the free people go where they
will, and they elect to go by the route where
the crowd is. It seems almost too much to
expect a municipality to devise means of
extricating them from the tangles they per-
sist in getting themselves into. It is notorious
how much dwellers in slums resent
their clearance and the erection of model
dwellings. There is never a public improve-
ment projected but raises opposition. The
builders of that most perfect of underground
railways, the Central London (Tu'penny
Tube), had not only to contest innumerable
cases which complained of the vibration
caused by the tube sixty feet underground,
but there are now actually pending suits based
upon mining claim laws charging them
with the theft of clay which they removed in
making their tunnel and failed to pay for.
It is a thankless task to provide town folk
with fresh air or light or room or means of
transportation. It is quite useless to plan
Utopian model cities in a wilderness of fresh
air until some means are found to make the
multitude forsake its grimy warrens.
Anything like a general scheme for the
rebuilding of London was impossible so long
as the antiquated system of government
struggled with its increasing burdens. But
as soon as what is known now as the "metro-
politan district" was placed under the control
of the London Count v Council, the breath
of invention and improvement was felt.
London began to hear and to see how far
behind it was in comparison with other cities,
that it was probably the most irregular, incon-
venient and unmethodical collection of houses
of them all. A comprehensive plan for the
transformation of Paris has been gradually
developed since 1848; slums have disap-
peared from Berlin since 1870; eighty-eight
acres in the centre of Glasgow have been re-
modeled; Birmingham has transformed ninety-
three acres of squalid slums into magnificent
I.
2/20
THE REBUILDING OF LONDON
streets flanked by architectural buildings;
Vienna, having completed her stately outer
ring, is about to remodel her inner city. In
London alone there was no organized scheme
to make it worthy its position as the first of
municipalities. And there is none now.
But the County Council has speedily directed
all its energies to the remedy of the most
crying needs. Systematization and beauti-
fication may come later.
It would be quite impossible even to name
the many plans for the improvement of
London which have recently been laid. Over
all the vast territory new things are taking
the place of worn-out old. Much, for example
is being done to open up the congestion of
surface traffic, the condition of which has
come to be synonymous with the very name,
London. Old streets are widened and new
ones are cut directly through long squares of
buildings. One of the earliest acts of the
County Council was to make provision for
the widening of the Strand. A careful survey
was made both of the ground and the owner-
ship of the space needed. In many cases
long leases had either to be bought out or
waited for. Wherever new building permits
were issued the new line of abutment was
insisted upon. This is the reason the average
American visitor wonders at the irregular
frontage of Strand buildings. From the
earthquake-like condition of this most im-
portant of all London streets one would have
imagined that the whole route was soon to be
opened. Yet after a wait of ten years and
untold expense the newly widened space is
only about the length of four average blocks
in Fifth Avenue, New York. From Welling-
ton Street, the entrance to Waterloo Bridge,
east to the Law Courts, there will be a fine
Strand, one hundred feet broad, extending
quite around both churches of St. Mary le
Strand and St. Clement Danes. These beau-
tiful examples of old ecclesiastical architec-
ture stand clear and free of outline on islands
with scarcely an entrance refuge. This
change has involved the complete destruction
of two narrow blocks of old gabled buildings
bounded by Holywell and Wych Streets.
Antiquarians deplore their destruction, and
no book lover who ever visited London can
forget Holywell, known as Booksellers Row.
Springing here from the Strand like a three-
pronged fork will run the new avenue quite
through to Holbom, the west prong begin-
ning at Wellington Street and the east at
St. Clement Danes. Each of these, eighty
feet wide, will join, at a point near the loca-
tion of the old Olympic Theatre, the stem and
centre prong of the fork, which will be one
hundred feet wide, to Holbom and even
beyond by Southampton Row to Theobald's
Row, the main thoroughfare to Northeast
London.
This beautiful new avenue, with never a
public house (saloon) on its length, will be
worth in health alone much more than it cost.
It offers, moreover, a fine architectural oppor-
tunity— close supervision will be exercised
over buildings here. Considering the magni-
tude of the improvement, its cost will be
very moderate. The first cost will be about
;^4, 500,000, but it is expected to recoup in
leases all but about ;;^70o,ooo. Between the
prongs of this fork will be some of the most
interesting new buildings in Londt-n. The
advantage of the site did not remain long
undiscovered. At the point of the west prong
stood the old Gaiety Theatre. This was
bought and doomed to destruction. Farther
on, directly opposite Somerset House, it is
proposed to erect the great steel shop-and-
office building about which so much has been
said and written. This will be the first in
London of a type well known in America. It
has been carefully designed in the same style
of architecture as the venerable pile across the
way.
Farther east the Strand shows in places
sporadic attempts at widening, caused by
buildings erected since the new line was
laid down. The next largest scheme for
street improvement is in Piccadilly. Here
the block is one of seasons, and not perpetual
like that in the Strand. One may almost
read the fashionable life of London by the
condition of traffic in Piccadilly. During
the last year one long stretch was made
broader by taking into the roadway a slice
of the Green Park from Constitution Hill gate
past Hamilton Place, a part almost impassable
during an afternoon in the season. At this
point on an ordinary spring day more than
2,855 vehicles have been counted during one
hour. The County Council is seizing every
lease as it falls due and promises in a com-
paratively few years to begin work here,
though there was great opposition to this
"sacrilege" to one of the town's too few
parks, and further plans for widening the
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2/2;
THE REBUILDING OF LO#NDON
TEARING DOWN OLD HOLYWELL STREET
street from the Green Park to Piccadilly
Circus must wait.
Another splendid street will be opened
when the Thames embankment is com,-
pleted between Chelsea and the Houses of
Parliament. This beautiful boulevard will
then run uninterrupted, save by the buildings
at Westminster, for miles with a park on one
side and the Thames on the other. It has
become the recognized site for public build-
ings, and every year sees additions to the long
line. The last decided upon is the new
County Council Hall, which is to give a home
to London's new governing body on the
Adelphi Terrace, just east of Charing Cross.
This new extension will give a proper situa-
tion to the Tate Gallery, full of the works
of modern painters and up to now lest in
Chelsea slums. It will also show off to great
advantage the model workingmen's dwellings
built in this neighborhood by the County
Council.
The great English railways have already
long ago reached the limit of their ability to
cope with suburban traffic in and out of
London. The greater part of the toilers
have been dependent upon horse-tramways
and 'busses. Because of the short-lived
franchises granted them, no surface trams
can afford to create suburbs. They must
await demand. They are, moreover, so
subject to ordinary street difficulties as to be
slowest at the very hours when they are most
needed — early morning and late evening.
The old underground railway was designed
to be complete in an inner and outer circle,
but the outer circle was found to be insuffi-
cient before it was ever built. And the inner
circle nowadays does not even touch what
ALL TILVT LS LEFT OF THE OLD OPERA COMIQUE
THE DILAPIDATED SIRAND
might be called suburbs. Yet so long as it
was without competition the two companies
owning this system drevv^ great dividends and
ignored the demands of their dependent
patrons for better service. Not until com-
petition arose in the shape of the Central
London electric tube railway did the directors
of the District and Metropolitan lines bestir
themselves. And even then their stirring
took the shape of a kind of panic over lost
receipts, with no idea of the necessity of
spending money to save trade. They did
not dare before to suggest any expenditure
without promising increased profits. Mr.
Yerkes's action in acquiring control of the
District Underground brought a flood of
underground railway schemes forward. Par-
liamentar}^ committees have been kept btisy
deciding between rival schemes. They have
been careful to reserve all manner of rights
to the Government, refusing, for instance,
to grant any route unless the proposed com-
THE Rl-:iiUILlJlNG OF LONDON
2723
pany agreed to i)r()vi(lc and maintain a sub-
way for pi[)es and wires alonj^ its line. This
is an etTort to unravel the tangle of sueh
things wliieh the least upturning of the
streets sliows. These lines are also refused
complete independence of each other, and
are compelled to arrange transfers and joint
time tables. There are now fifty-two miles
of deep railways running and authorized,
estimated to cost _^5oo,ooo per mile. The
great objection in London to shallow tram-
subways, such as are used in Paris and build-
ing in New York, is the necessity of torn-up
streets for a long period, as well as the diffi-
culty of disposing of the soil so near the sur-
face. The tubes, after the fashion of bur-
rowing animals, must necessarily dispose of
their soil at the end of their tunnel only.
It is safe to predict that in ten years it will
actiially be possible to traverse London by
public conveyance more quickly than one
could walk or go in a cab. Now, for lack of
means, or of cooperation when there is
means, the task is hopeless.
While the tubes are burrov/ing under the
river, new bridges are building, and even
a foot passenger tunnel has just been opened,
so great is the stream of workers which must
cross over twice a day. New bridges are
building at Vauxhall and Kew, while that
planned to be built at Lambeth is said to be
as notable a combination of art and utility as
TUBIi SIGNAL STATION
the famous Alexand'T
III. bridge in Paris.
And there is in active
operation a scheme for
the widening of famous
old London Bridge
by cantilever cornices
to carry all of the foot
traffic. Thus the old
foundation bridge of
the town by the Thames
keeps ])rogress with
its growth. For it is
known definitely that
both Roman and Saxon bridges existed here,
and that the first stone London Bridge was
built here in 11 76. For six and a half cen-
turies this old structure had houses on either
side of the roadway, much in demand for
shops, with a chapel on the central pier for
saints, arid stocks and a cage at either end for
sinners. The present beautiful bridge was
opened by William IV. in 1831. Experts in
the problems of traffic say that the new
Strand to Holborn Avenue will com.pel the
construction of another bridge between Black-
friars and Waterloo. Certainly something
must soon be done to relieve Waterloo, the
unceasing stream which crosses here being
the chief cause of the unending block in the
Strand at its approach.
Beyond the bridges comes that widening
HOW ONE SIDE OF THE STRAND IS BEING SHAVED AWAY
At St. Mary's in the Strand
THE REBUILDING OF LONDON
THE XEW GAIETY' THEATRE BUILDING
of the Thames called the Pool of London.
Here is where the city of ships lies, and here
are the great docks which fifty years ago were
the wonder of their time. Xot so now; they
and the system under which they are run
have been so scathingly condemned by a
committee of inquiry, after a year of investi-
gation, that the whole country is aroused to
their improvement.
Parliament is busy also with London's water
supply, mainly concerned with the con-
solidation of many companies, for the quality
or quantity of the v.-ater leaves little to be
desired. But the gradual growth of the
rights of water supply is a very attractive
story. Some of the old companies run back
to the days of the Tudors, and it is needless
to say that their shares are of almost inesti-
mable value. It is interesting also to follow
through old streets the course of former
little riv^crs and rills, all of which have been
turned into drink and wash for the thirsty,
dirty monster which has devoured them,
leaving only a corner or an alley with their
name for a monument.
As for the new buildings which are planned
and in course of construction, one can scarcely
find space to name them all. The great
Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster
has risen within a few squares of the Abbey,
the heart of the Church of England. Like
most great London buildings, it seems hope-
lessly out of place, fitting surroundings hav-
ing been sacrificed for central location. It
is quite hidden away out of ding\- Victoria
Street, and would never be found but for
its mighty campanile, three hundred feet
high. It is very different froni recent Gothic
and Renaissance church architecture, being
one of the few modern Byzantine buildings
in the West. It will soon be opened for use,
with no attempt at first to cover the rough
brick of the interior walls or the cement
of the domes, all destined later for mural
painting and mosaics. The largest arch
over any known church doorway will admit
ten thousand worshipers to ample accom-
modation under a central dome one hundred
and twenty feet high. The plan dispenses
with stained glass windows — a wise arrange-
THE RKHUILDING O I-" LONDON
2725
REBUILDING VAUXHALL BRIDGE
FAMOUS NEWGATE PRISON
The march of improvements will wipe it out and replace it with a court-house
I
2726
THE REBUILDING OF LOXUOX
THE NEW ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL
A few blocks from Westminster Abbey
ment in dark London. Twenty-nine marble
columns support aisles, galleries, and arches
of transepts, with bases of Xor^-egian granite
and capitals of white Carrara elaborately
carved.
Another scheme of magnitude has just
come to light in the purchase of the Royal
Aquarium by the "Wesley ans. The character
of the place v.-ill be quite transformed, and
even Mrs. Langtry, who has built a beautiful
theatre on adjoining leased ground belonging
to the plot, will either have to sell or buv.
The Methodists cannot see their way clear as
theatrical landlords. The new building, not
yet designed, will comprise a connectional
centre for the ^lethodists at which conferences
and congresses will be held. There will be a
great hall holding 3.000 people available for
services on Sundays and public meetings, a
sm.aller hall to hold i.ooo people, Y. M. C. A.
and Y. W. C. A. rooms, numerous committee
rooms and a library.
Famous Old Bailey Prison has been
demolished to make way for the new palace
of justice — the Sessions House of the City of
London. Few visitors to London miss this
site of many tragedies, its walls hung wdth
rusting manacles and hobbles, and its halls
complete with pillories and stocks and whip-,
ping blocks and implements of torture. So
manv incidents are located here that one can
scarcely choose for mention. For me, I
always first remember that here in 1660 the
com.mon hangman burned Milton's works.
In 1783 it succeeded Tyburn as a place of
execution, and in 1868 knew its last gallows.
Here the Lord Mayor held his quaint court
for the trial of offenders within the city wards.
Leaving unm^entioned all the many libra-
ries, baths, hospitals, hotels and business
premises designed by the most eminent
architects and engineers of the day, there is
left the improvements in the great govern-
mental space of Whitehall. When its new
I' ImjJ 2)1^:^1 :-j.^j
THE FIRST AMERICAN STEEL FRAME STRUCTURE IN LONDON
Now building in the Strand
THE RKBUILDING O I " LUNUON
2727
THE NEW GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS
The arch connects the new with the old buildings to the right
buildings are finished will stretch between
Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parlia-
ment almost every department of the British
Government. Some one has called this short
street the shuttle of the Imperial loom. It
will be a court of honor worthy of the Empire's
capital. On the left as one enters from
Parliament Street will rise the new home of
the Education Department and the Local
Government Board, designed in harmony
with the Home Office and connected thereto
with an archway bridge. Farther on, op-
posite the ancient Horse Guards and next
to Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall, the last
J
THE NEW WAR OFFICE
Opposite the Horse Guards, in Whitehall. To the left is Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall, from whose window Charles I. stepped to the scaffold
2728
THE REBUILDING OF LONDON
GALLERY FOR PIPES AND WIRES BENEATH THE
STRAND
remnant of the old palace of Whitehall, rises
the new War Office, and farther on, on the
opposite side, will be the new Admiralty,
part of which is already occupied.
of all, and one which is concerned only with
beauty and sentiment. It is proposed to
open a wide avenue from the square into
the Mall as a fitting approach to the beautiful
memorial which the people of all the Britains
are to erect to their great Queen. At first in
their grief her people seemed to think that
none fitting could be erected. But their
gratitude found material expression.
A monumental beneficence in a charitable
age might not long be associated closely
enough with the object for which it was to be
designed. So a purely artistic memorial was
finally decided upon, long after the funds con-
tributed had reached more than ample pro-
portions.
Whether this work, finished so far as plans
are concerned, has realized the dear desire of
those who wished it into being must be left
for future generations to decide. It is not
easv with the best of intent to command
inspiration, nor can the greatest wealth of
money succeed in buying what is often
achieved out of the direst poverty.
It is only to be wished that the home built
for her in her early years, Buckingham Palace,
were a worthier background for her monu-
ment. Perhaps the memorial will so accentu-
ate its ugliness that another generation will
demand its reconstruction. For it is to be
honored with an approach which competent
critics declare to be without equal in any
recent efforts at memorial and municipal
decoration.
A TR.\IX FROM THE TU PENN^' TUBE
All these improvements and new buildings
have been those of utility, but at the juncture
of Whitehall with Trafalgar Square we come
to what is perhaps the most striking change
i
AN A.MLRICAN CAR FOR THL TUBE
A STATION IN THE TUBE
SURK ON THK I.AKK COAST
In otlicr pl.iccs the water is joo feet deep at the shore line
SAVING THE FISHERIES OF OUR
INLAND SEAS
MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS OF TROUT AND WHITE-
FISH TAKEN FROM THE GREAT LAKES IN A YEAR— GOVERNMENT
RE-STOCKING TO REPAIR THE RAVAGES OF WANTON FISHERMEN-
FRY KEPT IN WATER AT 32)^ DEGREES— METHODS OF FISHING
BY
W. S. HARWOOD
(Illustrated with photographs by tlie author and others)
I
TO re-stock with fish a trout stream or
a bass pond is an easy task. To re-
stock an inland sea 400 miles long,
1,500 miles in circumference and averaging
1,000 feet deep, even one such sea, is Hercu-
lean. And yet so well does the Government
Fish Commission do its work among the Great
Lakes — all five of them — that the following
remark fell one day from the bronzed captain
of a Canadian fish-tug as we bowled along
the northern shore of Lake Superior:
''Four years ago the whitefish in my ter-
ritory were played out. Your American
Commission put young fry in the territory.
This season I have had one of the best white-
fish seasons in fifteen years. They were four-
year-olds. There wasn't no luck in that,
mister. "
The five great lakes are of greater impor-
tance than most Americans, whose knowledge
of them is confined to the geography of child-
hood, appreciate.
Through the canals at the Soo, the eastern
outlet of Lake Superior, passes a far larger
volume of freight — larger now by many mil-
lions of tons a year — than passes the Suez,
formerly the world's standard of canal traffic.
The traffic of the Soo now exceeds twenty
millions of tons a year.
But beyond their importance as a vast
highway of traffic, and their value, which is
great, as a conserver of national health,
through outings, lies their food production.
Like the prairies, these lakes are a mighty
food reservoir. Millions of pounds of fish
have been caught annually in these lakes;
millions of dollars are invested in securing
the catch. During 1899 the catch was nearly
one hundred and fourteen million pounds.
The herring, a species of whitefish, now
leads, but the common whitefish and the
lake trout are the most prized, and the ones
most in danger of extinction. Each one has
SAVING THE FISHERIES OF OUR INLAND SEAS
2731
FASTENING A NET AFTER LIFTING
its supporters as a food fish. Tlie whitefish,
firm of flesh and eminently nutritious, coming
to the table broiled or baked or planked, is a
toothsome fellow, fit for the plate of the
daintiest epicure or the hardiest lake-farer.
The trout, pinker of flesh, is not less nutritious.
The fish are caught in huge nets mainly by
Americans, mostly in the open lake season,
thougli tlicre is considerable fishing through
I lie ice. The fish find a ready market at all
the towns and cities bordering the Great
Lakes and even far inland.
But for the aid of the National Government,
the Great Lake fisheries, engaging thousands
of men and producing annually millions of
dollars' worth of food, would soon become
practically extinct. The decrease in the
catch long since reached the })oint of peril.
In Lake Ontario the catch of whitefish,
by many esteemed the choicest of our lake
fish, fell off from 1,156,200 pounds in 1868
to 126,650 pounds in 1895, and the catch of
trout for the same period from 61 2,000 pounds
to 109,300 pounds. In Lake Erie, the white-
fish, once the principal catch of that lake,
exceeding many times over the entire output
of other fish, fell away to nine per cent, of the
entire catch. The reduction from 1885 to
1 893 was sixty-three per cent. In 1 880 white-
fish held first place in the catch of Lake
Huron, but in ten years it fell back to sixth
place. The trout of this lake in 1803 yielded
LIFTING A POUND-NET
The fish are lo be scraped out and thrown into a fishing tug
2732
SAVING THE FISHERIES OF OUR INLAND SEAS
WEIGHING A SHORE FISHERMAN'S CATCH ON
THE TUG
over 3.500,000 pounds, ninety-two per cent, of
the entire catch of that species; in 1899 the
catch had fallen to 1.879,400 pounds, a
loss of over 1,600,000 pounds. The catch of
whitefish in Lake Superior has also shown a
steady and discouraging decrease from year
to year. The main causes of this falling off
are thoughtlessness, enterprise and greed.
When the rapid decline of the fisheries be-
came apparent several years ago, so marked
that extinction w^as promised, the matter was
referred to a Joint Commission of the United
States and Canada, which reported in 1896.
From this investigation it appeared that
the fishermen were not observing the close
season, when the fish spawn; that in many
cases they were using fine-meshed nets; that
the lakes were sadly over-fished. Extinction
was threatened. But, fortunately, the United
States Commission of Fish and Fisheries took
hold to repair the ravages.
Collecting eggs is the basis of the work.
Whitefish and trout spaw-n in the late sum-
mer and autumn. Billions upon billions of
eggs are deposited each season. Billions
never become fish. Other billions do. An
average trout will lay in a season 6,000 eggs;
-.-? ...-*>.-**>■ i* /ii*
AFTER THE MORNING CATCH
The troul woighs about 20 pounds
PREPARING THE CATCH FOR MARKET
indeed, trout have been caught with 15,000,
while the whitefish are more fecund still.
Trout eggs average 1,000 to the pound;
wiiitefish, 10.000. Despite destruction by
other fish, many out of such large numbers
must survive. The trout eggs are deposited
on reefs ten to fifteen miles from shore and
from ten to 150 feet below the surface, in
favorable spots revisited year after year. It
is here that havoc is wrought by wanton
fishermen. The whitefish spawn at greater
depths, and comparatively little is known of
their habits.
According to the natural process, the eggs
SAVING THE MSIIERIES UE ULR INLAND SEAS
2/33
A TYPICAL FISH-GATHERIXG BOAT WHICH CARRIES PASSENGERS ALSO
are laid upon a smooth bit of rock and milted.
Thereafter they take their chances. Artificial
methods are surer.
Penning the fish at spawning time has been
tried successfully. The pens are frameworks
or nets into which the fish run and from which
they are taken at spawning time and stripped
of their eggs. The other method is to gather
ihe eggs at the fishing banks during actual
fishing operations.
Men in the service of the Government go out
with the fishing tugs in the late autumn, or
in boats, and strip the ripe fish of their eggs.
These men are called "spawn takers" or
"strippers. " They must be men of strength
and courage, for there are many dangers
awaiting them in the fierce storms which beat
up against the coasts of these great lakes when
the late autumn winds are howling. After
the stripping into a shallow pan, the milt from
the male fish is sprinkled over them and the
REELS FOR DRYING GILL NETS
The nets are also often boiled in a bark solution to "tan"
I
2734
SAVING THE FISHERIES OF OUR INLAND SEAS
THE FISH HATCHERY AT DULUTH
eggs are packed in moss-protected trays for
transportation to the hatcheries. Nearly two
hundred thousand eggs are contained in each
case of eighteen trays. The trout are hatched
out in tanks or troughs, and when the young
trout appear they are placed in a rearing
trough, or pond, to be l^ept until they are
"yearlings," or distributed direct from the
hatching boxes. The eggs themselves may
be shipped great distances, instalments having
been successfully transported to Mexico,
South America, Japan and Australia.
The tiny fish are put on a diet of beef liver,
chopped fine, their principal food as long as
they remain at the hatchery: when they are
sent away to the Great Lakes they are large
enough to shift for themselves.
The trout are transferred to the lakes in
ten-gallon cans, two thousand tiny fish to the
can. In the course of six or eight years, the
fish in a single can, should they all live, should
weigh from ten to twelve tons. They are
returned when large enough to ship from the
hatchery, to the reefs whence the eggs were
taken.
The whitefish eggs must be treated differ-
ently. They demand constant motion in cold
water during the whole three months of their
incubation. The eggs are placed in glass jars
through which is forced a stream of water.
Under the natural conditions in the lake itself
but relatively few whitefish eggs are hatclied ;
in hatcheries, as with the trout, from seventy-
five to ninety-five per cent.
Of course, the utmost care must be exer-
cised at the fish hatcheries to see that the small
fish are kept in prime condition all through
the period before they are large enough to be
transferred to the lake proper. "When breed-
ing for such a lake as Superior, in which the
water, summer as well as winter, is very cold,
the eggs before hatching must be kept in
water clear and pure, and at a temperature
barely above the freezing point, during the
entire period of incubation. The water must
never be higher than 56° Farenheit, preferably
from 48° to 58° for the lake trout. The tem-
perature of the jars in which the whitefish eggs
are hatched is kept at 32'^°, the slightest shade
above freezing. "When the fish are hatched,
a slight rise is allowed, so that the tiny fry pass
out into water having a temperature from ^^°
to 34°. As soon as the whitefish eggs are
hatched, the fish follow the stream of water
out of the jar into a tank where the water
should not be above 55°. Sixty-five degrees
is fatal.
The Government maintains hatcheries, or
stations, as they are called, for the propoga-
tion of fish for fresh and salt water, at thirty-
seven points in many States.
During last season the Commission depos-
SAVING THE FISHERIES OF OUR INLAND SEAS
2735
ited 19,000,000 trout and 326,000,000 wliite-
Hsh in the Great Lakes. The average cost
per milHon for gathering the whiteHsh, iis
shown by one of tlie princi})al hatcheries — at
I'ut-in Bay, Ohio — was $13.95. Allowing
this hgure for the entire whitefish collection
would bring the cost up to $4,500. I do not
suppose any one can give any accurate esti-
mate of the number of these healthy fish —
for only the strong and healthy ones are
distributed — which will survive, but should
one-half of them reach a six-pound maturity,
their value at low current prices will be
$100,000,000.
Lake Erie is an illustration of the practical
value of the work. Several years ago it was
one of the greatest whitefish reservoirs on
the globe. The lake is comparatively shal-
low, and, in the words of the report of the
IKRTILIZEl) LAKE TROUT EGGS
Each egg is about the size of a French pea
Joint Commission already referred to, is
practically one continuous fishing ground,
accessible and more or less lucrative to the
fishermen at all points. The whitefish in
the beginning were sought almost exclusively.
The fish were taken in nets close inshore, and
inainly, if not entirely, during the spawning
run. The suicidal character of this method,
not to call it by a harsher term, is seen in the
fact that for the ten-year period between
1885 and 1895 the whitefish catch fell away
60 per cent. In 1885 the catch was over
3,500.000 pounds; in 1893 it had fallen away
2,240,000 pounds, through over-fishing.
The catching of these fish of the Great
Lakes is not effected without great hard-
ship. No hardier, braver men are found than
those who follow the fisheries of these lakes.
WHITEIISH EGC.S KEPT IN CON.STANT MOTION IN
ICE-COLD WATER
He who steams down this magnificent chain
of lakes, on a sunny summer day, when the
vast spread of blue-green water is broken
only by the faint plume of smoke from some
passing steamer, when the air is full of a
fine tonic and the noisy earth is far away and
day slowly succeeds day for a thousand miles
of delightful voyaging — such a man sees
the smiles of the Great Lakes ; he knows them
only when they are on their good behavior.
He who goes out on a fishing smack or tug
in late November, when the air is full of
marrow-penetrating cold, when the snow
comes now and then in fitful, spiteful blasts,
when the wind is high and the waves beat up*
over the little craft as it tries in vain to go
to anchor near the nets and break in harsh
fury on the low-lying reefs and the rocky
coast, when the sky is leaden and the short
day slips quickly into night — this man knows
the lakes in their sterner mood.
The nets which the fishermen set are
generally raised twice a week. Very much
of the fishing is done with the pound-net, or,
as the fishermen persist in calling it, the
"pond" net. These nets have been roundly
condemned. They consist firj:t of a long
A FIFTEEN-POUND TROUT
I
2736
SAVING THE FISHERIES OF OUR INLAND SEAS
wall of mesh running out from shore, per-
haps 200 feet, extending from the surface of
the water to the bottom and held by timbers
driven into the bottom of the lake. This
wall is called the lead or guide. The fish
swim up against this wall, are checked, are
deflected in their course, and then feel their
way along the wall until they are led into
an opening known as the heart or wing.
From this they work their way along until
they come to a narrow opening called the
tunnel. Through this they enter into the
crib or pot — and once inside there is no
mesh. In some instances as many as thirty
pound-nets have been set in a single course
extending from the shore in comparatively
shallow water, from six to eight miles out —
a continuous wall of net which is botmd to
gather in practically all fish swimming in the
region.
Some of the nets are raised by fishermen
in small sailing vessels, others by fishing
tugs. When a good haul is made by one of
these tugs the side of the boat will be a mass
of squirming, wriggling fish, literally h\m-
dreds of them, possibly 2.000 pounds in a
A GILL NET DRYING
escape. The crib is about forty feet square
and fifty feet in depth, with enclosed bottom
and sides. The fyke net is somewhat similar,
having wings but no lead and several tunnels
instead of one. In the fyke net the crib is
entirely closed and is wholly under water.
The gill net, which can be used to advantage
in shallower water, and which is used while
fishing through the ice, being stretched below
the surface and drawn out through holes, is
a long single net into which the fish run
their heads, and catch their gills in the
single lift. The fish are cleaned on the tug as
it steams onward to another net. and then
thrown into boxes of chopped ice, which hold
the catch until the return to port. Here they
are immediately repacked in ice and shipped
out. In the case of individual fishers, they
sell their catch at the dock at from three
to four cents a pound, depending upon the
market. In a single catch there will be a
good many small trout; many from five to
seven pounds; while a few may weigh ten to
fifteen pounds — though trout weighing over
ANOTHKR REVOLUTIONARY INCRKASl-: OF GOLD 2737
100 pounds have been caught. Captain Hfting of the nets is done by sailboat, the
I Craig, the keeper of the hghthouse at Thun- fisherman puts out to his nets alone and
der Cape, on the north shore of Lake Superior, with great labor raises the heavy load and
caught a lake trout in a gill net three years pitches it into the hold of his boat. During
ago which was four feet three inches long, the present season — 1902 — a single sailboat
thirty-three inches in girth, and weighed fifty- fisherman on the north coast of Lake Superior
three pounds. lifted a pound-net in which were 4,400 pounds
When the nets are to be lifted by a fishing of fish. I saw this same man lift a net, on a
tug, the tug goes to anchor alongside the cold August morning, not long after sunrise,
stakes, which appear above the net, and two in which were 1,200 pounds of trout, white-
or three men put off in a punt or small boat fish and lake pike.
to the net. The meshes of the net are seized When the individual fisherman has cleaned
and drawn up into the boat, and with long- his catch of fish, a tug calls for the catch,
handled scoops, somewhat like landing nets the captain weighs it as it comes on board;
for brook trout fishing, the fish are thrown the fish are pitched into huge boxes of ice and
up from the small boat upon the deck of the carried into port, there to be quickly sent out
tug, which rapidly becomes a mass of live either by rail or fast express steamers to the
fish several feet in depth. In case the consumers in "the States. "
ANOTHER REVOLUTIONARY INCREASE
OF GOLD
HOW ACTIVITY ALL OVER THE WORLD WILL BE STIMULATED BY THE DOUBLING
OF THE GOLD SUPPLY WHEN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINES ARE DEVELOPED —
THE UNITED STATES THE CHIEF GAINER — NO FEAR OF FINANCIAL DISTURB-
ANCES—THE CERTAINTY RATHER OF ENORMOUS LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
BY
CHARLES M. HARVEY
ENGLAND has the making of a new war, the output would have been about $90,-
America in the Southern hemisphere," 000,000 in that year if the conflict had been
says Lord Kitchener. He, of course, averted, and more than $100,000,000 in 1900.
has especially in mind the accessions of terri- After mining has been fully resumed, which
tory which the Boer war brought. He has will probably be during the early part of
in view also the enormous output of gold ex- 1903, the Rand's annual product, it is esti-
pected from a part of this new territory within mated by experts on the ground, will soon go
the next few years. With the annexation up to $100,000,000, and by 1905 or 1906 it
of an area slightly larger than California (the will be $125,000,000. It is estimated that
Transvaal, 118,000 square miles; the Orange that district will yield something like $3,000,-
Free State, 48,000 square miles), England has 000,000 in the next quarter of a century, or
a domain of 2,800,000 square miles on the before the reef already being worked is ex-
African continent — not much smaller than hausted. What effect will this vast out-
the United States proper, though not all pouring of new gold have on the world's in-
contiguous territory. dustries, its commerce, and its social and
• In 1898, the latest complete year before the political development ?
Boer war, the Witwatersrand, or ' 'the Rand, "
the Transvaal's principal mining district, consequences of the California gold
■ produced $60,000,000 in gold. At the rate of discovery
increase for the previous few years, main- The California parallel here suggests itself,
tained through the part of 1899 before the Between this country's birth as a nation and
I
2738
ANOTHER REVOLUTIONARY INCREASE OF GOLD
the end of 1847 the aggregate gold output of
the United States was $24,000,000. It was
$889,000 in 1847. This was the condition of
affairs when, on January 24, 1848, James W.
Marshall made his discovery of glittering dust
in the raceway of Sutter's mill, on the Ameri-
can fork of the Sacramento. In 1848 the
gold yield of California sprang from nothing
to $10,000,000. It was $40,000,000 in 1849,
after the inrush had fairly begun. It was
$65,000,000 in 1853, the highest point ever
touched by the California diggings. Then
it gradually fell off, and its annual average for
the past half-dozen years has been $15, 000, 000.
California's aggregate gold product from
Marshall's discovery to the end of 1902 has
been about $1,500,000,000.
California's sudden doubling in a year of
the amount of gold which the entire United
States produced in the sixty years preceding
Marshall's discovery had stupendous conse-
quences. The Western verge of civilization,
which had reached the Missouri in 1848, after
two and a third centuries of march from
Jamestown and Plymouth, sprang across to
the Pacific in a single 3^ear. This swung the
country's social and political centre of gravity
many degrees w^estward; it brought Cali-
fornia into the Union as a free State in 1850;
it broke forever the balance between the slave
and the free States which Southern statesmen
had persistently preserved; it produced the
demand for new slave territory which incited
the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854,
and this brought the conflict between the
North and the South for the possession of
Kansas, which split the Democratic party
on sectional lines in the Charleston convention
of i860, and gave the Republicans the victory
in the Presidential contest of that year which
precipitated secession and civil war and over-
threw slavery.
The stream of new gold at the same time
quickened all sorts of trade and industry
all over the country; it sent thousands of
prospectors through the whole of the Cor-
dilleran region from Mexico to the Canadian
line, who struck gold in Colorado in 1858,
silver in Nevada in 1859, gold in Montana in
1863, and one or the other, or both, in other
locahties afterward; it created new needs
which it furnished the means to supply; it
quintupled the mileage of the railroads in a
single decade; it increased the volume of im-
migration from Europe ; it added to the coun-
try's resources, wealth, power and confidence
in itself and in its destiny among the nations ;
it broadened the mental horizon of our people
and the circle of their interests and activities ;
it led to the building of a railroad across the
Panama isthmus by an American company
in 1850 to facilitate communication between
the country's Atlantic and Pacific coasts
along a line nearly parallel to that on which
the inter-oceanic waterway is to be con-
structed; it sent Commodore Perry to open
to American commerce the ports of Japan,
. which xmtil then had been sealed to the world ;
it brought trade treaties with China, and
added greatly to the prestige of the United
States among the nations.
On the world at large the effect of Cali-
fornia's gold discovery was to put up prices
and wages and to give an immense stimulus
to all sorts of business; to send prospectors
and adventurers all over the continents and
islands, resulting in the gold find in Australia
by a returned California miner named Har-
greaves in 1851, in British Columbia in 1858,
in Nova Scotia in 1861, in many parts of
Mexico, Central and South America before
and after the last-named date, and in the
Rand in 1868. And these finds, of course,
augmented the world interest in gold hunting
which led to the discoveries in the Klondike
in 1896 and in Nome in 1899.
An increased output, too, has been in
progress in recent years in many of the older
localities, due as much to improved processes
for extracting ore as to the finding of new
fields. Thus the $95,000,000 which was the
w^orld's product in 1883, and $118,000,000
in 1890, went to $202,000,000 in 1896, to
$307,000,000 in 1899, to $225,000,000 in each
of the years 1900 and 1901 (the falling off
being due to the closing of the Transvaal's
mines by the war which began in the latter
part of 1899), and to $275,000,000 for 1902.
THE APPROACHING DELUGE OF NEW GOLD
When, by 1904, the complete resumption
of mining in Edward VII. 's new domain in
the Transvaal, and the regular increase in the
rest of the productive coimtries, sends the
world's output up to $400,000,000, as com-
pared with only a little over a quarter of that
amount in 1890, and to $425,000,000 in 1905,
what will be the consequence to the world's
activities? Forty-five years ago the annual
increase which California and Australia were
ANOTHER REVOLUTIONARY INCREASE OF GOLD
2739
making in the world's gold sock seemed to
threaten such a fall in its price, as compared
with silver and the stable commodities, that
Chevalier recommended to the gold standard
countries to demonetize gold and substitute
silver. A British writer, IMaclarcn, urged
the establishment in England of life insurance
companies on the silver standard for the pro-
tection of depositors from loss by the fall of
gold. Cobden wished Parliament to pass a
law making the Bank of England publish
periodically a statement of the relative values
of gold and silver, so that prices of commodi-
ties and the wages of labor could adjust them-
selves from time to time to the decline of
gold. A commission of experts appointed
by Louis Napoleon's government recom-
mended demonetizing gold and prohibiting
the exports of silver, which at the prevailing
coinage ratio was the preferred metal, and
was being shipped from the country in large
amounts. A few years later (the world's
gold production having heavily shrunk in the
interval, and the production of silver having
more than doubled in a decade, largely owing
to the deluge poured out from the bonanza
mines of Mackay, Fair, Flood and O'Brien
on the Comstock lode in Nevada), Germany,
the United States, France, Ital}^ Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Spain, Greece
and other countries, most of which were
theoretically on the double standard,
demonetized silver, absolutely or virtually,
between 187 1 and 1878. England went upon
the gold basis in 181 6.
Thus, the battle between gold and silver
having been fought, and silver having lost,
this particular disturbing effect of increased
gold production can never assert itself again.
There is no double standard anywhere to be
guarded now. All the world's nations today
are on the gold basis except China, Mexico,
Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and the five
little Central American republics. The large
increase in gold production in recent years
has been absorbed by the expansion of gold
in the circulation of the United States (wdiich
has gained 55 per cent, since 1896), by the
necessities of Japan, British India, and
several South American republics that ex-
changed the silver for the gold standard, by
England's demands in the South African
war, and by the world's general increase in
population and trade.
The $400,000,000 gold production which
will come in 1904 — and this will doubtless
progressively increase for years — will, in a
quarter of a century or less, double the world's
present gold stock. Moreover, by the con-
stant extension of the use of checks, drafts,
bills of exchange and other cash-economizing
devices, a dollar will be able to do a continu-
ally increasing amount of duty in the ex-
changes. But this will have a strengthening
and steadying and not a disturbing effect on
the world's currencies. The increase in gold
already attained in the United States, sup-
plementing the monetary act of 1900, has
placed this country's currency so firmly on
the gold basis that the silver issue and the
international bimetalism cries have been
forever hushed. Neither can ever figure
again in a political campaign in the United
States. The flood of gold yet to come will
end all necessity for the "scramble" for
that metal among the nations which until
recently bothered financiers in most of the
countries. It will give the silver-standard
nations, urged by the necessity of the world's
trade, the opportunity to tie their currencies
to the gold anchorage.
For the past few years it has been known
that Sefior Limantour, the alert and capable
Mexican Minister of Finance, has been anxious
to range his country with the nations with
which its commerce is chiefly carried on.
China is slow to change its standard but it
has recently felt, in an impressive way, the
embarrassment of its financial isolation, and
it will have a favorable chance to join its
neighbors and patrons on the gold basis.
The possible change in these two countries
alone would absorb a good many hundreds
of millions of the new gold. The expansion
in population and commerce in all countries,
and the advance in the standard of living in
many of them, will have the inevitable effect
of using up more of it.
Many commodities will be advanced in
price. An advance, with some fluctuations,
has been in progress for several years. But
it will be prevented from reaching harmful
proportions by the absorption of gold in the
countries which will drop the silver standard,
the increase in population and commerce in
most of the countries, the elevation in the
standard of living which prosperity will bring
in many of them, and by the steady cheapen-
ing that is going on in production and
transportation.
II
2740
ANOTHER REVOLUTIONARY INCREASE OF GOLD
INCIDENTAL EVILS OF PREVIOUS MONETARY
EXPAXSIOX
President Fillmore, in his message to Con-
gress in December, 1851, in referring to the
swift growth in California's gold output, said:
.' 'This large annual increase of the currency
of the world must be attended with its usual
results. These have been already partially
disclosed in the enhancement of prices and
in a rising spirit of speculation and adventure,
tending to overtrading as well at home as
abroad. " The discoveries made in Australia
about that time added largely to the gold
flood in the next few years, and helped to
bring the ills which Fillmore predicted. All
over the world, but particularly in the United
States, men were stimulated to overdo.
Credits were dangerously expanded. Manu-
facturers made more goods than they could
sell. Dealers purchased more than there
was a market for. Consumers bought more
than they could pay for. I\Iore lines of rail-
road were built, especially in the West, than
the population required for many years to
come. In August, 1857, the Ohio Life and
Trust Company suspended, with liabilities of
$7,000,000, and a general financial crash came
all over the country.
But there w^ere monetary convulsions in
the United States long before Marshall's dis-
covery of gold created California. The panic
of 1837 was more disastrous than that of
1857. Almost equally calamitous was that
of 1 81 9. The panic of 1873 came when the
gold production of the United States had
dropped to $33,000,000, as compared with
$65,000,000 in 1853, and when there was a
large decline in the world's output. That of
1893 came when the production of the United
States and of the world was just half what it
is in these days of general prosperity in 1902.
Gold expansion has a tendency to incite
rash speculation, but the gold basis of the
currency of the principal nations has had a
steadying effect. In the United States the
wildcat banking of 1837 and 1857 and the
silver dilution of 1893 have been abolished.
Neither will ever reappear. The fundamental
differences between the situation in 1902, on
the eve of the reopening of the South African
mines, and that which existed just previous
to the gold deluge from California and
Australia, destroys any real parallelism be-
tween the two epochs.
The South African mines will not restrict
their influence to the Transvaal or even to the
British Empire. Gold flows automatically
to the country' where capital is organized best,
where enterprise is most active, where its
returns will be the greatest. It is no longer
necessary, in the interest of national solvency,
to capture it on the high seas, as was done
some centuries ago. A large part of the
gold from the Sierras in the early days
went straight to Lombard Street. Victorian
financiers got more gold from California in a
single year between 1849 and i860 than Drake,
Hawkins and the other Elizabethan corsairs
could have stolen from Philip II. 's galleons
in half a century. The United States has a
little of the same sort of ascendancy in the
greater financial world of 1902 that Great
Britain had from Bonaparte's overthrow
onward till the great house of Baring
Brothers went down in the Argentine cyclone
of 1890, and the Bank of England was com-
pelled to borrow $15,000,000 from the Bank
of France to stave off disaster.
THE GREAT ENTERPRISES THAT WILL BE
STIMULATED
An immediate consequence of the reopen-
ing of the Rand mines under British auspices
will be that the population and the business
of the Transvaal will materially expand.
The Cape - to - Cairo railroad, which, when
completed, will be the world's longest all-rail
line, and which is designed to make a close
connection with England's Asiatic Empire,
will be pushed to a finish. Every square
mile of British Africa territory will feel the
financial awakening. The mother country
herself will renew her youth. All the nations
— France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Spain and
Portugal — which have colonies in Africa,
especially the first three, will suddenly feel
that their possessions have gained an in-
creased value. Land-hunger will . awake.
The few unappropriated spots still on the
earth's surface will not long remain without a
master.
Germany, which has increased her popula-
tion forty per cent, in the past thirty years,
as compared with two per cent, for France,
thirty per cent, for the United Kingdom -and
nearly 100 per cent, for the United States,
and which has greatly surpassed all the other
European countries in coal and iron pro-
duction and consumption in that line (being
ANOTHER REVOLUTIONARY INCREASE OF (lOLD
2741
left far behind here, too, by the United States),
will naturally be profoundly affected, in-
dustrially and politically. The aspiration
for an enlarged outlet on the North Sea, an
ambition which stands as a perpetual menace
to the Netherlands, is already finding frec^uent
expression from German writers and pub-
licists.
Russia, which grew from a population of
30,000,000 in 1800 to 140,000,000 in 1900
(a niuch higher rate of increase than that of
any other great European nation, though
the growth of our population in that time,
from a population of 5,000,000 to one of 76,-
000,000, has been at a far greater ratio), will
also be moved materially. It is a more im-
portant nation, even relatively, in Nicholas
II. 's day, than it was a little less than a
century ago when Bonaparte proposed to
Alexander I. that Russia and France should
divide Turkey and its possessions between
them, without regard to the feelings of the
rest of Europe, and settle the Eastern ques-
tion. From President Felix Faure's time
to these days of President Loubet the Repub-
lic has invested $2,000,060,000 in Nicholas II. 's
dominion. This is one of the items in the
bill which France has paid in the past seven
years for the Russian alliance. Hundreds
of millions of dollars of the new gold which
the Transvaal will throw upon the world will
flow into the Czar's realm. Russia's people
lack inventiveness and imagination, their
civilization is mediaeval, and their indus-
trial system is archaic, but their population,
which, it is estimated, will rise to the colos-
sal totals of 200,000,000 in 1940 and of
400,000,000 in the year 2,000 must neces-
sarily be a powerful factor in the world's
development.
AMERICA THE LARGEST GAINER
But it is safe to predict that the United
States will be the largest gainer by the gold
deluge. Here is the best field for the in-
vestment of money that the world affords.
Here is centred the most varied, the most
expansive and the most profitable of the
world's industrial and commercial activities.
Here the consolidation of capital is greatest,
the organization and direction of vast enter-
prises the best, and the employment of im-
proved and economical financial appliances
I the most extensive. Alreadv the United
:' "■'"" -
Africa's new trade of 1902 than has gone to
Great Britain.
The great wealth of the United States
($94,000,000,000 in 1900) equals the com-
bined wealth of England and France, the
second and third of the nations in this
})articular; and in wealth and in population
this country's lead is getting longer and
longer.
The seat of the world's financial empire has
passed to this side of the Atlantic. New York
leads London in the amount of her bank clear-
ings and stock exchange transactions. Soon
the tonnage of the port of New York will
be greater than London's. More and more
the larger enterprises of the world are financed
from the United States. The Government
of England and the Government of Russia
have been recent borrowers from New York.
Mr. Morgan and his associates have taken the
supremacy in the financial world held by the
Rothschilds from Waterloo to Plevna and
down to the eve of Manila. America's
money changers are the men who today open
and close the gates of the temple of Janus,
who make declarations of war and decide
when peace shall be made.
Lord Kitchener is right in saying that the
new territory in Africa will be of great
benefit to England. But South Africa will
not be another America. It takes more than
gold mines to make a United States, however
prolific these may be. Absolutely and pro-
portionately, the United States has a far larger
land area capable of cultivation than England
has in the whole African continent. We have
a better river system. We are more favorably
situated with regard to the great countries
possessing the highest civilization. We have
a larger range of the useful minerals — coal,
iron, copper, lead, zinc, petroleum, and other
products essential to the life and development
of a great State, the aggregate value of the
production of which in the United States in
1901 was almost $1,100,000,000. In the form
of our Government and the character and
capabilities of our people our country's ad-
vantages, of course, are still m^ore marked.
Of these there is little need to speak.
South Africa's coming gold output will have
profound consequences — consequences that
are universal; and greatly as it will benefi.t
other nations, every sign gives promise that
we shall profit more by it than any other
people.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE LABOR
UNIONS
SUSPICION THE MOOD OF EMPLOYER AND UNION — LABOR
WARFARE IN MANUFACTURING — CONTRASTING A UNION
TOWN WITH A NON-UNION — HOW A UNION VIEWS
RESTRICTION— THE DRAMATIC STORY OF THE CIGARMAKERS
BY
M. G. CUNNIFF
(The third of a series of first-hand studies of labor problems)
OVER the coffee one night last summer
a labor union leader told me stories
of employers who never have trouble
with the unions — among them Senator Hanna.
"A union hates a typewritten letter," said he,
"but it likes a man."
Then he told an incident of a street car
strike in Cleveland, which was threatened just
as Senator Hanna was starting for Europe.
The Senator hurried to the scene.
"Invite the grievance committee to meet
me at two o'clock," he directed. "At six I
must start for New York."
The committee came. They were firm.
Mr. Hanna's men, like those on other lines,
would strike at the signal.
"Your demands?" questioned Mr. Hanna.
He was told. He thought a moment.
"They're granted," he suddenly declared.
"Now, can I embark for Europe and know
that whatever happens my lines will keep
runnmg :
"Yes," replied the committee — and their
word was kept. This was the tale as the
union president told it.
"I don't wonder you like such a quick sur-
render," remarked the city official across the
table.
"It isn't that," flashed the union man.
"What I liked was the conference — man to
man. That's the way to settle a labor dispute.
No typewritten letters there ! Why, mis-
understanding causes half the labor troubles
that fill the daily papers."
That, after all, is the largest fact that mv
studies of the imions have led me to. When
I turned from the building trades, where
men work within sound of the cheerful bang-
ing of hammers and breathe the clean fra-
grance of brick and mortar and fresh-sawn
wood, to see a little of tmion factory life, in
shops amid the whir of machines and the
searching exhalations of dye vats, and in the
homes of union men and manufacturers, I
found misunderstanding the normal relation
of employer and union. Its fruit was sus-
picion— needless suspicion. For, thinking over
all I saw and heard, I fail to understand why
employers, frankly telling the unions what
they have explained to me, and union men,
freely stating their point of view, cannot
arrange a modus vivcndi.
A case in point is this: Visiting Danbury,
Connecticut, on the advice of a union legis-
lative agent, who pointed Danbury out as
a typical union town, I called on a manufac-
turer who bitterly condemned the Hatters'
Union, though he had once belonged to it
himself. Danbury, it should be explained,
produces more hats than any other town in
the United States, and the owners of more
than half the twenty factories there have
risen from the operative's bench. This
manufacturer, among many incidents of union
activity — pernicious, he now regards it — told
me that after a recent strike in a competing
Philadelphia hat factory, the union made a
settlement granting a different scale of piece-
work wages than was granted him on a cer-
tain grade of hat. The harm was here: on
the particular grade he produced he must
pay his workmen a higher minimum price
per dozen hats than the Philadelphia man,
who thus could sell more cheaply.
I asked a union leader to explain. "
"Any employer in town," said he, "can
have just the terms we made in Philadelphia.
But no Danbury manufacturer wants them.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE LABOR UNIONS
2743
Our Danbury scale demands from seventy-
cents to a dollar and a quarter a dozen on
certain varying grades. The Philadelphia
price is now one dollar a dozen, a lump price,
on all those grades. That's the arrangement
we prefer. The Philadelphia man prefers it.
If Danbury would rather have the other,
paying less than Philadelphia on some grades
and more on others, I don't see why they
object to the Philadelphia bargain."
Now plainly there is a loose screw some-
where in that situation, due to distrustful
relations. Variety in wage scales might
play serious mischief with business, but no
reason exists why union employers and the
union itself should fail to understand each
other about it.
So with arbitration. I heard much of
an arbitration agreement the hatters of
Danbury formerly had with the manufactur-
ers— now no longer in force.
"They will not arbitrate," said a manu-
facturer; "they prefer to dictate."
"Why won't you arbitrate?" I asked the
union leader.
"Easily answered," said he; "we once did
arbitrate — by agreement."
"Yes?" I assented.
"Well, nine times out of ten we lost."
"Um-m-m," I pondered.
"One night," he went on, "I sat near the
door of the conference room. The door was
ajar. In the hall was a manufacturer and
one of the arbitrators, and the arbitrator said
'Don't bother to stay, Mr. Blank. You
needn't worry. I'll see they don't get any-
thing!' Then he came in, while the manu-
facturer went home. The meeting was called
to order, and I rose. 'Gentlemen,' I said,
'this conference will stop right here. You,'
said I, 'pointing to the arbitrator, 'just told
Mr. Blank you'd decided on this case before
you heard what we had to say. We don't
want any such arbitration. If these are
the methods we have to meet, we'd better
fight.' So we came away. Now we fight,
and nine times out of ten we win ! That's
why we don't like arbitration, and perhaps
that's why some other unions don't like it."
Here were employers accusing the union
of arrogant dictation, and union men accusing
employers of underhand methods. Each side
was suspicious.
But these two phases of the union question
merely hint at the Danbury situation — worth
dwelling on here because already the town
epitomizes what certain unions show signs of
drifting to, though with anchors to windward :
namely, the reputed English condition of
industry — though I must say here that union
men are slow to admit that England's depres-
sion is due to the unions at all.
Danbury is a beautiful little Connecticut
town, so cozily nestled among green hills that
all its vistas are soft-lined and verdant.
Quaint little tree-embowered cottages snuggle
up to the hillsides, fringed with fruit trees
and kitchen gardens. The main street is
clean and sedate and old-fashioned; and the
factories, all scattered, are tucked away one
by one where they least offend the eye. To
the outward sense the town is the sweet
embodiment of prosperous New England
homeliness. For about eight months in the
year, in two seasons, the inhabitants, men and
girls, make hats for the spring and fall trade;
the idle months are devoted to the kitchen
gardens and little farms. Savings are re-
ligiously banked away. Slums are unknown.
When the legislative agent sent me to Dan-
bury he knew its allurements. One could be
glad to live there.
But industrially the town is far from
pastorally calm. From bootblacks to manu-
facturers every craft is organized, and the
stores sell union goods. The boycott is as
common as trade itself. When I arrived,
the seventeenth factory out of twenty was
being organized by dint of a strike, and such
was the diplomatic atmosphere produced
that the President of the National Hatters'
Union looked at me askance because he had
seen me with a manufacturer's son. The
very air was electrically charged wnth union-
ism— every citizen a partisan. In Danbury
far more than in larger places unionism is a
human drama.
I went through factories. What I saw was
this: briefly, rabbit fur blown, soaked, rolled,
sized, dyed, pressed, baked, ironed, curled, and
finished into derby hats by workers, who labor
ten hours a day — nine on Saturdays — for
about eighteen dollars a week.
The two grave charges brought against the
union which controls these workers — both
women and men — were restriction of output
and boycotting. The boycott is carried on
against any Danbury hat that does not bear
inside its band the label of the National
Union. Word is sent to imions all over the
2744
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE LABOR UNIONS
country to boycott unlabeled hats, and
whenever a strike is on, and sometimes when
an employer persists in running a "fovd" or
independent shop, special agents go forth to
take personal charge of the boycott. The
hatters reciprocate favors done by other
tmions by refusing to buy non-imion goods
themselves. This, of course, is the ordinary
form of boycott carried on by the manufac-
turing unions. Like the sympathetic strike in
the biiilding trades, it is their effective vmion
weapon. " The label is a godsend to us,"
said a -union man to me with heartfelt enthusi-
asm. The boycott, however, is not unfamiliar.
The restriction of output was different. In two
months' stud}' of the unions it was the first
confessed system of definite restriction I had
found tying workmen's hands, with no pos-
sible chance for "rushing."
Eight dozen a day: that is the tmion limit
for a team of two men — "a fair day's work,"
the imion calls it; "a lazy team's stint," say
employers.
'Tn this very shop," said a manufactiu-er
who had once been a union man, "finishers
have sat on their benches and dangled their
legs from two till four o'clock in idleness, their
eight dozen finished at two o'clock, but
afraid to go imtil four for fear the union wotild
charge them with rushing. The extra hours
they simply loafed away."
"Did they object ?" I asked.
"They wouldn't dare," said he. "But
that's not all. In 'foul' shops in this town
are machines called side-lathes, on which the
derbies spin while the finishers smooth them
with sandpaper. I have a couple, too —
stored — covered with cobwebs. The union
says I can use them if I'll pay the hand- work
piece price for the hats turned out, though
the machines can double the speed of the hand
work or the top-lathe they permit. At that
rate we can't afford to use them. And what's
queer besides, the tmion wouldn't let a side-
lathe finisher take the double pay he'd get
at the hand-work scale, though I don't know
who the extra pay would go to; or else it
wotdd make him stop work at noon, when his
stint of four dozen was finished. Indirectly,
but conclusively, they say the side-lathe
sha'n't be used. We're as badly off as Eng-
land."
That night I met a labor leader at the union
meeting room.
"Hello, "said he; "what do thevsavof us?"
I asked him about the eight-dozen stint and
the side-lathe wreathed in cobwebs.
"Eight dozen," he said, "is a fair day's
work, I know, for I've worked at the bench —
it's as much as two average men can do;
and it's just about what will give our people
steady employment while the seasons are on.
You know, we don't work all the time. But
let rushing begin ! Men would overwork.
Even now I know many a man worn out at
thirty-five, with a sj^^stem full of mercviry from
the sizing, or lungs all soggy with breathed-
in bits of flying fur. The work wouldn't go
rotmd, and a smaller force would work a
shorter season. Then the manufacturers
would lower the piece price ; a man wotdd have
to do five or six dozen a day, or with the side-
lathe even more, to make three dollars. The
restriction's for our good."
"It isn't sound economics," I said. "In
the long run, business conditions will defeat
vou."
"Perhaps," he said, with full compre-
hension. "But when the economic law grinds
away our defenses, if it can, one-fourth of
our members here will be forced into idleness
and poverty — at least, temporarih\ It is my
affair as a union man not to stand and watch
the economic forces grind, but to help protect
my neighbors and their families. Business
may be selfishness; unionism isn't. One
manufacturer is pleased if he can freeze out
another; it pleases me to see , who lives
across the street, in fair prosperity. I don't
want to see his children barefoot in winter,
as they were in the lockout days, when the
manufacturers didn't give a d — n if they
starved."
I touched on the side-lathe question. Here
the union man was not quite frank. He said,
in face of the fact that the non-union factories
use them, that the machine was of no ad-
vantage : that side-lathed hats had also to be
hand-smoothed and thus were finished no
faster. Among union men I talked with in
the shops and about the town, opposition to
the machine was put on traditional grounds:
the side-lathe forced expert workmen out of
work. Accordingly the union was putting on
a balancing drag: if union employers were
undersold by "foul" shops using the lathe, did
not the "foul" shops suffer from the boycott ?
Here was the crux :
"Let them stop restricting," said a manu-
facturer. "Let us run the side-lathe and
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE LABOR UNIONS
2745
I
I
increase production at cheaper cost. A hat,
after all, is a luxury, to be worn long or
speedily thrown away as the pocket dictates.
So more hats would be sold. Our export
trade would grow. Export trade in staple
styles would mean steady employment. The
factories would run all the year. Every
hatting town in the country would feel the
impetus, and we'd hat the world."
I explained this typically American dream
to a union man.
"Pretty !" he said, "but the difficulty's here :
maybe the trade would grow, and maybe it
wouldn't. There's plenty of chance for
growth now, and plenty of foreign export
from this very town. What they ask us is to
try an experiment that will put a number of us
out of work — for a time, at least. It's not our
business to make experiments with the bread
and butter and the homes and wives and
children of our members. Even if we were
sure the expanded trade would eventually
come, the adjustment would be slow, and
meanwhile some of us would suffer. We
won't allow it. If the manufacturers will
show how the change can be made without
throwing us out of work, we'll consider it."
There is restriction, and the theory of
restriction in a nutshell. Economic laws
give place to human needs. No set of union
men will volunteer to be the victims of the
change; and no union will draft men to be
the victims.
Regard the next unfolding of the situation.
Like smoking menaces on the Danbury horizon
are other hatting towns — notably Fall River,
Massachusetts. Some of these towns are
non-union; their factories, like the few "foul"
shops in Danbury, use the side-lathe, and
hire boys where the unions insist on men.
Also, unlike the Danbury independent shops,
they employ women at the dye vats, and at
the blowers and sizers, according to the
Danbury people; keep superannuated help at
miserable wages; and thus cut down the pay
roll to the lowest figure. Where they com-
pete with the Danbury factories they can
undersell. Slowly, say the Danbury manu-
facturers, these menaces are eating up the
industry; just as English unions have allowed
English industry to decline, the hatters'
union, they say, will stupidly allow these out-
side shops to steal away the Danbury trade.
"They will kill the goose that lays the golden
egg."
"That's a good theory," said my ever-ready
union man — this man is a man who thinks,
" But the hard fact is that the union factories
in this town are growing — selling more hats
every year. We don't believe Fall River is
cutting in, and let me tell you we know the
middlemen as well as the employers do. We
make it our business to know them."
Incontestably the Danbury manufacturers
are shackled, and moreover, they are plagued
with petty dictations that irritate them more
than would a blunt demand for more wages.
They are incensed. On the union side is
the realization of a human problem that
appeals very little to employers, and it is to
solve this problem — how to get the highest
diffused prosperity — that they shackle, and
bind, and annoy. There ought to be a com-
mon understanding instead.
"We must form a trust, "say manufacturers.
"We had better eliminate the employer and
conduct cooperative factories," say union men.
In brief, both sides say, "Let the war go on."
Going from Danbury to non-union New
Britain, for my legislative agent had sug-
gested that I compare the towns, I found my
quest in a measure in vain. There was no
sound basis of accurate comparison. Con-
ditions were different because the industries
are different. An unsavory foreign quarter
in New Britain had no counterpart in Dan-
bury, for no Danbury mills hired the hundreds
of immigrant Poles who labor in the colossal
hardware factories of New Britain, as yet
too ignorant and unskilled to make good
union men.
When I found that union Danbury, out of
20,000 inhabitants, had 10,000 savings bank
deposits, and n'on-union New Britain, out of
30,000 inhabitants, 11,500 deposits, I also
found that, after all, such a fact meant little.
For through the New Britain post-office last
year $500,000 was sent by recent immigrants
back to their European homes. The unskilled
labor in the mills there, moreover, is paid, an
intelligent New Britain labor leader told me,
fully as much as it is worth. So despite the
difference in the towns, the foreign squalor
apparent in places in New Britain as against
the trig New England neatness of Danbury,
the intended comparison fell through.
From what I could learn from New Britain
manufacturers, the industrial order in the fac-
tories of the town is that old-fashioned order
in which the employer says to the workman.
2746
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE LABOR UNIONS
"I'll give you work at such wages. Take it
or leave it." He organizes his factory as a
teacher would grade a class of schoolbo5'S.
With the Americans, who do the more skilled
work, are Swedes, who, in the last generation,
were immigrants; in yeasty America they
have risen. Taking the lower places they
have left vacant are the South-of-Europe
people who are the immigrants of to-day.
The better skilled workers are paid, some
higher than the union scale in other towns,
some lower; the wages probably average
just as high, but they are scaled according to
the workman's ability. The foreigners are
poorly paid.
When I asked New Britain labor men
why the factories were so little organized,
they said: "The better men do not care to
organize; they probably would gain nothing
if they did. "
"But if the foreigners are living on an un-
American plane, why not organize them?"
"We don't want 'em. They're too stupid.
Thev couldn't understand the union idea.
We're waiting for the second generation —
trained in American schools. "
I asked a factory superintendent what
attitude his corporation bore to the unions.
" Xo attitude, " said he. " We place a man
and pay him wages according to his ability.
Whether he has a union card we do not in-
quire. But treat with a union we will not
and would not. "
His is a factory whose story is the story of
American business success, for its products
go far afield and its profits are high. It can
compete with the world. An operative of
ability has opportunity to advance as far as
his ability will permit ; the slower will stay
correspondingly far behind. The unskilled
work is done by foreigners. This is the New
Britain form of industry.
Danbury is already brought to the reputed
English condition, but it shows a diffused pros-
perity. New Britain, though a strikingly
American town in the one matter of inven-
tions, yet shows the spectacle of colossal
factories earning heavy profits for capital,
and exporting to the ends of the earth,
employing stupid foreign workers that, assimi-
lated, will no longer work for the meager
wages they now receive. It is past question
which town best subserves "American indus-
try" in the common understanding of the
term. But the two-sidedness of this matter
of "American industry," the human phase
of it, exhibited in Danbury, as against the
purely business side, I venture to emphasize
by the following story, the most dramatic I
have met in my studies of the labor problem.
It makes clear the union feeling on the broad
question.
Two match-boxes lie on my desk, given
me by officers of the Cigarmakers' Inter-
national Union. The sides are of celluloid.
One side reads, "Smoke no cigars that do
not bear this label;" below is the union label
in facsimile. The other side reads, "These
cigars are not union made;" below is a list of
widely advertised cigars. It is a form of
boycott.
"What is the story?" I asked a label agent.
"The story," he said, "is that those cigars
are made by the Trust. They are made by
machines that roll them out at the rate of
perhaps a thousand a day. A cigarmaker
can make by hand perhaps 150."
"Would you stop the machines?" I asked.
"No," he thundered, "we can't check
mechanical progress — we don't want to.
We want cigarmakers to run the machines at a
living wage. When the typesetting machine
came in, the typographical union insisted that
regular printers should run them at the regu-
lar wages. The machines moved printing
up a notch — they didn't lower wages. But
cigar-making machines are rtm by girls —
children ! And on starvation wages ! That's
what we want to stop."
"Like child labor in cotton mills ?" I asked.
"Just !" he snapped. "Admit that a father
among the unemployed, with yoxing daughters
earning from six to eight dollars a week on a
cigar-making machine, under a coarse and
perhaps vicious foreman — I could tell you
tales — is not so pretty an American sight as
a father earning eighteen dollars a week and
keeping his children at school. That is what
we work for — to help our children — ^to give
them a better start, please God, than we had.
Let the machines come in, by all means, but
let us run them. Don't fire us, to turn our
fingers skilled at cigar-rolling, and good for
nothing else, to idleness or to a new trade too
late — and put our children in our places."
"Is that being done?" I queried.
"Do those cigars sell?" he mocked. "Do
people buy the — , and the — , and the — ?
Or didn't you come by one of those brilliant
stores where they sell a whole pocketftil of
THE MORAL SOUNDNESS OF AMERICAN Lll-E
2747
machine-made cigars for a quarter and give
you a ticket for a gold watch in the bargain ?"
I ask him what he meant.
"Within the last three months," he said,
"thirty new cigar stores owned by a single
company have started in New York. Their
lights at night make the brilliantest spot in
many a block from Park Row to Harlem.
They sell cigars — non-union Trust-made
cigars — cheaper than any other stores in
town : good cigars for six cents, ten-cent cigars
for five cents, five-cent cigars seven for a
quarter, cigarettes at cut prices. They give
premiums, too, and are jammed with custom.
"Well," he went on, "the Trust controlsthem
— not openly, but, you see, they sell the scab
cigars for almost nothing. How long do you
think it will take them to drive independent,
stores from business ? How long before one
company will make all the cigars in the
country — by machines run by children and
girls; and how long before one company will
sell them all ? Can't you see a deadly force
squeezing smaller the margin of comfort in
the living of American labor?"
"Won't the consumer gain ?" I asked.
"A little," he admitted, "a very, very little.
You know where the gain will come. And
now tell me if our struggle isn't one where
the public swings against us for the bribe of
an extra cigar in every purchase and a coupon
for a nickel-plated match-box ? The union
fights a righteous battle for a higher standard
of American humanity — and it fights alone."
This human matter, this vital problem of
the elevation of our people as a whole, labor
and capital must discuss, and not in type-
written letters ten words long.
THE MORAL SOUNDNESS OF AMERICAN
LIFE
OBSERVATIONS ON THE HABITS AND THE CHARACTER OF LARGE GROUPS OF
PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT CLASSES OF SOCIETY AT SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS
— ONLY THE NEW YORK "FASHIONABLES" INDULGE IN DEMORALIZING PLEASURES
BY
JULIAN RALPH
OUR fashionables of New York and
Newport have kept so strictly to
themselves that, until last autumn,
the public was in ignorance of their modes of
living. The people knew only what they had
read in the newspapers, or had learned by
hearsay. But during August, and then
merely for a month, these heirs to many of the
greatest fortunes, estates and commercial
enterprises abandoned their fortress-like
mansions in Newport and played their parts
freely side by side with the public during the
race meeting at "the Springs" — that is, at
Saratoga.
It was as if the stout walls of the houses
of the very rich had melted away, leaving
the people free to stare into the drawing
rooms and gardens, the dining halls, the
card rooms, and even the precincts to which
madam and her daughter retreated for an
afternoon siesta over a book or beside an iced
drink. For at Saratoga the porches of the
cottages rented by the fashionables were but
extensions of the porches used by those who
paid but six dollars a day for board, and the
garden of the millionaires was also the garden
of the 1,500 poorer tenants of the caravan-
serai.
For nearly four weeks those who had
boasted the greatest privacy became the tar-
gets of 50,000 pairs of eyes during every day-
light hour. They ate with the crowd, played
at what the crowd played, drove where the
hackmen ruled the road, sought shelter
where the crowd registered its names above
and below their own. In this they closely
copied their exemplars, the aristocrats of
Europe, who in like manner disport them-
selves publicly at Ascot, at Hombvirg, at
Monte Carlo and elsewhere. Like their Euro-
pean models, they posed at Saratoga as the
guardians of sport, the main support of polo
2748
THE MORAL SOUNDNESS OF AMERICAN LIFE
and the race course. And yet the backbone
of the habits of the foreign nobles was missing
at Saratoga, and our rich fellow-citizens
proved but vain imitators — like so many
actors playing the written parts of kings and
nobles. For Europe has always known a
separate upper class. People there do not
stop to think of the remote time when there
were no nobles or will be none. And the part
of the nobles is one to which they were born.
The supporting of pleasure and excitement
is at once their duty, their trust and their
heritage. To the masses all that they do
seems becoming and natural. Even when
they are seen to transgress the conventions
of simpler folk the people merely shrug a
shoulder and say "they are different." And
yet, as the years go on, these transgressions
are more and more hidden behind the high
walls of the aristocrats' gardens and the thick
fronts of their mansions. Such disregard
for the opinions of the plain people as was
exhibited in public at Saratoga last August
was, I venture to say, paralleled nowhere in
Europe during the same season.
And here was a public with a young and
tender conscience largely of Puritan manu-
facture, with a belief in the equality of man,
and with the loud noise in its ears of a debate
upon the best method of disciplining the trusts,
of revising the tariff, which is the hothouse
of millionairing, of settling a great strike
among the producers of a prime necessity
of life. And this was a public with votes —
wide-reaching, deep-probing, slow but very
powerful votes.
What these favorites of fortune did in Sara-
toga may have seemed to the onlookers very
European. Certainly, they knew it was not
an American way of spending a vacation. It
belonged to no part of our population, our
country or our history. I have described the
Saratogan scenes as constituting "an orgy
of gambling," and I cannot modify or better
the phrase. The men gambled all day and far
into the night, at stocks or poker in the morn-
ing, at the races in the afternoon, at faro in a
public gambling "hell" at night. Fathers,
mothers, sons and daughters "played the
races" together, fathers looked at their heirs
at cards in the gaming house, young wives,
young boys and young ladies, were taken to
dine in the gambling house (in a room com-
manding a view of the faro and roulette
tables), and occasional bets upon the roulette
wheel, while all waited to be served, were
made by the men at these dinner parties to add
piquancy to the evening's diversions. I do
not mean further to dwell upon this extra-
ordinary outbreak or exposure of moral
disease. Suffice it that when, at last, many
of our most distinguished leaders of high life
left their Fifth Avenue fastnesses to take their
pleasures with the people, they chose as their
comrades the jockeys, the tipsters and the
bookmakers of the race track and the black-
legs of the gambling houses.
A stranger in America might easily have
said, "This, then, is how Americans spend
their summer holidays, and these are the
morals of this people." Even I, who had
been abroad for seven years, might possibly
have imagined that we had become demoral-
ized by prosperity and success in war and that
Saratoga properly represented the American
watering place of today.
But I was to learn better. I had gone to
Saratoga from Vermont, and I returned to the
same enchanted land to finish the summer.
Of all places it was the best to see every phase
and ingredient of American society taking its
leisure. I have called it the Recreation State,
but it is equally truly the American Tyrol.
Here, as in the Tyrolean Alps, are the same
rounded breast-like hills clad to their tops
with soft rich cloaks of furry green. Here
are similar lakes and lakelets (nearly all far
more beautiful than those of Austria) lying
among the green hills like great turquoises
tossed upon puckered sheets of velvet. Here
the white roads wind in the same errant way
along the sides of these bosoms of Dame
Nature and in the same way as in the Tyrol
are met by wood roads and farm trails. Here
are the stimmer hotels perched upon the
shoulders of hills or set beside the edges of the
dimpling lakes. The farmers take boarders
and the villages are the rendezvous of strang-
ers, so that far better than in the older Tyrol
is this place to see a nation's people at play.
Here, from all points west of New England,
but principally from New York and New Jer-
sey, come thousands upon thousands of
summer vacationers. To judge of my right
to make them pose as typical Americans, I
may indicate their grades of income and com-
fort by recording the fact that they are
charged from ten dollars to fifty dollars a
week — sums which comprehend a classifica-
tion wide enough to take in the store clerk,
THE MORAL SOUNDNESS OV AMERICAN LIFE
2749
Ihe traveling man, tlie partner in business,
the teacher, the professor, the shopkeeper, the
student and the suburban leader of society.
There were three hotels around me, housing
400 persons at a time, 1,000 in the entire
season. I knew many of these and studied
all of them — at play, at rest, at meals, in their
family circles and the men when apart from
the women.
Proudly and delightedly I say that the
American has not changed, and the life of the
fashionables at "the Springs" is not to his
taste or likely soon to become so. Here
were the young of both sexes by the score,
and beside them were the men who had made
their way and retired, as well as those who
were still climbing the hill to success. It was
after I had stayed at a hotel a month and left
it, that I heard it said, about a former fellow-
boarder, that "he liked to sit up over a game
of poker whenever he could make up a party."
While I had been there he did not find any
cronies, and so I never saw or knew a single
gambling game being played by any of the
thousand persons around me. The young
people danced every night and rowed, fished,
drove or climbed the hills every day, invari-
ably in parties from six to twenty, excluding
all possibility of evil. The men walked,
fished, swam, drove, and in the evening played
cards and read newspapers in the public rooms
of the hotels. The card games were whist,
euchre, hearts. The matrons read novels,
knitted, visited one another, gave teas, went
out driving, climbed the smaller hills —
reveled in the joy of living without servants
and the cares of their houses. Bowling was
a daily amusement for some, and at one hotel
baseball was often played — by regular
"nines," by the boarders, even by the young
ladies against the young men, in one instance.
There was not a single theme for scandal
between June ist and September 15th. In
none of these hotels did the thoughtless be-
havior or the misconduct of any man or
woman, boy or girl (except in the case of a
boat-keeper — and he merely got drunk), pro-
vide gossip or arouse censure among this
thousand of Americans. I was astonished to
note that the only persons suspected of love-
making and habituated to the least-lighted
corners of the porches in the evenings were
in every case the young widows. The rela-
tions of the boys and girls and of the young
men and young women were invariably those
of playmates and good companions. I had
reason to watch this phase of summer life
very anxiously and closely, and I write with
the utmost confidence and knowledge. Out-
door sports, co-education, life at large resorts,
and the strong and startling growth of inde-
pendence among women, have greatly de-
veloped this condition in the seven years I
have been absent. Apjjarently only the men
of the South now feel obliged to ])lay the cour-
tier to every lady, and only the ladies from
below Mason and Dixon's line still permit the
practice.
Though I chronicle a grade and degree of
virtue nowhere else to be found in such broad
simplicity and purity (except as the sexes
meet innocently in Ireland), I saw much the
same condition in Summerville, S. C, last
winter, and also at Lakewood, N. J. In
Vermont there was an intensification of that
democracy which is the pride of most Ameri-
cans. The visitors from the cities gave them-
selves no airs because of birth or wealth or
social success, but tempered their democracy
by allowing it to bring together only those
who were congenial to one another — except
in dancing, eating, and the arrangement of
outdoor games, when all came together in
equality and good-fellowship. The natives
caricatured democracy and made it nauseous ;
in fact, they outraged it by constantly insist-
ing upon their "rights," as if they were aristo-
crats at heart. This strange and repellant
feature of a decadent Americanism requires
an article for itself.
Both Summerville and Lakewood held
wealthier persons than any I was with in
Vermont. At Summerville there was no gam-
bling with cards and no interest in the stock
market. In Vermont I do not recall more
than three persons who turned first to the
stock quotations on getting the day's news-
paper. In Lakewood the rise and fall of
stocks was of extreme interest to a few — but
only to a few. Lakewood was the only place
at which I saw wom.en drink, and wines and
spirits served at meals, and there it was not a
general custom. Thus, during eight months
of this year of grace, I have seen practically
every representative sort of American folks
who can afford to take vacations. And the
New York fashionables, with a small handful
of rich Western speculators as their imitators,
are the only ones who find pleasure in for-
bidden fields.
THE QUIET CONTROL OF A VAST
ESTATE
A GLIMPSE AT THE PERSONALITY AND THE WORKING HABITS
OF COL. JOHN JACOB ASTOR— THE AMERICAN FAMILY THAT
HAS SHOWN A CONSERVING GENIUS IN EVERY GENERATION
BY
HENRY HARRISON LEWIS
OXE day not long ago a marine engineer
received a polite letter asking him to
call at the office of the Astor Estate.
Mr. John Jacob Astor wished to consult him.
'Til have to go all dressed up," he said to
his wife.
"I should think so," was the decisive
reply. "Put on your best things or you'll
look out of place."
The mechanic, painfvdly arrayed in unac-
customed starch, arrived at the office, which
he found to be an unpretentious two-story
double brick building on a side street leading
from Broadway. The only indication of
possible wealth were a number of massive
iron bars guarding the front windows, similar
to those sometimes found in front of banks
or deposit vaults. On the inside were glass
partitions, and counters with little brass-
barred windows, and several serious-faced
clerks poring over account books. One of
these asked his name, and conducted him
up a short flight of stairs.
The mechanic looked about him and saw
a dingy, uninteresting interior with a common-
place safe. At the head of the stairs was a
small room with several doors leading into
various other rooms. Into one of these he
was ushered. The only occupant was a tall
man with an erect military bearing. The
apartment was plainly furnished with a roll-
top desk, several bookcases, a centre table,
and three or four plainly framed pictures. A
red carpet covered the floor. The only out-
side light came from two windows opening
into a very narrow court. Out in this court
nothing could be seen but a blank, white wall.
Of the btisy street only a few yards away
there was no sign. Even the din of traffic
from Broadway was faint.
The tall man was bending over a blue-
print spread out upon the table. He glanced
up as the clerk said :
"Mr. Astor, this is Mr. So and So. He has
an appointment with you, I believe."
Mr. Astor wished to see him about the
details of an invention he was perfecting.
The blue-prints revealed a comprehensive
plan for a new marine steam turbine which
Mr. Astor had made. The engineer listened
carefully, but he scarcely could conceal his
amazement at the thorough knowledge of
marine mechanics exhibited by Mr. Astor.
He was quick to realize that the new turbine
promised to be a radical improvement over
the one in common use. When he went
home that afternoon his wife awaited the
description of his call.
"Tell me about it," she said. "What did
he look like ? Was his office full of fine
things?"
He shook his head.
"Then what did you see, John?"
"I saw a man," came the answer slowly,
"and a mighty clever man, too. If he wasn't
rich, the world would be richer. I tell you,
Mary, if John Jacob Astor's hands weren't
tied by so much wealth and so man)' social
obligations, he'd make an entirely different
sort of name."
Col. John Jacob Astor may be described as
"traveler, author, soldier, inventor," and he
has earned all these titles. He has a passion-
ate fondness for outdoor sports, and he keenly
enjoys automobiling. His palatial yacht,
the well-known Nourmahal, is put to good use
during the summer, and her owner often
makes extensive cruises, but it is safe to say
that very few men, even of those compelled
to labor for their living, work harder. He
has under his care the administration of an
estate valued at almost two hundred millions
THE QUIET CONTROL OE A VAST ESTATE
2751
%
of dollars. The greater part of it is in realty.
Although Colonel Astor has a staff of careful
lieutenants who look after the details, many
decisions are daily required of him. The
extent of the Astor holdings in New York City
is graphically expressed in the words of an
impressionable French visitor, who wrote
home, apropos of American millionaires:
There is a fascination in his Qohn Jacob Astor's)
vast wealth that hfts it beyond the commonplace
riches of other American millionaires. True, it is
real estate, but, voila! it is not a single house, nor a
score, but whole streets and avenues of houses.
There are blocks and half-blocks, brick tenenients
and marble palaces, great vacant spaces worth
fortunes, and buildings so clustered together that the
sight of the blessed earth has passed forever. This
man, this individual, who has only two arms and
two legs and only one head, yes, and even a limit
to his capacity of enjoyment, could stroll down
Broadway or Fifth Avenue, and stretching his arms
hither and yon, say, "Mine ! mine, all mine!"
Because of his war record Colonel Astor is
nearer to the people than any other man of his
class. It will not soon be forgotten that at
the outbreak of the war with Spain in 1898
he was one of the first to offer his services to
the Government in many ways, placing his
splendid yacht at the disposal of the Navy
Department, and equipping, at his own
expense, a battery of artillery for service in
the Philippines. The equipping of the battery
(which, by the way, made an enviable record)
was the tribute of his wealth, but the offering
of his services on the field of battle was a
tribute of his manhood. Apropos of Colonel
Astor's share in the attack on Santiago is the
following anecdote told by one of the war
correspondents in the field:
In '98, during those hot sweltering days so preg-
nant of import to the American troops arrayed in
the jungle before Santiago and El Caney, that I saw
a number of half-naked soldiers, crouching in the
tall grass, begin to move restlessly, and a whisper
passed from man to man down the panting line.
There were bullets moving, and the air seemed full
of the curious singing noises which accompany the
deadly Mauser ball in its flight.
To raise one's head was to invite disaster, but
above the waving tufts of green appeared one and
then another until at least a score of men were gaz-
ing intently toward a little knoll on the right flank.
"That's not him," I heard a corporal mutter in-
credulously.
" 'Course it is," replied his next neighbor. "I
guess I know Colonel Astor. I saw him in Tampa
before we left. Sa3^ did you hear he has given a
whole battery, guns and all, to the Government for
use in the Philippines?"
"He'll give his life too if he don't get off that
knoll," was the grim reply. " Fancy a man with his
money fighting down here, and risking fever.
Humph ! If I had "
"Lie down, men!" sternly commanded an
officer.
The line of heads slowly dropped from sight,
but each man, before he vanished in the grass,
snatched another glance at the tall erect figure in
the mud-stained khaki uniform which interested
them far more at that moment than did the Spanish
enemy or Spanish bullets.
It was the human interest in a man whose
patriotism rested heavier in the .scale than vast
wealth or social position or life itself.
It is interesting to pass a day in the little
two-story building in Twenty-sixth Street,
near Broadway, the headquarters of the Astor
Estate, and watch the noiseless revolutions of
its wheels of business. There is an air of
repose strangely inconsistent with the large
interests so quietly controlled. Colonel Astor's
day's work is exacting and would be difficult
to a less competent man. During the winter
he visits his office five days a week, generally
spending six or seven hours either there or
in attendance at board meetings. Since
he is a director in many of the great financial
institutions, including such well-known con-
cerns as the Western Union Telegraph Com-
pany, the Equitable Life Insurance Society,
New York Life Insurance and Trust Company,
(Trustee) Illinois Central Railway, Mercantile
Trust Company, Title Guarantee and Trust
Company, Astor National Bank, the Plaza
Bank, National Park Bank, and the Delaware
and Hudson Company, as well as numerous
smaller corporations, it will be seen that his
duties as a board member are by no means light.
His staff of lieutenants consists principally
of a triumvirate acting as trustees of the
Astor Estate. These three men, one of whom
is a noted New York real estate operator,
attend to all the details of the business under
Colonel Astor's direct supervision. Assisted
by a corps of minor officials they collect the
rentals, see after repairs, make investments,
and yearly add to the enormous wealth of the
estate. In addition to the triumvirate, there
is a private secretary who has supervision of
Colonel Astor's personal affairs. The secre-
tary's principal task is to attend to the large
mail and to see that certain instructions
received from his chief are carried out.
The daily mail of a man in John Jacob
Astor's position offers a study in human
nature. From sixty to seventy-five letters
are received every twenty-four hours, and of
this number at least one-half are begging
letters pure and simple. He is a shining mark
for the shafts of every person either too lazy
or too strong to work honestly for his living.
The requests for financial assistance are not
2752
THE QUIET CONTROL OF A VAST ESTATE
limited to the United States, but come from
all over the world. One letter, which is kept
as a curiosity, is a gem. It was dated at
Stockholm, Sweden, and ran as follows :
Mr. John Jacob Astor,
Richest Man in all the World,
New York, U. S. A.
Honored Sir: —
I would like you to send me at once 30.000
thalers; a mere bagatelle to you. but a fortune to
me. Send the check at once as I need the money
very bad.
Y'rs to command,
In the same mail came a long letter, evi-
dently from one unaccustomed to a pen,
describing in glowing terms the recent dis-
covery of a gold mine in Canada. The writer
said that he alone knew the location, that he
had had the quartz analyzed and found it
to be extremely rich, and that he would let
Mr. Astor in on the grotmd floor if he would
advance the working capital. A request for
an immediate advance of five thousand dollars
for preliminary expenses formed the contents
of the closing paragraph.
Another letter, written from an uptown
address, contained a pathetic appeal for money
to enable the writer to send his invalid wife
to the countrv. The sum asked for was
modest — only twenty-five dollars; but on
investigation — for it was one of the appeals to
which consideration was given — the address
was found to be that of a saloon.
In the nature of the case very few of these
letters reach Colonel Astor. If he gave them
his personal attention his time would be fully
occupied to the exclusion of his business. If
he granted every request, even his vast wealth
would not suffice. The legitimate demands
upon his purse for charity are very large, and
he responds to them regularly.
A student, principally of scientific subjects,
from his boyhood. Colonel Astor has given
much time to invention. His interest in good
roads led him to construct and patent a
contrivance for removing the pulverized
waste material from macadam roads by
means of an air blast. The invention was
exhibited at the Columbian Exposition and
attracted favorable comment.
His next venture, not so practicable, was a
device, based on thoroughly scientific prin-
ciples, to enable farmers to water their fields
at will. The idea involved the removal to
the upper and cooler atmosphere, through a
closed conduit, of a volume of warm, moist
air, which would be condensed and precipi-
tated as a rain.
His latest mechanical invention, which
promises to be of practical utility, and
which bears international patents, is his
marine turbine engine, to drive vessels at
high speed. It has no stationary parts other
than the journals and foundation frames
which carry it, the casing of the turbine
revolving as well as the shaft, but in an oppo-
site direction. It is proved that the extremely
high speed required in other turbines is a
disadvantage which the Astor device cor-
rects. The speed is reduced one-half but the
same power is retained at the propellers.
Colonel Astor is an ardent sportsman, too.
He is intensely interested in outdoor athletics,
and is a devotee of the automobile. The
extensive breeding stables established by his
father at "Femcliff" he still maintains,
although he now raises high-class hackneys
instead of racers, as formerly. His 3'acht is
an ocean steamer in miniature, and she is
placed in commission for his use every sum-
mer. He shows his interest in yachting by
presenting yearly for competition what are
known as the Astor cups.
His latest innovation in athletics is the
building of an extensive and costly athletic
court at "Ferncliflf." It is of one story, but
it covers a great deal of ground. Under the
one roof are a swimming pool sixty-five feet
in length, two squash courts, a tennis court,
a rifle range, a bowling alley, a billiard room,
dressing rooms, and a number of bedrooms
for guests. It is intended to hold house
parties during the winter and to enjoy what
are practically outdoor sports under cover.
Colonel Astor has written a novel, too,
entitled "A Journey in Other Worlds," a semi-
scientific work of fiction, which attracted not
a little attention here and abroad.
This glimpse of the man who is now the
manager of the great Astor estate shows the
safe quality that has distinguished the family
to a preeminent degree. It has been con-
spicuously rich longer than any other Ameri-
can family, and a great, if not the greater
part, of the Astor fortune has been kept in
real estate. It is essentially a real estate
fortune, for it grew to its great proportions
by the rise of land on Manhattan Island.
The conserving genius of the family is as
noteworthy as the accumulating genius that
has distinguished so many Americans.
I
JOHN JACOB ASTOR
THE PRESIDENT ON HIS TOURS
HOW MR. ROOSEVELT MEETS AND TALKS WITH THE PEOPLE— THE
CHARACTER OF THE MAN IX HIS SPEECHES— HIS EARNESTNESS AND
HIS ORATORY— HIS WHOLE-SOULED ENJOYMENT OF HIS WEARING TASK
BY
LINDSAY DEXISOX
WHO FOR FOIR YEARS HAS ACCOMPANIED MR. ROOSEVELT ON HIS JOURNEYS
Illustrated from stereoscopic photographs copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood, New York
THE brazen clamor of ''Hail to the
Chief" — usually the band is more
remarkable for earnest effort than
for harmony — stops at the signal of the
chairman's upraised hand. The chairman,
GREETING COLONEL EDGERLEV ^T CHATTANOOGA
PARK
his voice nearly always shaking because he
knows that the supreme moment of his life
has come, casts aside the fervid oration of
introduction he has prepared and shouts:
"Gentlemen! I have the honor to intro-
duce the President of the United States!"
There is instant uproar. The band revives.
The drums and the trumpets make many
noises and as much as they can. Flags and hats
and handkerchiefs wave above the heads of
the people. The President rises and stands
at the rail. The noise is doubled. He bows.
It is a nod of greeting in all directions ; a man
might greet his familiar friends so. The noise
is tripled. He raises one hand or both. Im-
mediately there is silence in front of him. Off
toward the edge of the audience the noise
dies more slowly. He does not wait for it to
die altogether. And so the President begins
to speak.
It is easy for the reporter to fall into the
way of using the phrase "ringing speech."
But the President's voice always rings when
he speaks. It has a peculiar timbre, especially
when he is speaking in the open air, which
has the effect of metallic vibration. There
is no sweetness in that ring. Xor does it aid
directly in making his words distinctly heard.
But it is penetrating. The sound, if not the
words, goes to the farthest part of the crowd.
It catches the attention of each man and
woman, and in time even of the small boy.
After that evervbodv hears what the President
IS savmg.
ANSWERING THE SALUT.\TIONS AT LOWELL,
.M.-\SSACHUStTTS
In running back over the memory of four
\'ears of following Mr. Roosevelt on his speak-
ing tours, as candidate for the governorship
of the State of Xew York, as Governor and
candidate for the Yice-Presidency, and as
President, it has been impossible not to re-
mark the most striking trait of the man as a
public speaker — no matter what his subject
IIIM rRi:Sll)KNT ON Ills lOl KS
-'755
or his situation. It is liis intensity. He
"goes at his aiulienec hard." He is uttering
today manv of the identieal expressions of liis
ideals of eitizenship whieh he uttered in his
campaign for the governorshi]) in i89<S. He
savs "tlie tliree cardinal, eoniinon])lace, old-
fashioned virtues of common-sense, connnon
honesty and common courage" with as much
earnest, almost angry aggressiveness, now as
then. He holds his left elbow loosely braced
against his side and his hand out horizontally,
and pounds away in the outstretched ]xdm
with a vehemence which it is hard for a
stranger to his ways to believe does not pro-
ceed from a fresh discovery of the ideas. Pie
drives his ideas home, almost roughly.
It is this earnestness, this almost desperate
determination that he shall not be misunder-
stood; that his hearers shall be convinced that
tlie other side of the question is untenable,
and as trivial and as wicked as he believes the
other side of all questions to be, that makes
him a great campaigner. People come to
hear him out of curiosity, because he is Presi-
dent, just as curiosity brought them to see
him when he was fresh from the Santiago
campaign and was a candidate for Governor.
Now, as then, before he is done talking to
them, their curiosity is satisfied; to their
visual memory of the man is added the con-
viction that he is honest to the backbone.
Those who follow the President hear com-
ments that seem to diverge a great deal.
About two-thirds of those who leave a mass
meeting giving voice to their opinions say:
" He is awful ordinary looking, ain't he ? But
any one can see he is honest." The other
third say: " How fine he looks when he says
those things!" They all mean the same
thing, though they express it so differently.
While Theodore Roosevelt is speaking, the
one evident thing is that a man is speaking
to his fellow-men with a man's earnestness
and a man's fearlessness. Nor is it too much
to say that that impression, and the willing-
ness and ability to back it up with deeds,
are Mr. Roosevelt's political stock in trade.
The President is not a phrase-maker by
profession. Sometimes, as much to his own
surprise as to that of his following, he strikes
a note in his public speeches which is epi-
grammatic— such, for instance, as in his speech
in Fitchburg a few weeks ago, when he said,
addressing the Civil War and Spanish War
veterans before him:
HIS VOICE ki:.\CHKS TO TlIK KAKTHhST LI.MITS OF
THE CROWD
A DIRECT APPEAL AT RIVER POINT, R. I.
HE GOES AT HIS AUDIENCE HARD
2756
THE PRESIDENT ON HIS TOURS
DURING THE PRAYER AT NAHANT
FACING THE VAST AUDIENCE Ai i . ^ i^.s^jl
DELIVERING HIS SPEECH ON THE TRUSTS
"Times change; weapons change; tactics
change — the spirit of the American soldier
does not change ! "
It is easy to remember just how the Presi-
dent said that thing. He was leaning far out
over a platform rail, making quarter-circle
gestures wuth his extended right forearm,
looking straight into the faces of the men to
whom he was talking. They were following
his words so closeh" — when the President
looks toward a man as he speaks it is almost
impossible for that man not to believe that
the President is not addressing him and him
alone — that they neither applauded nor
cheered. But the multitude behind them
cheered. The President's hand went up
with the quick motion of one who would
signal an approaching horseman to stop
short .
"Wait, W'ait!" he cried, shaking his head.
" Let me finish ! "
With a laugh of sympathy for the impulsive
sincerity of the man's desire to have his say
out at the expense of applause, they quieted
down again and listened to him. Some such
incident, not always quite so marked because
the President seldom says anything so much
in the oratorical style, happens at almost
every public meeting that he addresses.
No man who had a pride in his oratory
could find it in his heart to spoil a period as the
President does every time he is applauded
before he has developed to the full the idea
he is expressing. But the trait is thoroughly
consistent with the dogged grinding drive
with which Mr. Roosevelt hamm.ers home his
homilies; it adds mightily to the conviction
that he is altogether sincere.
Because Theodore Roosevelt made his
political beginnings in ways in which no poli-
tician had ever done things before, we heard
a great many people say that he was "an
able sort of man, but no politician." We
hear less of that sort of talk now. But
we hear even yet that he is no public speaker.
In the same sense that he does not usually
utter musical, balanced sentences that carry
his audience along with them, oblivious to all
except the speaker's voice, the President is not
a great public speaker. But in that he con-
vinces his audiences that he tells the truth as
he sees the truth, and does the right as it is
given to him to see the right, he is eminently
successful.
When the President is speaking to a great
Till': PRESIDENT ON HIS TOURS
2757
crowd, thorctorc, there is seldom any pro-
longed applause. The word "cheers" and
"applause" in l)rackets in the printed reports
of his speeches mean spontaneous outbursts
of ai)proval which have been checked by the
desire to know what the President is going to
say next. Now and then, when the interrup-
tion comes at a pause in both thought and
words, he will take breath while the audience
has its way. But that is not often.
Those who hear Mr. Roosevelt speak for the
first time are apt to think that he has a sore
throat or that his voice is exhausted. He
has a way of letting his vocal control get away
from him when he is making a telling point:
of which he is conscious as a telling point.
At such times his voice rises to something very
like a falsetto. In conversation, when he is
making such points much more freely than
in a public speech, the same raising of the
pitch of his voice is much more frequent.
Yet it is not really a vocal defect. It is the
speaker's unconscious signal of a good-
humored crisis in his argument. It is his
chuckle at a joke which the audience will
laugh at when its turn comes.
It must never be forgotten by students of
the President's public utterances that he is a
man who must always, because of the neces-
sary dignity of his place, keep his inborn sense
of humor under control. President Roose-
velt's humor is perhaps a more strongly
marked characteristic in him than the humor
of any President since Abraham Lincoln,
though it is of an entirely different sort from
Lincoln's. In his conversation every utter-
ance bristles with altogether original expres-
sions, rich in irony and invective. It is fair
to quote an example. In speaking of a cer-
tain political opponent of great ingenuity he
said recently:
" Don't speak of him as my enemy. I like
him. He is interesting. It is pleasant to see
how many ways he has of not doing the thing
he has not exactly promised to do."
And again:
"Oh, I think Brother is a sincere
friend. But his money nerve is very sensi-
tive. If he acts peculiarly when it twitches,
we must find a way to forgive him."
A man who talks with his friends, who
talks to himself, wdio thinks, in such a
strain, must keep a firm grip on himself when
he speaks in high places. We are pretty well
past speaking of Theodore Roosevelt's lack of
MAKING AN EMPHATIC POINT
A CHARACTERISTICALLY QUICK THRUST
A BURST OF ELOQUENCE
2758
THE PRESIDENT ON HIS TOURS
A MAN-TO-MAN EXHORTATION
HE DRIVES HIS IDEAS HOME ALMOST ROUGHLY'
AS MUCH EARNEST CONSIDERATION GIVEN A SMALL
CROWD AS A LARGE ONE
self-control; we are beginning to realize
that he controls far, far more than is within
the comprehension of most of our public men.
The break in his speaking voice means, per-
haps, that he has made up his mind to let
himself go — just so far.
Roughly calculating, the President has
traveled about thirty thousand miles in the
last four years making public speeches. He
is just as eager for this sort of work today as he
was at the beginning. He is m.ore eager. In
the beginning he did not know exactly what
he could do. He knows now that he will have
an attentive audience wherever he goes.
And he enjoys himself on his public tours.
It could be nothing but a joy to any man of
competent physique to find the enthusiasm of
the American people rising strong and clear to
meet him wherever he goes. Mr. Roosevelt
does not like ever\-body. There is a certain
type of man, represented, perhaps, by one in
every thousand, whom he would like very
well to see wiped off the earth. But he likes
most folks. He likes the average man. And
after all there is no way of striking the average
of the whole people of the United States
quite so satisfactorily as by going out in a
special train and having them all come down
to the railroad station to meet you. The lazy,
the indifferent, the ostentatiously c^^nical stay
at home. But the average natural man and
woman of quick emotions come to the meet-
ing and hear and let themselves be heard.
Mr. Roosevelt has found that by standing
in the presence of great gatlierings of such
people he gains their confidence. He knows
them and they know him. The more of
such mutual self-confidence that can be estab-
lished, so he feels, the better for the country.
For if he makes mistakes as President, the
people will know that the mistakes were made
in good faith, and they will rather join with him
in correcting the error than devote themselves
to the throwing of stones. So it is that after
a day of many speeches and of the utmost
physical hardship — heat and rain, and jostling
crowds, and jolting rides in springless car-
riages— the night will find the President keen
and merry and warm-hearted toward all the
world : for the simple reason that all day long
he has been face to face and hand to hand
with real Americans. In the highest sense of
the word he has felt the pulse of the people
and knows that it is as healthy as his own.
At the end of such a dav his voice rings more
Tllli TRKSIDKNT ON HIS TOURS
2759
clearly. The slap of his fist in his luiiul as
he marks the conclusion of an arj^unicnt is
shar{)er. The sweep of his arm, brushing,'
aside a fallacy, is more decisive and inclusive.
The most unsympathetic of human l)eings
(.anudt help feeling that the President likes
the people even i)ettcr than tlie ])eoplc like
tlie President.
This is true in spite of the difficulty of the
ordeal which confronts tlie President when he
is called upon to make a short speech —
a speech of from three to ten minutes in
length. Mr. Roosevelt's one fear is the fear
of being misunderstood. This fear rises like
a spectre in front of him when he tries to be
very brief. The five-minutes' speech, as Mr.
Harrison and McKinley used it, was a quick,
genial collection of epigrams with a local ap-
plication. Mr. Roosevelt would undoubtedly
like to make such speeches, but the moment
he starts on them he finds that he must first
come to a common understanding with his
audience. In getting at this understanding
his time is consumed, and the train must move
on. This sort of thing tears the nerves, and
even Mr. Roosevelt cannot stand more than
three or four days of it at a time without
showing the strain.
Fortunately, however, closely crowded days
do not usually follow each other continuously
on speaking trips. There is always a day in
every three or four when there are but one or
two speeches and an opportunity for a full
and exhaustive treatment of the subject in
hand. It is on such days that one realizes the
change that the last four years have worked
in Mr. Roosevelt as a public speaker. Such
a day, for instance, was that in Boston, late in
August, when he spoke before an audience in
Symphony Hall. All things combined to lend
inspiration. The hall itself, one of the latest
built of those beautiful public buildings in the
construction of which Boston is leading the
whole country; the audience, a gathering of
people of higher average mental training than
could have been gathered into a public meet-
ing anywhere else in the country; the day,
one which had begun in the intellectual and
patriotic, if frosty-clear, enthusiasm of Xahant
and had been continued in the rougher and
less calculated approval of Lynn's public
square. It was the place and time for a sum-
ming up. There was no need for the pre-
liminary step of convincing his hearers of his
sincerity. The President knew that these
A JOKE IS DKAR TO HIM
NO ORATORICAL GRACE BUT GRIM STRAIGHT-
FORWARDNESS
HIS WORDS COME AS OF OLD FROM BETWEEN
CLENCHED TEETH
I
2760
THE PRESIDENT ON HIS TOURS
AN EARNEST DECLARATION TO THE CITIZENS
OF MAINE
AS THE TRAIN BEGINS TO MOVE IN TENNESSEE
WITH J. J. HANRAHAN AND F. W. ARNOLD OF THE
LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS AND FIREMEN AT
CHATTANOOGA
people had known him and had approved of
him long before they ever dreamed that he
would one day hold high public office. There
was no need in an atmosphere so clearly
sympathetic as this of an introductory clear-
ing away of misconceptions.
"With his hands behind his back most of the
time, sometimes gesturing by way of setting
one situation or one phase of his subject
more clearly against another, Mr. Roosevelt
talked to that great audience as though it
were one man and that man representative of
all that is best in this people. Words came
without calling or choosing. The high ability
of the audience to appreciate what it was
receiving had its reflected eflfect. There was
no holding back for the dullard or the ignorant.
The higher the strain of thought, the loftier
the ideal, the higher mounted the power of
expression. The audience became tense with
intellectual delight and with warmth of affec-
tion for the man who was proving himself.
Time and again, in one quarter of the hall or
another, the irresistible impulse to break out
in cheers burst the tense strain of attention.
Each time, so well was that attention concen-
trated on the speaker, he held it, not by throw-
ing out his hand or by breaking off to ask for
silence, but by the slightest motion of the
head, the straightening of a finger. For forty
minutes was the oration continued — forty
minutes of uninterrupted eloquence. At its
end there was no man in the place who dared
to say to himself that Theodore Roosevelt
was not an orator.
Yet a month later, in a little Eastern
Tennessee village of two houses, a store and
a watering tank, when the President cut a
five-minutes' opportunity for a speech to a
one-minute apolog}- for not making a speech,
merelv because he wanted time to exchange
pleasantries with three tow-headed young-
sters who reminded him of his own brood at
Ovster Bay, he was not one bit less in sympa-
thy with his crowd than he was in Symphony
Hall in Boston.
The succession of blaring discordant bands,
the succession of gasping and overcome chair-
men, and the succession of cheering multi-
tudes, may seem unendingly monotonous
and wearisome to the newspaper reader, but
to the President, an American discovering
Americans, and discovering himself to them,
there is no monotony in them and no weari-
ness.
THt LtCTURli HALL SKATING i,4"o PtOHLE
Photograph taken by flaalilight
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE
MASSES
THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY— HOW IT
ACTS BOTH AS INVESTIGATOR AND POPULAR TEACHER OF THE FACTS
IT POSSESSES— THE ALMOST LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES OF ITS FUTURE
BY
FRANK M. CHAPMAN
ASSOCIATE CUKATOK AT THE MUSEUM
WHEN one day a gentleman from
Xew York was in the natural his-
tory department of the British
Museum, in London, he was congratulated,
to his great astonishment, by a member of the
museum staff upon having in his own city the
American Museum of Natural History.
" Lm looking forward," went on the
Englishman, " with more pleasure than I
can express to seeing your institution. In
fact, I intend going to America shortly with
that end in view."
Soon after reaching home the American
visited the handsome building on Seventy-
seventh Street which, beautiful as it is, is
only a prophecy of the completed American
Museum, and he says he understands now
the foreigner's enthusiasm. The mass of the
American public know as little of this insti-
tution and its varied and important work as
he did. The high scientific standing of the
museum is acknowledged, but its popular
success is not so fully realized.
On December 2 2, 1877, President Rutherford
B. Hayes declared open to the public the
first finished section of the museum. In con-
formance with the original plan, which even
now surprises one by its scope, section after
section has been added until, in 1900. one-
fourth of the projected structure was finished.
I shall not attempt to describe this building
and its contents, or its organization, or its
continuous and healthy growth, but rather
to show that the sums of money spent have
brought a return in educational influences.
SCIENCE AT THE MUSEUM
No matter how popular the aims of any
natural history museum may be, its most
important equipment is the corps of scientists
2762
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
in charge. Exhibits for public instruction,
where every fact presented is accepted with-
out question, must be arranged and labeled
with scrupulous accuracy. Knowledge to
this end can be gained only through original
research. The educational value of a mu-
seum's collection, therefore, depends primarily
on the collections which are available for
study. Most of the museum's collections
are the objects of original research. They are
acquired through donation, purchase or, more
frequently, museum expeditions under direc-
tion, often personal, of the scientific staff.
Some idea of the museum's activity in the
field is given by the statement that during
the year it has had exploring parties or
collectors at work in Venezuela, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Martinique, Cuba, Bahamas,
Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Xorth
Carolina, Virginia, Xew Jersey, Xew York,
Massachusetts, Montana, Wyoming, Dakota,
California and Oregon, British Columbia,
Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, Japan and China.
The results of the study of the collec-
tions thus made are often presented in
the museum's scientific publications — an
octavo '"Bulletin" containing some four
hundred pages annually and now in its
sixteenth volume, and quarto "Memoirs,"
monographing some group or subject. Thus
the results of the museum's scientific work
}P
/'*ir
W K.\.^LLS IN" WIXTLR .\ND SU.MMER COATS
Groups illustrating haunts, habits, and seasonal adaptation in color to environment
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
2763
THE MUSEUM BUILDING IN 1881
THE MAIN ENTRANCE OF THE BUILDING AT PRESENT
2764
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
become accessible to other students. These
investigations are then often reflected in the
public halls of the museum through the dis-
play of additional exhibits.
The use of these research collections is not
restricted to the curators who have them in
charge, but they are available for study by
other scientists, who are always welcomed
to the museum's laboratories. Indeed, speci-
THE SOUT
Eventually the building will also face east, wi
mens are often loaned to investigators in other
parts of the country.
Without dwelling further on the scientific
side of the museum's work, it may be said,
briefly, that its equipment, both as regards
the members of its scientific staff and the
extent of the material available for investi-
gation, compares favorably with that of the
other leading museums of the world.
The recent Congress of Americanists, held
at the museum October 20-2 5th, illustrates
one phase of the museum's cooperation with
other scientific bodies. It is also the regular
meeting place of several local scientific
organizations, which use its collections freely.
In return these societies deposit their own
collections or libraries at the museum.
PEARY'S MUSK-OX
Secured by Lieutenant Peary on Bache Peninsula
THE POPULAR SIDE OF THE MUSEUM S WORK
The museum reaches the public first through
its exhibition collections. These embrace
mammals, including man, birds, reptiles,
fishes, insects, shells, corals, and other marine
invertebrates, vertebrate and invertebrate
palaeontology, geology, mineralogy, and for-
estry. In most of these departments the
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
2765
ADE
iorth around Maohattan Square
museum's exhibits are not excelled by those
of any other institution in this country.
And everything possible has been done to
I make the exhibits of the greatest practical
value to the visitor not only by showing the
natural relations of the objects displayed,
but by illustrating the facts for which they
I stand.
! Professor Huxley's description of a museum
as "a consultative library of objects," admir-
ably expresses the ideal function of a mu-
seum in its relations to people who visit
. museums as they turn to Professor Huxley's
I works for information; but it does not include
a museum's relations to that infinitely greater
class who come simply to wander idly through
its halls. A museum's exhibits must, there-
fore, catch the attention of the objectless
visitor; they must be interesting; they must
I appeal to sightseers as well as to fact-seekers.
Each department meets this problem of
making its collections self-explanatory in its
own way, but as indicative of some of the
methods employed I maj' describe briefly
the exhibition collections of birds, with
which, personally, I am more familiar.
I
These are four in number, and contain some
12,000 specimens: (i) A collection of the
birds of the world. (2) A collection of the
birds of North America. (3) A collection of
the birds found within fifty miles of New
York City. (4) Bird groups. No original
features distinguish the first two exhibits.
Both are general reference collections, but
the separation of the birds of North America
not only renders more easy the identification
of any North American bird, but serves to
illustrate the character and the composition of
the American avifauna. Similarly, the col-
lection of birds found in the vicinity of New
York City makes identification easy, and
shows, almost at one glance, the nature of
our bird life.
The last-named collection, however, is
placed under two heads: (a) systematic and
(b) seasonal. The first contains all the
birds which have been recorded from within
a radius of fifty miles of New York City; the
second contains only the birds of the month.
It is placed in two cases, one of which is
devoted to what is known as '" Permanent
Residents," or those species which are repre-
2/66
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
STONES CARIBOU
A new specimen discovered in Alaska
sented throughout the year, while in the
other migratory birds are exhibited. In the
month of February, therefore, this seasonal
-collection is composed of the ever-present
■"Permanent Residents." and. in the case for
migratory birds, the "Winter Visitants," or
species which come from the North in the
fall and return to their homes in the spring.
In March we look for the coming of the first
spring birds from the South, and these are
duly placed in the case of migratory species
under the head of '"March Migrants." April
and May migrants are exhibited in a similar
manner, and as the ""Winter Visitants" re-
treat northward they are removed from ex-
hibition. This seasonal collection reflects the
conditions in bird-life prevailing out-of-doors,
and is an attempt, by narrowing the field of
possibilities, to simplify the visitor's effort
to name some local bird. He has only to
search for the labeled representative of his
bird among the birds of the month. Group
labels and labels for each month of the year
help to make this collection clear, and it is
accompanied by an exhibit which explains
terms used in descriptive ornithology in
which are displayed a wide variety of bills,
feet, wings, tails and feathers, each with its
technical name. Photographs from nature
of the nests and eggs of local birds, and a
collection of the nests and eggs themselves,
are also exhibited in this hall.
The series of bird groups, which is not
equaled elsewhere, illustrates the nesting
habits of the species by facsimile reproduc-
tion of the surroundings in which the nest is
placed. Swamp, meadow, beach, cliff and
tree-top are shown with convincing realism.
These exhibits are extremely beautiful and
therefore attractive, and the important facts
they represent are thus brought to the atten-
tion of manv whose interest would not be
TEACHERS AND PLPILS STLDVING FOSSIL MAMMALS
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
2767
gaineil in any other way. Not only the nest-
ing habits of birds are tlms shown, but many
other faets in their histories as well; for ex-
anipk', how the youiij^ coiu'eal themselves,
how they are fed, their growth and aeeoni-
panying changes of plumage, the relation
between climate and color, the changes of
color with season; explaining, for instance,
how the bobolink becomes the reed-bird, or
the brown summer ptarmigan becomes
snowy white in winter. More economic in
character are the collections of building
stones and the Jesup collection of North
American woods, which are often consulted
by architects and builders.
The museum also reaches the public through
its lecture courses, given under the direction
of its Department of Public Instruction, by
its curators, through cooperation with the
Board of Education of New York City and
Columbia University. The State Depart-
ment of Public Instruction is an institution
in itself. At the museum its work consists
mainly of the lectures to teachers delivered
by Professor Bickmore Saturday mornings
during the fall and spring terms. These
lectures are repeated later throughout the
State, and the stereopticon slides by which
they are illustrated are distributed to fourteen
normal schools and seventy-eight school
THE INDUSTRIES OF THE KOSKIMO INDIANS OF
VANCOUVER ISLAND
Ethnological group
superintendents. In the year 1901, 23,000
slides were thus delivered to educational cen-
tres. The lectures by curators are usually
based on the museum expeditions or exhibits,
and are often descriptive of the manner in
which the latter were collected, telling, there-
I
HALF OF A GROUP REPRESENTING A SECTION OF BIRD ROCK, GULF OF ST. LAWRLNCE
The group contains seventy-three birds
2 768
NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE MASSES
TERRA-COTTA FUNERAL URNS
Found at Xoxo, Southern Mexico, by a museum expedition
RED FOXES GRAY FOX
Specimen groups from a series illustrating the mammals of the vicinity of New York in their haunts
NATURAL HISTORY !• O R THE MASSES 2769
fore, a side of their history which cannot guide. A trainetl guide, who is thoroughly
readily be displayed. Laboratory work for competent to conduct individuals or classes,
nature study teachers, with the object of explain the collections, and reply to questions
giving them a practical knowledge of scicn- concerning them, is the only possible im-
tific methods of identification, has been in- provement on this plan. There is such a
augurated with marked success. guide in one department of the museum and
To what extent does the public avail itself his work is a marked success,
of these opportunities for instruction ? The The preparation of guide leaflets empha-
museum is open without charge of admission sizes the fact that the curators' duties do not
every week-day but Monday and Tuesday, on end with the writing of technical papers and
Tuesday and Saturday nights except during placing on exhibition of properly labeled
the summer, and on Sunday afternoon. On specimens. The curator, in truth, becomes
Mondays and Tuesdays, which are reserved not alone the exponent of the collections
for members, and students accompanied by under his charge, but of the subjects to
teachers, the general public is admitted for a which they relate, and much of his time is
small entrance fee. During last year 361 devoted to answering requests for informa-
teachers with 4,959 pupils visited the museum, tion, made both by mail and in person,
and the total number of visitors was 461,026. These range from questions regarding the
The attendance at lectures given during this identity of specimens to explanations of
period was 76,021. current natural phenomena, or appeals for
One must remember, of course, that the advice as to the most desirable methods of
museum's exhibits are designed not only to education in the natural sciences. Not a
interest but to instruct, and a better idea of few inquiries come from professional writers
their educational value is gained from the who, when the encyclopaedia fails, turn to the
character, rather than from the extent, of museum for additional details. The museum
the attendance — from the students or classes thus exerts an influence on both the natural
who, bringing their text -books and luncheons, history literature which is published and
spend the day in profitable study. that which is suppressed.
Exhibited collections and lectures how- In this connection the museum's library of
ever, are not the museum's only points of 58,000 scientific works should be mentioned,
contact with the public. In addition to Designed primarily to aid the members of
the "Bulletin" and "Memoirs" containing the faculty in their investigations, it is prac-
the results of original research on its col- tically open to the public, and the museum
lections, the museum publishes a "Journal" reading-room is much frequented by students
containing popular news of its work and and writers.
aims, letters from expeditions in the field, More far-reaching and important, however,
notices of installation of exhibits, and is the museum's influence on natural history
dates of lectures, and each number of this art. There is hardly a prominent American
"Journal" is accompanied by a supple- animal artist who does not habitually
ment entitled "A Guide Leaflet." These look to the museum for assistance. Seton,
guide leaflets are devoted to some one collec- Knight, Fuertes, Carter Beard, Bull, Drake,
tion. They are very fully illustrated, and Nugent, and a score of others, have sought
are designed not only to explain some par- their models in the museum's collections,
ticular collection, but also to be used in a Thousands of illustrations based wholly on
study of the group of animals to which they museum specimens illumine the pages of
relate. Their value is not restricted to their dictionaries, cyclopaedias, natural history and
use in the museum. They may be employed other books, to say nothing of current maga-
in the class-room, particularly by such zines. The museum is willing at all times to
classes as propose to visit the museum. They aid publishers of works or articles on natural
are sold at cost. Bound copies are placed history by permitting them to photograph
with the exhibits in the museum. Certain specimens in its collections. Indeed, it often
collections, in addition to the individual supplies them directly with photographs, not
labels, are further explained by typewritten only of the specimens, but often of the
bound booklets, dictated by the curator in country whence they came.
charge, which serve in place of a personal Thus we have mentioned what seem to
2770
TRANSITION IN NAVAL EFFICIENCY
be the most effective methods by which the
museum strives to bring to the pubHc that
knowledge of the world about us which
"renders life's heritage more fair," and it is
believed by those w^ho are well qualified to
judge that its efforts have won a success
commensurate w4th its opportunities.
The museum, however, is still young. It
has attained only one-fourth its projected
size, and, if the desire of those in charge
be considered, not one-hundredth part of
its usefulness to mankind. That which the
few learn by arduous toil is made the com-
mon knowledge of the many. And in its
province of encouraging the few to search
out new truths, and of urging the many to
hear them, the museum is both scientist
and teacher.
A TRANSITION IN NAVAL EFFICIENCY
THE NEW CONNECTICUT IS FIVE TIMES AS EFFECTIVE AS
THE IOWA, AND FAR SURPASSES THE BEST EUROPEAN SHIP
— OUR BATTLESHIPS NOW THE STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE
BY
JOHN R. SPEARS
IN April, 1898, as the war with Spain was
beginning, a well-known scientific peri-
odical said truthftdly, "The Iowa has
the distinction of being the first modem first-
class sea-going battleship built for the United
States Navy, and she is also the largest and
fastest of our fleet of ships of the line." The
last battleship authorized by Congress, the
Connecticut, now in hand at the Brooklyn
Navy Yard, represents the latest ideas of our
naval constructors, and shows the marvelous
progress made in battleship building since the
war.
Take the guns. The Iowa carried in turrets
four guns of 12-inch calibre; the Connecticut
will also carry four. But if the Iowa's four
were fired in a broadside they would develop
a muzzle energy of only 104,000 foot tons;
the four that could be supplied to the
Connecticut today would develop at least
185,000. If the muzzle energy of those latest
four guns could be applied to the Iowa, it
would lift her more than sixteen feet, where
the old guns would lift her but nine. The
new guns, moreover, although they weigh
seven tons more apiece than the old, can be
fired more than fifty per cent, faster. In
five minutes of actual battle the Iowa could
fire two broadsides, exerting a total muzzle
energy of 208,000 foot tons. The Connecticut
could fire more than three broadsides with a
total muzzle energy of 550,000 foot tons. In
the same space of time, the eight guns of the
lowas 7 -inch battery could pound out
320,500 foot tons; the Connecticut's eight,
653,000.
Added to these larger guns the Iowa had six
of 4-inch calibre. The Connecticut has twelve
of 7 -inch calibre. The weight of the 4-inch
shot was thirty-two pounds; that of the 7-inch
shot is 165 pounds. The Iowa could exert in
five minutes 165,000 foot tons; the Connecticut
can exert 1,862,000. But this conveys no
adequate idea of the relative efficiency. For
the 4-inch guns could not penetrate at any
range the six inches of steel armor protecting
the broadside guns of modem ships, while
the Connecticut's 7 -inch guns can penetrate
more than eight inches of the best armor
at 3,000 yards.
But other guns than these are to be con-
sidered. At Santiago, the Spanish crews
were driven from their guns and the wood-
work of their ships was set on fire by the
pelting storm of six-pounder projectiles fired
from the American ships. It was with six-
pounders, too, that Wainwright's Gloucester
met and sunk the two big Spanish torpedo
boats. The Iowa carried twenty of these
six-pounders, each of which struck a blow of
A TRANSITION IN NAVAL EFFICIENCY
2771
138 foot tons. In place of these tlie Connecticut
will carry twenty fourteen-pounders — 3-inch
rifles — each of which will strike a blow of 709
foot tons at every shot. The twenty, if fired
steadily for five minutes will exert an energy
amounting to 462,850 foot tons. In addition to
the fourteen-pounders, the ConnccticiU carries
twelve three-pounders, which would also search
out the ports of an enemy's ships at any
fighting range, besides eigliteen one-pounders
and automatic guns that throw efficient pro-
jectiles in a stream, like water from a hose.
To sum it all up, it appears that our latest
battleship is in gun power not less than five
times as efficient as the largest and fastest of
our ships of the line that went out to meet
the Spanish.
The Connecticut will displace about 16,500
tons of water, where the Iowa displaced
11,410 — an increase of 5,000 tons, or nearly
fifty per cent. Where the Iowa showed a
speed -of 17.1 knots, the Connecticut will show
something above 18. Where the Iowa carried
armor plate fifteen inches thick the Connecti-
cut will carry a better equality no more than
twelve inches thick. In what other depart-
ment of modern industry has such a devel-
opment as this been made ?
It is twenty years since Congress passed
the bill (Act of August 5, 1882) under which
the construction of our modern navy was
begun. On the day that bill became a law
the navy of the United States was the world's
standard of efficiency — the example to which
men turned when they talked of degeneration
in the fighting power of the nations. Not
only were our ships in the semblance of scare-
crows: we had no yards where efficient ships
could be built, nor was there a shop fit for
building modern guns, or even a hammer that
could forge an armor plate. In view of these
facts, let us compare our latest ship with the
best in hand under European flags.
The King Edward VII. is unquestionably
the most powerful European battleship. The
muzzle energy of her four 12 -inch turret guns
in five minutes' firing would fall short of the
Connecticut's by over 131,000 foot tons. The
Edward will carry four guns of 9. 2 -inch calibre
IV where the Connecticut will carry eight 8-inch
guns ; but broadside to broadside the Connecti-
cut could drive twenty-four 250-pound pro-
jectiles through the Edward while the latter
was returning but ten of larger (380-pound)
shot. It does not seem too much to sav that
the Connecticut's 8-inch battery is about twice
as effective as the 9.2-inch battery of the
King Edward VII.
With the next calibre the difference is still
more striking. In five minutes the Edward's
ten 6-inch guns will exert a muzzle energy of
847,000 foot tons; the Connecticut's 7-inch
guns 1,862,000. As for smaller guns — the
Connecticut will carry thirty-eight, the Ed-
ward twenty-four.
In short, the Connecticut will have nearly
twice the striking power of the best European
ship now in hand.
A comparison of armored cruisers is equally
interesting. As compared with the fire of the
Brooklyn — the best of our cruisers in the war
— the new Washington and the new Tennessee
can exert, each, a muzzle energy of 2,179,000
foot tons against the Brooklyn's 760,500. To
compete with this the best European ship,
the Good Hope, is capable of only 1,539,000
foot tons.
The latest American cruiser is a marvel.
In speed and in ability to keep the sea she is
the equal of anything that floats. In striking
power she is not only superior to every other
cruiser that has been provided for anywhere,
but she is superior to any battleship now
afloat. And if she be compared with the best
of the European battleships now in hand,
the King Edward, it is seen that her guns can
exert a muzzle energy of 2,178,720 foot tons
to the Ki)ig Edward's 1,694,028. She will
carry but eight inches of armor on her turrets
where the King Edward will carry twelve,
and six on the broadside where the King
Edward will carry nine, but her lo-inch guns
will be able to pierce fifteen inches of armor at
a range of 3,000 yards, and the American
idea is that "the best protection from an
enemy's fire is an efficient fire of your own."
Neither the Tennessee nor the Washington
will ever be seen showing her screws in time of
war to the crew of any battleship now in hand.
Of Lieut. Cleland Davis' electrical method
of hardening armor plate, which will render it
at least twenty per cent, more efficient than
the Krupp; of the use of wireless telegraphy
in place of flags and lamps for signaling from
ship to ship; of the turbine engine, and the
use of oil for fuel, nothing need be said now
because these matters are not yet fully de-
veloped. But it is worth noting that where
the muzzle velocity of the projectiles of our
guns was but 2,000 or 2,200 feet per second
I
2772
THE NE.W CENTRE OF AMERICAN FINANCE
in the loivas battery, the velocity now at-
tained is up to and above 3,000 feet, and
plans are now under consideration by which
that velocity is to be greatly exceeded. Thus
in comparing the striking power of the Con-
necticut with that of the lovja and the best
of European battleships, the 12-inch gun as
now built was used in the calculations. This
gun is forty calibres long. But the 12-inch
guns that are to be built for the Connecticut
(plans for which are already in hand) will be
forty-five calibres long. With this length
more powder can be burned and space for the
added powder will be provided behind the
projectile. Where the muzzle velocity of the
present gun is now never less than 2,800 foot
seconds, it is reasonable to suppose that the
guns to be built will develop a muzzle velocity
of not less than 3,500 foot seconds. A corre-
sponding increase in the force of the blow
delivered will follow necessarily.
The officers of the Bureau of Ordnance also
have under consideration plans by which
the muzzle velocity of the projectiles of the
smaller guns will be raised to 3,800 or 4,000
foot seconds, with a corresponding increase in
striking power and in margin for error in
aiming. It seems certain that when this
improvement has been fully carried out 10-
inch guns will replace the 12-inch in the tur-
rets of battleships. And it is worth noting
that this change would permit an increase in
the number of the broadside guns, if not an
increase in their calibre.
In speaking of certain features of the
British warships. Lord Brassey, with the
American ships in his thoughts, says in his
Naval Annual for 1902 (p. 307): 'Tt is a
great come-down to have to confess that we
have lost our superiority and are distinctly
dropping to the rear."
In 1882 the American Naval ships excited
the scorn and derision of all the world. To-
day they are the world's standard of excellence.
THE NEW CENTRE OF AMERICAN
FINANCE
THE NEW STOCK EXCHANGE BUILDING IN NEW YORK— SOME REMARKABLE FEATURES OF
ITS CONSTRUCTION— HOW BUSINESS WILL BE TRANSACTED UNDER THE NEW CONDITIONS
BY
IVY LEE
BREATHING and embodying every
development of the life of this rush-
ing, whirling, electrical age, the new
home of the New York Stock Exchange
has a distinct personality. In outer contour
it suggests the columnar, monumental archi-
tecture of the ancient Greeks. But this
exterior shelters the very essence of the
strenuous energy of this twentieth century.
In erecting it nothing has been spared to
make this building beyond improvement for
its own purposes.
This remarkable building is to be the home
of the busiest organization of 1,100 members
in the world. For five hours of the business
day it will be a perfect whirlpool of trading.
Securities aggregating more than $100,000,000
par value will be bought and sold in a day —
$20,000,000 an hour. A "seat" on its floor
now costs about $83,000, and the aggregate
memberships of the institution are, therefore,
valued at $91,300,000. This property is
untaxable and unrecorded. The "seat" is
purchased of the retiring member. It is a
private transaction, legally, and the Exchange
officially does not recognize that a membership
has a money value. A new member must
be of exemplary business character or the
Exchange will not admit him, no matter what
he should be willing to pay.
This is the business centre of the nation,
into which are poured a vast proportion of the
securities of the country which are for sale.
Upon this floor are showered countless mil-
lions of dollars with which investors through-
out the world desire to buy stocks and bonds
THE NEW CENTRE OF AMERICAN FINANCE
2773
of industrial corporations, railroads, etc.
Through sales on this iloor huge conil)ina-
tions may be "floated" in a day. Through
purchases here great railroads may be bought
in a few hours. An outsider may do all of
these things through another broker, but
upon every sale and every purchase the
broker must collect a commission — a com-
mission which ordinarily amounts to $12.50
for every hundred shares. Members exe-
cuting orders through other members pay
only one-half this amount. That is why
about half the members pay such large sums
for their privilege and yet never go on the
floor in person.
As an institution, the New York Stock
Exchange is unique. It is not a corporation
— only a voluntary association. It resents
being sued for any transaction of its mem-
bers. A member who brings suit against the
institution terminates his connection with it.
Its rules are inflexible. Its transactions are
upon an absolutely cash basis. What is
bought to-day must be delivered and paid
for before ten o'clock to-morrow morning.
If not, the member is suspended, his con-
tracts sold out, and his membership held as
security for the losses of fellow members, all
before eleven o'clock. If a member has bor-
rowed money, and the payment of the loan
is demanded at ten o'clock, payment by
certified check must be made before one
o'clock or the member is "sold out."
There is another feature of the operations
of the New York Stock Exchange, which in
the eyes of many of the public is its most
important phase — the gambling. One of the
rules of the institution is that "no bets or
offers to bet shall be made on the floor," yet
this is the greatest speculative mart in all
the country. A very large proportion of
the trades on the Exchange are made on
"margin." The customer, to secure the broker
against loss, supplies say t went 3^ per cent, of
the purchase price, and the broker buys the
stock, negotiates a loan with the stock as
security in order to carry it, and charges the
loan to the customer. If the price of the
stock goes up and the customer sells, the
I broker deducts the commission, interest on
the loan, and other charges, and the customer
gets the balance. There are endless varia-
Itions of gambling on the extent of these rises
or falls in market prices, but it is gambling
Stock Exchange is ab.solutely essential to the
business of the country. Spcculat'on is an
inevitable feature of its transactions.
The spectator visiting the Exchange wit-
nesses a most bewildering sight. Here and
there are little groups of men shouting and
gesticulating wildly. They throw their hands
violently in the air, jump and push, and glare
fiercely at one anotlier. Then suddenly all
hands come down, some of the men do a little
scribbling on a pad and rush to a telephone.
That means that a sale has been made. In
the group there is one man representing
the telegraph company. As soon as the
sale is made, he rushes to the "ticker" and
sends the news of the sale over the telegraph
printing apparatus, which instantaneously
prints it on the "tape" in thousands of
offices. Private wires flash the news to
Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston
and other points. A few moments later
telephone wires are heard all over the place.
Brokers run to them, get from a clerk a slip of
paper — a commission to buy or sell — and rush
to a certain place on the floor w^here there is a
post with a guidon containing the name of
some railroad or other corporation. Then
there is another wild fight, all over in a
moment, and the whirl goes on. This pro-
ceeds continuously throughout the five hours.
The telephones are ringing, brokers are shout-
ing— it is no wonder that nerves give out
under such mad pressure. Yet through all this
storm and stress the world's great advances in
business and finance are being recorded.
From 1865 to 1900 the New York Stock
Exchange was housed in a building on Broad
street, but the structure was antiquated and
inadequate. It was decided to tear that
structure down and rear a home that would
be both monumental architecturally and
equipped with every device that mechanics,
electricity or ingenuity could supph', wath
every resource needed to transact the se-
curity trading for the commercial centre of
the world !
One of the most important desiderata was
light and plenty of it. The building is no
skyscraper. It is small compared wdth the
great steel towers among which it is nestled.
Its great monumental feature is a row of six
huge columns on each of the two outer facades
of the building. Each of the columns is
five feet six inches in diameter and reaches
up fifty-two feet. Instead of having a con-
2774
THE NEW CENTRE OF AMERICAN FINANCE
siderable number of windows just inside these
columns, the architect of this building has
arranged to have a vast single window just
behind each row of them. Nothing com-
parable to this has architecturally ever before
been done. Each of these windows is about
112 feet wide, fifty-two feet high, and will
weigh thirteen tons. The aggregate wind
pressure on the exterior of each window is
about seventy-five tons. To resist this enor-
mous force and to support the great weight
of the immense glass screens, eighteen-inch
iron mullions were constructed. These iron
columns stand in pairs directly behind the
stone columns and are hung from girders
overhead. To clean the windows a kind of
painter's scaffolding has been provided.
Shades are fastened to the vertical iron mul-
lions, and these run right and left instead
of up and down. They are operated from
the Exchange floor by electric buttons. In
the freezing weather of winter, such great
surfaces of glass will certainly radiate a large
amount of cold air into the room. At the
bases of the windows, therefore, steam radia-
tors are placed for the special purpose of
heating the interior surfaces. For some dis-
tance the glass is to be made double. The
space above the radiators, which will be
located between the two glasses, is to guide
the heat upward and circulate the air over
the whole surface of the great windows.
Next to the light, the two features of the
room which it is of greatest importance should
be as convenient as possible are the telephones
and the annunciator. The public at large
little realizes how important a part the
telephone plays in the work of the Stock
Exchange. Before the da3^s of the telephone,
orders and commissions had to be sent to
brokers by messenger. Often messages were
lost or the boys were delaj'ed. Under present
circumstances, it is possible to give an order at
a broker's office in Chicago, telegraph it by
special private wire to an office in New York,
have it telephoned from there to the broker on
the floor and the commission executed within
two minutes from the time it was given in
Chicago. The private wire, with branch
offices all over the country, and the telephone
are primarily responsible for making it pos-
sible to do such an enormous amount of busi-
ness on the Stock Exchange floor in a day.
At the present time. Exchange members
liave about 500 telephones on the floor. In
the old building they were placed every-
where that room could be found for them.
In the new structure, however, the greatest
attention has been paid to placing the tele-
phones in the most convenient possible loca-
tion on the floor. The instruments are to be
placed against a row of parallel partitions at
the New Street end of the floor? They also
encircle the great piers at that end which
support the ceiling and floors above. An
extraordinary amount of time and ingenuity
was expended in planning these telephones
so that every inch of space should be saved to
the main floor and so that the clerks who
operate the instruments should not be in the
way of the brokers on the floor. To that
end it has been arranged that these clerks
shall enter the Exchange by their own door.
They will not come into contact with floor
members except when it is necessary to the
transaction of business.
Second in importance only to the telephones
is the annunciator. In the old Exchange
building the annunciator was a huge checker-
board contrivance stretched across one
wall. There were 1,200 squares — one for
each member and officer — with a number on
each. When a member was wanted at the
telephone, his clerk would press a button, the
flap covering ^lis number would fall, and the
member would run to his telephone to get
the message. It is obvious that on a floor
where perhaps 1,000 men are moving about
it is not easy to locate any one, so that in the
expeditious discharge of business these annun-
ciators form an essential factor. In the new
building there is a most ingenious contriv-
ance. In each of the two side walls of the
room, other than those made by the windows,
there is a great oblong checkerboard, of
1,200 rectangles, each nine by twelve inches
in size. These rectangles are made of
opaque glass and upon each of them a
member's number is painted in distinct
numerals. Behind each square is several
incandescent electric bulbs, with bulbs of
different colors. Any one of the bulbs may
be operated by the member's clerk. If the
member is wanted at the telephone a red
light may be turned on. If he is wanted at
his office immediately, a green one. If some
one wants him at the entrance, a blue globe.
By alternating the colors, by duplicating
flashes, and by other variations, it is obvious
that an almost unlimited number of messages
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
2775
may be flashed to a member on the floor. In
a business where seconds often count for
everything it will be possible to save a vast
amount of time and money through this form
of annunciator. One of them is fixed on each
wall to save the members from looking one
way all the time. Under the old system, the
eyes of many members were injured from the
necessity of continually looking at a single
flapping checkerboard.
The Board Room proper contains about
15,000 square feet, an increase of about sixty
per cent, over the old Exchange floor. There
has been an economy of every possible square
inch. The chairman's rostrum has been
placed in a sort of gallery, so that members
may stand and do business under the rostrum.
Messenger boys and telegraph offices are
placed in other rooms, with instantaneous
communication possible through pneumatic
tubes. Very little space is given to a visitor's
gallery, and visitors are not to be so welcome
to the new Exchange. Cards of admission
will be necessary in the future.
Throughout the building every possible
convenience has been installed. There is a
comfortable "Bond Room," where the trading
is in bonds only. This room is in communi-
cation with the Board Room by pneumatic
tubes and telephones. There is a restaurant.
Members may take meals here and have
messages shot to them from the Board Room
through tubes. A member may begin a meal,
get such a message, hurry to the Board Room
by elevator, execute his order, and be back
at his meal in five minutes or less. There are
smoking rooms, conference rooms, committee
rooms, club rooms, barber shop, coat rooms,
locker quarters, and all connected with the
Board Room. The nerves of this Board
Room extend to every part of the building,
just as they do, for that matter, to the whole
of Wall Street and to the remotest ends of
the land.
If the great march of American pros-
perity continues, it is believed that before
long seats on 'Change will sell for $100,000
or more. Already a movement has begun
toward "listing" — that is, sanctioning the sale
of foreign securities on the floor. Before long
international securities will be freely dealt in
here as in London or Paris.
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
THE OPINIONS OF SOME EMINENT MEN WHO FEAR FOR THE
FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF WEALTH
AND POWER— A GROUP ALSO OF CONTRARY OPINIONS
BY
GEORGE PERRY MORRIS
WHETHER the civilization of the
United States is materialistic in
its main tendencies — whether it be
true of the average American that "his
counting-house is his temple, his desk his
altar, his ledger his Bible, and his money his
God" — is a fundamental question, and it
is interesting to put together the conclusions
of a number of representative thoughtful
men on the subject:
Dr. Felix Adler, in an address before the
Society of Ethical Culture in New York City,
1900, said:
The greater part of humanity does not as yet
stand for light against darkness. . . The trouble
is that nine-tenths of our people are solicitous about
their material prosperity but indifferent to their
moral prosperity.
E. L. Godkin, late editor of The Nation,
wrote in April 11, 1901:
One of the new things that have come into the
world of late years, along with Expansion, is absorp-
tion in dinner pails and insensibility to moral shame.
The loss of shame among our public men is one of
the saddest features of the time. Hitherto the sense
of shame has happily stepped in to restrain ambition .
It has scared men from doing things to which
ambition would have prompted them. But we
have lost even that. As long as we have a full
dinner pail we care not what happens.
Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville
Courier- Journal, declared, in April, 1902:
The idiosyncracy of the century gone by was
liberty. . . The idiosyncracy of the century that
is upon us is commerce — trade and barter — in busi-
ness, in politics, at the marriage festival, and up to
the very altars of the Supreme Being.
27y6
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
Rev. John White Chadwick, in an address
before the Free ReHgious Association, Boston,
1 901, said:
Since the world began no people ever believed in
wealth so much as the American people at the
present time. We worship it as we do not worship
God. The millionaire bulks, in our imagination,
as the saint in that of mediaeval times. We believe
in general in the world and those things of the
world which were denounced by Jesus; in the lust of
the eyes and the pride of life which were denounced
by His disciples. . . We read complacently Jesus'
praise of poverty, and the offense of our commercial
greed is rank; it smells to heaven.
WilHam Lloyd Garrison, in an address to
Boston negroes, July, 1899, said:
It is commercialism versus self-government, party
control and patronage versus the Declaration of
Independence. . . Trust the sheep with the
wolves, but trust not the nation which has shown its
humanity in its treatment of the Indians, the negroes
and the Chinese.
Prof. Wm. James, of Harvard University,
in the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1901,
said:
When one sees the way in which wealth-getting
enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow
of our generation, one wonders whether a revival
of the belief that poverty is a worth}' religious
vocation may not be "the transformation of military
courage " and the spiritual reform which our time
stands most in need of. . We have grown
literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who
elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his
inner life. . . The prevalent fear of poverty
among the educated classes is the worst moral
disease from which our civilization suffers.
Hon. J. C. Carter, at Harvard Commence-
ment, 1900, said:
Can a calm and candid answer to this question
avoid the admission that our society at the present
time is under the control, abject in thought and
action, of an enormous pressure of material interests
and personal ambitions which disdains any appeal
to what is everlastingly true and right. Things
have come to be a standing menace to the high
ideals of men; and these results have been reached,
not by an appeal to histor3^ or to science, or to
the reason, but by the assertion that there are
irresistible tendencies to which we must of necessity
yield not only, but which we must urge forward and
support because they are irresistible.
Bishop John L. Spalding, Peoria, 111., said,
in an address at Chicago, May, 1899:
Our capital is fast becoming the most inhuman,
the most iniquitous tyrant the world has ever
known. Its tyranny is a blight and curse to those
who exercise it as well as to the multitude who are
its victims. . . We are hypnotized by the glare
and glitter, the pomp and circumstance of wealth,
and are becoming incapable of a rational view of
life. We have lost taste for simple things and
simple ways. . . We are the victims of com-
mercialism. We have caught the contagion of the
insanity that the richest nations are the worthiest
and most enduring. We have lost sight of the
eternal principle that riches are akin to fear and
death, that by the soul only can a nation be great.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall, Professor of Ethics in
Union Seminary, New York City, wrote the
following poem:
GOD OR MAMMON.
Sound the loud trumpet and beat the big drum,
Jehovah is conquered, a greater has come.
The wealth of the world and the spoil of the sea,
These alone can redeem us, these alone make us free !
The pulpits proclaim it, men sound it abroad.
Our God condones all things — oppression and fraud,
The greed of the market, the pride of the priest,
If success sits enthroned and presides at the feast.
We still speak of justice, equality, love,
As blinds for the stupid, we rule from above,
Our own eyes are opened, ah, the glitter of gold.
Is alone worth the worship we gave God of old !
Our daughters' fair bodies, the souls of our sons
Are the price of a faith which no sacrifice shuns;
Yea, though millions get crushed in the mud and the
mire,
To gold's bitter mastery all the strong must aspire.
The shams of religion but veil our designs,
When our deeds are most dirty, then our "charity"
shines.
The press we employ, and the preachers we pay —
So none dare defy us or stand in our way.
With but few exceptions, all those quoted
are men who have differed radically from
their fellow countrymen on the righteous-
ness of the wars of the United States wi h
Spain and of Great Britain with the South
African republics. Most of them are radi-
cals rather than meliorists by temperament,
or rather they began life as radicals but in
their old age have become conservatives ; and
there is in almost every public utterance of
some of the:n that note of pessimism which
Lowell had in mind when, in* 1842, chastising
Wordsworth for his pessimistic judgment of
his fellow men, he said:
'Tis the saddest sight to see
An Old Man faithless in Humanity.
Proximity in time or place to an alleged or
real evil is not always the best condition for
judging it.
The opinions just cited, it will be noted, are
all b}'' citizens of the United States. It would
be easy to quote similar unfavorable opinions
of the United States from journals like the
London Saturday Reviciu and many of the
Continental newspapers, and from an occa-
sional traveler like M. de Regnier; and, of
course, by the average European we are
deemed sordid to the last degree.
But it is a r''"nking fact that, from the days
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
2777
of De Tocquevillc down to Prince Ilcnry of
Prussia, the more thoughtful, intclHgent
visitors to our shores who have studied us
carefully have commented upon our strange
blending of realism and idealism.
De Tocquevillc said:
An American attends to his private concerns as if
he were alone in the world, and the next minute he
skives himself up to the common weal as if he had
forgotten them. At one time he seems animated
by the most selfish cu])idity; at another by the most
lively patriotism. (Vol. 2, p. 171.)
Now it is precisely this blending of other-
selfness with self-interest, this acquisition of
property for higher private or public ends,
which has impressed some of the more recent
visitors to this country, as the following
quotations will show:
Prof. Marcus Dods, Free Church College,
Glasgow, Scotland, once said:
That which strikes me most forcibly in America is
the astonishing display of wealth. Don't jump to
the conclusion that I hint at vulgar display. On
the contrary, my very next sensation is admiration
for the way in which America seems to be using its
wealth, public as well as private.
Frederick Harrison, after his visit to the
United States, 1901, declared:
As to the worship of the "Almighty Dollar," I
neither saw it nor heard of it as we do at home. I
may say the same as to the official corruption and
political intrigue. . . I received a deep impres-
sion that in America the relations of the sexes are
in a state far more sound and pure than they are
in the Old World. . . Society is in the main
sound and wholesome. . . the zeal for learning,
justice and humanity lies so deep in the American
heart that it will in the end solve the two great
problems which face the future of their citizens —
the eternal struggle between capital and labor —
the gull between people of color and the people of
European blood.
Professor Hoi?, of the University of Berlin,
at University of Chicago, 1901, declared:
What strikes me most about your country is its
realism, founded as the nation is, upon an ideal.
There is no more realistic country than America,
and there is no more idealistic one.
Prince Henry of Prussia said, after his tour
in the United States, 1902 :
I found in that country not only what is called
on this side of the Atlantic "a dollar-hunting nation"
but a nation striving with all its energy to secure
pure and ideal possessions. There prevails in the
United States an intellectual and pleasant family
life, and no better life can be found in this countrj-;
and where this life does not exist, every effort is
being made to attain it.
LM. Robert de Billy, member of a deputation
from France to participate in the dedication
of the Rochambeau statue, Washington,
: ■
America, which to the average Frenchman is only
the country where rapid fortunes arc made, is for
the well-educated I'renchman the land of tmiver-
sities. 1 mean the land where knowledge is culti-
vated with a real passion for truth and an entirely
unprejudiced mind.
Professor Munsterberg of Harvard Univer-
sity, the most brilliant of recent German
scholars to take up residence among us, in his
book, "American Democracy," 1901, retorts
on those who say that politics with us has
reached its lowest ebb and that the whole
life of the land is sacrificed to commercialism :
This may be cfTective, Init it is not true. The
stronger current of the nation is at present setting
in the op{)osite direction. The nimiler of men who,
unselfishly and with high ideals, serve the com-
munity in a thousand forms is undoubtedly increas-
ing every day.
Of the elder generation of captains of indus-
try hving among us, few arc so well known or
speak with so much weight as Hon. Abram S.
Hewitt, ex-Congressman and ex-Mayor of
New York City, who has recently said:
Of the future of the nation I see only ultimate
good The country is running in the right and safe
trend.
Edward Everett Hale always retorts on the
advocate of American materialism thus:
When you hear it said that the American people
loves the dollar and is not faithful to the Ideal, ask
in reply: What prince or people but the American
people ever gave up so large a part of the appanage
for the education of the people ? . . Talk of
princely liberality ! Name to me the prince from
the earliest Pharaoh to the autocrats of today who
has ever dreamed of such munificence.
Secretary of State Hay, in his remarks at
the Harvard Commencement Dinner, 1902,
described the nation as
. . . moving always consciously or unconsciously
along lines of beneficent achievement, whose con-
stant ends are peace and righteousness.
Hon. Wayne MacVeagh, ex-Attorney-
General of the United States, in an address
at Harvard, June, 1901, an address pessi-
mistic as a whole, admitted that
the human spirit has in different ages
devoted itself to varying aims and objects, and that
it has been found entirely compatible with the divine
order in the education of the world, and not at all
disastrous to the welfare of the race, that difTerent
nations should cherish wholly different aspirations.'
Hence, he argued, that because this age is devoted to
the making of money as its chief ambition, this need
not disturb us, for it is not at all certain that any
better ambition could have been found at this time
for the class of men engaged in practical business.
It may, indeed, well happen that their labors are
laying enduring foundations for far nobler standards
of comfort, of effort and of life than we are now-
enjoying. . . In saying this I do not forget that
Cicero declared that a general desire of gain would
2778
IS AMERICAN CHARACTER DECLINING?
ruin any wealthy and flourishing nation, but I do
not forget either that Mr. Burke, a far safer gtiide
in the philosophy of politics than Cicero, declared
that the love of gain is a grand cause of prosperity
to all States.
President Geo. Harris, of Amherst College,
is a man given to study of practical ethical
problems and of comparative history, and he
sees a change for the better rather than for
the worse in our estimate of wealth. In his
last baccalaureate sermon, delivered last
summer at the college, to Amherst students,
he said:
The exaggerated estimate which in America has
been set upon wealth and display is declining some-
what in favor of more correct standards. It is
beginning to be seen that possession of wealth is the
ver}- cheapest distinction; that devotion to money-
making marks the newness and crudeness of a
country and should lead to higher accomplishments.
The rich man gives largely to colleges and libraries,
identifies himself with great charities, is a collector
of rare books and etchings, initiates some social
experiment with his workingmen, finds his way to
Congress, does not forget that his father was a pro-
fessor or clergyman. Wealth has deference, it is
true, a servile and contemptible deference, but it is
not the only value that has deference, nor the value
that has the greatest deference.
President Tucker, of Dartmouth College,
addressing students at the Harvard Summer
School of Theolog\' this year, spoke in part
as follows:
We shall have a ven,' inadequate conception
of the power which holds in the modem world
if we do not allow ourselves to idealize the
present situation as history has idealized like situa-
tions in the past. Work, when measured by its
relation to thought, the ambition and the enthusi-
asm of men, holds the same relative place which the
revival of learning, for example, held in its time,
or the struggle for political liberty in its day. It
is the absorbing, controlling, and in its highest effect
the inspiring force of modem life. . . The zest
for work whichjias taken possession of the Western
races, and which has begun to invade the East,
must be understood, if at all, in the light of its own
idealism. It does not mean love of toil, nor does
it mean love of money. Neither the show nor the
substance of wealth offer a sufficient explanation.
Among the ends sought are power, control, influence.
. The joy is in the seeking as mucla as in the
sense of possession.
There is much cant respecting commercial-
ism and materialism, a cant that Emerson,
to go back for a moment to the work of a
seer of the generation preceding our own,
had in mind when he wrote, in his essay on
Nominalist and Realist:
Money, which represents the prose of hfe, and
which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an
apology, is in its effects and laws as beautiful as
roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world,
and is always moral. The propertv will be found
where the labor, the wisdom and the virtues have
been in nations, in classes, and (the whole lifetime
considered, with the compensations) in the indi-
vidual also.
Wu Ting Fang, Minister from China to the
United States, in a speech before the Carnegie
Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1900, said:
The test of loftiness of character is to possess
boundless power without abusing it. Wealth is
power. Where can 3-ou find such vast accumu-
lations of wealth in private hands as in America,
with so little attendant evil felt by society ? I have
seen countries where the rich oppress the poor and
the poor curse the rich. There money is the root
of all evil. The reverse seems to be the case in
America.
In all consideration of the matter with its
pros and cons, so far as it relates to the
United States, there are several facts that
have a pertinent bearing on the question at
issue to be borne in mind:
First, that historically considered, America,
as President Eliot in an address to Harvard
students in 1898 pointed out, has always
represented increasing well-being as well as
in increasing liberty for all men.
Second, that, as Senator G. F. Hoar, in an
address before the Massachusetts Legislature,
said:
Plain living and high thinking are doubtless the
best conditions for human life. But if the living be
too plain, the thinking will not be high. The soul
and body will not often hunger or thirst at the same
time. Mean and base surroundings without the
refinements of taste, are apt to degrade alike the
intellect and the moral nature.
Third, that with most Americans the
acquisition of property is not for the acquisi-
tion's sake, but for the power that it gives its
possessor to do large things for his country,
his church, his family, himself.
Finalh% so long as our diplomacy in the
far East is avowedly based on the Golden
Rule ; so long as our treatment of our outlying
possessions is based on their education for
self-government; so long as our defense of
the Monroe Doctrine has underlying it protec-
tion of Latin- American Republicanism against
European monarchies; so long as we give so
lavishly for popular education and sectarian
and . non-sectarian religious propaganda ; so
long as we deem labor honorable and recog-
nize manhood wherever found ; and so long as
we continue to rear men of vast fortunes who
look upon fhemselves as stewards, to a degree
unknown to men of any other land, we need
not worry overmuch if the wealth of the nation
increases with leaps and bounds.
A NEW ERA IN DECORATIVE ART
THE RECENT INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION AT TURIN DEVOTED TO THE
DECORATIVE ARTS — ODD BUILDINGS —THE EXCELLENCE OF ENGLISH
ARTISTS — THE FAR-REACHING PRACTICAL POSSIBILITIES IN DECORATION
BY
PAUL S. REINSCH
PROFESSOR OP POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN
AN exposition devoted wholly to a individual laborers. Through correlation of
novel movement in art — this was the arts every laborer, instead of being a mere
the unique distinction of the recent insentient cog in the machinery of industrial-
exhibition in Turin. The movement for a ism, is again to participate in the joy of pro-
new decorative art to pervade all the activi- ducing a thing of beauty. Each one of the
ties and environments of life for the first time various arts will thus derive inspiration from
gave an account of itself to the world in all the others and work in common with them,
general. The Turin Exposition, therefore, Inasmuch, moreover, as most of the work is
marks a new era in decoration. to be done by hand, it does not require factory
During the half century just past the world life, but may be carried on at the home of
lacked fruitful general ideas upon distinctive the laborer. Though factory life cannot be
and harmonious decorative art. As a result, superseded, a revival of the handicrafts would
each separate branch of decoration developed certainly benefit the laboring population,
independently without regard to general Though of very recent origin, the move-
effects in buildings and interiors. Even in ment has already made great progress in
the homes of wealth the decorations were not Europe, as the exhibition at Turin clearl}'
consistently planned: Renaissance reliefs and shows. There is no fully developed art — only
Japanese vases dwelt in the same apartments beginnings. But the exhibition did give
with Tukish rugs, Dresden china and Louis evidence of a great force seeking an outlet
XV. furniture. Thus the dwelling house and of not a little actual achievement,
became an eclectic museum — indeed, often a In the buildings of the Exposition an
curiosity shop. If the owner possessed taste attempt was made to give expression to the
he might make such a collection distinctive, new spirit in architecture, and it must be
like the interior so brilliantly described by confessed that, though not always pleasing
Bourget in his essay on Flaubert, but oftener at first sight, the structures were decidedly
unity was lacking. Meanwhile, contem- original and gained upon closer acquaintance,
porary decorative art went begging; the Their main characteristic is massiveness;
production of ornaments and of furniture indeed, they often carry suggestions of the
was commercialized and reduced to dead heavy stone monuments of ancient Egypt,
imitation, often of the worst models ; or to The sky lines are hardly ever straight, but
the horrors of a cheap, machine-made "art. " undulating, with sweeping upward curves
With the general revival, in the last decade, toward the centre of the facades. Fresco is
of beauty for its own sake, ' 'as a sweet solace used in the exterior walls — convolutions of lines
in the melancholy of life," there has also suggestive of movement and force, as well as
come a movement for beautifying common flowers and leaves rising in thick bunches upon
objects and making them more dignified, slender stems, or woven into graceful garlands;
and distinctive of our own modern ideas and and sombre, and also laughing or cynical
civilization. Not only does this movement faces, gaze down from the upper walls,
demand artistic judgment in purchasing, and The place of honor in the Exposition was
scorn of the cheap and characterless and given to the works of Walter Crane, and of
inartistic, but it also aims to reform produc- some other decorative artists of Great Britain,
tion and give a wider and happier life to placed there by the Arts and Crafts Society
2780
A NEW ERA IN DECORATIVE ART
of London. There was not only "Walter
Crane's charming painting of the Renaissance
of Venus, and a great variety of water colors,
but also the cartoons for the magnificent
Earle window, tapestry, majolica and tile
panels, bronze utensils, designs for the most
varied ornaments and decorations, as well
as books printed and bound with consummate
workmanship. There was, however, no place
in the Exposition that so fully represented
the ideas of the movement for a new decora-
tive art as the dignified and beautiful piece
of tapestry, the Orchard, designed by William
Morris and executed under his care. There
was also a noteworthy exhibit of jewelry
manufactured by the Guild of Handicrafts of
London, in which the antique forms of Anglo-
Saxon and Norman jewelry have been revived
and modernized with great effect. The
greater part of the exhibits were arranged in
"atmosphere," a term here applied to the
complete interior furnishings of a dwelling or
apartment, suggesting that the furniture of a
house should not be a mere fortuitous collec-
tion, but should be pervaded by an atmos-
phere distinctive of purpose orpersonality.
On account of a misunderstanding the
French exhibit at, Turin was rather meagre.
The most interesting exhibit was that of the
Hotel de I'Art Xonveaii Bing, of Paris, an
establishment which acts as agent for a large
number of Parisian artists, and executes
plans and designs for every imaginable article
of furniture or ornament, including jewelry
and paintings, tapestr}', carved wood and
leather, stained glass, ceramic wares, and
sculpture. The idea of harmony and charac-
ter in style is thus carried even to personal
dress and ornament. The new French style
of decoration has become generally known
under the name of fiorcalc. Here, as in many
of the other exhibits, the rugs were specially
interesting. The principles of the new decora-
tive art reject the Oriental rug because it owes
its origin to the need of one striking ornament
in the bare tent of a nomad, and is ordinarily
seen from a very slight elevation by a person
seated upon it. In a European house it fails
to harmonize with the other furniture; and
its bright and variegated hues and small
pattern, effective when close to the view, are
less pleasing and appropriate when seen from
a higher elevation. Therefore, instead of the
geometrical ornamentation and the dazzling
richness of color in the Oriental rug, the new
art makes use of a uniform base of color:
designs traced in curves and flowing bands
like the ornaments in wall frescoes and in
wood carving.
In Belgium there has been a great
awakening. Architecture itself has been trans-
formed in the hands of such men as Hanker
and Horta, the latter of whom also worked
out the principle of making the decorating
of a building entirely dependent upon its
structure. The Belgian interiors at the
Exposition showed great originality^ in the
use of new forms and designs as well as a
pleasing harmony between structural and
ornamental details. Greater public interest
in decorative art has been aroused in Belgium
than in any other European country, and a
number of societies have been formed for the
advancement of new ideas in the arts and
handicrafts.
Germany has generally showoi herself very
conservative in the adoption of new forms of
art. Her artists have either drawn their
inspiration from the great masters of the
antique and the Renaissance or have attempted
to develop the features of the indigenous
Germanic styles. The new movement has,
however, obtained an entry, and has already
borne some notable frxiits. The principal Ger-
man exhibit at Turin was that of the colony
of artists at Darmstadt, which has recently
been started under the patronage of Ernst
Louis of Hesse. Of this colony Prof. Joseph
M. Olbrich is the leading spirit; it was he
who designed the so-called Hessian House
exhibited at Turin. The axiom of simplicity,
which is one of the main tenets of the colony,
is followed with greater fidelit}^ in this house
than in the most sumptuous structures
erected at Darmstadt.
The exhibitions of Italy were naturally
more numerous than those of any other
countr}', but they contained very much of the
commonplace and the conventional. Still
there were a number of exhibits which
showed an intense effort to express modem
ideas. One of the most interesting exhibits
was that of the Acmilia Arts, a cooperative
association founded in Bologna in 1898, to
perfect the products of the local decorative
arts, to introduce sound methods and new
ideas among the artisans, and to assist the
latter in improving their products, in creating
a harmonious, art, and in disposing of the
finished articles. An artistic commission of
A NEW KRA IN DliCORATIVE ART
2781
the society prepares designs and models,
which arc then executed by the artisans.
The society also assists young men of promise
in completing their artistic education. The
industries are mostly carried on at the homes
of the artisans, the products being sold from
the depot of the society at Bologna. The
society does not make its sole aim the creation
of new methods, but it also favors the
reproduction of classic works. Its products
embrace the entire lield of decorative art —
furniture, wrought iron and bronze work,
ceramic ware, terra-cotta, stained glass,
leather work, lace and embroideries. Al-
though it has existed only for so short a time,
the impetus it has given to household industry
in the region of Bologna is remarkable, as is
evidenced by the exhibit at Turin.
Although in performance much remains
to be desired, the general aims of the new
movement stood out quite plainly at the
Exposition. There is an intense striving
after originality of form, a serious effort to
express the thought and feeling of modern
life — its aspiration toward freedom, its
naturalness and emancipation from conven-
tionality, its democratic sympathy, the sur-
prising sweep of newly discovered or newly
applied natural forces, and finally its new
and noble simplicity of ideals. A main
ingredient of the movement is democratic
— not only the aspiration to render art a
household matter, but also the effort to bring
about a more democratic industrial organi-
zation. But it still remains doubtful whether
the movement will have a deep influence
upon the people in general and whether it
can permanently interest them. Moreover,
the emplo}'ment of such original and beautiful
forms especially to make interiors harmoni-
ous will remain for some time a matter of
great expense. A wider circle of influence
can be hoped for if the efforts of such associa-
tions as Acmilia Arts are successful, and if, as
we are beginning to do in the public schools
of the United States, the taste of the people
is trained from earliest youth to distinguish
and to value the beautiful.
In the actual present achievement, there is
much that falls short of even less elevated
requirements, much that is evidently created
merely to arouse attention, without any
deeper thought or feeling. The symbolism
employed in the forms of decoration is often
obscure and unmeaning ; Oriental and mytho-
logical designs of the vaguest significance,
as well as forms of invertebrate life, are used
without any relation to modern thought.
There is a mannered predilection for archaic
elements of decoration ; when the human
figure is introduced it is too often languid
and fragile for sane art. Moreover, the new art
may be criticized for a frequent disregard of
comfort; the easy chair is banished, and the
straight-backed narrow chairs are such as
few elderly persons would find endurable.
Usefulness and comfort are often overlooked
when the idea of a beautiful design has
captivated the artist. Often, too, the articles
of furniture are so huge that they would be
entirely out of place in any but a regal
mansion. The limits, too, between the
various arts are often disregarded; wood is
twisted like wrought iron into strange and
unnatural shapes, or it is given the polish of
metal and the massiveness of stone.
To expect at the present time a clear, con-
sistent, uniform style of the new movement
in decorative art would be to misunderstand
its purpose and scope. It is rather an ideal,
an aspiration, than a style. In the practical
execution of work it makes use of forms and
suggestions taken from many sources; it
builds upon the foundations of national
traditions ; it uses the enticing symbolism of
the Orient, the dark runes of Norse mythology,
the Egyptian pyramids and temples, the color
schemes of Japanese art. It also draws much
inspiration from the great works of the
Middle Ages, but it avoids as much as possible
the forms of the Renaissance and of classical
antiquity, which have been rendered conven-
tional through long imitation. Tho.ugh
distinguished from naturalism by a deep
worship of beauty, its main tenet nevertheless
is truth and simplicity of expression, and it
strives to look fully and directly at the great
stream of modern life and to express its mean-
ing through art in all her branches. It is
democratic both in calling attention to all
the forms of artistic activity and also in aim-
ing to embrace within a great artistic commu-
nity all the people, both rich and poor, artisans
and employers; thus it hopes to unite some
of the harsh contrasts of life. Among all the
great efforts and activities of mankind at the
present time, this movement challenges
attention on account of the scope of its
aspirations and of the crying needs which its
efforts are laboring to satisfy.
TRUSTS AS THEIR MAKERS VIEW THEM
THE VIEWS OF IMPORTANT TRUST LEADERS WHICH COINCIDE IN MANY CASES
WITH THE EXPRESSIONS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT IN HIS SPEECHES
BY
JAMES H. BRIDGE
EDITOR OF "the TRUST: ITS BOOk"
IN a few years, more than one-tenth of
the mantifacturing estabHshments of
the United States have gone under
the control of some so-called trust. Already
some 200 combinations embrace over 2,500
separate plants, representing an aggregate
capital of $3,500,000,000. They employ over
400,000 workers who annually receive
$250,000,000 in wages and their output is
valued at $2,000,000,000 a year. Fully half of
these industrial aggregates have been char-
tered during the last five 3'ears. In every
other civilized community the same economic
movement is taking place. It is this mighty
tendency which politicians of every party
and journalists of every hue are seeking to
' 'curb. " The effort has been well compared
to that of attempting to dam the Mississippi.
From the outset this cooperative movement
has been met by the hostility of almost every
class, just as half a century ago the develop-
ment of the factory system was resisted.
The evils and disorders incident to a great
economic change have been held so close to
the public eye as to shut out all view of its
beneficent aspects. Latterly, however, there
has come a disposition to recognize the evolu-
tionary and progressive character of the
movement, and denunciation is gradually
giving place to argument. The change is
well exemplified by the cautious utterances
of President Roosevelt. "While Governor of
the State of New York he embodied the
following statesmanlike views in one of his
later messages: —
"The machinery of modern business is so
vast and complicated that great caution must
be exercised in introducing radical changes
for fear the unforeseen effects may take the
shape of widespread disaster. Moreover, much
that is complained about is not really the abuse
so much as the inevitable development of our
modern industrial life. We have moved far
away from the old simple days when each
community transacted almost all its work
for itself and relied upon outsiders for but a
fraction of the necessaries and for not a very
large portion even of the luxuries of life.
Very many of the anti-trust laws which have
made their appearance on the statute books
of recent years have been almost or absolutely
ineffective because they have blinked the all-
important fact that much of what they thought
to do away with was incidental to modern
industrial conditions, and could not be elimi-
nated unless we were willing to turn back the
wheels of modern progress by also eliminating
the forces which had brought about these
industrial conditions. . . . What remains
for us to do, as practical men, is to look
the conditions squarely in the face and not
permit the emotional side of the question,
which has its proper place, to blind us to the
fact that there are other sides. We must set
about finding out what the real abuses are,
into their causes, and to what extent reme-
dies can be applied."
Since giving expression to these views.
President Roosevelt's ideas have crystalized
into such definite shape as to justify him in
proposing measures for remedying the defects
of the new industrialism without, as he says,
turning back ' 'the wheels of modern progress
by also eliminating the forces which have
brought about these industrial conditions."
And curiously enough the remedy suggested is
precisely that which has been urged for years
by the practical genius of the very men who
have built up the trusts — namely, a constitu-
tional amendment giving the Federal Govern-
ment control over them.
In 1899 Mr. John D. Rockefeller, in his
testimony before the United States Industrial
Commission, expressed the opinion that the
remedy for the most conspicuous abuse of
the power conferred by combinations was
TRUSTS AS THKIR MAKERS VIEW THEM
2783
"Federal legislation under which corpora-
tions may be created and regulated, if that
is possible ; or in lieu thereof, State legislation
as nearly uniform as possible, encouraging
combinations of persons and capital for the
purpose of carrying on industries, but per-
mitting State supervision, not of a character
to hamper industries, but sufficient to pre-
vent frauds upon the public." Before the
same commission Mr. John D. Archbold testi-
fied as follows:
"If you should ask me, gentlemen, what
legislation can be imposed to improve the
present condition, I answer that the next great
and, to my mind, inevitable step of progress
in the direction of our commercial develop-
ment lies in the direction of national or
Federal corporations. If such corporations
should be made possible, under such fair re-
striction and provisions as should rightfully
attach to them, any branch of business could
be freely entered upon by all comers, and the
talk of monopoly would be forever done away
with. Our present system of State corpora-
tions, almost as varied in their provisions as
the number of States, is vexatious alike to the
business community and to the authorities
of the various States. Such Federal action
need not take away from these States their
right to taxation or police regulation, but
would make it possible for business organiza-
tions to know the general terms on which
they could conduct their business in the
country at large. Lack of uniformity in the
laws of various States, as affecting business
corporations, is one of the most vexatious
features attending the business life of any
great corporation today, and I suggest for
your most careful consideration the thought
of a Federal corporation law."
Some of President Roosevelt's recent
speeches are simply an amplification of this
recommendation. Mr. H. H. Rogers and
Mr. E. C. T. Dodd, both of the Standard Oil
Company, gave expression to similar opin-
ions ; and that these are still the views of the
men who have built up the American oil in-
dustry is shown by the following statement,
prepared by Mr. Dodd for use in this article :
' 'A corporation created by one State of
our Federal Union has no rights in other
States which they are bound to respect, save
only the right to carry on inter-State com-
merce, which right is controlled solely by
Congress. All other rights of so-called for-
eign corporations depend upon State comity,
and the corporation may not even question
the constitutionality of a law which deprives
it of the right to do business in a foreign State.
"Business on a large scale is almost neces-
sarily conducted by corporations and it can-
not be limited by State lines. Corporations
should, therefore, have a more substantial
right to carry on business through the Union
than the vague and revocable license of State
comity. Such a right can only be conferred
by an act of Congress under which corpora-
tions may be chartered with power to do busi-
ness in all the States and Territories, subject
to such restrictions as Congress may deem it
wise to impose. Such a law would be availed
of for incorporation if its provisions were such
as reasonably to protect creditors, stock-
holders and the public, while not unneces-
sarily impeding the carrying on of legitimate
business on a large scale. No such law can be
enacted without amendment of the Federal
Constitution. Such an amendment is, there-
fore, demanded not only for the better pro-
tection of the public, but also in the interest
of our growing manufactures and commerce. "
While calling upon Mr. John A. McCall,
P esident of the New York Life Insurance
Company, I found that Mr. McCall was at
work upon an address to be delivered before
the National Convention of State Insurance
Officials at Columbus, Ohio, in which he advo-
cated exactly such a Federal corporation
law as that proposed by Mr. Rockefeller and
Mr. Archbold, and for the same reasons.
"If," said Mr. McCall, "a State chooses to
exercise its full pow.ers over foreign corpora-
tions (that is, corporations formed in other
States), it need not stop short of absolute
exclusion ; it may consequently, so far as legal
authority is concerned, impose conditions
which are unreasonable and onerous, both
with regard to requirements, as well as with
respect to license fee and taxation. The
corporation in such cases has no remedy in
the courts, even if the conditions are un-
conscionable; it can escape injustice only by
ceasing to expose itself to the jurisdiction of
laws which, make unjust requirements." He
concludes ' 'that an amendment to the Con-
stitution is necessary to secure National super-
vision and control of insurance companies."
And almost paraphrasing Mr. Rockefeller, he
advises that "pending such an amendment,"
efforts be made ' 'to secure uniform laws for
2784
TRUSTS AS THEIR MAKERS VIEW THEM
taxation and other purposes in order that
policy holders may be protected against the
crude and oftentimes destructive legislation
proposed in some of the States."
The disorder, loss and inconvenience re-
sulting to corporations from the wide differ-
ences between State laws, the unending
litigation to which these give rise, and the
inducements they offer to trust-baiting and
blackmailing suits, were repeatedly men-
tioned by the industrial leaders whose views
on the President's proposal were invited, as
the strongest possible argument in favor of a
Federal corporation law. Instances were
given of States creating corporations for the
purpose of doing business which is unlawful
in the State that confers the charter, and
even for the purpose of working in violation
of the laws of the foreign State in which it
operates. A systematic canvass of the men
who manage the principal industrial combi-
nations reveal with but one exception a
striking unanimity of approval of President
Roosevelt's proposal. The single exception
is that of the Sugar Trust, which ' 'did not
care what the President thought or did. "
At the same time it is generally conceded
that without a Constitutional amendment a
Federal corporation law is impossible, and
that the difficulties in the way of a Constitu-
tional amendment are so great that years
must elapse before the proposed remedy — or
relief, as the State-badgered trusts regard it —
will be available. Judge Gary, of the United
States Steel Corporation, even thinks it im-
possible. ' 'From the standpoint of our
corporation," he says, 'T see no objection
to an amendment to the Constitution which
shall permit an act of Congress providing for
Federal inspection ; but it is doubtful at least
if this is a practical question. If such an
amendment is proposed it will probably be
opposed by substantially all the Democrats
and a large percentage of Republicans. Few,
if any, of the States will be willing to give to
the Federal Government control of questions
which are now reserved to the States. More-
over," he adds, "I believe the laws now in
force are amply sufficient to protect stock-
holders, and consumers or users of the pro-
ducts of corporations, against wrong or injury.
In my opinion, the greatest danger to be
feared is that, as a result of hasty con-
sideration or improper motives, there will
be enactments or prosecutions calculated to
do very much greater harm tdtimately to the
masses than the good which, ostensibly at
least, is sought. "
A kindred fear is expressed by another
industrial leader, who has happily joined
sociological research to the practical experi-
ence of a long business career. ' 'The danger
is," says this gentleman, "that political and
journalistic rivalries, sensational editorials
and lying cartoons will, in a country with
universal suffrage, influence public sentiment
until it crystalizes into unjust and confisca-
tory laws which will hamper industry and
injure alike the interest of labor and of capi-
tal." At the same time this gentleman says :
"President Roosevelt's idea of an amend-
ment to the Constitution, giving National
control of great National forces, is a good one
if practicable. It would bring order out of
the political and industrial chaos which, so far
as State laws are concerned, prevails in the
United States. They are like the old practice
in shipping goods before the days of fast
freight lines — marking them in care of a
'transfer agent'^ at the State line, and
actually rehandling the goods at every
'transfer point." "
Concerning the President's advocacy of
publicity as a. remedy for certain corporate
abuses, there is considerable diversity of
opinion among the men who would be most
affected by it. One of the best-known
"captains of industry" points out that pub-
licit}' is alread}' obtained by the periodical
examination, under oath, of corporation man-
agers by the various industrial commissioners
appointed by State and Federal governments.
Another produces a copy of Moody's Manual
and reads out the balance sheet of the great
corporation of which he is president. "Can
any one desire greater publicity than this ? '
he asks. Still another draws attention to
the injury which he would sustain by the
publication of facts which would reveal his
business secrets — sources of supply of raw
material, methods of manufacture, names of
customers, etc. Even a statement of profits
may be prejudicial to some corporations;
and these will resist the passing of any very
drastic measure.
Judge Gary, however, says:
' 'There should be no objection to pub-
licity concerning the business of corporations.
I have always strongly advocated this doc-
trine. The United States Steel Corporation
TRUSTS AS THEIR MAKERS VIEW ITIEM
2785
has been frequently complimented by the
press because of the public statements which
arc regularly made and published."
The strongest opposition is made to the
President's proposal of government super-
vision of corporations, which is involved in
liis demand for enforced publicity. "Shall
an inspector be sent into every industrial
establishment," asks one manufacturer "to
see that its accounts are properly kept and
all transactions in order as he may construe
it ? If so, it will be gravely resented. What
is possible in the case of banking institutions,
where only one commodity is dealt in, where
transactions are simple and easily traced,
where methods remain unchanged from year
to year and experts are common, is utterly
impossible in a manufacturing establishment.
There processes change from day to day;
new methods are constantly being adopted;
and the expert of last year is a mere tyro
today — so swift is the movement. Moreover,
it is government interference with private
affairs. The mere magnitude of the corpora-
tion does not change this fact, nor rob the
espionage to which it may be subjected of its
vexatious features and still more intolerable
possibilities."
On the other hand, some corporations have
nothing to conceal, and frankly avow their
readiness to throw open their books and their
business to any government inspection sanc-
tioned by law. The more general feeling,
however, is that anything like close super-
vision will prove impracticable, and that
publicity will be incomplete, especially in the
cases where it is most needed.
There is one aspect of this subject which
is deserving of emphasis, and that is the
tendency everywhere visible among what are
called trust magnates toward a more elevated
moral plane. The evils and abuses of cor-
porate power are being remedied by the
demands of the higher industrial life which
we are reaching. The position of the man
who directs an anny of workers and controls
the collected savings of thousands of his
fellow-men — and women — is so lofty that
even if liis natural inclination were to dis'
honesty, he is too cons[)icuous to indulge it-
A sensational rumor tliat such an industrial
leader has been seen at a roulette table is
cabled to the ends of the earth and brings an
avalanche of protest from investors. The
kings of finance and the lords of industry live
in as fierce a light as that which beat on
Tranby Croft. Moreover, they are subject
to the sleepless scrutiny of each other. In
no place is commercial integrity valued more
than in the purlieus of Wall Street; and there
is rarely room on the directorate of any great
corporation for one whose record is not clean.
The grosser forms of dishonesty are fast
being eliminated from American commercial
life; and although stock-jobbing presidents
and directors are not extinct, they are ever
growing less numerous. Mr. James B. Dill,
the great legal authority on trusts, says that
at a recent directors' meeting of one of these
great corporations, a resolution was passed
' 'that it was the consensus of opinion that
no director or officer of the company should
avail himself of this advance knowledge (of
the increased value of the company's property)
to purchase any of the stock of the company
on the market, before the statement was made
to the public." And in further illustration
of the higher conception of the duty of direc-
tors now becoming general, he quotes the
following statement from the recent report
of one of the large corporations, published
and signed by the executive officer:
' 'The total number of stockholders of the
company, immediately after its organization,
was about 1,300. The total now is 5,153, of
which 1,860 are women. Trustees as we are
for this large and constantly increasing body
of stockholders, many of them women, some
of them the widows and children of former
associates, all of them entitled to the best
service we can give them, we must and do
feel that the administration of this great
property is a trust of the highest and most
sacred character, and while it is in our charge
we shall ever strive to administer it in this
spirit. "
AN AMERICAN BUILDER IN ENGLAND
THE WORK OF MR. JAMES C. STEWART WHICH HAS BROUGHT NEW
RESULTS WITH BRITISH LABOR— THE ENGLISH LABORING MAN
CAN BE TRAINED TO SPEED IF HE IS MANAGED PROPERLY
BY
AN ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT OF "THE WORLD'S WORK"
THE experiences and achievements of
^Ir. James C. Stewart as a supervising
engineer and general manager of
large construction undertakings in England —
short as his career in England has been — are so
notable that they may profitably be recounted
in detail in pages where efficiency is an ideal.
It has been often a subject for comment
that building and engineering operations in
England should consume so much time and
cost so much more money than in the United
States. When the capital of Americans
came to be invested in British construction,
this difference in methods attracted their
attention. One of the latest and largest
building enterprises in England in which
American capital is concerned is the plant of
the British Westinghouse Company atTrafford
Park, near Manchester. After buying 130
acres of land located upon the Ship Canal,
this company planned to erect buildings
covering sixty-four acres; large oflfice build-
ings, iron and steel foundries, shops for foun-
dry supplies, pattern and storage shops,
girder yards, box factories, drying and dip-
ping rooms, engine rooms, boiler rooms, and
many smaller offices and workmen's dwellings.
The larger houses were all to be of the steel
construction so much used in America, but
so little seen here. Such structures are
wholly built of great steel uprights and girders,
the walls being afterward filled in with bricks
and terra-cotta. Also, every known manner
of labor-saving device was to be employed,
such as the automatic riveter for joining
girders together, which strikes 1,500 blows
per minute, as against 200 usually struck by
hand. Bricklayers were not to be served by
old-fashioned hodcarriers, but by barrow-
hoists which would raise 20,000 bricks each
per hour, besides loads of mortar. In spite
of all these appliances, the estimate of the
English contractors to whom the work was
given was that, following ordinary methods of
construction, it would take five years to
complete. Upon this estimate they began
work, and for several months were engaged
in laying foundations.
It then occurred to the American directors
of the British Westinghouse Company that
there was no reason why an experiment in
American building should not be made, for if
it succeeded and the plant was consequently
ready even two years earlier than expected,
they would be in an advantageous position as
regarded their shareholders, to whom excuses
for the delay in starting the work had alread}-
been necessary. Therefore they asked a
member of the firm of James Stewart & Co.,
of New York, Pittsburg and St. Louis, to
come over and see what could be done in the
way of "hustling" with British labor. This
firm is well known in America for the size of
its undertakings and the speed with which it
has accomplished them.
Such was the reputation which caused the
British Westinghouse Company to appeal to
Mr. Stewart to help them out at Tralford
Park. The record which he has made for
himself there has now filled his hands with
work in all parts of England, until it looks as if
he will not be permitted to return home. It
should be clearly understood, however, that in
none of the many enterprises with which he is
associated here is he a contractor as he is in
America. He is engaged as a consulting and
supervising engineer upon work for the most
part already in the hands of British contrac-
tors. In other words, he is aYankee "hustler,"
engaged to stir up the easy-going British con-
tractor, as well as the British laborer. He
arrived at Trafiford Park in April, 1901, with
seven young Americans to assist him. He
found 236 men at work. Within a week he
had under him 2,600 British workmen. At
times they had as many as 3,758 men under
them. They also used British material where-
ever possible, 15,000 tons of steel at $90 per
AN AMERICAN BUILDER IN ENGLAND
278;
obtained from
Middlesbrough.
tort being
The timber — more than 9,000,000 feet — came
from America.
At this date it must be understood that
from 450 to 600 bricks per day, according to
the character of the work, was looked upon
as the usual nine-hour day's work of the
British bricklayer, while in America the
same artisan lays an average of 2,000 bricks
and has done as much as 2,700. Mr. Stewart
rightly concluded that here was to be found
one of the principal causes of delay, and he
set out firmly to see what could be done to
encourage the British workman to speed.
Every known method was tried. One day
there would be a posse of twenty special
policemen on the ground ready for emer-
gencies. The next would see the manager
presenting a ten guinea suit of clothes to a
foreman for an expeditious achievement.
In the very beginning was instituted a system
of daily progress reports from each of the
seventy-five foremen or sub-foremen. The
walls of ^Ir. Stewart's office were lined with
row after row of these files. They showed the
quantity of material received, the amount
used, hours on the job, number of men
engaged, average amount of work done per
man, causes of delay, and material needed
for the next day's work. These reports
came in daily, and they showed at once how
the work proceeded. Also there came a
special report each morning from the firm's
representative at the various steel foundries,
announcing the daily output, tons tested and
despatched, and so forth. Consequently the
supply always kept pace with the demand,
while the grounds around the buildings were
not blocked with material waiting to be used.
The first two weeks, while this organization
was being built up, showed that a great deal
too much money was being spent for the work
done. But by this time they had, as far as
bricklaying was concerned, reached 900 bricks
per day per man, and by a constant process
of elimination this was raised to the amazing
(in England) figure of 1,800 per nine-hour
day per man, with 2,500 per day per man on
the plainest work.
Of course, such work brought trouble from
the trades unions, of which the most pro-
gressive were startled at such overturning of
rules for the employment of the less capable
many instead of the more capable few. But
Mr. Stewart was always ready to meet the
delegates and confer with them. lie defined
his position very plainly. He was willing to
work with union men, and in every way
according to union rules. To the bricklayers,
for instance, he gave elevenpence per hour,
instead of the tenpence for which the Union
stipulated, but he made it as clear as possible
that he was going to have the bricks laid, that
he intended to be the master of his own works,
that the delegates were not going to "boss"
the business, that the slowest man was not to
set the pace, and that each man would have
to do his utmost under men who would see
that the work was carried out. The alterna-
tive was that the unions would be disre-
garded entirely and other men employed to
do the work. Ultimately an excellent under-
standing was reached, which existed to the
last.
Early in the operations there was some
trouble with the joiners. The manager asked
that the men should curtail their time at
noon to half an hour, and stop half an
hour earlier in the evening instead. This was
so directly opposed to the union rule for the
noonday pipe that the men refused, and
quitted work by way of protest. As the man-
ager held that they had been in no way badly
treated, he refused to have any conferences
on the subject, and 475 joiners were at once
secured to take the places of those who had
struck. The wages paid on this work, as on
the bricklaying, were such as to give the
employers the choice of all the workmen in
the Manchester district, and to enable them
quickly to eliminate all undesirable or " go-
easy" artisans. And it was a wise invest-
ment, this advance of ten per cent, on the
local wage, for it enabled the manager to
secure one hundred per cent, increase in the
value of the work secured.
Mr. Stewart took charge of the work in April,
1 90 1, and in the fir.st part of January, 1902,
the whole of the superstructure was finished,
a record which made him the most talked-of
man in the British building world. Over
$500,000 had been paid out to British labor
(there were never more than ten Americans
employed in the work), and more than
10,000,000 bricks had been laid.
Of course a great deal of discussion was
caused by this record made by the Yankee
boss and British laborer working together,
and all sorts of opinions were expressed.
Prominent trades union leaders said they did
2/88
AN AMERICAN BUILDER IX ENGLAND
not believe the figures put forward as to the
number of bricks laid (they could not deny
the time in which the work was finished), and
they predicted that the work was so badly
done that the first shock of machinery in
operation would shake it all down. Mr.
Stewart was called upon to tell how he had
done the work. Had it been done, as the
animal trainers say, " all by kindness " ? In a
way it had been, although there was no hesi-
tation about showing the iron hand when
necessarj-. But Mr. Stewart believes that the
secret of success lay not so much in this as in
constant and kindly communication with the
individual men. He would go among them
constantly with a hearty "Good-morning,
bo3's!" and with frequent encouragement of
all kinds for good work done. He fully proved
that the volume of the work had not been
exaggerated; and finally in response to fre-
quent requests for an opinion on the subject,
he wrote down the following maxims in con-
nection with his experience in the unusually
successful employment of British workmen:
"First, the men must satisfy themselves that
thej^ are to be paid good wages.
"Second, the man who has general charge of the
work must understand his own business, and have
his work done in his own way, in his own time, and
by his own methods.
"It may seem strange to the people of this coun-
try, but it is a fact, that the British bricklayers who
go to America work side by side there with the best
American bricklajxrs and equal their average.
"It may be to the point if I add that besides
bricklaying we have achieved results in the con-
struction of the British Westinghouse Company's
works at Manchester not less notable than those
to which so much reference has been made. For
instance, results have been obtained here by British
carpenters just as quickly and as cheaply as I have
ever accomplished similar work in America.
'"To the unbiased mind, facts like these afford
conclusive proof that British workmen, if they
diligently apph' themselves, do as much as the
workmen of any other countr}-.
"Finally, I will say with regard to Union men
that if our work has been rapidly executed, it has
been greatly due to the interest that has been taken
by the representative of the Unions concerned in
securing for us the best men that could be obtained."
Mr. Stewart has further said: "There is
plenty of snap in the British workman if you
only let him see there is snap in you. " He is
not lagging in the utilization of the force he
has more or less discovered and trained, for
he has undertaken to "hustle" various long-
delayed jobs for the Midland Railway, becom-
ing in fact a consulting and supervising
engineer on special work. He has already
made another record in stack-construction on
the great chimney he has erected for the
Mersey Tunnel Power Station at Birkenhead
He also has charge of the work upon the
tunnel itself under the Mersey River from
Liverpool to Birkenhead, and of the Yerkes
Power Plant for the electrification of the
Underground Railway. Besides this, he is
flooded with offers to take hold of other work
for which he cannot yet find time. This, too,
in spite of the fact that he has warned British
manufacturers against what he considers
their too conservative methods. They do
not, he sa^'s, appreciate the value of the scrap
pile. Experience has taught the American that
ten 3'ears is about the life of any mechanical
appliance, or rather that there is a revolution
every decade in methods of manufacturing.
So Americans only build their machines with
this time limit before them, whereas the
Englishman takes time to make his machine
good enough to outlast its usefulness.
This record raises the question: "What
of the British architect or contractor ? Is he
not first of all a little above his work, a little
ashamed of it, and anxious to conceal his
connection with labor? Does he not leave
things too much in the hands of his foreman ?
Is it not again the old trouble that labor is a
disgrace to a gentleman in England, whereas
it is an honor in America ? Or, to go further
still, is there not a crying need in British con-
struction generally for a strenuous middle
man, a manager, between the architect and
the laborer, to see that the one properly and
promptly carries out the work of the other?"
Why, when the very feat of bricklaying
described here was made public, some pro-
gressive member of the London County
Council, knowing the interminable delays
attending all work done by that body, tried
to discover what was the average of the brick-
layers in their employ. All that could be got
out of the committee in charge was that they
laid something more than 330 bricks per man
per day of nine hours — say forty bricks per
hour. The committee had to confess that it
could not obtain any reliable information,
owing to the absence of any details as to the
actual cost of brickwork to the department I
And the public seemed to receive this astound-
ing revelation with complete indifference.
Truly the "Wake up, England" campaign,
even with the public support of the Prince of
Wales, has yet need of converts in other
quarters than in the laborer's cottage.
CAN ARBITRATION IN LABOR TROUBLES
BE EFFECTIVE?
AT the National Convention of Employer is 'compromise,' and there is nothing more
and Employee, recently held in Min- mischievous than a compromise on any
neapolis, the most important of the question of principle. Si)eaking from the
many important questions discussed was that point of view of one whose entire time is
of arbitration. Strong and timely addresses occupied in adjusting differences between
were delivered by such men as John Bates employer and employee in the coal mining
Clark, Professor of Economics at Columbia industry of Illinois, I say that arbitration
University; Herman Justi, Commissioner of should never be resorted to save in an cxtrem-
the Illinois Coal Operators' Association, and ity, and that the energy and industry dis-
Frederick \V. Job, Chairman of the Board of played in advocating its general adoption
Arbitration of the State of Illinois. could be better applied to all those simpler
Professor Clark discussed : " Is Compulsory and more practical methods of adjustment
Arbitration Inevitable?" In part he said : designed to render arbitration unnecessary.
"The existence of trusts puts many strikes "The coal operators and coal miners of
on an entirely new footing. A motive for Illinois came together in 1898 and adopted
yielding to strikes is removed. When one what is known in the bituminous coal fields
employer out of a score or a hundred in the of the Central States as the system of 'joint
same industry finds that his men have gone agreements,' or what is called in the school
on a strike, he is tmder strong pressure to of economics a system of 'joint bargaining.'
make concessions to them. A trust has no A wiser, fairer, more equitable system has
such rivalry to fear and can bide its time never been devised. . . . But to me it seems
before yielding to its men. On the other that we can never agree in this country on
hand, the trust has much to gain, first by compulsory arbitration, though in quasi-pub-
holding out till its men are near the end of lie enterprises there are times when it might
their resources, and then making some small seem to be desirable. Some law may be
concession that will bring them back to their needed to prevent strikes and lockouts where,
work. It can charge the cost of such a con- by reason of these, travel is stopped or ren-
cession to the public and exact a large profit dered hazardous, or w^here the supply of light
besides. and water is shut off. When such a law.
The only compulsory arbitration I am will- however, is enacted, it must not be left to the
ing to recognize as possible . . . says to a agents of great corporations, to our labor
body of strikers, 'Continue at work while we organizations, or to the amateurs now clamor-
investigate your claims. If you demand only ing for it, but it must be drafted by the most
that natural rate of pay which represents experienced, the wisest, the fairest and the
what you produce, you shall be protected in most far-seeing students, not only of political
your tenure of place. If you ask more, we economy, but of the existing conditions."
will announce the rate which is natural and "Arbitration from the Point of View of an
fair, and give you the first option of accepting Arbitrator" was the topic of Mr. Frederick
it. If then you refuse to take it, your tenure W. Job. Among other things, he said:
of place is forfeited, the employer may put " At the conferences of employer, emplo3'ees
new men in your places, and they will be pro- and our Board I have always wondered why
tected by the fullest power which the State it was that employers and emploj'ees did not
can exercise.' get together the way we did then, before the
"This is the only logical outcome of trouble broke out, instead of waiting until a
the present anomalous and intolerable strike or lockout occurred. One of the most
condition." ' frequent causes of lockouts comes from the
Mr. Herman Justi, speaking on " Arbitra- fact that one side or the other to the disturb-
tion: Its Uses and Abuses," said: "Arbitra- ance fails to recognize the fundamental facts
tion's popular, though erroneous, synonym of the relation which they bear to each other.
2790
THREE NOVELISTS OF SINCERITY AND CHARM
"The employer will often fail to recognize
the fact that his growing business, the changed
conditions which are attendant upon such
growth, the employment of new foremen and
bosses and the actual condition of the laborers
should receive his careful attention. The
employer, too, often makes the mistake of not
getting closer to his men and understanding
their situation and circumstances. The work-
man, on the other hand, is often too prone
to assume that increased prices, a large estab-
lishment and more material evidence of a
growing institution means that all this growth
was produced exclusively as the result of his
toil. He makes the mistake of assuming that
because there are more employees in the
factory than formerly, the manager or owner of
the business has forgotten him, and that he
cannot see the president or head of the concern.
. . . We coupled with our invitations
to combatants the guarantees :
"First — That a conference with each other
and with our Board would do them no harm,
if it did them no good, and would at least
leave them where we found them, if it did not
settle the trouble.
" Second — The Board could be relied upon
to carry no tales from one side to another.
"Third — That it would not cost the con-
testants one cent ; that the State paid the bills.
"We find that when we have reached the
point where we can get the employer and
employee to agree to meet and reason to-
gether, they are always well on the road
to reconciliation. . . . One of the most
important features of the present Illinois
arbitration law provides that where industrial
disputes occur in which the public is affected,
with reference to food, fuel, light or the
means of communication or transportation,
or in any other respect, and neither party to
such strike or lockout shall consent to sub-
mit in the matter of controversy to the State
Board of Arbitration, the Board, after
having first attempted to affect a settle-
ment by conciliation, shall proceed of its own
motion to make an investigation of all facts
bearing upon such disturbance, and make
public its findings, with such recommenda-
tions to parties involved as in its judgment
will contribute to a fair and equitable settle-
ment of the differences which constitute the
cause of the trouble ; and in the prosecution
of such inquiry the Board has the power to
issue subpoenas and compel the attendance
and testimony of witnesses, as in other cases.
"We do not think that there is any short
cut to the solution of all labor troubles. We
do not claim to have a panacea for every case.
There is one thing this Board does find, how-
ever, and that is that a great many employers
and employees who formerly were the last to
consider the matter of conciliation or arbitra-
tion are now the most eager for it."
THREE NOVELISTS OF SINCERITY
AND CHARM
MR. HOPKINSON SMITH'S "OLIVER HORN"
MR. F. HOPKIXSOX SMITH'S "Oliver
Horn " is an orderly, well-built, well-
bred, sympathetic story, clean and lovely;
and it contains two pictures of life that ought
to give it an historical value — a picture
of the ante-bellum society about "Kennedy
Square" in a Southern city, and a picture of
the rollicking Bohemian life in New York in
the early sixties. It is a book that every
cultivated reader will get pleasure from — a
pleasure, too, that does not pass with the
reading.
The story begins in a Southern city just
before the Civil War. Young Oliver Horn,
well-born and intended by his parents and
traditions for the law, must while yet a bo\
earn his living, because the family fortune
is waning. To work in his native city would
be to incur social disgrace. He therefore
goes to New York to seek his fortune, and he
becomes a shipping clerk. His ambition was
to become a painter, but in his native circle
a painter was regarded as a mere idler. The
story is of Oliver's toil to make a living and
to aid the mortgage-ridden family, and at the
same time to learn the art that he must learn
for his own development and happiness. His
long struggles in New York, his happy love
experience and his triumph — these make the
perfectly natural, smoothly flowing story.
The tale takes the reader into the New
THREE NOVELISTS OF SINCERITY AND CHARM
2791
England mountains, too, where the attract-
ive heroine Uves; and Hfe there and Hfe at
the South are brought into wide contrast.
PoHtical contrasts, social contrasts, the con-
trasts of occupation, give the book both
stability and charm.
But (as in every novel that is worth while)
the people in it make it what it is. Oliver's
father, Richard Horn, the old free negro
butler Malachi, Oliver's mother and the inti-
mate friends of the family — these all become
permanent additions to the reader's acquaint-
ances: charming ac(|uaintances every one of
them. And there is no other such picture
that we recall of artist life in New York nearly
half a century ago. There are interesting
persons, good manners, honest struggles, well-
won triumph, good times in the book, and so
carefully is it all wrought out that the inci-
dental musical and artistic atmosphere that
pervades it gives it an additional charm and
distinction.
Mr. Smith's "Tom Grogan" and "Caleb
West," to say nothing of his shorter tales,
were real books, and not books made to order;
but "Oliver Horn" leaves them far behind,
both in its construction and in its literary work-
manship. It is a tale to love for its truth and
charm — a book to own and to recall. Old
Richard and Malachi will often come to your
mind long after you have put in on the shelf,
and you will find more pleasure in recalling
"Oliver Horn" than in reading a long list
even of the cleverest new stories that come in
the flood of the year's novels. It is the kind
of book that would have been written if there
had never been a flood of novels ; it is the book
that Mr. Smith has been writing toward and
in preparation for since he made his first effort
in fiction. The more you think of it, weeks
after you have read it, the more grateful you
become for it, and this notice of it is meant
less as an appraisal than as thanks. It is
the best product of a very versatile man of
unusual gifts and grace and a piece of fiction
of a very high kind indeed.
MISS GLASGOW'S NOVELS AND POEMS
MISS GLASGOW has now won as enviable
a place as any young writer of our
country holds ; for her work has a deep serious-
ness as well as a serious art. Four novels and
a book of poems now stand to her credit, and
a good measure can be made from them of
her achievement and of her promise.
Her earlier stories, "The Descendant" and
"Phases of an Inferior Planet," attracted
attention because of their remoteness from
the commonplace. They were strongly indi-
vidual books. They had nothing in common
ivith the mass of current fiction; they showed
a determination to see life at first hand and
to report it frankly. Miss Glasgow revealed
in them the Southern love of that ideal of
manners which is deferential and charming
to women and resolute and commanding witli
men; and she showed courage and frankness
in the expression of emotion; but she had a
wholly modern freedom of mind, a determi-
nation to see life on all sides and to see it
with perfectly cool and clear vision. She
betrayed a high degree of femininity, too, in
her sensitiveness to the charm of mature
social life, but she showed also the deeper
insight which deals with the formative
forces of character and the courage which
does not flinch from the darker facts of
existence.
"The Descendant" and "Phases of an
Inferior Planet" were vigorous, unconven-
tional novels, but their material was of that
kind of tragedy which lies aside from a per-
fectly wholesome view of life. They were
clearly the work of an independent and vigor-
ous mind, more accustomed to study than to
observation. The force of the writer was in
advance of her experience; her passion to
know life was in excess of her knowledge.
The faults of the stories were the kind of faults
that a far-sighted critic does not dwell on —
faults of a strong nature finding its way to an
individual point of view and an individual
reading of experience.
When "The Voice of the People" appeared
it was clear that the gap between vision and
knowledge had been closed and the promise
of the earlier stories had been fulfilled. This
novel happily illustrates both Miss Glasgow's
hold upon tradition and her open-mindedness.
It is an admirably composed and shaded
picture of the old and new South in contact
and, to a certain extent, in conflict. The
refinement and the dignity of the old order,
expressed in the obsolete community that
it pictured and in the bearing of its lovely
people, did not prevent her from recognizing
and placing as just a value on the dignity of
a strong character expressed in aspiration and
struggle. The novel is one of orderly develop-
ment, sane, wholesome and w^ell balanced.
Miss Glasgow had passed from the problems
of a very active and vigorous imagination,
working in surroundings which it had arbi-
trarily created, to a simple, direct and deeply
sympathetic dealing with emotions, condi-
tions and experiences which she knew at first
hand. The style of the story showed a sig-
nificant advance in steadiness and mastery.
It is well con tructed; the contrasts of ideals
and of conditions are striking but not violent ;
the action is inevitable; and, although it is
tragic, it is not without a note of hope. The
2792
THREE NOVELISTS OF SINCERITY AND CHARM
background of scenery and of history is
sketched accurately, but not too minutely.
"The Battleground" registered a further
advance in her art. It has the vigor of the
earlier stories, and it has also a quality which
thev lacked. It is finely dispassionate and,
in dealing with episodes and events which
inflame the imagination of many writers in
the exact degree in which they put heart into
their work, it is artistically impersonal. In
this, as in the earlier stories, the reader feels
himself in contact with intellectual power of
a high order; with a clear, cool, penetrating
mind which works through the imagination,
but never loses clearness of vision Miss
Glasgow's skill is evident in her treatment
of the episode of the Civil War, which is
broadly presented by means of significant
details — details which, without wearying the
reader or interrupting the flow of the narra-
tive, produce a culminative effect of tragic
significance. In "The Battleground," as in
"The Voice of the People," the tragedy is
resolved at the end, as a tragedy in the hands
of the greatest writers must be, in the first
foreshadowing of a new order.
In this combination of sympathy with old
and comprehension of new conditions, Miss
Glasgow, by the way, holds a place by herself
among the novelists of the South. They
have, as a rule, felt the charm of the older
social order so keenly that they have been
content to depict it and to leave the deeply
interesting aspects of contemporary life
unrecorded. Not so she. Indeed, she uses
her material, Southern or Northern, ante-
bellum or post-bellum, as a great writer
should — for what it is worth to her purpose
and in her handling. She is not a " Southern "
writer nor a "Northern" writer, but a writer
of human life as it develops itself everywhere
under the conditions that her stories natur-
ally find. She has understood and practised
this law of the best writing and has escaped
the snare of provinciality.
In this confidence in the quality of her
material to make its charm felt she has shown
the independent vigor of her mind and com-
pelled the judgment of her work by reference
to universal standards. She writes as a
woman, but with a vigorous masculine ele-
ment in her work; a faculty of detachment,
of seeing things apart from her own personal
affiliations, or letting things speak for them-
selves without too much manipulation for
dramatic effect. She has perhaps the richest
field that any American novelist has taken ; and
the vigor of her mind and the thoroughness of
her methods make it clear that she can add
this great field to the geography of our per-
manent American fiction.
Miss Glasgow's latest book is a volume of
verse, "The Freeman and Other Poems": a
slender book, but individual in thought and
expression. Most of these poems are in the
mood of her earlier work. They present some
of the darker aspects of life, and present them
with daring and vigor. There is an almost
uncompromising effort to face the worst and
to interpret it with relentless frankness and
with a fine philosophic courage. Whether
this attitude represents a mood or a convic-
tion— perhaps both — it is certain that in this
book, as in her prose, there is freedom from
the commonplace and an original power.
Observe the quality of the following:
The trumpet of the Judgment shook the night,
Dust quickened and was flesh; grave clothes
were shed;
With moaning of strong travail and lament,
The sea gave up her dead.
One, rising from a rotting tomb, beheld
The heavens unfold beneath Jehovah's breath.
" Great God," he cried, " with Thine etemitj',
Couldst Thou not leave me Death ?"
Miss Glasgow has steadily gained in power
and in skill since her first book. Her work
has not yet reached her highest capacity She
has not forced her growth. She has worked
without reference to applause or to popu-
larity, but in obedience to her own high
standard as one who works for permanent
distinction. We have no novelist who shows
a higher aim.
MR. OWEN WISTER'S STORIES OF AMERICANISM
WHAT'S the book?" asked a lazy
voice. It was nearly midnight at
the Cripple Creek Club, and the speaker,
citizen of many mining camps, sprawled
negligently in an easy chair.
The book was " Lin McLean. " I explained
a little.
"Author from the East, 3^ou say ?" he caught
up. "Funny about these Eastern fellers
chasin' out here to put us in note-books.
S'pose Boston's forgotten Bret Harte — thinks
this new feller's the whole Rocky Mountain
shootin'-match, eh?"
"No," said I; "not yet."
" Let me see it, " he broke out disgustedly.
When I went to bed his chin was resting on
his breast and his eyes were galloping along
the lines.
"Thanks to you," he said next morning,
proffering the book as I was climbing to a
dusty wagon-seat. "That feller knows his
business. He ain't Bret Harte, but he's got
a claim, and it's the real thing, sure. It's a
strike. "
"I wish you'd keep it if you like it," I
ventured.
MISS ELLEN (.1 A.sGOW
AUTHOR OF "THE BATILEGROUND," ETC.
2/94
THREE XU\'ELISTS OF SIN'CERITV AND CHARIM
"Wait a minute," he jerked out to the
driver.
"Say we swap." lie exclaimed, returning;
and he handed me a bit of blue rock all shiny
with pyrites but richly speckled with duller
gold. I took it, demurring, for, commercially,
it was not a fair exchange. Now, however, I
feel a peculiar fitness in the trade: my pros-
pector's whole-souled recognition of "Lin."
"the Governor" and the taciturn Virginian as
living types made his gold-shot bit of blue
rock a symbol, in the book's absence, of the
book itself.
For as Bret Harte took full measure of
Sierran miners and the full-blooded life of
early California. Mr. Owen Wister, not only
in "Lin .McLean," but in "Red Men and
"White, " "The Jimmyiohn Boss" and "The
Virginian," has exploited the essential spirit
of frontier Wyoming and Arizona, "the Cattle
people and the Cattle country, with the
plains and mountains where they lived, all
wholly American, of our blood and soil."
And the gold dug from Colorado hills is not
more precious than just this large spirit
phrased in narrative not merely exhilarating
for the graphic plausibility of what it tells but
inspiring for the deep suggestiveness of what
it means. The brilliance of the vivid Western
background and the tingling magnetism radi-
ated from the passionate frontier life in Mr.
Wister's stories sting with the sort of delight
that Mr. Kipling's narratives yield. The
dramas develop with an insistency not unlike
the quality of those tales that Bret Harte
gave the Overland Moutlily over thirty years
ago, and they bite indelibly. But there is
more. With his quick-pulsed stories of
cowboys and Indians and soldiers, hard
women of that lynch-law belt now gone,
and the gentle women "steel-true and blade-
straight" who brought the refinement of
human sympathy beyond the Missouri "in
the good old days before the wire fence,"
Mr. Wister's work expresses with some success
what precious little other American fiction
tries to express — Americanism.
Mr. Wister is a Philadelphian forty-two
years old. a Harvard man who went West
for his health on graduation, and sixteen
times afterward for love of it. In ten years
he has written short stories of the West
which, garnered, make four volumes — mathe-
matically, it might be noted in a slip-shod
age of garrulous, dictated fiction, one book in
each two years and a quarter. Give credit for
loving artistry in that. Yet very slowly did
he enter his popular heritage, keen and quick
as some critics were to see a new force in this
work that breathed so electricallv of a land
and a people more American than any east of
them. But now that "The Virginian" has
come into a blaze of popularity, it is well to
value Mr. Wister's results.
Mr. Kipling sings in a ballad "The East is
West and the West is East." In the United
States the West is Eastern: the East is verv
far from being Western. To catch the deeper
meaning of our life, one's path must lie
toward that Western verge of the continent
where all white men are American-born,
because there only are the culture and the
conservatism of the East, the chivalry and
the fire-eating spirit of the South and the
broad unhampered gambler's view of life
native to raw Western soil, all transmuted
into a Democracy of no distinctions except
the intrinsic. That combination, with other
elements of course, is the United States in
essence, found only in the West, and that is
what Mr. Owen Wister expresses.
In Wyoming and in Arizona before the
wire-fence men played a man's game, that
quality counted most — in man or woman —
that the Virginian yielded to Queen Eliza-
beth when he wisely said of her: "She
would have played a good hand at poker."
Each man played according to the measure
he had taken of his neighbors. Reticent
brotherliness marked friends: deference was
accorded all sincerity : and humor, mainly
grave humor, touched everv relation of
life.
All this Mr. Wister symbolizes in the life
of his boyish, slightly limping Lin McLean,
in the heroes of his briefer Iliads, and in
the romance of the lithe Virginian whom
Mr. Wister inscrutably keeps nameless. But
observe that Lin McLean, from Massachusetts,
after his tragic but humorous experience
with the oddly human Lusks, loves Jessa-
mine Buckner from Kentucky, and the
Virginian — strangely reminiscent of the Con-
federate officer — wooes a descendant of Molly
Stark from Vermont. And each one carries
to the complex drama unraveled in raw
Wyoming some motives traditional in each
provincial section. These, with passion
mixed and pure, native ideals low and high,
and the frankest and richest humor, is the
stuff of which an American literature shall be
woven.
It is not enough to say of Mr. Owen Wister
that he capably carries on the Bret Harte
short story tradition, or that "The Virginian"
is a vivid narrative of exceptional power,
especially moving in its story of the cowboy's
love. Mr. Wister has also sharply blazed the
way to that quite possible impossibilit}', the
American novel.
MR. OWEN WISTER
AUTHOR <)I "THE VIRGINIAN," ETC.
MR. F. HOPKINSON SMITH
AUTHOR OF " OLIVER HORN," ETC.
From a painting by Oliver Hazard Perry
M
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
A REVIEW OF THE WORLD'S RECENT INDUSTRIAL CHANGES AND PRESENT TENDENCIES
—THE GREAT KACTS MADE PLAIN BV RECENT DEVELOPMENT: THE HOME MARKET MOKK
IMPORTANT THAN THE FOREIGN; THE GRAVITATION OF POPULATION AND CAPITAL AND
SKILL TO THE SOURCES OF WEALTH SUPPLY; THE PATRIOTISM OF INDUSTRY — THE
NECESSITY OF EUROPEAN INDUSTRIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION TO OFFSET
THE SOLIDITY OF THE UNITED STATES — A WORD-WIDE FORECAST OF THE FUTURE
Being the Rectorial A ddress delivered at St. A ndre^vs University, St .A ndrews ,Scotla?td, October 22, 1902
BY
ANDREW CARNEGIE
I THOUGHT that I might interest you
by considering a subject now attract-
ing wide attention — the economic
changes which have come and are impending
in the relative position and power of nations,
since it has been necessary for me during my
business career to watch and study these
and to base action upon them. The growth
of nations in wealth and population, the social
conditions and aptitudes of their people,
natural resources, prospects, ambitions,
national policy, all bore directly upon our
problem.
It was upon no easy task that the American
-manufacturer entered when he determined to
struggle for place for his country among manu-
facturing nations, and it behooved those who
risked their capital, or incurred debt in the
attempt, to keep a wary eye upon the doings
of their established competitors, and weigh
futuie probabilities of development in other
lands.
In studying the manufacturing world,
Britain claimed more attention than all other
nations together, for here was the seat and
throne of manufactures. We examine the
globe and note how much is marked red under
the Union Jack, and speculate upon what
would be left if this were obliterated. But if
in viewing the world's material development
we should consider what would be left if her
inventions were deleted, a greater void still
would be found in this nobler field of conquest,
for this island has also been the seat and throne
of invention, the work not of the barbarous
sword, but of the brain of civilized man. That
development rests upon the steam-engine of
Watt, one arm of which embraced the sea
through the steamship of Symington, another
covered the land through the locomotive of
Stephenson. Here is the great triad which
has created the modern material world. This
audience will not fail to note with satisfaction
that all of these magicians were Scotch (the
first two native-born, the last by descent) —
a remarkable fact, and not to be readily
accounted for except upon a hypothesis which
national modesty prevents a born Scot from
suggesting here in the presence of so many
distinguished members of other nations.
Arkwright, Hargreaves and Cartwright,
through their inventions, brought economical
spinning and weaving of textiles; those of
Nelson and Cort, cheap iron; Bessemer, Sie-
mens, Martin and Thomas, cheap steel, the
most important article of all, since it is the
basis of so many other articles. It is the in-
ventions of these men based upon steam that
have revolutionized the conditions of human
life upon the earth, and, in passing, will you
be good enough to note how many of these,
and indeed of the supremely great in other
fields as well, have at first worked with their
hands 1* Whatever the future may have in
store, nothing can rob Britain of the credit of
having given to the world the means for its
surprising development. Material Progress
is Britain's child. At the time of which I
speak, she was the only important manufac-
turing nation, for here naturally her inventions
were first utilized. The reward obtained
from this monopoly — for such it was — made
her the richest of all peoples per capita. Her
realized wealth is still unequaled. Forty odd
years ago she made more iron and steel, man-
ufactured more machinery, mined more coal,
wove more cloth, than all the rest of the world.
It was Britain in the one scale, the world in the
2798
EUROPE versus AMERICA"
other, the world kicking the beam. In the
dawn of this prosperity came Cobden and
Bright, who insured cheaper food for the
workers, which further stimulated manufac-
turing and insured Britain's preeminence.
The theories of these great men and their
school were justified in their day, one being
that the various nations of the world were
created with different qualities and resources,
all so beautifully arranged that one was to
supplement the other. Britain's destined part
clearly was to manufacture the raw materials
of other lands. Interchange, of raw and
finished and of different products, was evi-
dently Nature's intention, thus uniting the
nations in the noble task of supplying each
other's wants. Nations were destined to be
cooperating parts in one grand whole, and
thus Commerce became the golden chain to
bind the world in bonds of peace and good-
will. There was only one flaw in the entranc-
ing theory, but that was fatal — the various
members were not satisfied with the parts
assigned to them in the beneficent drama.
On the contrary, each evinced the strongest
desire to develop its resources and manufac-
ture its own raw materials as far as possible.
None relished being the mere hewers of wood
and drawers of water to another nation: all
wanted to play Hamlet, and as is usual in the
most talented companies of performers, all
believed themselves defined by nature for the
great part. There came to the aid of the new
ambitious lands, automatic machinery and
scientific methods which largely solved the
question of skilled labor. A few managing
Britons, or Americans, can now readily be
obtained to establish manufactures in any
part of the world, and educate the natives to
become satisfactory workers. In my travels
round the world I carefully noted this weighty
fact. I saw the peons of Mexico weaving
cloth in factories, and engaged in iron and
paper works, at two and three shillings a day
in silver, worth only one-half value in gold;
the people of India, the Japanese, and the
Chinese, all doing excellent work in cotton and
jute mills; the negroes in the United States
steadily rising in the scale and becoming good
workmen in mines and in iron and steel works ;
the Russian, Hungarian and Italian, Swede
and Norwegian, all making good workmen.
Capital, management and skilled labor have
become mobile in the extreme. The seat of
manufacturing is now, and will continue to be,
more and more simply a question where the
requisite raw materials are found under suita-
ble conditions. Capital and skilled labor
have lost the power they once had to attract
raw materials; these now attract labor and
capital. The conditions are reversed. The
cotton industry, for instance, was attracted
from Old to New England, and is now attracted
from it to the Southern States alongside
the raw material. The jute industry, once
centred in Dundee, is now also established
in India, near the jute supply.
Another factor is clearly seen: the most
patriotic people of every land consider it
a duty to develop their resources. Hence
Canada to-day gives twelve shillings a ton
bounty for every ton of pig-iron produced, and
Australia has a scale of bounties, and has just
offered a large one for the manufacture of steel
rails. They are not content to be dependent
even upon the Motherland for manufactured
articles. Germany, Russia and America give
protection, and all the colonies tax your pro-
ductions, thus giving their home producers
incidental protection.
Another element enters. Business methods
have changed in the past twenty years ; manu-
facturing especially has been revolutionized
by new inventions, improved machinery and
new and enlarged demands. The old rule of
thumb has given place to scientific precision.
The Technical Schools furnish the young
foremen and superintendents. Automatic
machinery has developed a new class of work-
men more intelligent than the old. The size
of works has increased tenfold, and instead of
partnerships devoted to one process, all pro-
cesses, from the minerals in the mine to the
finished articles, are combined in one. Rail-
roads are constructed and fleets of steamships
built and worked, all the needed materials are
owned, the company is its own insurer, and
everything entering into the product or needed
to maintain the works is made by it. One by
one subsidiary branches or new departments
are added, and from a score of small streams of
profit, unknown to the small producer of the
past, the main stream is fed. So rapidly does
one improvement follow another that some
parts of the huge concerns are constantly
undergoing reconstruction. Old-established
works are seriously disadvantaged by the new
order of things, especially if under joint stock
ownership, because it is difficult to get from
numerous small owners the capital needed for
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
2799
modern improvements. Hence the old coun-
tries, and particularly Britain the pioneer,
have been disadvantaged, and the new
American land, with a clean slate to begin
upon, much favored.
The causes specified have already changed
the positions of Britain and America as indus-
trial powers. America now makes more steel
than all the rest of the world. In iron and
coal her production is the greatest, as it is in
textiles — cotton, wool and silk. She pro-
produces three-fourths of the cotton grown in
tlie world. The value of her manufactures
is just about three times that of your own;
her exports are greater. The Clearing House
exchanges of New York are almost double
those of London in amount. She furnishes
you with most of the necessary food products
you import. She has two-fifths of the railway
mileage of the world. Thus she has become
the foremost nation in wealth, manufactures
and commerce, and promises soon, in some
branches, to occupy the position which Britain
occupied when it was Britain versus the world.
She already does this with steel. Although
no Briton can be expected to see with satis-
faction his country displaced from first place,
there is yet cause for rejoicing that supremacy
rempins in the family. It is not altogether
lost what the race still holds. Macbeth's fate
is not Britain's. The scepter of material
supremacy has been wrenched by no unlineal
hand. It is her eldest son, the rightful heir,
who wears the crown, and he can never forget,
nor cease to be proud of, the mother to whom
he owes so much.
The relative position of Germany has also
changed. She has forged ahead, her product
of steel being now second to that of the United
States. In other departments her rate of
increase is also great. She promises to run
Britain close, perhaps by the end of the decade,
for second place as a manufacturing nation.
During the ten years previous to 1900 she
added five and a half millions to her popula-
tion, and almost doubled her production of
iron, and increased that of iron ore from eleven
to nineteen millions of tons.
In comparison with these three countries
others are of trifling moment in the production
of staple articles for export, always excepting
that giant of the future, Russia, whose latent
resources are enormous, and whose growth is
so stead^^ not only through increase of popu-
lation, but through accretions of contiguous
territory. She must occupy a great position,
but not in our day, nor perhaps in the next
generation : if she hold together, she will be a
continent under one government like the
American Union, although, as far as known,
not with comparable resources and conditions.
She has employed more than one of my former
assistants to construct and manage steel-
works, and is vigorously developing her
resources in many lines. Her production of
iron has doubled in the last twelve years. Coal
mined in 1880 was six million tons, and in
1900, ten years, sixteen millions — an extra-
ordinary increase. The cotton industry has
also developed during the ten years. It is
probable that she will soon supply many of her
own chief wants, great as these are to be; but
as these will be largely additions to present
world needs, this will not greatly lessen the
trade now tributary to other nations.
Belgium, for its size, is the most wonderful
of all manufacturing nations, but too small
and fully developed to play a greater part than
now in the world's trade. One notes with sur-
prise the magnitude of her commerce. Exports
and imports per capita much exceed those of
Britain, exports being as 11.4 per head to 6.14
— almost double ; even her imports are greater.
France occupies a unique position. She
may be said to have, in the artistic quality,
substantially a monopoly most difificult to
break. Till women reach the height of wis-
dom attained by man and establish a uniform
and unvarying style of dress, and as long as
articles of luxury are in demand, and till men
reach the wisdom shown by women in regard
to French wines, so long will France remain in
the first class of nations, although much fur-
ther increase of her trade is not probable. I
might also say that as long as the French
people remain so industrious, frugal and free
from the vices of other lands, gam.bling and
drinking, so long her position is secure. It is
significant that the silk trade of Britain has
passed entirely into her hands, and that in
motor machinery she is preeminent in
Europe. The Swiss Republic may be in-
cluded in what has been said of France. It
is a wonderful little manufacturing centre
A splendid race the Swiss, who are often
described as the Scots of Continental Europe,
and very highly valued in America.
In our survey of the world the efforts of
Canada and of Australia to manufacture were
not overlooked. Nothing ever found or heard
28oo
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
of in either of these lands was calculated to
deter us from going forward without fear. If
the United States had not transcendent
resources, and an unequaled home market
that enables it to sell its surplus to Canada
cheaper than Canada can possibly produce,
manufacturing might be established to some
extent there. Under present conditions the
outlook is not favorable. In Australia so
little has been done, and, so far as I know% so
little has been found of a favorable character,
that it need not be reckoned with at present.
Xeither is ever likely, as far as yet seen, to be
important factors as manufacturers for the
world's trade.
In India, China and Japan the textile
industry has taken firm root, and in the latter
an attempt is being made to build warships
from domestic products ; but in none of these
countries did I see much prospect of rapid or
extensive development, except in textiles,
one reason for this being that while the home
market for these is great, it is small for machin-
ery, steel, and other branches of our diversified
industries of the West. The absence of a large
home demand is a serious, almost fatal bar to
the introduction of any new article of manu-
facture which must be produced upon a great
scale.
From what has been said it will be inferred
that the manufacture of staple articles for the
world is to be chiefly conducted in our time
and in the next generation by the three coun-
tries, Britain, Germany and the United States,
France retaining her own domain, although
the smaller countries will increase their indus-
tries and supply a greater part of their own
wants.
In the race for the world's trade between
these countries several considerations are
important. First — let this vital fact be noted
— the most powerful weapon for conquering
foreign markets is a profitable home market.
It might also be taken as an axiom that the
nation fortified by the best home demand for
any article will finally conquer the world's
trade in that article in neutral markets. In
economic circles "the law of the surplus," as
I have ventured to call it, attracts increasing
attention. Manufacturing establishments are
increased year by year until they become
gigantic, simply because the more made the
cheaper the product, there being a score of cost
accounts divisible by product. By giving
men constant employment, and having a repu-
tation for never stopping, the best men are
attracted and held — an important point. The
manufacturer upon a large scale can afford to
make many contracts in distant parts of the
world, and even some at home, at a direct loss
in times of depression, knowing that, upon the
whole, the result will be less unprofitable by
running full than running short time or
stopping. Hence, those possessing the most
profitable home market can afford to supply
foreign markets without direct profits, or even
at a loss whenever necessary. I speak from
sad experience on this point, for during most
of my life we have had to encounter Britain's
surplus in our markets in times of depression
here, to the great disadvantage of the home
producer and advantage of the British manu-
facturer. This position the United States
now in turn occupies toward Britain and other
manufacturing countries, since it has the
greatest and most profitable home market,
not only for steel but for most articles.
Invasions of Europe, and especially of Britain,
by American manufacturers are not to be
apprehended to any considerable extent, ex-
cept at rare intervals. It is not the amount
imported, however, that discourages the home
producers; the knowledge that he is open to
serious competition from abroad, a small
amount of which will break his market, is
what makes him loath to invest the great sums
sometimes necessary to keep him in the front,
and robs him of the do-or-die resolve, which
often is of itself the secret of victory in the
struggles for life.
Second, the question of population bears
directly upon the industrial development of
nations, since increased numbers expand the
home market. There are today 78,000,000
of people in the American Union. More
than 600,000 immigrants from Europe will
have landed on her shores this year. Her
rate of increase between 1880 and 1890
was just about three times that of the
United Kingdom. Last decade it was not
so great, although more than double, hav-
ing fallen, because of five years of depres-
sion caused by an agitation upon the stand-
ard of value, the most disturbing of all eco-
nomic questions. Nevertheless she added
13,500,000 to her population. This decade,
ev^en at no greater native rate of increase than
the last, will add more than 15,000,000.
Every morning the sun rises it greets more
than 4,000 new faces added to the Union.
KUROPE vi-rs/is AMERICA"
2801
Germany's population is 56,000,000; she
added 5,500,000 last decade. The increase
of the United Kingdom was 3,600,000. It
is a serious disadvantage to Britain in the
contest that her home market cannot expand
as rapidly as the American, or even the Ger-
man. Size of productive territory, as affect-
ing population, is a prime factor in the race
for the first place among nations in material
production.
Third, we see proofs of another important
law. Just as raw materials now attract
capital and labor to any part of the world,
so unfilled fertile soil increases and attracts
population. We note the rapid increase in
the Mississippi Valley, and that America is
consuming more and more of its own food
supplies. It already manufactures as much
of its enormous total cotton crop as Britain im-
ports, and not more than 10 per cent, of all its
field crops, except cotton, are ever exported.
Wherever food products can be grown profit-
ably people will increase until the limit of
food supply is reached. Where exceptional
conditions exist, such as valuable minerals,
' population may remain in excess of the food
supply, as with this favored island; but p.er-
manently to maintain population beyond
food supply, a nation must be able to supply
needed articles to so much better advantage
than the purchasing nations can produce or
procure them as to enable it to endure the
disadvantage of higher cost of food.
It seems clear that the spread of manufac-
tures will be so general that the leading nations
will finally supply most of their principal
wants — at least to a much greater extent than
hitherto. It follows that exchange of articles
between nations, "Foreign Commerce," is not
to increase as rapidl}' as exchange of articles
within nations, "Home Commerce." But the
unceasing growth of the world will never-
theless probably keep British, Belgic and
French foreign commerce and manufactur-
ing at their present figures.
There is a great difference between a home
and a foreign market, which is not much
dwelt upon in Europe, to which I invite your
attention.
Exchange of products benefits both buyer
and seller. With British home commerce
both are Britons; with foreign commerce one
only is a Briton, the other a foreigner. Hence
home commerce is doubly profitable. And
this is not all. When the article exported, such
as machinery or coal, for instance, is used for
developing the resources or manufactures of
the importing country, and enable these to
compete with those of the exporting country,
the disadvantage of this foreign Commerce
to the seller. excei)t the jjrofit ui)on the sale,
is obvious. How different when the machin-
ery is sold at home and develops home
resources continually.
Here is another important point. The
relative importance of the two markets is often
lost sight of. The home market of America
takes ninety-six per cent, of all manufactured
articles, only four per cent, going to foreign
markets. Even Britain's home market takes
four-fifths of her manufactures, only one-fifth
going abroad. Politicians give far too much
attention to distant foreign markets, which
can never amount to much, and far too little to
measures for improving conditions at home
which would increase the infinitely more
important home market. If the people of the
United Kingdom could spend even one pound
per head more per year her home commerce
would be increased more than the total value
of her exports to all of iVustralasia, British
North America and China combined. Truly
foreign commerce is a braggart always in
evidence, home commerce the true king.
In studying the industrial positions of
nations, imports and exports are misleading.
The undue attention still generally bestowed
upon these by writers upon economics here is
surprising. Arguing as they do who judge of
a nation's prosperity by its foreign trade,
America's prosperity today is lessened because
her manufactured exports have for the day
declined, which is, on the contrary, the best
proof of extraordinary prosperity, for America
at present needs all its manufactures in some
branches for its own development. Happy
country whose steel builds railroads, ships
and other structures in its own territory. It
is not what is exported, but the amount pro-
duced, that shows a country's condition, and
what is not exported but put to profitable use
at home is, as we have seen, doubly profitable.
The habits, conditions, intelligence and
spirit of the masses are important elements in
the industrial race, and we gave close atten-
tion to these as bearing upon our task. The
German, as we know him at home and in the
United States, is a valuable man, steady,
sober, methodical, thorough, self-respecting,
of fine domestic tastes, an admirable workman
u
2802
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
and superintendent. Thanks to the con-
scription of Germany, among other causes,
we had many thousand of Germans in our
service, of whom at least four whom I recall
became partners and earned the millions of
dollars they obtained. They fled from the
conscription of their sons, and today the son
of a German who left his country largely for
the same reason is at the head of the greatest
manufacturing corporation in the world. We
owe a valuable invention to one of these men.
The value of the German element to America
can scarcely be believed except by those who,
like myself, know it by experience. The total
emigration from Germany and Austria-
Hungary has about equaled that from Great
Britain and Ireland. It may be accepted
that if ever Britain resorts to conscription, the
Republic will be still more enriched than it has
yet been by one class of emigrants who will
come in greater numbers than ever, even more
valuable per man than the German — the Scot ;
and that many more than ever of the most
valuable men of England — a splendid strain
when they reach the "open mind" — will leave
their shores for the land which knows not
conscription.
One is not wrong in believing that it is the
ablest and most ambitious who leave their own
land — men who have saved enough to enable
them to reach and to start in the new; that
they have saved being the best possible proof
of their value. One such emigrant is worth to
America a score of inert stay-at-homes. One
census showed that more than half the total
number of Scotch emigrants were engaged
in manufacturing. The three most celebrated
pioneer manufacturers of iron in the United
States were Scotch — Burden of Trov, Dickson
of Scranton and Chisholm of Cleveland.
The American is efficient beyond other men
because compounded of the best of other
nations and developed in a climate under
political and social conditions all stimulating
beyond any to be found elsewhere.
In comparing Britain with the Continents of
Europe and America, much is seen unfavora-
ble to Britain's industrial position and to the
comfort and happiness of her people, both
employers and employed. The former fail to
give business the unremitting attention and
to display the energy and enterprise of the
founders of the practical monopoly of the past.
They generally regard it as only a means to
win entrance to another rank of societv.
The employed think too much of how little
they need to do, too little of how much they
can do. Both classes still take life easy in
this day of competition which only the day
of established monopoly could support.
Employers would find it much to their own
interests to give to their ablest employees
shares in the business. The more given in
this form the more would flow to the employer.
The great secret of success in business and of
millionaire-making is to make partners of
valuable managers of departments. The
contest between the old and the new lands
today resembles that between professionals
and amateurs. It is in their workmen that
the Continent has one of its chief advantages
over Britain, and America over the Continent,
for even the German has to yield the palm to
the compound British-German which makes
the man of the more stirring New World.
He could not be more thorough or methodical
than the German, but he is more active and
more versatile. Wages of skilled labor,
though higher in Britain than in Germany,
are not so much so as to rank in importance
with the factors stated ; the difference between
the two is trifling as compared vyith that
between Britain and America. It is not the
lowest, but the highest paid labor, with
scientific management and machinery, which
gives cheapest products. Some of the impor-
tant staple articles made in Britain, Germany
and America are produced cheapest in the last,
with labor paid double.
The two continents have another decided
advantage over Britain in the sobriety and
regular habits of their workmen. The broken
days of Britain both handicap the employer
and injure the workman.
In viewing the immediate future of Britain
without misgiving, as far as maintaining her
present trade is concerned, I count upon the
inherent qualities and capabilities of our race,
which, lulled to drowsy inactivity by pros-
perity under highly favorable conditions, are
bound to be again aroused by adversity, more
or less severe, under strong competition.
There is such wide scope for improvement
that the most despondent may be encouraged;
nor does the reform imply want or suffering,
or less desirable conditions of life for either
employer or employed. Far otherwise. That
the drink bill of this country, now reaching the
incredible figure of ;^ 160,000,000, should be
cut in half, or only a quarter or less of it left.
"EUROPE versus AMERICA
2803
or better still, if only ;^20,ooo,ooo were left,
implies not the degradation but elevation of
the people. That the sums risked by both
masters and workingmcn in gambling, and the
greater injury wrought in the waste of their
time and thoughts, should become evils of
the past, would improve the poor slaves of
this habit. Tliat they should smoke less
would not render life less happy nor health less
robust. There are now spent upon tobacco
per year _£32, 000,000: better if half or more
were saved. And so with many of the rude
sports: better if these were abandoned. From
these evils the Continent and America are
comparatively, and in some cases almost
entirely, free.
The peace expenditure and debt charge of
the four principal Powers stand thus per
capita ■
Expenditure . Debt Charge.
United Kingdom, £^, los. 8s. 6d.
Germany, ... 2, is. is. 7d.
Russia, . . . I, 15s. 5s. 2d.
United States, . . i, 8s. is. lod.
Germany's position financially is remarka-
l)le ; that of Britain in contrast deserves care-
ful attention.
That Britain's present population, wealth
or trade in the aggregate are to decline is
unlikely. I believe these may even increase
somewhat in the immediate future. Her
wealth, climate, geographical position and
resources are superior to those of any country
in Europe, some of which, because of these
very advantages, are allowed to furnish her
with products which she herself could produce.
They get the crumbs which fall from her more
luxurious table. That busy hive, Belgium,
for instance, sends her articles to the value of
;£2i,ooo,ooo yearly, ;^3,ooo,ooo of this being
cloths and yarns, ;^i,5oo,ooo iron and steel.
Germany is permitted to send ;^i,ooo,ooo
worth of cloth goods and £1 ,000,000 worth of
butter and eggs. France sends silks and
woolens to the value of £18,000,000;
leather goods, ;£i,75o,ooo. Little Denmark,
with a population not much exceeding
2,000,000, supplies Britain to the extent of
nearly ;^i 2, 000,000 — almost as much per
capita as your total exports. Denmark
receives ;^7, 000,000 yearly for butter and
£3.5o°'Ooo for bacon and eggs. The latter
item equals the total value of all you
send her. Norway, Sweden and Holland
send her ;^i,5oo,ooo worth of butter, and
the latter also sends gloves and glassware
valued at ;^i,ooo,ooo. Here are ;(]6o,ooo,ooo
worth ])er year of foreign supplies, most of
which Britain could herself produce, and will
produce if ever she fi»ils to find more profitable
occupation for her own people, as she now does,
or if ever her people become as industrious
as those of the Continent, thus obtaining a
permanent home market almost equal in
amount to one-quarter of all her foreign
exports.
Thus Britain alone among European nations
holds in reserve an imjjortant home market
capable of yielding profit equal to at least one-
third or more of all her present export trade,
since home commerce is doubly profitable.
Here lies an untouched mine of wealth. She
has in her unrivaled supply of coal, as far
as Europe is concerned, another mine of vast
wealth
There is one dark cloud upon her horizon
which cannot be ignored. From the best infor-
mation I can obtain, in twenty or twenty-five
years the supply of Cleveland iron-stone will
be practically exhausted at the present rate of
production, except that two concerns will
then still have sufficient for some years longer.
The Cumberland supply is already nearly
exhausted. This will bring dearer iron and
steel. Without cheap iron and steel the con-
struction of ships and machinery of all kinds,
and of the thousand-and-one articles of which
steel is the base, would tend to decrease; but
the loss in this trade may be compensated for
by increase in other branches, caused by the
ever-growing wants of the world. Britain is
not alone concerned in the iron-stone supply,
for, as far as I know, the supply is soon to
become precarious in some of the other manu-
facturing nations before man}^ decades pass
unless new sources of supply are discovered.
Even the United States has a proved supply
of first-class ore only for sixty to seventy years,
and a reserve of inferior grades which may
keep her supplied for thirty years longer, say
for a century in all, unless the rate of con-
sumption be greatly increased. The enor-
mous extent of territory in the Republic over
which ore can hopefully be looked for
encourages the belief that new deposits are
sure to be found. It is upon new discoveries
that Britain depends, the outlook in her case
being less hopeful. Germany has today, as
far as proved, the most enduring supply,
although its ore is not nearly so rich as the
American.
2804
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
Years of painful lessons may be, and prob-
ably are, before the people of Britain, but the
discipline will be salutary, leading to their
improvement and elevation, and hence to
make life here truly happier because freer
from degrading tastes than ever before.
The evils of poverty receive unceasing
recital, but there are evils of long-continued
prosperity of no mean order which pass with-
out the attention their poison warrants. The
decay of great States is traced, not to poverty
and want, but to the reign of luxury and the
vices it breeds. A Britain filled with people
possessed of the valuable qualities of our race,
and becoming as temperate and industrious as
the French, German or American, has nothing
to fear in the struggle for maintenance of a
place among industrial nations. She needs no
sympathy since her destiny is in her own hands.
Fortunate, indeed, ma}' be the verdict of her
future historian, if sheer necessity at this
epoch in her history compelled her to discard
the vices engendered by a long season of
extravagant gains, and consequent spread of
the evils which luxury brings in its train, and
led her once again to tread the toilsome path
of self -improvement. A nation's position
often depends upon the character and attain-
m^ents of the leaders it produces — the excep-
tional men who lift their fellows. May it be the
part of the historian to record that in inaugu-
rating, and by example, precept and exhorta-
tion, conducting, this great campaign for the
improvement of the habits of the people, rich
and poor, noble and commoner, rulers and
ruled, there was one body of men distinguished
above all others for the enthusiasm, labor,
ability and sacrifice displayed in every part
of the field — the students, graduates and
alumni of Scotland's oldest university.
To summarize in one paragraph the laws
bearing upon the material position of nations,
as described, may not be amiss:
(i) The chief nations of the world have
greater capacity to supply their own wants
than was supposed.
(2) Skilled labor has lost its power to attract
capital and raw materials, which under favor-
able conditions now attract capital and labor.
(3) Nations will d/velop their own resources
to the greatest possible extent as a patriotic
duty, offering inducements to the enterprising
to risk time and capital in the task.
(4) The country with the largest and most
profitable home market has an invincible
weapon for the conquest of foreign markets,
as the "law of surplus'' operates in favor
of the largest producer in competing for the
trade of the world.
(5) As nations are more and more to supply
their own wants, home commerce is to increase
much more rapidly than foreign commerce.
(6) Nations tend to increase in population
according to their capacity to produce cheap
food.
The tendency to enlarge areas under one
government must continue, otherwise the small
nations become mere pygmies industrially and
play no part in world-wide affairs.
These laws have already given some proofs
of their sway, to which I beg to direct your
attention.
We hear of huge industrial combinations
on land and sea, but the combination of
forty-five States, some of them larger than
the United Kingdom, forming the American
Union, which promises soon to equal Europe
in the production of many of the staple articles,
and is already producing more than the rest
of the world of the article of prime impor-
tance, is a portent of infinitely more conse-
quence to the world than any possible indus-
trial combinations, the latter being trifling in
comparison. At the present rate of progress
America will, in the lifetime of many present,
have a population equal to that of Europe
today, excluding Russia.
The influence of a united Continent upon
the separate smaller nations of the world is
already felt. Europe sees its art treasures and
its shipping lines and the centre of finance
passing to the new land as primacy in manu-
facturing, in wealth and in commerce have
already done, under the law of gravitation,
which operates in every field, even in that of
literature. Eight copies of the Encyclopccdia
Britannica find their home in the new land for
every one in the old land of publication. The
manufacturers of the new land invade the old
and compete in the world's markets. These
facts have not escaped the attention of the
nations. Austria's Premier was among the
first to direct attention to the situation, and
he has been followed by others in authority.
Europe is alarmed at the threatened conse-
quences, and the search is now directed to the
discovery of countervailing forces. The first
necessary step in this task is to compare the
two continents and note the points of dif-
ference which create the dangers feared. We
EURUTE versus AMERICA'
2805
have treated of the positions of different
nations hitherto; now we must contrast
Europe and America as units — continent
against continent.
There are some portentous contrasts.
First, we find Europe an armed camp, every
man's time and labor for years taken for
miUtary training, not merely unproductive
labor, but labor costly to the State. Nearly
9,000,000 of men are thus called to military
duty. The American Union, on the other
hand, has only an army of 66,000 men, and
there is no conscription. Its men are in the
industrial, not in the military army, constantly
adding to the material wealth of the country.
She is further enriched through the operation
of conscription in Europe.
Europe has 410 battleships, cruisers and
coast defense ships; America, 35.
It would be difficult to overestimate the
eflfect of this contrast upon the industrial
development of the two continents.
Second, America is one united whole at
peace with itself, and enjoys immunity from
attack by neighbors, or even by Europe, since
she supplies so many parts of it with neces-
sary food products that non-exportation of
American products would produce not only
famine prices, but actual famine itself, and
compel peace. Hence industrial development
has one indispensable condition-— peaceful
security. In Europe this is lacking, for it is
divided into hostile camps. That its huge
armaments cannot go on unceasingly growing
is evident — an explosion must come. That
this is considered imminent is evident from the
measures taken by the nations to protect them-
selves from its consequences. If rulers and
statesmen did not see the inevitable result
impending over their heads — a Damocles
sword — they would strain less violently in
preparation. It is impossible for industrial
development to proceed satisfactorily under
the shadow of this dreaded catastrophe . There
is nothing so timid as capital.
Until these contrasts cease, anything ap-
proaching equality of power between the
industrial armies of the old and the new
worlds is unattainable.
Third, since his continent has less than
thirty people per square mile, the American
has a constantly expanding home demand,
urging him to extensions, and justifying costly
improvements and the adoption of new pro-
cesses. He has also a continent under tDne
government. He establishes his several works
at the centres of the various markets. If a
needed ingredient be found in one State,
another somewhere else, if it be desirable to
construct works for one part of a process here,
or there, or ply ships, or build railroads in
any part of this broad area, he proceeds with-
out hesitation, dreading neither interference
with supplies, hostile legislation, nor national
antipathies. "No pent-up Utica contracts
his powers" : more the boundless continent
is his, as are all its markets, free from tariff.
His operations are free from start to finish.
The result is that every process of manu-
facture in the Union flows naturally to the
localities best adapted for it, there being no
barriers to free selection. The best places also
are selected for assembling materials, raw or
partially prepared, for their final forms. In
short, it is free, unrestricted trade in every-
thing under the same conditions, same laws,
same flag, and free markets everywhere over
an expanding continent — advantages which
only those experienced in industrial trade will
estimate at their full value.
The European manufacturer finds obstacles
to such varied expansion in a continent
divided into hostile and warring States, with
different laws and exactions and tariffs at
every boundary, the fear of war overhanging
all. He is almost compelled to confine his
investments and works to the small area of
his own country and its small home market.
One of many telling advantages which
industrialism receives from political union in
America is that a great home demand for any
article from one united people occupying a
continent evolves standard forms, the evolu-
tion of the best types, which justifies the manu-
facturer in erecting special machinery and
running it exclusively upon each part of the
type. Railway, electric, harbor, bridge —
engineers in these and other branches adopt
the standard forms: hence whenever a huge
bridge, for instance, is needed prompt!}' in any
part of the world — Egypt or India — America
is applied to: the steel-maker has his bridge
construction and bridge erection depart-
ments managed by specialists who know
what is best much better than any general
engineer can possibly do. The proper plans
for the standard bridge required are taken
and the work begins instantly. Note here
that the steel-maker is also the bridge
contractor: a vital point. The bridge is proba-
28o6
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
bly open for traffic before the European
engineer could have submitted plans and the
bridgemaker had contracted with the steel-
maker. A new bridge in Europe is a new
creation in which several separate contractors
have participated ; in America it is from stand-
ard patterns evolved from experience and
completed from start to finish by one con-
tractor.
In greater or less degree this exists in
the manufacture of the principal articles of
which America is now the greatest producer.
Consider agricultural machinery. One of the
leading English manufacturers once told me
that he had been compelled to abandon
foreign markets and finally to cease business.
The American manufacturer had triumphed.
While here three or four hundred machines
were sufficient for the season's demand, his
friend in America put in hand seven thousand.
Megalomania again. This output justified the
automatic machinery used in every process of
manufacture. If my memory be correct, it
was twenty-two men in Britain for two men
in America in one of these processes — that
is, the machinery did twenty men's work.
Why, then, not adopt it in Britain? you say.
Small home demand is the adequate reply,
and that demand itself open to the American
competitor.
Here is an illustration of different character.
The republic has now more than ten thousand
miles of connected river and lake navigation
which supplies the cheapest inland transporta-
tion of materials in the world. Having one
government, these lakes and rivers were
easily improved and joined, harbors deepened,
and rivers rendered navigable by means of
movable dams and locks. The work still goes
steadily on under government naval and
military engineers. Some years ;^i 2,000,000
have been devoted to it. In one day recently
226 barges, containing 200,000 tons of coal,
passed through the Ohio River lock at Pitts-
burg for Western and Southern cities. All
articles can be thus floated or towed to points
three and even four thousand miles distant
for a few shillings per ton.
The iron-stone from Lake Superior mines is
transported over part of this water system to
the coal of Pennsylvania for nine hundred
miles at a cost of two shillings per ton — one
of several elements in the making of cheap
steel. So much for water transportation
through the action of government; now con-
sider land transportation by railroad through
private agency. There is free trade in railroad
building — five men in Pennsylvania, for in-
stance, can meet and organize a company
under the general railroad law by satisfying
the county court that it is a bona fide enter-
prise, and that the capital is subscribed and
one-tenth paid in: a charter issues costing
eight shillings, and the work begins. Railway
traffic rates per mile do not average over one-
half, sometimes one-third those of Europe for
long distances — often for three thousand
miles merchandise is carried by rail in bulk,
without transfer, at rates that would surprise
you.
Pause to consider for a moment what such
facilities by land and water mean as bearing
upon the area of the home market which the
gigantic producer of any article can reach and
supply — and then carefully note how impos-
sible to acquire these except through the action
of one central government, disregardful of the
rival claims of its petty parts, and dealing
with the problem solely from the national
point of view, always intent upon developing
one unbroken system of transportation.
Let us go to Germany for another proof that
magnitude tells. She is supreme in speed
upon the Atlantic: no steamships like hers.
And why ? Because these monster ships start
from Germany after draining the passenger
travel of Northern and Eastern Europe. Not
content with this, they touch at Southampton
and compete for British travel, and still unsat-
isfied cross to Cherbourg and drain France and
Southern Europe. On their homeward trips
from New York they are filled with passengers
for all these ports. It is not subsidies which
enable the Germans to conquer here, for their
lines are not paid more than half what British
lines on the Atlantic receive. It is magnitude.
The 250,000,000 people the German lines
serve is equivalent to a great home demand.
This justifies their ocean greyhounds as the
American home market justifies unequaled
manufacturing establishments. Since these
lines were penned strong proof has come of
the law of surplus. The Britain, the smaller
market, has been compelled to pay $150,000
per year for two Atlantic greyhounds, while
the greater market, Germany, has four of these
supported by the greater demand of the
greater market.
Germany, in herself, furnishes proof of the
necessity in this age for consolidation of small
"EUKorK 7rrs//s amkric:a"
2807
areas. As long as she was cut up into petty
divisions, with different laws and tariffs, she
had no international position industrially—
it was impossible siie could have. United
into one empire, with free trade over the whole
area, giving a home market of 56,000,000
people, she only needed to encourage the
development of her resources, which was
wise statesmanship, to become the dangerous
rival of Britain, and even to outstrip her in the
most important article of all, steel.
One more illustration. Switzerland was
the land of watch manufacture by hand.
America introduced machinery, having an
enormous home demand — there being scarcely
an American adult without a watch. Now
one concern there makes more watches than
all of Switzerland, as one American constructor
makes more locomotives than any European
country, and one agricultural implement
maker makes more machines than all Britain.
Another proof of the value of home demand
can be given from Britain. One important
department in Europe is unequaled by the
1 American — shipbuilding, which also obeys
the law of great home demand. Since Britain
has been the great exporter and importer of
the world and the greatest naval power,
naturally the building of ships has taken firm
root there; and in the world's market she
remains supreme. Having the enormous
home demand, she conquers the foreign.
More and more clearly must the truth be
realized that the industrial struggle among
the nations is bound up with the political, the
question of magnitude being at the bottom of
supremacy in both. A nation cannot be
small in size and in population and remain
great in material products or material power.
To maintain first rank industrially, commer-
cially or financialh' small nations must merge
with others and become prosperous parts of
one greet federated power. Once the race
was between separate nations, henceforth it is
between continents.
Ask yourself this question. If America had
been composed of petty, independent, jealous
States, as Europe is, each afraid of the other,
and armed to the teeth against expected
attack, and had erected tariff barriers against
the products of each other, would Europe ever
thave heard of the American Industrial
Invasion? To ask the question is to answer
it — never.
trasts between the two is that the one
continent is one harmonious, peaceful,
cooperative whole, its power and energy
directed to industrial progress ; the other
divided into hostile camps — tlie power and
energy of each directed to military protec-
tion and commercial isolation.
Ask yourselves another question. Can
Europe, as long as she remains divided into
hostile camps, ever hope to conquer foreign
markets or even to repel the American
invasion ? That question also answers itself
— never.
Such are the chief contrasts between the
two Continents and their effects bearing upon
Industrialism. What must Europe do to
dispel them ? There is only one answer.
She labors in vain until she secures some form
of political and industrial union and becomes
one united whole, as the American Union is
in these respects, for this is the only founda-
tion upon which she can ever contend success-
fully against America for the trade of the
world, or each of her separate nations hold its
own home trade in manufactures, except
under a system of protection which must
handicap her in the race for the trade of the
world. The load of militarism would cease
to press upon her, for a very small per-
centage of the cost of the present defensive
armaments of the Powers would suffice to
protect her from foreign attack. Europe is a
body whose members war against each other;
her enemies those of her own household. A
sorry spectacle.
The consolidation of Europe has proceeded
apace within a century. Napoleon abolished
more than a hundred independent centres of
quarrel in Germany alone. In our own day we
have seen Germany emerge, through Federa-
tion, into one of the strongest of powers
and reach the front rank industrially, Italy
reconstructed and enlarged, France adding
Savoy and Nice. Several smaller changes
in territory have taken place, but no student
of international affairs assumes that Europe
has yet reached its final forms. It is still in a
state of flux. Hence the great Powers sleep
upon their arms, mistrustful of each other,
and in every successive budget devote huge
sums to increase their war power, thus from
year to year giving that fearful note of prepa-
ration which keeps capital alarmed and pre-
vents rapid and thorough scientific industrial
development and free exchange. No end can
28o8
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
be safely predicted to the struggle once begun.
Twenty wars and peaces may find Europe still
in flux, if its final forms are to be determined
by the sword. Fortunately consolidations
have reduced the centres of disturbance until
today there are only five in Europe, and, as a
result, even Europeans are now sometimes
permitted to rest from the slaughter of each
other for a generation, guiltless of their neigh-
bor's blood, and this although Europe is an
armed camp and the Powers still busy increas-
ing their destructive agencies. We should
hail the Triple and the Dual Alliances, since
these are defensive agreements, and reduce
war-making centres practically to two, a
contest between which would be of such stu-
pendous magnitude as to give the most reck-
less gamester pause. But the merely negative
influence of these alliances is clear. They
cause not one moment's cessation in the race
for additional armaments — proof that the
Powers still fear each other in spite of these
consolidated agreements, and dread the com-
ing of an inevitable struggle, which is to end
only when the map of Europe is greatly
changed. Hence the military army exacts its
conscripts from the industrial army, and pro-
gress halts in all the fields of peaceful develop-
ment. Security is absent. Some have pre-
dicted that no permanent peace is possible
until the division among the great Powers be
effected substantially upon racial lines. Such
drastic reconstruction means generations of
strife, or of preparation for strife, almost
equally disastrous to industrial progress, and
would still leave three rival Powers. Such a
solution should not be thought of. One
exclaims instinctively, "Take away the sword
— States may be saved without it." The most
important gain of all to the cause of peace
among men is to be credited to the enlight-
ened and peace-loving Emperor of Russia. The
Hague Conference, called by him, established
a permanent tribunal composed of the ablest
and best men of the various nations, a selec-
tion from which can be made by nations to
settle their differences.
Its value has not been realized. Wars in
South Africa and the Philippines arose and
absorbed attention. In both of these our race
was offered bv its adversaries arbitration
through this agency, which was ultimately
rejected, but the time comes when .we shall
begin to appreciate what the world has gained
thereby. Two international disputes have
alread}^ been submitted to this high court of
humanity, and the example once set is bound
to be followed and crystallized into custom.
A thousand years from now the historian will
probably cite as the most important event of
the century the first creation of a tribunal
whose object was to banish from the earth its
deepest stain, and from human beings their
most inhuman practice, the settlement of
international differences by the killing of each
other. Such the part played by the present
Emperor of Russia. Such his unimpeacha-
ble title to rank with the few supreme bene-
factors of men. It is something gained that
Europe might relieve itself of internal wars
among its parts, as if by magic, by simply
agreeing to appeal to this tribunal.
The three leading powers, Russia, France
and Germany, took joint action in regard to a
question in the far East, and more recently
Britain joined them in joint action in China,
the United States cooperating to some
extent. These are all cheering signs, indica-
tions that perhaps the era of continuous joint
action is not so far distant as might be feared.
The Triple and Dual Alliances, or a new group-
ing of parties, might guarantee the status quo
and agree to cease increase of armaments,
which would not change the relative positions
of nations. Perhaps a second resolve might
soon follow that these should be ratably
decreased, but this being a positive, not a
negative measure, would be more difficult.
Still, much seems possible in the direction of
peace, since there are now only two organiza-
tions to be harmonized.
"A great man has arisen in England, Sire,
called Cromwell," said Richelieu to the King.
We might say "A great man has arisen in
Germany, the Emperor." It is impossible to
follow his doings without feeling that here is a
personality, a power potent for good or evil,
in the world. So far he has given Germany
a much-needed stimulus to industrial action.
Both on sea and land his influence has been
decisive. The German ships are first in speed
upon the Atlantic. The inland watercourses
of Germany, according to his plans, are soon
to play a more important part in her internal
development. She is now second in the world
as a manufacturer of steel, which means much,
since that is the basic element of a thousand
articles, and her product of iron is soon also to
be second. The Emperor's head and hand and
heart, too, are in all these triumphs. He is at
' ' K V R 0 1' 1-: irrsNs A M K R 1 C A ' '
2809
once the Emperor and the vital force of the
empire. One wonders whether, after having
proved the efficiency of the German Constitu-
tion, he may not devote himself to its further
extension. All that Germany has gained by
consolidation into an empire Europe would
gain, and more, if merged into one. A combi-
nation of the German and American Constitu-
tions, satisfactory to most, if not all, European
nations, seems not impracticable, and the
union only of tlie most important is required
to insure peace. France, Germany and
Russia would suffice, and these have taken
joint action already against Japan, Why are
they not to do so hereafter in the greater issue ?
Under both the German and American sys-
tems small nationalities are sacredly preserved
as in the Union of Scotland and England ; hence
the perfect welds. The Kings of Saxony and
of Bavaria are German. Every State in the
American Union is in itself sovereign with its
elected Governor. Wherever suppression has
been tried trouble has arisen. Imagine the
effect of an attempt to destroy Scotland's
nationality and stamp out the sentiment
which lies in the core of every Scottish heart,
which no words can ever express but "Scotland
forever." With this precious national patriotic
sentiment properly recognized and protected,
consolidations of nations will be easy and
wholly advantageous.
The coming century is to look back upon
the present petty political divisions of Europe
with the feelings we of today entertain for the
one hundred and fourteen little States of
Germany and their pygmy monarchs of the
past century, with their thirty-four tariff
barriers to commerce and travel on the Rhine,
resembling the Likin of China.
The Emperor of Russia having taken the
first step toward the peace of the world in the
Hague Conference, the other mighty Emperor
might some day be impressed by the thought
that it is due to himself and to Germany to
play a great part upon the wider stage of
Europe as her deliverer from the incubus
which oppresses and weakens her, the appall-
ing and paralyzing fear of a war of ruin
between the members of her own body.
Seldom comes to the world one who is both
Emperor and ruler, and the few known to
history have made their mark upon the world,
from Caesar and King Alfred to Charlemagne.
No ordinary task contented them. One
cannot help believing that "one of the
supremely great' ' in the Emperor's position
could influence the few men who today control
Europe to take the first step, not to federate,
but by alliance to insure internal peace, whicli
is all that can be expected at present. What
the separate nations of Europe — Russia
excepted — have to look forward to in the not
distant future, if they do not agree so far as to
enjoy peaceful security and free trade among
themselves, and act in wars, military or
industrial, as one power, is to revolve like so
many Liliputians around this giant Gulliver,
the American Union, soon to embrace two
hundred millions of people of the English-
speaking race, capable of supplying most of
the world's wants, both in manufactures and
food products, at lowest and yet to it profitable
prices. The most sanguine predictions in
regard to her advantages and coming triumphs
industrially and commercially are, in my calm
judgment, probably to be exceeded. Even
if European nations were reconciled to play
the subordinate role indicated, there remains
the impossibility of their enduring forever
the present military strain under which some
already begin to stagger. The loan must
sooner or later prove too great and force
reconstruction.
Let us therefore assume that Continental
Europe will be finally compelled, after greater
or less sacrifice, through ruinous wars or peace-
ful negotiations, if not to federalize in some
form, yet to adopt means to insure peace
among themselves which would lead to some
form of federation under free trade. It would
then be continent against continent — Europe
versus America: with the former relieved
from militarism there would be equality so far
and both could prosper with a large home
market and participate in the ever-increasing
trade of the world. There is little room today
for operations upon a small scale either
in industrialism or in nationalism — nation
against nation was once well enough. Britain
and France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary
were each once of sufficient size to rank as
great powers, but the American Continental
Union — forty-five States in one, has changed
all that. The solid mass of this great body in
action will by mere momentum force its way
through small industrial warring units into
opposition. There is also huge Russia to be
reckoned with, which likewise threatens to
overshadow the small nations.
The closing paragraph of Morley's '" Life of
28lO
"EUROPE versus AMERICA"
Cobden" is most pertinent to today's condi-
tions :
" Great economic and social forces flow with
a tidal sweep over commiinities that are only
half conscious of that which is befalling them.
Wise statesmen are those who foresee what
time is thus bringing, and endeavor to shape
institutions and to mold men's thought and
purpose in accordance with the change that
is silently surrounding them,"
The question arises, what would Britain do
if Continental Europe be thus relieved from
internal dangers and under free trade possessed
of the indispensable home market, and were
finally to be federated into one ZoUverein or
great power? Would she remain a small
separate island nation of forty-five or fifty
millions, against the hundreds of millions of
the Continent ? Or, if invited, become a mem-
ber of the European consolidation — our race
submerged by Slav, Teutonic and Latin
races? Or would the mother-heart, beating
fast within her, turn her gaze longingly to
her children across the sea, then hundreds of
millions strong, and, grasping their out-
stretched hand, murmur, " ' Whit'hersoe ver
thou goest I go; thy people are my people":
the English-speaking race thus becoming
again as it was before — for offense never, for
defense ever — one and inseparable.
It is for essays upon this momentous ques-
tion that I shall offer the usual Rector's prizes.
Students of St. Andrews: — My subject has
been the Industrial Ascendency of the World,
once yoiu-s, and now passed to your lineal
descendant, who bears the industrial crown.
But, gentlemen, in this audience, assembled
in Scotland's oldest university, the thought
that fills your heart and appeals to mine, is, of
what value is material compared with moral
and intellectual ascendency, supremacy not
in the things of the body but in those of the
spirit ! What the barbarous triumphs of tTie
sword compared with those of the pen I
Peace hath her victories much more renowned
than those of war : the heroes of the past have
been those who most successfully injured or
slew; the heroes of the future are to be those
who most wisely benefit or save their fellow-
men. What the action of the thews and
sinews against that of the Godlike reason, the
murdering savage armies of brutal force
against the peaceful armies of Literature,
Poetr}-, Art, Science, Law, Government,
Medicine, and all the agencies which refine
and civilize man and help him onward and
upward ! Shakespeare and Milton, Burns
and Scott, Xewton and Hume, Bacon and
Locke, Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Sidney and
Russell, Burke, Gladstone, Bright, Tennyson,
Browning, Arnold, Carlyle, Ruskin, Darwin,
Watt, Symington, Stephenson, Bessemer,
Arkwright, Hargreaves, and others of the
past ; and all the leaders of today who march
in the train of the white-robed angel of peace
and good- will among men.
What matters what part of the world makes
the most steel, iron, cloth or ships, if you
produce the highest poets, historians, phi-
losophers, statesmen, inventors, teachers ?
Let others make more of the food for the
body of man, if from you come the best books
for his soul, or the highest examples of lives
grandly lived. Let more of the millions of
the people of the world be clothed by other
lands and other hands, as long as you educate
and apparel the minds, leading men in the
higher paths.
There is no ascendency of the world and
that the highest, where neither unbounded
fertile territory, immense store of minerals,
nor numbers, nor aught material, are of value,
where megalomania reigneth not. For the
crown of this realm you have no cause to
struggle; it is already yours; it has never
been lost; it remains here in the old
home. Nor has the blast yet blown of any
challenger from either of the four winds of
heaven. The crown of the material world
physical reasons prevent you wearing,
although man for man you may remain the
equal or superior of any. There is no reason
why you should lose the other. See to it that
you do your best to guard it against all comers,
men of St. Andrews, for precious it is beyond
all others, and blessed among and beyond all
other nations is she whose brow it adorns.
Let other nations therefore distribute among
themselves as they may the victories of materi-
alism. Precedence for Britain, the dear old
home of our race, is the thing of the spirit, the
modern Greece, and m.ore than Greece ever
was to her world, at whose shrine all that
highest and best of the nations of the world
will dutifully attend to testify their gratitude,
admiration, reverence and love.
URANCH OF A COCOA TRKE WITH I'ODS OF COCOA HEAN ATTACHED
CHOCOLATE MAKING IN AMERICA
BY
HERBERT S. HOUSTON
HEN Montezuma Massachusetts Bay. Thus chocolate corn-
raised a golden pleted a circle by returning to the country
cup to his lips for where it was discovered by the Spaniards
refreshment one nearly a century and a half before. And it
trying day after was in this country of its discovery that
the fall of his king- chocolate was destined to reach its highest
d o m , he intro- estate as a food and drink.
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MONTEZUMA, WHO INTRO-
DUCED CHOCOLATE
TO EUROPE
duced a new drink
to the world.
Bernal Diaz, one
of the Spanish
officers with Cor-
tez, observed the
monarch, and in
a history he after-
ward wrote of the
Mexico he described the act
BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT INDUSTRY
On the Neponset River, in the old town of
Dorchester, the first chocolate mill in the
United States was established in 1765. Fif-
teen years later this mill became the property
of Dr. James Baker, the first in a succession
of remarkable men who founded and devel-
oped a great industry. It is interesting to
observe how much of New England conscience
became a base in establishing a business
enterprise. The principle was laid down in
the beginning that there should be unflinching
honesty in every stage of chocolate making.
conquest of
and its effect. Thus it came about that
when the Spaniards took ship for Cadiz
they bore with them not only a yellow
metal but a dark brown nut from which choco-
late was made. This knowledge of chocolate
making was kept a secret for many years in to the end that the product should be of
Spain, but it finally crossed the Pyrenees into perfect purity.
France and spread throughout Europe. The In the hundred
way of this spread is interesting. In the re- and twenty-two
fectories of the Spanish monasteries chocolate years since, that
had become such a famous beverage that the principle has
monks, wishing to remember their brothers been deemed of
I
in France in an especially friendly way, sent
them presents of the cocoa beans. The
daughter of Philip III., when she went to
Paris as Queen of Louis XIII., bore with her
from Madrid the news of the new drink from
America. And so the cheering cup was
passed on. It reached England before the
time of Charles II., and some of the Puritans
took it with them to the thriving colony on
The World's Work Advertiser
more importance
than any new
process or ma-
chine. This fidel-
ity to an ethical
idea has pro-
duced an inheri-
tance and a tra-
dition similar to
THE PURITANS, WHO RE-
TURNED CHOCOLATE
TO AMERICA
CHOCOLATE MAKIXG IX AMERICA
TfH-
OLD STONE MILL OF WALTER BAKER & CO. ABOUT 1850
those perpetuated
in the craftsmen's
guilds of the Middle
Ages. And this
gro\vth of character
in an industry is
really of more vital
significance after
all than any me-
chanical invention
or business svstem.
It is that funda-
mental philosophy
which President
Roosevelt has re-
cently been preaching as the basis of good
citizenship ; and it is just as important in
manufactures as in citizenship.
But this article is not a homily but a history.
On the Neponset River the chocolate mills
multiplied. For many years Walter Baker,
a crrandson of tlie founder, was the head of
the business, and it came to bear his name.
For two years, following his death in 1852,
Sidney Williams had charge of the business,
and then, in 1854, it came under the direction
of Henry L. Pierce. For forty-two years,
and until his death, this able captain of in-
dustry was in control. It was a period of
great development and expansion in the
business of the company. There was little
r^WWVM W /'I'lUft
tyr
change during these
progressive years in
the processes of
manufacture, and
absolutely none in
the fixed principle
below those pro-
cesses ; but there
was marvelous
growth in the con-
sumption of choco-
late. This was not
something which,
like Topsy, ' 'just
growed " but it was
the result of design and splendid general-
ship. Herein lay Mr. Pierce's power as
a constructive business man. He not only
made a product, but he literally created a
larger market for it. And he did this by
methods that were in advance of his time.
He was one of the first American business
men to perceive the creative force in ad-
vertising. The chocolate mills at Dorchester,
as well as nearly all other food producers,
sold their product to grocers and they in turn
gained buyers after the stereotyped methods
of retailing. But Mr. Pierce changed all this
by appealing direct to the consumer through
general advertising. He believed that here
was his ultimate market and that it wotdd be
THE GREAT MILLS OF WALTER BAKER & CO. AS THEY ARE TODAY
The World's Work Advertiser
Photographed by J. C. Hcmment
EX-PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND
AS HE APPEARED AT THE PRINCETON INAUGURATION
" On this issue [tariff reform] I am satisfied that the Democracy is face to face with a great opportunity. All the signs of the times
point to a recognition, far beyond all party lines, of the benefits which would accrue to the people by a readjustment of the tariff, and it
would be worse than folly for the party, under the stress of any temptation or yielding to any allurement, to permit this to be subordinated
to or overshadowed by any other issue." — Graver Cleveland.
THE
World's Work
DECEMBER, 1902
Volume V
Number 2
Z\yc fiDarcb of lEvcnts
As the end of the year draws nigh we
may congratulate ourselves that it
will leave the world in much better
plight than it found it. When it began there
was war in South Africa and there were
troublesome hostilities in the Philippines.
Now peace is broken, if broken at all, only by
the unrest in Venezuela and Colombia and
in Hayti that follows their revolutions and in
Africa where the "Mad Mullah" has attacked
the British. And not only is the world at
peace, but the great nations are more
securely linked together, perhaps, than they
ever were before. New forces for peace
are at work — especially two of the strongest
possible world influences : an organized and
closely knit commerce, which none can
afford to disturb for fear of a lasting loss of
trade, and in particular the overwhelming
commercial power of the United States, which
would gain a still surer lead by the suspension
of industrial activity in any important
country. The little periodical adjustments of
power and of privilege that the nations used
to make by special treaties were crude and
weak guarantees of peace in comparison with
the compelling power of modern commerce
and all that it implies. The most recent
wars were really only frontier wars.
Men without historical knowledge easily
believe that their own era is a new era in the
world. But men with historical knowledge
now see international conditions that are
radically different and radically better for
peace than any of the battered centuries
behind us knew. Th'e unfettering of the
dominant race of men by free institutions
to free opportunity on the most fruitful conti-
nent and the industrial rise of the Republic,
fortifying its political power, have put all
nations in a new relation to one another and
in a new relation to civilization This revolu-
tionary fact has become plainer this year than
it ever was before . Its far-reaching significance
we do not yet see ; but it looks like a great
force that will work for the steadying of
governments and for the sane direction of
endeavor for centuries to come. For it is
the natural result of a great law of human
development and not an advantage won by
the strength of armies or by the skill of diplo-
matists or by any other power that may
change with a change of rulers and of genera-
tions. The industrial man becomes stronger,
the political man weaker; and economic force
is beginning to rule the world as military
force once ruled it.
A YEAR THAT HAS BROUGHT A WIDER OUTLOOK
SOME of the definite proofs that have
been given this twelvemonth of the
nations' adjustment to a future larger and
humaner than the past are worth recalling.
The Boer war ended with the promise of a
more liberal reconstruction of South Africa
than England has been accustomed to make
2oI4
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
to a subjugated people. That this liberality
was wrung from the conquerors by the unex-
pected endurance of the Boers may be true.
But it fits in not only with the English policy
of our time but with the humaner mood of
the world. An even greater departure from
preceding methods of colonial warfare and
administration has been made by our dealing
with the peoples of the Philippine Islands.
Cuba set up her own government in due time,
and now that the sluggish politicians of that
voung republic know the conscience of the
people the details of our honorable programme
will unquestionably be carried out.
Between the great powers there has been
no serious friction. England concluded a
five-year treaty with Japan that makes peace
in Asia more stable. Our own diplomatic
triumphs for fair dealing have continued
under Mr. Hay's management, for no other
international statesman is writing so large a
chapter of contemporaneous history. Germany
sent a royal prince to express her good
will to us. The change of Prime Ministers
of England did not break the continuity
of policy, and under the king the great
empire is as stable and as sane as it was under
the great queen. The Australasian colonies
have economic and administrative difficulties,
and there is some danger of local disturbance
elsewhere in the empire, nor did the conference
of colonial ministers bring concrete results ;
but England's power is held in bonds for peace
everywhere by the need of her industrial
awakening; and it is interesting to reflect
that the subject that now profoundly agitates
the kingdom is popular education. It was to
the broader education of men into an inter-
national view of life that the most successful
of modern English adventurers gave his
thought when he made his will, and it is to
education that the builders of colossal
American fortunes give with a lavishness
that marks a new era.
The year would be made memorable, if
it had no other claim to distinction, by the
demonstration that the Hague arbitration
tribunal may settle international contentions.
The submission to it of the long-standing
case of the "Pious fund" by the United
States and Mexico does not prove that in
the future all or many international disputes
may be settled by it, but it has definitely
and auspiciously made an excellent beginning
of beneficent activitv.
TWO NOTEWORTHY CHANGES IN PUBLIC
THOUGHT
AT home the year so far has been note-
worth}' in the best way that a year
can distinguish itself — by the continuation of
a generally diffused prosperity. If the foolish
coal strike could have been left out of the
calendar, it might have been said that our
chief excitement has been caused by the very
excess and ambition of prosperity ; for we have
probably talked more about trusts, domestic
and international, than about any other single
subject. Mr. Morgan has held the centre of the
stage more constantly and more conspicu-
ously than any other one private citizen, and
yet he is one of the most reticent of men.
It is in prosperous times that the normal
organization of industry goes on; for in such
times men are energetic and hopeful and ready
to bring things to pass. In a sense, there-
fore, continued organization is a wholesome
sign — up to the limit of normal action; for
there is a point beyond which it becomes
the mere taking of a mortgage on the future.
Then — if the future does not yield the big
returns on its capitalization — a day of reck-
oning will come. It will come sharply, too.
No man will dare predict early disaster in
specific terms ; for no such prediction is war-
ranted from facts that are now obvious.
But every thoughtful man knows that
Attorney-General Knox spoke the truth
when he said that the chief evil of trusts is
their overcapitalization. In this era of
almost incalculable prosperity there has been
an irresistible tendency to overcapitaliza-
tion— to capitalization on the basis of the
earnings of an exceptionally prosperous time.
But there has been an enormous gain dur-
ing the year from the popular discussion of
trusts and trade. Public opinion has asserted
its growing determination to protect the
public interest, but it has asserted this deter-
mination less in a wish to make indiscriminate
attacks on trusts than to deal with them
in a just and conservative way. The trust-
smasher is less in evidence, and the trust-
regulator is more. The literature of the sub-
ject that has most commended itself is such
treatises as the President's more conservative
speeches, the Attorney-General's address at
Pittsburg, Prof. James B. Clark's little book
on the regulation of trusts, and other such
arguments and appeals for the strengthening
of conservative laws against monopoly and in
FRANK NORRIS
DIED OCTOBER 25, I902.
PI otographed by Frederic Colburn Claike
ELEANORA DUSE
THE GREAT ITALIAN ACTRESS NOW PLAYING IN THIS COUNTRY
Tl
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Photographed by Fowler
DR. EDMUND J. JAMES
THE NEW PRESIDENT OF NORTH\YESTERN UNIVERSITY
MR. JOHN FRITZ, IRONMASTER
" John Fritz is a living proof of the results of individual and industrial liberty in a country endowed with boundless resources. In vain
shall we seek for a like career in nations or in countries where the indi\idual initiative has been suppressed. . . . He is an example of the
free spirit of American institutions, a beacon light warning the present and coming generations against permitting any invasion of the principle
of the liberty of the citizen, which alone has made our beloved country great and free." — Abram S. Hnvitt.
THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS
2819
the encouragement of publicity and for per-
mitting the common law to work its restrain-
ing and regulating influence according to the
great principles that it embodies.
Then, too, a strong impetus has been given
by the discussion of the trusts to the reduction
of the tariff, not only on trust-made articles
but on many more. The rising tide of opinion
in favor of tariff reform must be put down
as one of the notable movements of the year.
It did not make itself felt in the election
because of bad leadership; but the steady
growth of opinion has gone on. It is the one
active subject in our political thought to
which the serious-minded public man will
give his most earnest attention. Most other
subjects are artificial or temporary. This
has a staying power and it will not be talked
down. The day of action, however, is yet
at some distance in the future, because of
the very great personal popularity of Mr.
Roosevelt and of the pitiful lack of Democratic
leadership.
The two most important changes, then,
that have taken place in the public thought
and purpose during the year are the steady
growth of a determination to regulate trusts
by conservative methods, for the public mind
has swung away from a mere destructive
mood , and the increasing earnestness about a
reform of the tariff, when the time for action
comes.
MR. VANDERLIP'S CONSERVATIVE WARNING
THE very fact that prosperity does con-
tinue is putting far-sighted men in a
thoughtful mood ; for radical financial changes
are taking place as the result of the revel of
organization that we have been indulging in.
When organization is so effected or effected
so far as to cause a general inflation of values
or of credit, a day of reckoning must come —
unless a return to conservative action be
taken in time to prevent it.
Mr. Vanderlip, formerly Assistant-Secretary
of the Treasury, who is a student of Old World
financial conditions as well as of our own, has
given what he called a conservative note of
warning that comes with great timeliness
He has pointed out that there has been an
increase of $1,300,000,000 in the deposits of
the national banks alone during the last
two years, while the basis of gold and legal
tender has slightly decreased. This increase
of bank liabilities and of bank credits has been
I.
caused in great measure by the conversion of
I lie ownership of industrial establishments
into shares and bonds — that is, into bank
collateral. With the banks doing a top-
heavy business — their credits thus enor-
mously extended — and with so much of the
formerly liquid capital of the country now
locked up and "fixed" in many forms of
industry, there is great theoretical danger.
And it would quickly become an actual danger
if any untoward financial event of large impor-
tance were to happen. If the banks were
forced by any shock to the general situation
to call their loans, we should be in imminent
danger of such a general and sudden curtail-
ment of credit as would produce stagnation if
not panic. The best time for conservative
action is while it may prevent trouble. It is
too late after trouble has come.
Mr. Vanderlip does not make a cry of alarm,
but only of warning. He is a scientific and
not a sensational student of financial condi-
tions. But he did a distinct public service
by his conservative explanation of danger.
Every far-sighted man feels the truth and
opportuneness of it.
THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS
THE November elections very emphati-
cally sustained the President and
his party. The Republican majority in the
House of Representatives was somewhat
reduced ; but at the mid-Presidential election
the dominant party is at a disadvantage, and
some Republican loss was expected. The
gains of the Democrats were not large
enough to show that they are regaining
unity of purpose, nor to indicate that any
great tide of public feeling is yet running in
their favor. The two Democratic strong-
holds are New York City and the Solid
South.
The most noteworthy local result was the
increased Democratic vote in New York
City. All factions of the party there are
again united. Tammany showed its full
strength. Its huge machine is in good voting
order in spite of the troubles of boss-ship
that have come since Boss Croker nominally
resigned. The machine is greater than any
boss, and it showed a compactness of its fol-
lowers that looks dangerous for the reform
party when the next local election comes.
The result of the November elections throws
no new light on the next presidential contest.
2820
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
Mr. Roosevelt remains in the centre of the
RepubHcan stage. The Congressional elec-
tion signified the country's hearty approval
of his administration. No Democrat won
new distinction or prominence such as to
suggest his nomination for the presidency.
Mr. Coler polled a very large vote in New York,
but he was defeated, and at best he is hardly
made of presidential material even in times
when few men are wholly safe from accidental
nomination; and Mr. Hill is where he was
before — except that he is additionally ham-
pered now by his platform in favor of the
government ownership of coal mines. The
next presidential contest will be between Mr.
Roosevelt and a yet unknown Democrat,
with the chances more strongly in ^Ir.
Roosevelt's favor than they have seemed
in favor of any man in our recent history
two years before the election. The one
thing he has most to fear is not any par
ticular Democratic candidate now within
sight, but his possible running-mate known
by the name of Hard Times. Whenever ]ie
comes into the field, the present political con-
tentment and apathy will be rudely disturbed.
A NEW CHAPTER IN SOUTHERN POLITICS
THE movement begun a few months
ago in North Carolina to exclude
Negroes from Republican meetings spread
to several other Southern States almost instan-
taneously. Neither party in the South wants
a solid mass of Negro followers, for with such
a mass it cannot get the support — certainly
not on local questions — of any considerable
number of influential whites. There is noth-
ing left for the Negroes to do but to refrain
from political activity or to make a political
party of their own. Such of them as are not
disfranchised may vote; but if the white
Republican party succeed they will not have
representation even in conventions.
The aim of the new movement is, of course,
to split the solid white Democratic ranks;
and in several States, notably in North
Carolina, men of prominence who have
hitherto been Democrats have come into the
new party. It is thought that the new party
will receive the support of many such if it
succeed in establishing itself.
The most serious difficulty that it en-
counters is the necessary opposition of the
National Republican party and of the Repub-
lican administration. No National Repub
lican convention could give seats to delegates
who came from organizations that openly
excluded men wholly because of their color —
provided there were contesting delegates
from other organizations that made no such
discrimination. Nor could any Republican
administration lend its approval. Now, since
the Republican party in most of the Southern
States has for this long generation lived
chiefly on the loaves and fishes that come
from these two sources (for it has been an
abject and mendicant party), the question is,
can the new organization really supersede
the old? "Will the undisfranchised Negroes
and their leaders retire ?
If they do retire or are so put in the back-
ground that the white Republican party in
these States wins recognition by the National
party, the solid white South will be divided.
What will become then of the solid Negro
South? Will it be divided, too? Or will it
remain compact and hold the balance of
power between Southern Democrats and
Southern Republicans ? -Here lies the danger.
But, since the race feeling is stronger than
part}^ feeling, the probable outcome will be
the successful establishment of the white
Republican party in those States, whether
few or many, where it has strong leaders, the
practical retirement for a time of the Negro
from political organization, and at last,
whenever either white party needs the colored
vote, a rivalry between them for it. The
thing most to be feared is that this rivalry
may tempt to corruption. But such a result
need not follow. When the Negroes reappear
in politics, as their disfranchisement is gradu-
ally overcome by their education and their
thrift, they also may divide and some become
members of one party and some of the otlier.
If the political solidity of each race be thus
broken Southern political life will enter a
new era.
In the meantime, three facts have been
made plain. The Negro is spumed by white
men of both parties ; there is a growing division
of political opinion among the Southern
whites; and the National Republican party
has an embarrassing dilemma to face.
THE DEEP SERIOUSNESS OF LABOR UNIONS
THOUGHTFUL men in the United States,
whatever their relation to industrial
life, are thinking more seriously about the
problems presented by labor and its organiza-
THE DEEP SERIOUSNESS ABOUT LABOR UNIONS 2821
tion than they have ever thought before. In
proof of this increasing seriousness only the
following facts, out of many such, need be
set down:
Mr. Alfred Mosely has brought to the
United States members of nearly every
English trade — founders, carpenters, printers,
plasterers, shipbuilders, cotton spinners,
tailors, weavers and -perhaps a dozen more —
and they have been investigating, each in his
own trade, the methods of work and employ-
ment here. The motive of this interesting
practical study of American labor and of its
ways is, of course, to discover how the
American manufacturer turns out a greater
volume of work per man than the English
manufacturer. It has been made plain by
a year's discussion on both sides of the
Atlantic that the restriction of output by the
English trades unions is one of the important
causes of the lessened efifiiciency of the English
working system as compared with the
system in vogue in America.
Simultaneously with the coming of this
party of English workmen, it has become
obvious to every man who knows anything
about the subject that there is a distinct
tendency in some of our trades unions —
notably in the building trades, but not in
these only — to do precisely what the English
trades unions have done. They limit the
amount of work that a man or a group of men
may do. They restrict output. They repress
individual initiative and ambition. This is
not yet true of all unions, but it is already
true of some, and others show a tendency in
this same direction.
II
Another phase of the same significant
tendency is explained in the following state-
ment of the owner of a shop, whose output is
products of iron and steel: "My shop is a
union shop. I have no trouble with the
union. But I have proved to my own satis-
faction that it makes men less efficient work-
IB men, that it prevents the development and
the rise of the best men, and that it prevents
the normal gro'^i;h of my business. In short
it hinders industry. I have proved this by a
long and^ minute comparison of my shop with
a similar shop that is non-union and that
pays its men by the piece. In the other shop
the men make higher wages — the best men
very much higher. The shop, too, gets a
larger return for the wages it pays, because the
work is better. The men are of a higher
average than my men. They are better
workmen ; they are more successful ; they are
more ambitious; they are better citizens. I
do not now turn my shop into a non-union
one because I should have a strike on my
hands and all sorts of trouble, and my business
would be seriously interrupted at a prosper-
ous time. I simply can't afford to do it now.
Many of my men feel as I do. They would
like to break away from the union. But
their trade is well organized. There are not
many non-union shops. They do not dare
quit the union. But the best of them feel
repressed bv it."
Ill
A step to make the labor unions more ser-
viceable is under discussion in Massachusetts.
A bill will be introduced at this winter's
session of the Legislature to require the
incorporation of them. Massachusetts has
an elaborate and rigid corporation law.
The proposal now is to bring labor unions
under the same sort of responsibility that
corporations must assume, so that they may
sue and be sued, and so that they will be, as
other corporations are, within reach of the
courts for their actions.
One union at least — perhaps there are more
— has for some time been incorporated; and
the compulsory incorporation of them has
many times been discussed. The friends of
this definite movement in Massachusetts
expect that such a requirement will make
them more useful. It is an efifort to help the
laborer by lifting the union into responsibility.
It is the reverse of the destructive plan that
the manufacturer just quoted would apply.
He would abolish them if he could.
IV
The next significant fact is the recom-
mendation by the Illinois State Federation
of Labor that all members of labor unions
who are also members of the State militia
shall resign from the militia. This proposi-
tion has been favorably regarded by some
other labor organizations. It has done more
than any other single recent declaration or
action to cause a public distrust of such unions
as favor it. It hints of a class separation
that in turn hints of anarchy.
2822
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
V
Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, who favors the organ-
ization of labor, wrote a letter that was read
at the recent celebration of the eightieth
birthday of Mr. John Fritz, the eminent iron
and steel maker, which admirably expresses
the fear that the unions are in danger of
preventing the development of exceptional
men. Mr. Fritz, who, by his inventions and
improvements of processes, has conferred an
inestimable benefit on mankind, rose from
the working ranks. Mr. Hewitt wrote :
"That a bo}' bom in humble life, with no advan-
tages of education -^or opportunities for position,
without influential friends or the favoring accidents
of fortune, should be able to advance steadily in
usefulness, power and the respect of his fellow men,
until bj' common consent he occupies the first place
in the domain of practical industry with which he
has been connected, gives conclusive evidence that
political institutions which afford free play to
individual ambition, industry, ability" and strict
integrity are worthy of all lo3"alty and should be
cherished and preserved at all costs and hazards.
"The developments of the twentieth century
show that these institutions are in great peril.
Their essence is to be found in individual liberty,
involving the right of free labor and the acquisition
of private property under lawful conditions. When
the right of free action shall be suppressed the
possibility of a career like that of John Fritz will be
destroyed. Collectivism, ending in Socialism,
may atford other advantages, but let it not be over-
looked that these advantages will be obtained only
by the sacrifice of personal freedom, and will arrest
the progress of civilization, due, during the ages that
have passed, to the substitution of freedom for force.
"John Fritz is a living proof of the results of
individual and industrial liberty in a country
endowed with boundless resotuces. In vain shall
we seek for a like career in nations or in countries
where the individual initiative has been suppressed.
The stagnation of China, whose men are physically
strong and whose resources are abundant, is in
marked contrast with otir own land, where hereto-
fore everj- citizen has been free to employ his labor
and his energies in his own wa}', so long as the rights
of others were respected.
"John Fritz, therefore, is to us more than a man
whom we love and respect, more than a friend to
whom we wish many 3'ears of health and happiness:
he is an example of the free spirit of American
institutions, a beacon light warning the present
and coming generations against permitting any
invasion of the principle of the liberty of the citizen,
which alone has made our beloved country great
and free."
VI
Finally, the grave fear that a conservative
part of the community felt lest President
Roosevelt had put the dignity of his great
office in peril by having to do with the coal
strike, and on the other hand the practically
universal applause of the persistence and of
the practical patriotism that caused him to
succeed — these feelings have even more
deeply stirred the people than the coal strike
itself did; for it w^as made obvious that a
labor union and a small group of employers
may hold the public in their grip as it had
perhaps never been obvious before even
during our most violent labor troubles.
Here was a deadlock which had defied every
influence but the personal effort of an ener-
getic President of the United States; and he
could break it only by what many regarded
as a most strenuous and even dangerous use
of his personal power as President.
There were three scenes in the adjustment
of the coal strike that the public will not soon
forget. The first was the straightforward
and earnest appeal that President Roosevelt
made to the operators and to the strikers to
agree to arbitrate, and the almost insulting
conduct of the operators. Some of the
operators, indeed, showed a self-righteous
pig-headedness that was enough to turn a
right contention into a wrong one.
The next scene was the visit of the greater
captain of industry, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan,
to the President, when in five minutes the
President's request of the operators was
agreed to.
The third scene was at the convention of
the miners where the plan for arbitration was
accepted. Men who were sure of reinstate-
ment at the mines volunteered to give their
places to others who might be debarred. A
spirit of loyalty to their organization and to
their leaders was shown that was admirable
and true; and the meeting broke up singing
patriotic songs. They had stood together
for nearly half a year for what they regarded
as a right contention — unselfishly, for it could
at best bring any one of them little profit;
and that is no small thing for any group of
men to do. Out of such a spirit great
achievements can come under able counsel
and wise leadership.
All these things and more like them have
put the whole people in a most serious mood
regarding the rights, the duties and the
dangers of labor organizations. In the
uncertainties that beset the subject- two
things are plain:
Labor unions have come to stay. They
will grow rather than diminish.
They call for the wisest guidance if they are
really to build up the American workingman
and not to destroy the great characteristic of
THE PEACE ARMY AND ITS FUTURE COMMANDER 2823
I
I
American citizenship while tliey are strug-
ghng merely to gain the strength of compact
organization. Every great movement in a
democracy must be tested at last by its
influence on the individual. The care of
classes is the business of older and less efficient
social systems. The normal nurture and the
free development of the individual is the
mark of a democracy.
There is no more urgent demand for wise
leadership in the world than the demand for
wise leadership of organized American labor
today.
THE PROBABLE PROGRAMME FOR TRUST
REGULATION
IT is probable that the long and varied
discussion of trusts will bear fruit in a
definite effort at legislation during the short
session of Congress ; and the effort most likely
to succeed will be in the general line of
Attorney-General Knox's plan which he
explained in his address to the Pittsburg
Chamber of Commerce. This plan proceeds
on the assumption that (without an amend-
ment to the Constitution) Congress has power
so to supplement the Sherman anti-trust
law as to compel publicity and to prevent
monopoly.
When the Sherman law was passed in 1890
it was supposed that it would give the
Federal Government power, through its regu-
lation of interstate commerce, to prevent the
existence of trusts that monopolize articles
of general consumption. But the Supreme
Court by its interpretation of the law made
it almost useless. It does not enable the
Federal Government to interfere with a trust
because it is a monopoly, but only with a trust
that shall seek to monopolize or restrain
interstate commerce — which is a very different
thing. Attorney-General Knox declared that
"If the Sherman Act exhausts the power of
Congress over monopolies, the American people find
themselves hopelessly impotent, facing a situation
fraught with the most alarming possibilities, with
which neither the Federal nor State governments
can deal."
But with the Sherman law so amended and
extended as to give the Federal Government,
through its regulation of foreign and inter-
state commerce, some real control over trusts
that strive for a monopoly of production, all
additional necessary power resides in the
common law, and by the common law the
courts can decide each case on its own merits
— whether it really be in restraint of trade.
This ])lan is sinqjlc — at least, as simple as
so complex a matter seems likely to be made.
It calls for a single act of Congress which
shall give the Federal Government the power
that the Sherman law at the time of its enact-
ment was supposed to give it. Then the
common law will do the rest.
Such a programme docs not exclude the
reduction of duties on trust-made articles,
which commends itself to many thoughtful
men, but which is j)romiscuously punitive and
would not touch the larger task of scientific
regulation. It is well to remember the closing
words of Mr. Knox's comi)rehensive address,
which is the best piece of literature provoked
by the whole summer's discussion :
"The conditions of our commercial life are the
result in part of an evolution of forces cf world-wide
operation. They have developed gradually and
are not, perhaps, fully understood. Laws regulating
and controlling their operation, before they ripen
into a complete system of wise jurisprudence, will
be of gradual growth."
In other words, he who has in hand a com-
plete or automatic remedy is a quack.
THE PEACE ARMY AND ITS FUTURE
COMMANDER
THE promotion, which has been semi-
officially announced, of Major-
General S. B. M. Young to be lieutenant-
general, to succeed Lieutenant-General Miles,
who will reach the age of retirement next
August, will put the command of the army
into the hands of a soldier who has won every
step in his military career from the ranks of
the volunteer service, which he entered at the
beginning of the Civil War. He became a
captain of cavalry as early as 1861, and he
took part, in spite of successive wounds,
in most of the cavalry operations of the
Army of the Potomac. He was brevetted
brigadier-general of volunteers; but, when
he was mustered out in 1865, he began
military service again — this time, of course,
as a regular with the rank of second-
lieutenant. He was colonel of the Third
United States Cavalry when the war with
Spain was begun, and since then he has
risen to his present rank. He saw service
both in Cuba and in the Philippines, and he
is now President of the War College.
The position of lieutenant-general in
time of peace is not spectacular, but it is
important if the right man holds it. General
Young is in the heartiest agreement with the
President and Secretary Root concerning the
2824
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
reorganization of the army and the efficient
organization of the peace force. The army
is now, by the way, for the first time since
1898, on a peace footing. The number of
officers and men is httle less than 6o,ooo^as
nearly a "skeleton" as the army of so large
a country can be and keep a really good
organization.
It was only the other day — it is difficult
now to recall it — that certain frightened
persons of prominence were sure that we were
committing ourselves to the maintenance of
a permanently great army ; that the rampant
spirit of "militarism" had made peace seem
abnormal ; and that we should find fighting so
pleasant (the savage blood running red even
in our children) as to seek new lands to
conquer, till Asia were laid waste and the
Southern Cape acknowledged the Stars and
Stripes; for to such dread "imperialism"
were we drifting that there was no retreat,
since we had tasted Spanish blood and grown
remorselessly fond of Filipino slaughter I
How gently a little time and silence bring us
to ourselves after a nightmare of feverish
criticism.
PREPARING FOR TWO GREAT PUBLIC WORKS
ENERGETIC preparatory labor has been
done looking toward the beginning of
two great public works authorized by Congress
at its last session — the isthmian canal and
government irrigation of our arid region.
The Canal Act empowered the President to
buy the rights, franchises, property, etc., of
the French Panama Canal Company if they
could be bought for $40,000,000 and if the
titles were clear. Attorney-General Knox
himself went to Paris to examine the titles,
and he has reported to the President his
opinion and the opinion of the other counsel
of the United States that they are clear and
that the Panama Company has the right to
sell all its interests on the isthmus. In the
meantime the Colombian Government has
threatened some dela}^ in completing the
negotiations; but it is not thought that any
insuperable trouble will arise in that quarter.
It has been given out that Rear-Admiral
Walker will be appointed chairman of the
commission that will have the completion of
the canal in hand, and it is expected that the
negotiations with the French company and
with the Colombian Government will soon be
concluded and that work will be begun during
the present administration — an event large
enough to give historic distinction to any
presidency.
Seven available sites for government irri-
gation reservoirs in ^lontana, Colorado,
Arizona and Nevada have been reported to
the Secretary of the Interior by Mr. Newell,
the chief hydrographer of the Geological
Survey. Thus preliminary work has been
done also for this great undertaking.
A MODEL CHARTER AND A DEBAUCHED CITY
WHEN the present charter of St. Louis
was framed in 1876, it was regarded
by students of municipal administration as
a model. Many of them declared that if the
plan that it illustrated should be generally
adopted we should soon be fre-e of the reproacla
of bad municipal government. The State
constitution of Missouri separated the city
of St. Louis from St. Louis County, and gave
the city, in addition to its municipal powers,
the authority invested in the counties of the
rest of the State. The city charter pro-
ceeded upon the theory that the great centres
of population have conditions and needs
unknown in the sparsely settled regions, and
that the persons directly affected by these
needs and conditions should have the sole
power to legislate concerning them. Thus the
city secured — not as a concession wrung or
coaxed from the State government, but as a
right — somewhat the same powers and inde-
pendence in its own sphere with respect to the
State government that the States have with
respect to the federal authority.
This theory of municipal independence was
not new, but it received a much broader appli-
cation in this charter than had previously
been given to it in any important city. St.
Louis has had home rule to an extent not
enjoyed by any other city in the United
States. Its public officers were supposed to
be nearer to the people than they were else-
where. It was thought that provision was
made to remedy inefficiency, to prevent
extravagance and to detect and to punish
wrongdoing. If any municipal system any-
where in the world could be relied on to work
with some approach to automatic action, this
system would.
But a government depends more upon
the officials who administer it than upon
those who frame it. The intelligent and
respectable citizens of St. Louis came in
GREATLY INCREASED SCHOOL EXPENDLrURE
2825
time to neglect their civic duties, to refuse to
attend the primaries, and to permit incapable
and corrupt men to get into office. The
penalty is written large in the orgy of black-
mail, bribery and robbery which has brought
discredit and humiliation on the eve of a
great international fair. There are virtues
in good charters and in good systems; but
there is no substitute in a democracy for
personal civic activity. Whenever this
cease general inefficiency begins and corrup-
tion follows. There is no short road nor
chartered way to safety.
NEW CONTROVERSIES ABOUT COEDUCATION
COEDUCATION has come to be regarded
in the Western State universities, where
it has its principal home, as a natural educa-
tional system that has proved itself. But in
many men's universities in the Eastern States
it is yet looked upon as a Western experi-
ment that must suffer many modifications, if
not ultimate abolition. The discussion used
to turn on the good or bad social influence,
sometimes on young men, but oftener on
young women, of such association of the
sexes.
But now the controversy has been shifted
to the influence of women on the quality of
the intellectual work done in these universi-
ties. In some institutions they show a
tendency to monopolize certain groups of
studies, especially English literature; and
the question is raised whether literature is
essentially a feminine subject. One inference
is (whether it be warranted or not) that many
young men leave alone courses in English
literature because the young women take
them, regarding the subject as a girl's matter.
A still more interesting question is this — is
literature so taught as to appeal rather to
the taste of girls than to the taste of boys ?
But the most interesting subject of recent
discussion in the coeducational universities
is the rapid proportionate increase of young
women in the academic departments. In
»i9oo, as estimated by Prof. James Rowland
Angell in The Popular Science Monthly, the
number of women in the department of arts
and sciences (not professional schools) at the
L University of California was 55 per cent, of
* all the students; at the University of Minne-
sota 53 per cent.; at Chicago University and
tat the University of Michigan 47 per cent.
7^^ """■
number of women that it will admit to 500,
Chicago University no longer permits the
two sexes together during the freshman and
sophomore years, and there is discussion of
similar limitations or of limitations in number
elsewhere. This restriction recalls the expec-
tation during the early days of coeducation
that among the students tnen would always
outnumber women. These institutions were
once regarded as men's colleges to which
women were admitted. The fear now is that
some of them may come to be regarded as
women's colleges to which men are admitted.
This tendency recalls the economic fact
that played an important part in the
establishment of the coeducational system.
In many State universities women were at
first admitted partly if not wholly because
the State could not afford to establish two
institutions of high grade. Economy had
much to do with the movement. This
economic fact still has force, but it has been
forgotten by many who discuss the social
and educational aspects of the system.
A CALL FOR GREATLY INCREASED SCHOOL
EXPENDITURE.
THE public school system of the United
States deserves the credit that has
been given to it, even perhaps the rhetorical
praise by its patriotic eulogists, which, how-
ever, is sometimes a tiresome flow of words.
Statistics (which can never tell much worth
knowing about such a subject as education)
betray us because they present such large
totals of achievement that the individual
child is hardly visible ; and the work done on
the individual child is the only test of the
whole matter.
But, remarkable as the development of the
system has been in many of our common-
wealths, it lags far behind our needs and
opportunities. How far it lags President
Eliot makes clear in his stimulating address
that is published in this magazine. He
points the way to greatly increased expendi-
ture on the schools. It must be a revolution-
ary increase of expenditure if they are to do
with excellence the task that is committed
to them.
Public opinion in such a matter generally
moves by impulses. We go forward with
great speed ; we reach a certain point in liber-
ality and in achievement ; and then we rest or
turn to other tasks. The time is opportune
2826
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
now while the flood of prosperity continue's
for another long, forward movement made
both by communities and by individuals for
the bringing of our public educational work
to such a standard of excellence as no country
in the world has yet reached. When the
history of our great school system is truly
written it will probably appear that our own
time was a time of general acknowledgment
of its necessity but of somewhat half-hearted
support — that we had not made full proof of
our faith by our public liberality. So long as
there are from forty to sixty pupils to one
teacher the individual child is partly for-
gotten or partly neglected, whatever impress-
ive totals school reports may show. The
extraordinary addresses that President Eliot
has been delivering to associations of teachers
in New England make the most stimulating
literature of the subject that educational
agitation has provided for a long time.
A MORAL REFORM IN THE INDUSTRIAL MAN
THE Society of Friends has invited the
other Christian sects to send delegates
to a national conference for the discussion of
the liquor traffic which they propose to hold
several years hence — a very proper and
characteristic act. This call will remind the
social reformer of a long succession of organ-
ized efforts in behalf of temperance.' At one
time societies were formed all over the country
to promote total abstinence. In man}^ States
almost every village had its "lodge." At
that time the temperance lecturer was almost
as well recognized a person as the evangelist
of other periods. The preaching of total
abstinence became an organized industry. It
had its well-patronized press, and at least
one publishing house laid the foundations of
its career by the issue of temperance periodi-
cals and books.
Then came the era of prohibition laws.
Many States passed such acts, and the
Prohibition party became a power in politics.
Following this form of agitation came the
effort to introduce into the public schools the
study of the effect of alcohol on the body ; and
it was only a few years ago that the Committee
of One Hundred, men of wealth and men of
sociological zeal, conducted an investigation
into the drink evil — the legislative efforts that
have been made to suppress it, the results of
open barrooms and of high license in cities,
the physiological results of drink, etc. ; and the
publications of this committee form the best
practical literature of the subject. It has
been a long and earnest and many-sided
agitation.
A great change has taken place in American
habits during the last generation or two.
Drunkenness has not been stopped — far from
it; but it has lost the toleration that it once
had. There was a time within the memory
of men yet in middle life when in many parts
of the country it was considered a pardonable
weakness provided it were not too often
yielded to. Now it is regarded as a disease —
often as a criminal disease. Its victims every-
where lose social standing.
And the strongest force of all is what may
be called the industrial condemnation of
drunkenness. No man who gets drunk can
now expect to hold a place of trust, whether
in professional or commercial or mechanical
life. A bank will not have a drunken presi-
dent, nor a railroad a drunken brakeman.
A man who drinks loses his job: this has
become a well-nigh universal rule in working
life of all grades.
The eradication of drunkenness has by no
means been accomplished. Nor is it even in
sight. There is work enough for the Friends,
in their gentle and persuasive way, and for all
other sects and classes of self-restrained men.
But the strongest influence that has made for
the temperate indulgence in liquor has been
the social influence of industrial life — the
demand that every man who counts for any-
thing in a democratic society must be efflcient.
This great moral reform must be accredited
chiefly to industry.
THE STANDSTILL OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE
THE death of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton at a ripe age (and she was
in many ways a remarkable woman) recalls
the slow progress that the cause of woman
suffrage has made during the comparatively
long period of agitation for it. It has had the
championship of many influential men as well
as of such remarkable women as Lucy Stone
and Ehzabeth Cady Stanton. Of course, too,
it has drawn to it, and suffered from, the favor
of many shrieking, unattractive "reformers,"
as every radical proposition does. Four
Western States have granted the ballot to
women, but the experiment has not yet con-
vinced other States of the wisdom of doing so.
In many communities they vote at school elec-
OUR WASTE OF OLD WORLD II A X DI C R A I'TS
2827
tions and for certain other local purposes.
There has been a considerable and proper
change also, as a side result of the agitation,
in the laws of many States regarding the
property rights of women. But the main aim
of the suffragists has for a good many years
made little headway, and the probability of
their further success seems as remote as ever.
ACCIDENTS ON AMERICAN RAILROADS.
FOR the year ending June 30, 1902, 303 pas-
sengers were killed on American railroads
and 6,089 injured — a very decided increase
over preceding years, for the figures of 1901
show but 282 killed and 4,988 injured, and
those of 1900 but 249 killed and 4,128 injured.
This shows that the number of passengers
has increased and traveling conditions have
not become less dangerous.
The diminution of one kind of accident
to employees is cheering, for the means
whereby this accident rate was lowered
points the way to securing greater safety. In
1902 2,819 railroad employees were killed
and 38,900 injured, as against 2,957 and
46,130 in 1901 and 2,799 ^^^ 43-771 i^ 1900.
These totals are deceptive, since certain classes
of employees included in the earlier years do
not appear in last year's figures. Probably,
*as with the passenger lists, just as many
employees are killed or maimed now as
formerly, with one notable exception.
The Interstate Commerce Commission
reports that 68 per cent, fewer brakemen are
killed and 81 per cent, fewer injured in
coupling cars now than in 1893; and they
ascribe the improvement to the Safety-
Appliance Act of 1893 requiring automatic
couplers. In other words, the single signi-
ficant gain in safety came through legislation.
Rigid laws are the best guarantee against
railroad accidents.
THE RESTORATION OF THE WHITE HOUSE
THE White House is to be restored, and
a part of the work has been done.
The amazing fact is, the original plan of it
had been forgotten and to an extent defaced
and changed. The house had so been put to
utilitarian uses for a centurj^ that its real
nobility of plan had been forgotten, and at
last utility had defeated itself, for it was not
large enough. There was not room for many
■ proper functions; at great receptions guests
t~"
not even enough living room for a large
presidential family. Everybody who has had
occasion to go to the White House must
have felt, too, the insufficiency and even the
indignity of the President's offices and of the
hall outside, where there was always a group
of newspaper reporters. The whole scene
reminded one of the ante-room of a court-
house in a second-rate country town.
The front of the White House is not the side
facing on Pennsylvania Avenue, which has
been used as the approach to it, but the side
facing the river. The public has always used
the back door. The distinguishing features
of the architecture are the two long terraces,
one of which had been put to no use at all and
the other concealed by conservatories. These
are noble and impressive parts of the original
plan and give dignity to the whole structure
when seen from the river side. The proper
public entrance is on the east side (next the
Treasury Department) through the east
terrace. At the end of the west terrace the
new executive ofhces have been built.
Mr. McKim, the architect who has restored
the plan of Hoban, the original architect, has
done another national service by making the
White House as it was meant to be. The
interior furnishings, too, are in keeping with
the period when the house was built.
OUR WASTE OF OLD WORLD HANDICRAFTS
MANY interesting things which Ameri-
cans go abroad to see could be had
in any of our large cities if we would but
encourage the immigrants who come to our
shores to preserve the best of their old-
country life." So recently spoke Miss Jane
Addams,of Chicago, and she spoke with knowl-
edge. The remark is suggestive. Immigrants
are made to feel by our treatment of them
and by their surroundings that their old life
must be cast aside. The elders among them
often feel regret at the swiftness with which
the children become ashamed of their native
ways and dress, and even of their parents
themselves. This rapid Americanization in
many cases means the abandonment of their
handicrafts. Miss Addams told the story of
an Italian in Chicago who, missing the art of
his own land, carved the doorpost of his rented
apartments and decorated his ceiling with
stucco; and he was fined by his landlord for
disfiguring the property ! There are said
to be many immigrant workmen who have
2828
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
never let their skill be known because they
think that they must literally begin life anew
in America. Woodworkers, metal-workers,
potters and many other skilled craftsmen
sometimes discard their native industries as
they discard their native speech.
"We came near to permitting (for we long
ignorantly encouraged) the Indians to lose
their native handicrafts, as basket-making
and blanket -weaving; and the same sort of
carelessness loses to us, no doubt, many of the
useful occupations of the European peasantry.
We might import them all; we do import
them all and fail to encourage them. Then
we go to Europe and pay high prices for
objects that might be made in our own cities
by the natives of all the lands that we ran-
sack. Oior country ought to be the home
of as many handicrafts as it is of different
peoples.
POSTAL STORIES OF GROWTH AND PROSPERITY
OXE of the most interesting evidences
of our continued prosperity is the
enormous increase of 20 per cent, in the
postal business of the fifty largest post-ofhces
in the United States. This increase implies
chiefly the development of commercial cor-
respondence and other commercial uses of
the mails. It means a large increase in the
volume of printed matter, too. These fifty
post-offices yield one-half of the whole postal
revenue.
But it is not only a story of commercial
prosperity that may be read in postal statis-
tics. The increasing density of population
is indicated by the rise in the number of
post-offices — from 64,000 to 76,000 in ten
years, or more than a thousand a year.
Within the same period the number of postage
stamps annually sold increased nearlv two
billions — that is, say, it was very nearly
doubled. Hardly less important than the
commercial story told by the growth of the
business of large post-offices is the meaning of
the development of rural delivery systems.
There are now 8,500 routes and there are
petitions for 10,000 more.
THE EASTWARD AND WESTWARD SPREAD OF
CHOLERA
OXE of the great sanitary tasks of
civilization was done when, during
the American occupation of Cuba, yellow
fever was stamped out at Havana. Another
and greater task of a similar kind is to rid the
world of cholera. In its Asiatic breeding-
ground it always exists, and at intervals it
spreads eastward and westward and again
retreats. But it never dies out. It has
made visits to other continents in recent
times once in about twelve years, and it is now
by this calendar nearly due again in Europe
or America.
It was reported on November ist that
more than 75,000 cases had occurred this year
in the Philippine Islands, which are now (as
such a disease travels) dangerously near to
us. The mortality has been as high as 75
per cent, of the cases, and in some otwns and
provinces the population has been decimated.
But it is now fast disappearing, and there
are no cases in most of the provinces. But
in China the disease has been playing havoc
— at Nanking, where 40,000 persons had
died before November ist, at Hong Kong and
at Peking. It is making its way westward,
too; for it has this year caused tens of
thousands of deaths in Egypt.
COLOMBIA AND VENEZUELA IN CONVULSION
CIVIL war still wages in Venezuela and
Colombia, and no one can yet safely
predict the outcome in either country. Old
men are still living who remember the great
liberator, Simon Bolivar, and since his day
Venezuela has seen 104 revolutions, her
longest period of comparative calm having
been from 1870 to 1889, when Guzman Blanco
was dictator and governed the country,
either directly as President himself or through
puppet presidents whom he named.
As he rode into power at the head of a
revolution, so did the present President,
Cipriano Castro. A revolution broke out in
February, 1899; it was suppressed and a pro-
visional government was formed under Castro
in September, 1899. In the revolution which
began soon afterward the so-called Liberals
of Venezuela under Castro espoused the cause
of the Liberal rebels in Colombia, and Colom-
bian troops violated Venezuelan territory.
When the Colombian minister left Caracas
in August, 1 89 1, the United States offered
to mediate between the two countries, but
Venezuela declined, and later rejected a
similar offer from the Pan-American Congress
at the City of Mexico and from Chile. At
present mediation is not of \'ital impor-
tance, as the civil strife in each country is all-
THE LESSONS OF THE SAMOAN AWARD
2829
engrossing, and neither has a government
suffieiently stable to cneourage a n^ediator
to deal with it. It is not improbable, too,
that when internal quiet shall have been
restored international irritation will disap-
pear.
The revolution in Colombia has been of a
more devastating character than tliat in
Venezuela and is of more interest to the
United States. The whole country is being
laid waste; the people are becoming poorer
and poorer; the government is hopelessly
bankrupt. The output of worthless paper
is so large that it cannot be correctly calcu-
lated. The revolution has continued unre-
mittingly for three years, having started in
the autumn of 1899. It followed a long
period of oppression under Dr. Rafael Nuiiez,
who came into power as a Liberal in 1884, but
promptly turned Conservative, and by force,
fraud and corruption held the country in his
grip until his death in 1895. The revolt is
against his feebler successors and imitators.
Toward Colombia the United States sus-
tains a peculiar obligation. In 1848, when
James Buchanan was Secretary of State,
before a railroad was built across the Isthmus
of Panama and when a canal was hardly
dreamed of, the United States made a treaty
with what was then New Granada and is now
the republic of Colombia, guarant'^eing the
perfect neutrality of the isthmus from sea
to sea, that transit should not be interrupted
or embarrassed, and that Colombia's sover-
eignty should never be disturbed. In 1855
the railroad was built, and whatever turn the
troubled aflfairs of Colombia may take, this
road and the land through which it runs must
be kept open by the United States. To pro-
tect it marines have landed on several occa-
sions, and in November of last year Com-
mander McCrea of the Machias ordered the
revolutionists not to bombard Colon, the
eastern terminus, while at the present time
Admiral Casey guards the strip with a formid-
able fleet, and permits troops to use the rail-
road only when there is no danger of conflict.
When the present revolutions shall cease
in Venezuela and Colombia, if the revolu-
tionists win, governments will be reorganized
on a liberal basis. After a time the leaders will
endeavor to entrench themselves in power
by the familiar methods, and new revolu-
tions will follow. If, on the other hand, the
Ifc re volutionists are crushed they will watch for
an opportunity to revolt again. This, unfor-
tunately, is the history of government in the
southern republics, and tranquillity seems
to come only with a dictator, who is nominally
a president, in control. It is fortunate when
he is bold and progressive, as in the case of
Porfirio Diaz of Mexico, and unfortunate
when he is both corrupt and reactionary, as was
the case with Rafael Nunez of Colombia.
THE LESSONS OF THE SAMOAN AWARD
THE influence that the Hague Arbitration
Tribunal has had, by reason of its
decision of the Pious Fund case, has been out
of all proportion to the importance of the case
itself. The fact that two governments so
soon submitted a controversy to it, and that it
reached a decision in a reasonable time and in
a reasonable and businesslike way, is a con-
vincing demonstration of its utility. It has
proved that it is a practical piece of machinery.
The press and the public opinion of the whole
civilized world now regard it seriously and
hopefully ; and there is talk at more than one
European capital of submitting even more
important cases to it.
A striking proof of the probable utility of
the tribunal is given, by contrast, by the
decision of the King of Sweden as arbitrator
of the Samoan dispute. The United States,
England and Germany submitted this case
to King Oscar. He has handed down the
decision in the controversy about damages
done by men-of-war to Samoan property
in favor of Germany and against the United
States and Great Britain. The decision is of
course accepted cheerfully by all the parties
to the contention ; but the method of selecting
one person as an arbitrator, in comparison
with the method of the Hague Tribunal,
already seems antiquated. The King of
Sweden has other duties. He undertook this
arbitration as a favor to friendly nations.
He chose his own advisers. The whole
method is unscientific and it seems likely now
to become obsolete.
The Samoan case has almost gone out of the
public mind. Its details are hardly worth
recalling here — except to remark that the
triple guardianship of Samoan affairs by the
United States, Great Britain and Germany
proved a failure, as it is easy now to see that
it must. Yet it was often cited by those who
were opposed to the American occupation of
the Philippine Islands as a method whereby
2830
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
they might have been managed. Such a
method would of course have failed — failed
probably with tragic results.
THE SWARMING MILLIONS OF CHINA.
THE population of China has always been
a subject of dispute by statisticians.
The Chinese count has not been regarded as
trustworthy, and the estimates of foreigners,
however carefulh' made, were but guesses.
But the recent enumeration that the Chinese
Government has now published is accepted
as at least better than any preceding count
or estimate.
It shows the enormous total of 426,000,000
persons — a gain of 13,000,000 over the
Chinese count made in 1842. Compared with
the growth of our own population this is a very
small increase. But epidemics and the lack
of sanitary knowledge and wars and the crowd-
ing of the population greatly check the natural
increase. Of course the provinces differ
greatly in the density of population. Thibet,
^Mongolia, Turkestan and Manchuria are
sparsely peopled; but in the great provinces,
such as Shantung and Honan, every avail-
able foot of soil is used and occupied. There
is a considerable area so densely populated as
to warrant this comparison — if all the people
in the United States proper lived in Texas,
40,000,000 more would have to go there before
the population would be as dense as it is in this
part of China.
Since Chinese immigration is forbidden by
the United States and by Australia, these
swarming millions have no outlet that they
know how, or are disposed, to take; and the
problem of lifting life higher in such a hive,
or of radically changing it, will be solved, if it
be solved at all, by the railroad. Easy and
cheap transportation may in time change the
conditions of life there ; but no other influence
that we now know seems likely to do so.
THE DEATH OF MR. FRANK NORRIS
THE death of Mr. Frank Norris, which
occurred on October 25th, in San
Francisco, at the age of thirty-two, was a
definite and serious loss to American literature.
The work that he had already done was con-
siderable and important; for the two books
that he finished of the great trilogy of novels
that he had planned are original and vigorous
contributions to the best class of our fiction.
Other writers, some by choosing historical
and some by choosing social subjects, have
interpreted various phases of American life;
but he had a larger conception of it — a con-
ception that included its vast economic
significance — perhaps than any other writer of
fiction. He stood firmly, too, at a time of
sensational "successes" in fiction, to his artis-
tic convictions. Many a writer of real ability
has been dazzled and has suffered a change
of ideals because of the financial success of
cheap work; but he held true with an heroic
persistence to the best that was in him. He
knew that he could write a swashbuckling
romance, and he was ambitious for success
and he was eager, too, for the financial
rewards of his work. He could at any time
have made a much larger income by writing
sensational books, but he worked on, year
after year, unswerving and content with the
nobler aim.
After practising his art in his earlier stories,
which all showed originality, and after out-
growing certain obvious faults that marked
his youthful works, he had, while still young,
found a great subject. The strong grasp of
his imagination and his mastery of his art
were just beginning to show themselves.
Here was a man, then, who, having done
most noteworthy and, we think, lasting work
in his 3^outh, died just as he was reaching
the easy command of his powers. The pity
of it comes keenly to those who look out over
American literature now in the making and
see so little genuinely original work.
To those who knew Mr. Norris, his death
brings a deeper loss than the premature close
of a brilliant literary career. He was a strong
and lovely personality. His youthful and
beautiful face, crowned with gray hair, wore
a smile for all his friends. He was associated
with the publishers of this magazine from
the beginning of their career as publishers of
books; and he showed such a rare genius for
friendship that to them the loss to literature
is swallowed up in the loss of a friend and
companion. He carried with him always an
atmosphere of cheerful earnestness. He was
a very noble man — strong and gentle and
brave and true. The memory of him is so
precious a possession to those who lived and
worked with him that they will carr}' it as
an uplifting influence all their lives long.
THE BONDS OF AMI-RICAN
CORPORATIONS
(The World's Work publishes every month an article in which some timely and vital subject of the financial world
is taken up)
SEVERAL years ago nearly all capital-
ization issues on the part of impor-
tant corporations were in the form of
stock. Since the summer of 1901 and
continuing with increasing volume the ten-
dency has been toward the issuance of bonds
instead of shares of stock. It is a tendency
all the incidences of which cannot be felt in a
period of great financial exaltation such as
the present. But the tendency is a most
significant one.
That the extent of this tendency may be
realized it should be noted that during the
current year scarcely an important issue
of capital stock has been announced, with
the exception of $35,000,000 by the New
York Central Railroad. This issue is explained
upon grounds peculiar to this railroad,
primarily the fact that assurances were at
hand that much the greater part of this stock
would be subscribed by the present control-
ling interests in the property. Conspicuous
among the large issues of new capital in the
form of bonds is the case of the Brooklyn
Rapid Transit Railroad, which announced
its intention to borrow Si 50,000,000 on bonds.
The Pennsylvania Railroad is to obtain money
for the building of its tunnel into New York
by the issue of $50,000,000 in bonds. This
action of the Pennsylvania is particularly
significant, for up to this time this railroad
has relied on the issue of new stock for its
capital, increasing the stock from $129,305,000
on January i, 1898, to $203,272,100 on
January i, 1902. In addition there might
be mentioned the following very large bond
issues: Atchison Railroad, $30,000,000;
Norfolk and Western Railroad, $20,000,000;
American Telegraph and Telephone Company,
$10,000,000; Mexican Central Railroad,
$10,000,000; and the notable case of the
United States Steel Corporation, which is now
seeking to convert $200,000,000 of its seven
per cent, cumulative preferred stock into five
per cent, bonds and to issue $50,000,000 bonds
in addition to provide necessary working
capital. Further evidence of the pronounced
tendency is found in the fact that in 1901
the New York Stock Exchange "listed"
$923,010,100 in bonds against $443,713,000
for the previous year, while exclusive of the
$1,018,000,000 of Steel stock listed, the stock
listings for 1901 were only a few million dollars
in excess of those for the previous year.
^lany of these issues of bonds were deter-
mined by circumstances peculiar to the cor-
porations concerned, but the general run of
them were influenced by certain underlying
conditions of the American securities market,
and were also affected by disastrous experi-
ences certain railroad interests had had in
retaining the management of their properties.
When Mr. J. Pierpont IMorgan was on the
witness stand last spring in a case involving
the validity of the Northern Securities
Company merger, he gave one explanation
for the existence of that combination which
has been oftentimes quoted in Wall Street
since. "I wanted," said Mr. Morgan, "the
stock of railroads I had helped to build up
and make prosperous to be where I knew it
was secure — where it could not be bought up
over night. I felt that if a corporation with
$400,000,000 capital stock held this stock,
it would be safe there, if it would be safe
anywhere in the world."
In this desire to have the control of proper-
ties in hands whose locality is not a matter
for speculation, this anxiety to prevent the
secret purchase of control of properties in the
stock market — here is to be found one of the
directing reasons for these new issues of bonds.
For bonds confer no voting power upon their
holders. Possessors of stock may elect a
management. They are partners in the firm,
so to speak. Bondholders are creditors.
They can have no voice in the direction of the
properties until the corporations shall have
become bankrupt. If a corporation, there-
fore, issues ever so many millions of bonds,
the management runs no risk of creating
possibly hostile voting power. Managers of
2832
THE BONDS OF AMERICAN CORPORATIONS
many of the great corporations of this country
have had occasion to shudder within these
last few months at the assaults made upon
them through quiet purchases of stock.
The cases of the Lotiisville and Nashville
Railroad and the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company are still vividly in the minds of the
investing community.
This, then, is the predominant reason for
the preference for bond issues over those of
stocks. There are many, however, who feel
that the investment public has absorbed
about all the "stock" that it will. It is an
extremely difficult matter at present to float
a new issue of stock. Even the great Steel
Corporation, backed and guaranteed by the
powerful house of Morgan, with its enormous
earnings and conservative management, and
pa3-ing seven per cent, dividends upon its
preferred stock, has not been able to induce
the public to buy that stock at a figure much
above S95 a share. With such a conspicuous
warning, it was but natural that financiers
should cast about for a more hopeful method
of obtaining capital. It is freely predicted
that should the Steel Corporation issue its
8250,000,000 in bonds, those five per cent,
promises to pay will command a higher
market value than the seven per cent, cumu-
lative stocks of the same company. The
securities market has come to feel that there
is some magic in the word "bond." It, at
least, is sure. Xo matter how bad times
may be, the bondholder will get something.
The stockholder may suffer an absolute loss.
Since the memorable panic of May 9, 1901,
all the machinations and allureraents of
Wall Street have failed to attract a large
public into stock market speculation. There
have been various artificial bullish move-
ments, but in every case they have been
traced to pools held within narrow limits.
Corporations have been made to realize that
their capital issues could not be carried upon
the crest of waves of wild, indiscriminate
speculation. They have been made to feel
that the only way to induce the public to
allow its money to be used in their enterprises
would be to give to that public some security.
It must be regarded, at the same time, as a
most hopeful indication that the bonds of
American corporations have come to have
such an assured value. If they had not they
could not be floated, in spite of the charm
surrounding the word "bond." The public
must be led to believe that there is a reason-
able probability that the interest due on the
bonds will be paid. If the public has confi-
dence in this fact, it will willingly sacrifice a
seven per cent, cumulative stock in the most
prosperous of corporations for a five per cent,
bond of the same institution. The public
realizes that the corporation will thus save
two per cent, in dividend payments, which
may be utilized in improving the properties
and making them more likely to continue
five per cent, pa^'ments for a long period
than could be the case with seven per cent.
But right here occurs the chief danger of
this wholesale issue of bonds, in the opinion
of thoughtful students of modem finance.
A bond constitutes a fixed charge upon the
earnings of the corporation. In times of
prosperity, a heav}' fixed charge is not felt to
be burdensome. If business be depressed,
however, the fixed charge becomes immedi-
ately a peril. Xo matter how much sales or
profits ma}^ fall off, interest payments must
continue to be made or the company go into
a receiver's hands. Bonds floated, therefore,
upon the basis of earnings in times of pros-
perity are Uable to prove most disastrous
when depression comes. N^o issues of securi-
ties which have not passed through a period
of depression can be viewed with absolute
confidence by the investment world. The
establishment of rates of interest, the fixing
consequently of the exactly proper sums in
which issues of bonds should be made to give
the corporation permanent safety, constitute
one of the most difficult problems with which
corporation managers have to deal.
Conser\'ative investors have begun to
inquire just what possibilities of "watering"
there are in bond issues. When the general
public is so kindly disposed toward a bond,
there is an extraordinary temptation to capi-
talize earnings, as well as properties, in this
form. The form has so far been, in most
cases, utilized by corporations of established
conservatism and reliability. But even as
late as October a prominent trust company
in Xew York announced that it had agreed to
accept the property, franchises, patents, etc..
of a newly established telephone company, in
return for which it would guarantee the issue
of Sioo,ooo,ooo in bonds, to be sold as needed.
This transaction was no doubt entirely wise.
It illustrates, however, the striking character
of this tendency.
THE BUILDER OF THE NEW YORK
SUBWAY
A STORY OF STEADY ACHIEVEMENT SHOWING THE QUALITIES
BY WHICH MR. JOHN B. McDONALD BECAME CONTRACTOR
FOR THE LARGEST MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISES IN THE WORLD
BY
RAYMOND STEVENS
THE day shift of workmen on the
New York Subway had hardly begun
their morning work on a section far
uptown when an automobile whirled up to
the edge of the trench and a short, broad-
shouldered man, brisk and businesslike,
alighted.
"J. B.'s late this morning," said a work-
man, as the visitor, stepping quickly down a
ladder, started with alacrity along the tunnel,
his keen gray eye glancing sharply here and
there with critical gleam.
The rhythm of the workmen grew speedier
as the new arrival went by. Foremen listened
deferentially to his quick, decisive comments.
The man was John B. McDonald, con-
tractor with the City of New York for the
2,000,000,000-gallon Jerome Park Reservoir,
one of the largest storage reservoirs in the
world, the Rapid Transit Subway, the largest
contract ever let, and, with his company,
for the subway tunnel to Brooklyn — three
contracts that amount to nearly $50,000,000;
and early as it was, not half -past seven, he
was later than usual on his daily tour of
inspection. To a puzzled competitor who
once exclaimed "How does McDonald make
his success?" another, wiser, replied: "He
gets up early in the morning."
The northeastern section of the country is
dotted with engineering works built by him
— railroads, bridges and tunnels from Georgian
Bay to Maryland; and the contracts have
gone to him and have been successfully com-
pleted because in every case he has known
to a hair beforehand just what the tasks would
call for. The magnitude of the task involved
in building the New York Subway appals an
observer who, visiting the mine 100 feet deep
at i8ist Street, thinks of the tunnel already
begun at Post-OflEice Square and the miles
upon miles of torn-up streets between — all
L
part of a single colossal undertaking carried
on by a single man. But when Mr. McDonald
undertook the problem and some one said
"Difficult job!" he replied:
"Difficult? Not a bit. It's cellar digging
— just a lot of cellar digging. Put all the
cellars in New York in a row and they'd make
a tunnel from here to Philadelphia. There's
nothing hard about digging a cellar, and a
row of cellars isn't any harder. It takes
longer — that's all."
This power of simplification — this refusal
to be worried by details — is the quality that
has enabled Mr. McDonald to accomplish
large tasks in engineering work when his
preparedness has secured them.
At his office he is the same alert captain of
men as within sound of the chugging of air-
drills and the noise of labor underground.
From his morning inspection of the Subway,
now one section, now another, or a half-dozen
others, he hurries downtown — he always
hurries — and, entering the Park Row Building
just across from the City Hall end of the
Subway, is carried up twenty-six stories to his
offices. The building is the tallest in the
world — in New York all things are superlative
— and his office floor is just beneath the roof.
From his office windows, as far as eye can
see, straight north, run the cany on -like streets
of Manhattan, and in the middle is the scar
of the Subway. It is there all day before his
windows — an object lesson in achievement —
a thing to dream over. But dreaming about
it is not for him. He turns to his pile of care-
fully sorted letters, plunging vigorously back
to the work that is constant stimulation to
him.
Engineers' reports, blue prints showing
the condition of every foot of the Subway,
sub-contractors with statements of work done
and claims for payment, drafts for contracts.
2834
THE BUILDER OF THE NEW YORK SUBWAY
plans for variations, conferences with the Rapid
Transit engineers, bills for all kinds of expense,
come in quick succession. With a thorough
knowledge gained by years devoted to similar
work, quick, decisive, quiet, he gets through
the vast amount of work with less time and
trouble than many men put into trivialities.
Mr. McDonald was born in Ireland in 1844
and was brought, when three years old, to
New York, where his father had already
located. At the age of eighteen he left the
public schools to go to work — first in the
office of the Registry of Deeds, for he had no
idea of what he wished to become. He must
be something, however, "something worth
while," he declared to himself; and night
after night he studied practical subjects in
the evening high school.
" I want some real work," he told his father
when he had copied deeds for a year. And
when this real work took the form of time-
keeping on the Boyd's Dam contract, a part
of the Croton Water system, he discovered
his vocation. Speedily made foreman, he
soon showed ability to handle men, but all the
time he was on business of his own — learning
the details of contracting and constructing
— for his time was coming. Four years he
served, and then, on recommendation of the
Chief Engineer, who had watched his work,
he became Inspector of Masonry on the New
York Central tunnel. The contractors were
subletting sections. The young McDonald
studied one of them with care. " I can do it
myself," he confidently thought.
He put in a bid. It was accepted. The
work was done — and well done. Now, as he
passes through the tunnel, he sees, supporting
the roadway at Ninety-sixth Street, "The
Big Arch," his first business venture. The
contractors, liking the work, gave him other
contracts — on the Boston & Hoosac' Tunnel
Railroad, the Georgian Ba}^ branch of the
Canadian Pacific, and the extension of the
Lackawanna from Binghamton to Buffalo.
By this time his experience had widened
until no construction problem balked him.
He was reaching his full business stature.
Wherever in the northeastern part of the
United States great works or new railroads
were building there were gangs of his men —
on the West Shore Railroad, the Potomac
Valley, the extension of the Illinois Central
from Elgin, Illinois, to Dodgeville, Wisconsin,
the Trenton "cut off" on the Pennsylvania,
the Akron Junction in Ohio, the extension of
the Baltimore & Ohio from Baltimore to
Philadelphia, and others.
But these were ordinary tasks. They did
not show that the young contractor had
unusual ability. He could capably carry
plans through, but had he any of that
capacity that makes captains of industry ?
He was living in Baltimore, to be near his
railroad work. The city's transportation
facilities were wTetched. The Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad, unable to get a franchise for.
tracks through the city on grade, was ferrying
its trains completely around the city to make
connections with Philadelphia. Tunneling
had been put aside. Baltimore stands on low
gravel hills under which run countless little
streams, perhaps the most difficult of soils to
tunnel. The problem came to his attention. He
thought it over; he computed; he estimated;
and in the end he prepared a plan for a tunnel.
He convinced the railroad officials that he
could build one. Public opinion said an
attempt to build a tunnel under Baltimore
would endanger property, would imperil life,
and would come to naught — the task was
utterly impossible. But a franchise was
obtained and the work was begun. Difficul-
ties arose. The soil proved so full of water
that buckets had to be used in excavating.
Quicksands were encountered. A subterra-
nean stream burst through the tunnel wall one
day, and laden with fine white sand, flooded
out the workmen, swamped the works and
stopped operations. But one after .another
the bucketfuls of mud came out; the quick-
sands were pumped dry, built on and passed;
the subterranean stream, led to a brick con-
duit beneath the tunnel, was diverted to the
harbor; and the tunnel bored on. When
streets settled Mr. McDonald, with his usual
foresight, had material and workmen ready,
and the streets were filled in and repaved.
Day after day with a rubber coat and hip
boots he went down into the tunnel to direct
the work himself. For five years the struggle
continued. Any visitor to Baltimore knows
the outcome. The Baltimore Belt Railroad,
as the tunnel is called, is one of the hardest
bits of tunnel construction ever successfully
accomplished. It is the work of one man.
Then, as if one such task were not enough, he
submitted a bid for the Jerome Park Reservoir
in New York City and secured the contract.
Besides all this, he is head of a company that
f hotographed bv E. Rockwooit
JOHN B. Mcdonald
WHO IS BUILDING THE NEW YORK SUBWAVS AND RESERVOIF
2836
THE BUILDER OF THE NEW YORK SUBWAY
owns a manganese mine in Central America
that is shipping ore to the United States Steel
Corporation.
But Mr. McDonald's great work is the
subway. For years he has taken a special
interest in the rapid transit situation in Xew
York. Realizing that an extensive subway
system was certain to come, he had long had
an ambition to build it. He was a bidder on
the so-called "arcade"' subway plan of the
70's; indeed, he lost much of the property he
had so arduously acquired when the plan
eventually fell through. But that had not
discouraged him. As an expert he was fre-
quently summoned before the Rapid Transit
Commission for his advice. The present plan
called for bids on a comprehensive task — a
contract not only to build the subway but to
equip it with a transportation system and
run the system for fifty years, paying back
to the city the first cost of building. While
there were dozens of contracting firms eager
to do part of the work, only two submitted
bids for the whole. Mr. McDonald, after
spending a month at his Jerome Park office
figuring on the estimates, put in the lower bid
by nearly $5,000,000. The city required
cash, securities and bonds to the amount of
$7,000,000 to bind the contract. On account
of disagreements with the surety companies
as to terms, Mr. McDonald asked for an exten-
sion of the time for qualifying. Immediately
there w^as talk that no one would back him
because his bid was so low as to exclude
profit. The other bidder was asked if he
expected to get the contract through default.
He replied:
" No, sir. John McDonald has got that
contract and he'll keep it. He is the right
man to do it. Security won't be lacking.
Don't vou worry about that."
Mr. McDonald had intended originally to
build the subway alone, but feeling that the
terms demanded by the security companies
were exorbitant, he interested other capital-
ists, among them Mr. August Belmont. He
convinced them that he had a profitable con-
tract; and a corporation, wuth S6, 000, 000
capital and with Mr. Belmont as president,
known as the Rapid Transit Construction
Company, was formed to finance the under-
taking. The construction has been pushed
so rapidly and so successfully that the subway
will be open to the public ten months before
the contract time.
Throughout his career ^Ir. ^IcDonald has
had the faculty of finding competent men to
assist him and of interesting conservative
capitalists in his projects, for his is a person-
ality that begets confidence. He has had
equal success in dealing with labor. He has
had but a single serious strike in all his expe-
rience. That occurred on the Jerome Park
work. One forenoon in !May, while the work
was going on serenely as usual, a few Italians
at the dump ground, apparently without pre-
conceived plan and without any notice save a
shout to the surprised foreman, "W(? strike,"
stopped work and started for the reservoir
two miles away. There they were joined by
a thousand more. Greatly excited, shouting,
waving their shovels, accompanied by many
of their women and children, who lived
near by. they rushed toward the office. Mr.
McDonald stepped out. He saw^ moving
toward him an excited mob evidently bent
on violence.
■"What do you want?" he demanded,
advancing to meet them.
"We strike — more pay," came the cry.
mixed with shouts and threats in Italian.
" Strike ? If this is the way you strike, you
can keep on striking. Get out I"
A moment's pause, another step toward
them — "Come, get out," and the mob melted
away.
Fearing that the excited men, with so
much dynamite accessible, might do serious
damage to the works, he went for a body of
police to drive them from the reservoir.
Within a week the men returned unsuccessful.
Mr. McDonald's method in the case of any
grievances has always been to call the men to
his office and settle the matter man to man,
or, when the laborers have been organized,
to treat with the union's agents; but he is not
the man to be driven or frightened. Said an
engineer who had long been connected with
him: " He has had little trouble because the
men get anything reasonable they demand."
The 10,000 men on the subway, though all
under sub-contractors, are protected by an
effective scheme of arbitration devised by
Mr. McDonald.
He is a member of many clubs — the
Law vers' Club, the Manhattan Club, the
Colonial Club, the Maryland Club, the New
York Yacht Club, and of several golf clubs
as well, for he is enthusiastically devoted to
that game and is an expert player.
AN rNKlM.slll.H SKI.ICH
The imniori.il to il>c soMiers of Centre County. I'cnnsylvani.i, and to ("lovemor Ciittin, W'.ir Covcrtior ol l'cnnr,ylvania
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
BV
ALEXANDER BLAIR THAW
Illustrated from photographs by W. E. Cooper and G. C. Cox and a portrait by A. R. Dugmore
NATURE'S first appeal, to a child or to
a young world, is through the eyes.
Before we give much heed to the spoken
word, even before we learn to listen to the power
of sound, how we delight in color, how eagerlv
we try to grasp everything that comes within
our vision. Painters and sculptors give us
pleasure and delight by their power in the
handling of color and of form. But not often
shall there appear the man who can do more
than this, who shall fill our hearts with wonder
and our eyes with tears. To do this, the
artist niust feel. How deeply, how intimately
must he feel the meaning of our life ! Through
what long and terrible struggles must he go
before he can express this meaning to the
world ! This story, of inward suffering and
of both interior and external struggle, is in a
few words the story of the life of George Grey
Barnard, the sculptor.
And now, with the best of his years still
before him, he is given a unique opportunity
for expression, since he has been awarded the
contract for the entire sculpture scheme for
the new capitol of Pennsylvania, the largest
contract ever given to a single sculptor in the
country. The members of the commission
and the people of Pennsylvania are to be con-
gratulated both upon the wisdom shown in
giving the painting and the sculpture to a
single painter and a single sculptor, and upon
their choice of the men for the work. With
Edwin A. Abbey to do the painting one can
rest assured that the mural decoration is in
safe hands. The State of Pennsylvania is
also to be congratulated upon being able
to show to the rest of the country, in
the commissioners, and in their architect,
Mr. Joseph M. Huston, an example of artistic
knowledge and of freedom from any kind
of influence or partisanship, either artistic
or political. And the country at large, the
whole world indeed, as well as Mr. Barnard
himself, are to be congratulated that he is to
have this opportunity to do the great work
that is in him.
That Mr. Barnard is a man of unusual
powers and a sculptor of great genius will
appear beyond a doubt to any one who shall
study the man, his life and his present achieve-
ment. It is a part of the fitness of things
that Pennsylvania should have chosen a son
of her soil for this work; for Mr. Barnard was
born at Bellefonte, Pa., in '63. Like her, his
riches lay deep within him, and like her he
had to hew his wealth out of the rocks and
stones. But it was equally fitting, and even
more necessary, that he should have gone out
West while still very young and so become a
son of the greater America as well. Near
Chicago, on the shores of the great lake, until
twelve vears old, and then, until sixteen
MR. BARNARD AT WORK ON '-Tlii:: HEWER' IN CLAY
"THE HEWER" IN MARBLE
2840
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
THK FAMOUS CARVED OAK CLOCK CASE
i>ETAlL FROM THE CLOCK
Every child in our day inherits the precious " Life of ihe Past "
in a weahh of detail and sense of growth of the world that could not
belong to Homer or Phidias. From reading our histories of " Man
and Earth" a vision in its ensemble, taking the form of an evolution,
becomes an ever present consciousness. This consciousness and rela-
tion of earth, its elements, wind, water, roots, and unseen powers, witli
man struggling out from it all like a spirit on the waters, is what I
have feebly expressed in my carving of oak. Struggling against and
out from the water and roots gleams here and there a serpent form
t)-pifying unseen power, Man. This struggle between the elements
and man goes on up to the foot of the dial, where the water ends and
roots first take bud and leaf. The two sources of nature in the form of
man and woman holding urns from which water flows in the depths
below, the maiden at the top t)'pif>-ing peace and simplicity, the true
rulers over all. — George Grey Barimrd.
years, in Iowa, on the Mississippi, wandering
through woods and swamps by day and night
he learned to know the creatures.
The son of a clerg}'man of broad sympathies
and of a mother through whom chiefly his
artistic temperament was derived, he was
never hampered spiritually or intellectually,
though in the struggle for existence he was
always hard pressed.
When only nine years old, through the
delightful experience of a boyhood's intimate
acquaintance w^ith an old retired sea captain,
whose wonderful collection of shells and
minerals became later the nucleus of the col-
lection of the University of Chicago, the boy
learned much of geology, and grew to know
everv shell as he later taught himself to know
every bird and animal. By fifteen he was an
expert taxidermist and in the habit of drawing
each creature from the life and so mounting
them. He had as many as 1,200 specimens
in his collection at this time. Then for
about three years he earned his living as
GKUKCil-: (;RKY liARNARU, SCLLP'IOK
2841
an engraver and worker in (jjold and silver when he refused the offer of a situation which
ornaments. But at the same period he had would have "fixed" him for life. From that
already found his vocation and begun to time onward we find him constanth' refusing
model in clay. He was only seventeen to accej^t any and every condition that would
MAN'S STRUGGLE WITH NATURE
An unfinished fragment
FRAGMENTS FROM THE URN WHICH IS TO HOLD THE ASHES OF ANTON SEIDL
From this central group twenty-seven figures of life encircle the um
GEORGE GREY BARNARD
2844
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
^"^:^%.
Old Pan, past master of the flute,
Thou lusty, dear, melodious brute.
Sit on thy haunches by my side
And blow my spring dream open wide.
PufE out thy shaggy jowls and make
The honey buds of nature break
Abloom for joy: stir up the juice,
The sap, the chlorophyl, and loose
Once more the tender, searching strain,
While all the world goes wild again.
Puff out thy shagg)- jowls and blow,
Now high and clear, now soft and low,
Until the music stirs my feet,
Until my veins the measure beat,
And that vague wonder masters me,
Tlie panic of thy melody.
Ah, Pan, Pan, Pan, one of thy boys
Still holds to those Arcadian joys.
Those simple, deep bom, keen delights
Of colors, perfumes, sounds and sights
And love, love, love, when in the Spring
The flickers pipe and thrushes sing.
—Maurice Thompson, in The Independent.
"BROTHERLY LOVE" OR "FRIENDSHIP"
A copy of a large group on a monument in Norway. The marble typifies that which separates all loved ones though »e reach
forth with infinite love
2846
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
seem to him to compromise his conscience or
bind his genius.
At the age of seventeen therefore, upon the
sum of S89 which he had saved, he lived a
whole year in Chicago, a year of unbroken
toil and untold delight, drawing and modeling
at the Chicago Art Institute. Humanity had
become the object of his study, and the world
a piece of clay for his strong hands to model.
There was a closed room in the Institute build-
ing, closed and locked because the students
of the previous year had mutilated the
treasures concealed behind that locked door.
This treasure v\-as a complete collection of
casts of the works of Michael Angelo. One
day the President of the Art Institute gave
the key of that door to the boy Barnard, and
there, for the first time, the man Barnard
found himself face to face with the great
drama of humanity as expressed through
the human form. From that day he has
known his own powers clearly, and has gone
on over obstacles and through privations,
temptations and sacrifices straight toward
his goal.
At the end of his eighteenth year he
received an order for a portrait bust of a child.
After making his model in clay he took it to
■I FEEL TWO N.4TURES STRUGGLING WITHIN ME"
"This group is intended to express the battle «e all «Tige who open our heart and mind to the light ' — George Grey Barnard
GEORGE GRKV BARNARD, SCULI'TUR
2847
"I FEEL TWO NATURES'
IN ITS PERMANENT POSITION IN THE NEW WING OF THE
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
a marble yard, where a piece of marble was
given him . There was no one in that country
who could give him a word of help. There
was the head in clay, and here was the piece
of marble, which had to be hammered till the
marble became a copy of the clay. His only
tools were a hammer and chisels ! It was an
impossibility, but it had to be done ! And it
was done, the young sculptor receiving $300
for his work. And now the road was open
to Paris !
There, for twelve long years, Barnard
struggled to bring out the genius that was
in him, and against difficulties of every kind;
for, besides all the ordinary trials and tempta-
tions of Paris, he had at times to bear the
extremes of hunger and of cold. But there
were generations of strength in the moral
and mental fiber of the young artist. Besides
these, and in an unusual degree, he possessed
that personal force of will by which the
Young America is so rapidly taking the
leadership of nations: only, instead of steel
or iron, he is hammering marble and bronze
into shape for her greater glory.
Yet, though he were all will, he might still
have failed of his purpose, but for a rare
perfection of physical health and strength,
I
284S
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
without which he could not have endured
such extreme hardships. For instance, there
was a time when, for many months, with
nothing to eat but a httle rice and milk, he
kept on constantly with his work, drawing
or modeling sixteen hours a day. And so
during these twelve years, in the midst of
that gay Paris, he had to struggle for his
very life.
There, during these years, the boy of the
open prairie found before him the opportunity
MAIDEN WITH THE ROSES"
A marble in a mausoleum in Iowa
•THE BOY"
Modeled in 1884. This is in the private New York collection of
Alfred Corning Clark
to train eyes and hands more and more closely,
to follow the reality of life and the actual
form of things, and to force that actuality into
harmony with the ideal image which filled his
heart and mind. In the schools, and later, for
many years, alone, his skill in handling clay and
charcoal and the development of his powers
of visualization brought him many honors,
all culminating in the year '"94," when, at
"MAIDENHOOD
2850
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
the age of thirty-one, he won his greatest
success up to that time upon the exhibition
of his work at the Salon, a triumph accorded
him by a jury of the greatest artists, by the
foremost critics and by the people of Paris.
Shortly after, against the advice of his
friends and, as usual, following the dictates
of his own will and conscience, he returned
to America; and it is, after eight long years,
privations of his condition of life. This work,
■"The Boy," made when Barnard was little
more than a boy himself, was modeled in his
little bedroom under a. roof through which
the rain and snow poured in, so that the
sculptor was obliged to hang canvas over his
iron bed; and the clay in its wet wrappings
had to be covered with part of his bedclothes.
One dav after his four-mile walk from the
i
L
■
Hk
^I^^^^^HH^H
^-j_- — ■..T-ni^ ^^^^^
^~ ^Z-^^ "^^^H
-^ '^B iLJ^^^HMMriH
A MEMORIAL TO MR. PLANT
of the Plant System, given by his employees. It is on the grounds of the Tampa Hotel, Tampa, Florida
a thing to be thankful for that America has
learned to appreciate his work and to realize
that in George Grey Barnard she has produced
that man of the ages, a really great sculptor.
It is a thing of happy omen, too, that his
first work, made in Paris fifteen years ago,
was seen and appreciated by a fellow countrv-
man, the late Mr. Alfred Corning Clark, and by
him bought, at a critical time, when Barnard
could not have borne much longer the extreme
Beaux Arts to his room near the Versailles
Gate, he found a note asking him to call at the
hotel at which Mr. Clark was stopping. The
next evening at dusk, in clothes that were
mere rags, he reached the door of one of the
great hotels near the Opera, only to be stopped
by the doorkeeper. But upon Barnard's
quiet insistence that a gentleman wished to
see him, inquiries were made and it was found
that "the bov" should be admitted. And
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCUEl'TOR
2851
these two Americans met in the in-ivate parlor,
and the boy sat down just as he was to a
Parisian dinner, his first dinner in many
months.
They sat and talked for awhile — and each
understood the other. But when they parted
who shall say which was the happier or the
more deeply moved, the man who had found
that boy or the boy who had found a friend.
With the fabulous sum of 1,500 francs as
partial payment for his first statue, wrapped
up in his new friend's handkerchief and put
in his hat for safe keeping (for there was not
a safe or secure pocket in his rags) Barnard
ran, through the night, all the way to the
studio of an American acquaintance (for he
dared not return to his home near the haunts
of thieves and murderers), and there he lay
on a couch, dreaming all night of the great
work that he was to do.
Great work it is and will be, and therefore
it does not always make an obvious appeal.
But since sculpture is the most direct of the
arts, the great sculptor is able to show to every
man something of the divine in human form,
something of the relation between man and
the universe. As the man develops with the
universe a greater harmony appears in the
midst of the struggle. So in Barnard's work
there is evident a process of evolution. Yet,
as the bud contains the complete flower, so
in his first work, "The Boy," there is some
suggestion, not only of the struggle in "The
Two Natures," but of the wonderful sim-
plicity and repose of "Maidenhood."
In the beautiful figure of "The Boy" we
seem to see — for the work of the true artist
gives liberty, not limits, to the imagination —
I we seem to see not only a half-unconscious
expression of the sculptor's boyhood, dream-
ing, and groping in the earth for light and
truth, but, more than this, we see in it some-
thing of our own experience revealed; and
then, in the beauty and strength of this young
I bent figure, we feel all the coming possibilities
of the man's power.
His next work of importance was an order
for the tomb of a Norwegian philanthropist,
a man who gave not only his money but him-
self to his fellow man. The work is called
"Brotherly Love," and shows the nude
figures of two young men with their heads
[^partly buried in the rough marble, through
which with their hands they seem to be grop-
ing for each other. It is a beautiful work,
with a rare charm and an original quality of
attractiveness of its own.
It is in this way that Barnard seeks to make
his appeal, through the simi)le symbolism of
humanity itself, with none of the adventitious
aids of convention or traditional allegory,
and free also from their limitations which held
back even the strong hand of a Michael
Angelo. Therefore, we are not altogether
surprised, when we turn to look at the great
group called " I Feel Two Natures Struggling
Within Me," to feel a sense of doubt, or
at least of wonder; and we ask ourselves
whether the sculptor, in this group, taken by
itself, has not ventured too near the confines
of his art.
A study of the group, however, convinces
one that it is important in itself; by its won-
derful technical treatment; by the great and
immediate impression of struggle which is
conveyed in its unique ensemble as well as in
the characterization and details of the group ;
and more especially by its expression of pure
vital force. More important still was the
indirect value of the "Two Natures" to the
artist himself — psychologically as a step in his
development as man and artist, and practi-
cally as a means of development of his rare
powers of visualization and technique.
For one of the most wonderful elements of
Barnard's strength lies in the actual handling
of the chisel. To the layman it is rather a
surprise to learn that the modern sculptor
seldom if ever takes a chisel in his hand, his
work being done when he finishes the model-
ing. In Barnard's hands, however, the
hammer and chisel have learned to hew and
to caress, as they did in the hands of the early
sculptors.
A surprising expression of Barnard's power
is the next work, completed while the sculptor
was waiting to be discovered by America.
It is a great clock, an immense piece of wood
carving. The conception, though based upon
Scandinavian mythology, is the sculptor's
most complete and direct expression of the
whole of man's struggle in relation to the
universe. The wood becomes the giant tree
of Norse mythology, or life itself, with its roots
running down into primal matter; while all
about pours the ocean of chaos. Struggling
amidst the waves, winding in great coils, is
the huge Mitgard serpent, representing the
force that has grown out of inert matter ; and
now man appears, battling with the serpent,
2852
GEORGE GREY BARNARD, SCULPTOR
or human nature in its struggle with natural
forces. Among the many groups that tell the
story of the ages in this clock of universal time
are the three gods of creation. One reaches
with aimless hand toward a bit of drift carried
by the tide ; one takes it and breathes into it
the breath of life; and the third speaks to it
and endows it with a soul. The central
feature- of the scheme, standing out in relief
from the massive movement and struggle,
are the sculptor's trinity — man, woman and
child ; while, above all the elements of struggle,
at one side of the clock-face, is a beautifully
delicate figure of a girl, expressive of the
purity of life at its summit — on the heights.
One looks and looks at the work with growing
wonder at the beauty of proportion and of
detail, down to the exquisite texture and
finish of the varying surfaces.
This work, the sculptor's first and only
effort in the handling of woods, is as beautiful
and interesting in technique as it is in con-
ception. The delicate and subtle handling
of some of the human figures and heads in the
midst of the broader masses is curiously
fascinating; and the decorative effect of the
whole work is very fine and simple.
The great bronze " Pan " is, in this country,
perhaps the best known of the sculptor's
works, having been seen for a year at the
Metropolitan ]\Iuseum — where in the new wing
"The Two Natures" has a permanent place;
and it is to be expected that the City
of New York, which received "Pan" as a
gift from Mr. Clark, will soon find a fitting
place for this great bronze. "Pan" is an
original, unconventional and very lazy god
of the woods and streams, and both in
treatment and conception a frankly decorative
individual, with a grin and a pair of flopping
ears, one up and one down, all quite his own;
yet truly a person of great importance, and
for other reasons than those of his being the
largest single piece of bronze in the country,
and of his having created a very panic, as it
were, in the New York Board of Aldermen,
when they failed to find a fitting haunt for
him in Central Park.
He is a cheerful and a very living Pan, and,
with the clock, shows us that the sculptor
had returned, after a long period of storm
and stress, to that frank communion with
external Nature from which his life and work
in Paris had largely shut him out. This
change came at the period of his return to
America, which was marked also by his mar-
riage to a beautiful American wife. So that
he became, at the same time, in every sense, a
citizen of the world; and, entering fully into
the everyday life of men and women, he
began definitely to do the work of humanity
for which, on the heights, and in a remoter
atmosphere, he had prepared.
Since the "Pan" and the clock he has fin-
ished two works, in which this important step
in his development is well and nobly illus-
trated. Of these two works, "The Hewer,"
a colossal figure in a gray-toned marble from
the same quarry as Michael Angelo's " David,"
and the infinitely and tenderly beautiful
"Maidenhood," it may be said that, with all
the tremendous difference between them, each
is, as it were, a complement to the other; and
together they splendidly complete Barnard's
present achievement, and serve as sure
omens of his success in future creations. In
"The Hewer," by the simplest synthesis, he
has brought together and concentrated in a
single figure of primitive man the whole
gospel of labor, in its birth and beginning, in
its discipline and in its dignity.
In the harmoniously forceful movement of
"The Hewer," as in the very central meaning
of "Maidenhood," there is some suggestion
of the unusual fertility of conception and
invention of the artist, the "Hewer" being
but a single figure of a proposed colossal
group of "Primitive Man." For Barnard's
future promise consists not only in these
works already done, but in that exuberance
of imagination, not too often seen in modern
art, which, given power of execution, is one
of the marks of genius.
It is impossible, for this reason, to give
more than a very genera, description of his
work, a cinerary urn in memory of the late
Anton Seidl containing, for instance, twenty-
seven figures. Among other orders now on
hand, Barnard has an important monument
to Governor Curtin to be erected at Bellefonte,
Pa., the birthplace of the sculptor as well as
that of the great war governor.
In "Maidenhood" modern sculpture in
America, through Barnard's heart and eyes
and hands, has achieved that rare and inde-
scribable loveliness of utter simplicity, that
unconscious purity and beauty which is the
ultimate word of great art. In this work, as
in several others, the sculptor has taken his
model in an almost accidental pose. The
WHAT EMTLOYERS SAY OF PROFIT-SHARING
2R53
thing that we sec in the marble as it stands
is the inhnite beauty which he beheld, as with
eyes half closed he worked upon that mass of
clay until the lines of the model and of his
dream — if you will have it so — and of the
plastic clay, and then the stubborn marble,
became fused into one beneath his hands.
Who shall say whether he created that
beauty, or, finding it there, copied what lie
saw ? Through him and through his power
it has become a reality for us, with almost the
mobility of very flesh in the texture of the
marble; with the beauty of restraining and
chastening power in the pure lines of the
figure; and in the young girl's face, with its
closed eyes, the vitality and eternity of love.
WHAT EMPLOYERS SAY OF PROFIT-
SHARING
THE VARIED EXPERIENCES OF EMPLOYERS IN ALTRUISM,
ESPECIALLY IN THE GIYING OF CHRISTMAS PRESENTS —
(ilFTS SOMETIMES MISUNDERSTOOD —THE SWEDISH WORK-
MEN WHO SAW THE PRESIDENT— WHAT EMPLOYEES PREFER
BV
FULLERTON L. WALDO
SUPPOSE we gave them each a turkey
at Christmas time," an employer
said to me — I was trying to find
what employers do in the way of gifts at
Christmas time or any other time to establish
cordial relations with employees — "Suppose
we gave them turkeys. You would hear
them muttering 'We must have made a good
deal of money for the firm, first and last, or
their consciences wouldn't have pricked
them to give us this sop. "
This was one man's opinion. Others had
different views. Some objected to discuss-
ing the question at all. "We fear," one
writes, "that articles on these subjects have
a tendency to encourage a spirit of unrest
in the minds of those who are least entitled
to such recognition." Certain conservative
business houses prefer not to exploit their
. policy, in some cases because they desire that
IK the charity shall be unostentatious. In other
cases it may be that employers are unwilling
to betray unsuccessful experiments. Inquiry
as to the practice of a number of industrial
concerns has elicited replies which, in some
I cases, touch upon the larger, but kindred,
considerations of the introduction of pension
svstems, the division of profits, and various
The president of an important steel and
iron company believes in some practicable
system of cooperation, but not in the pre-
mium or gift -giving idea. The pound of
tea should stand on its own merits, and the
cost of the china pitcher it were better to put
into improving the quality of the tea. It
is not feasible, he holds, for railroads or large
industrial organizations to make small gifts
to their workmen because of the large num-
ber of operatives involved in any general
distribution. In Germany, he points out,
the government pensions the vast horde of
agricultural laborers.
I talked with a chief of staff in a Sixth
Avenue, New York, dry goods house employ-
ing 1,800 people, where a system of organized
beneficence has been in operation for fifty
years. It is a scheme of adjustment accord-
ing to the deserts of the individual and the
length of his or her term of service. The
reward of merit frequently takes the form
of vacations of several weeks ; and frequently
there are opportunities for travel in Europe,
with expenses paid, and perhaps not much
to do in the way of business. Sometimes
presents of money are given; sometimes
percentages of profits are divided. The
giving of such percentage is the usual practice
2854
WHAT EMPLOYERS SAY OF PROFIT-SHARING
in the case of managers of departments. In
any case, what is given is known only to
the giver and the recipient of the gift. Were
a vote taken of the employees the result
would not be in favor of a general distribu-
tion of small gifts, such as is the custom
in many establishments at the Christmas
season. This was the house that did not
favor the giving of turkeys at Christmas.
A certain soap manufacturing company,
employing i,ioo hands, has made a practice
for twenty-five years of giving turkeys at
Christmas to its workingmen. The boys are
given their choice among small articles of
cutlery; and each of the girls receives a tea-
spoon and candy or some toilet article made
by the house employing them. Foremen
and chiefs of departments "receive more
substantial recognition." With reference to
this custom of giving turkeys, an officer
of a similar — and world-famous — concern
remarks : " This was probably a small matter
when the custom was inaugurated, but at
the present time we bull the turkey markets
in one of the counties of the State. As our
man who makes these purchases says, we
always have young and tender turkeys
because we buy up the entire crop of the
neighborhood each year. "
The size of a gift has little to do with its
intrinsic value; and small courtesies are
often much appreciated when they betoken
a special thoughtfulness. This the manu-
facturers of certain well-known cereal food-
stuffs realize. "We try to arrange our pay-
day at that season so as to give the employees
their money right up to a day or so before
Christmas in order that they may have it
for their Christmas shopping. We also give
them, a day or so before Christmas, a half-
day off, for which we give them full pay.
This is done so as to give them ample time
for their Christmas shopping. In the way of
a httle gift, we give the emploA'ees a turkey
and supplies for their Christmas dinner."'
A large manufacturing firm in Worcester,
Massachusetts, employing many Swedes, has
likewise found a managerial regard for local
sentiment conducive to good feeling between
operatives and employers. "Within a year
or two after we became established here we
adopted the custom of distributing turkeys
among our employees (at Christmas time),
giving everybody, man, woman or child, a
good-sized turkey. For several years, also, a
Christmas entertainment was given — a por-
tion of the expenses being paid for by us and
a portion by the employees, through sub-
scriptions. These entertainments consisted
of music and acts from such talent as was
found among the employees, and sometimes
outside talent was employed. Often we
had a dinner or a lunch either before or
after the entertainment. These entertain-
ments were always very successful and
seemed to create a friendly feeling. After
awhile, however, the number of employees
increased to such an extent that there was no
suitable place in which to have these enter-
tainments ; so we adopted the plan of having
a shop picnic about Midsummer's Day,
June 24th. Seventy-five or eighty per cent.
of our employees are Swedish, and they make
a great deal of Midsummer's Day as well as
Christmas. It was, perhaps, their sentiment
in regard to this, as much as anything, that
led us, in the first place, to arrange for these
entertainments.
"The other day, when President Roosevelt
visited Worcester, he landed at the station
opposite our office entrance. We erected
a grandstand on the green in front of our
office building large enough to accommodate
seven or eight hundred people, which was
just about sufficient for our employees and
their families, and gave them a good oppor-
tunity to see the President ... To show
you the interest that our men took in the
visit of the President, about eighty of them
went out into the woods and got greens
to help on the decorating, and they worked
nearly all day Monday, Labor Day, making
preparations. Last Christmas time they
went out into the woods and gathered greens
and trees and decorated the interior of the
factory so that it looked very pretty. This
is a Swedish custom and we think a very nice
one, and we like to encourage it. "
"Our problem," said a high official of the
New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad,
"is not like that of a department store. The
railroad runs through a great man}' towns,
and employs many thousands of men. No
system of Christmas giving on any large scale
would be practicable; we would be robbing
the stockholders. To introduce a system
of pensioning off employees would likewise
require the expenditure of what must be
regarded as the stockholders' money. The
cases of employees temporarily disabled or
WHAT EMPLOYERS SAY OF PROFIT-SHARING
2855
permanently retired on account of injuries
received in the service are considered sepa-
rately. A question has been raised, and is
now mooted in the courts, as to the legality
of the Pennsylvania Railroad's embarking
on a certain form of the insurance business,
with a sinking fund established by contribu-
tions from the employees' wages."
The remarks of a staff officer of the New
York Central Railroad were to the same
eflfect. "The Central has no system of pen-
sioning off veteran employees. We believe
in paying a fair business wage for services
rendered and letting it go at that. Instances
of faithful and diligent service extending over
a period of many years would be considered
on their individual merits. The Delaware,
Lackawanna & Western is, I believe, con-
sidering the establishment of a pension
system of some sort. But we have no such
scheme here. And to give Christmas presents
or percentages of wages from the stockholders'
money to the vast number of employees in
our service is impossible."
One of the greatest of our great life
insurance companies has a thorough system
of pensioning oflE employees grown old in the
harness. But to grant a percentage of profits,
or of yearly salary to the army in the com-
pany's pay, is declared to be impracticable.
"The money is locked up with the policies of
the policy holders, and is theirs just as much
as the money of the stockholders in a railway
company belongs to the stockholders." The
beneficence of this company to those in its
employ has taken a very practical form in
the establishment of a school of instruction in
matters relating to the business of life insur-
ance. A school of banking and finance has
similarly been established by one of the great
Wall Street banking houses, under its own
iroof ; and a large department store in Chicago
[has likewise an adjunct of the same sort.
A prominent concern in Newark, New
'Jersey, has tried, and abandoned, the project
of profit-sharing after years of experience.
" I talked it over with some of the men, " the
president says, "and we came to the conclu-
sion that turkeys given at Christmas and
[presents, given now and then in the event of
'their marriage, or of a funeral or something
of that sort, would produce a better effect,
land so our profit-sharing has really been
(stopped. ... I am still in hope of
turning our business into a real cooperative
concern in which the men will share not
only in the profits but in the management.
I think the sharing in the profits without a
sharing in the management does not produce
any really great benefit. "
A certain large electrical company does not
believe in making gifts to its operatives. It
pays high wages and cares for sick or injured
employees. It is considering, but has not
yet adopted, a scheme of pensioning. A car
manufacturing company "has always made
it a point to remunerate one and all of said
employees to the full extent of what they
merited. . . . We have not made special
consideration for them at Christmas time. "
A writing machine company gives a bonus
of $100 annually to employees of at least ten
years' standing — $50 at Christmas, and the
rest at vacation time. This bonus, however,
is given only to those who have attained
the salary limit.
To the traveling men of a Chicago house,
a bonus, based on the amount of each man's
sales for the year, is paid at Christmas time.
This operates strictly as a reward of merit,
the amount each man receives being deter-
mined by the sum total of the sales he has
personally made during the year. Many of
the 200 traveling men thus add from a tenth
to a half to their salaries.
A conservative manufacturing establish-
ment in Rhode Island is also of those that
do not believe in specific Christmas giving.
"We consider that ordinary men are better
satisfied, in the long run, to have the best of
wages and to know that they can obtain such
wages steadily."
What is the general inference to be drawn
from these various responses, indicating a
wide divergence of business policy? It is,
perhaps, that indicated in the opinion last
quoted. Adventitious giving, unless the
nature and amount of the gifts are carefully
calculated according to the relative deserts
of the recipients, does not in all cases result
in the promotion of a cordial good will
among the members of an industrial estab-
lishment. The typical American workman
is ready to enter into the fruit of his labors
in the shape of regularly paid and sufficient
wages, considering this his just due, and
willing therefrom to supply his own neces-
sities as well as luxuries. He does not as
yet, on any large scale, demand to be made
a profit-sharer.
A R/[EANS TO EFFECTIVE ARBITRATION
BY
FREDERICK W. JOB
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF ARBITRATION OF ILLINOIS
TWENTY-FOUR States have already
enacted statutes providing for the
adjustment of disputes between the
employer and employee. In only a very few
of these States, however, has the desired end
been accomplished.
In some States only $2.00 per day is
paid each member of the Board for every
day he is helping to arbitrate a labor dis-
turbance. Other States provide $4.00 per
day as a salary for such work. Where the
salary is large enough to attract men of
standing and ability another drawback is
in the lack of methods for carrying into effect
the findings of the Board.
It is believed that the amendment to the
arbitration law of the State of Illinois, pro-
posed by the present Board, and passed by
the Legislature of 1 901 -1902, has to a great
extent solved this difficulty. This amendment
says in substance "that the duty of the
mayors and town presidents and of the
executive officers of the labor unions, in case
of a strike involving more than twenty-five
employees, is to communicate with the State
Board of Arbitration, giving full details."
And "whenever there is a strike or lockout
by which the general public appears likely
to suffer injury or inconvenience with respect
to necessities, and neither party to the strike
consents to submit the controversy to the
State Board of Arbitration, the Board may
proceed of its own motion to make an investi-
gation and to make public its findings, with
recommendations, and in the prosecution of
the inquiry the board has power to issue
subpoenas and compel the attendance and
testimony of witnesses. "
Prompt notification of labor troubles
to the secretary of the Board by the presidents
of towns and by mayors of cities throughout
the State resulted, in many instances, in a
quick, quiet and harmonious settlement of
the difference. The presence of the Board
without more than a casual inquiry and with
a few recommendations has sufficed.
While the amendment was designed to
cover principally the cases of employees and
employers who conduct plants in which the
public is interested, such as transportation
companies or telephone, telegraph or light-
ing plants, yet that part of the amendment
giving the Board authority to make investiga-
tions "whenever there shall exist a strike
wherein in the judgment of a majority of the
Board the general public shall appear likely
to suffer injury or inconvenience ... in
any other respect, " has been of incalculable
benefit to us in our independent inquiries.
The unwilling party is generally repre-
sented as the case proceeds and takes a
lively interest. The example of the party
to a suit at law who permits it to go by
default stimulates the unwilling side.
Immediately upon receiving information
our Board proceeds to the scene of the
dispute, and if attempts at conciliation and
mediation by us fail, steps are at once taken
to make a searching inquiry. Subpoenas
are seldom found necessary, for the disposi-
tion to be an involuntary witness and to
compel the Board to resort to the use of the
subpoena is too apt to be taken as an indication
of weakness. The books of the employer are
usually produced and comparisons of prices
of labor of manufactured goods with other
competitors are shown ; the cost of necessaries
of life, comprising clothing, rents, foodstuffs
and other things, are made by the employees,
which in turn are met by the employer with
comparisons of freight rates of the products
of the industry he is engaged in. By this
careful sifting out of the essence of the con-
troversy and by the elimination of the less
difficult features a conclusion is reached.
The decisions of the Board have always
been characterized as fair. With a bi-
partisan and non-political Board of one
employer of labor, one bona fide employee
and a third neither employer nor employee,
the opportunity for the accusation of preju-
dice or politics is reduced to a minimum.
THE HEAD OF THE INTERNATIONAL
SHIPPING CORPORATION
THE PERSONALITY OF CLEMENT A. GRISCOM — HOW HE
PLANNED AND ACCOMPLISHED, WITH MR. MORGAN,
THE GREAT COMBINATION OF SHIP-OWNING COMPANIES
BY
LAWRENCE PERRY
NOT many years ago King Leopold of
Belgium was one day holding
court in Brussels. Among, those
waiting to be presented were Clement Acton
Griscom and Mrs. Griscom and the United
States Minister to Belgium. Mrs. Griscom had
never met the queen. The minister, recently
appointed, had just arrived in Brussels, and
stood directly in front of the Griscoms.
When he was presented the king greeted him
in his hearty way, welcomed him to T^elgium,
and then, suddenly breaking off, said:
"By the way, have you ever met Griscom,
Clement A. Griscom ? No ! Well, you should ;
he is a rare good fellow and a great friend of
mine," and the king went on with as sincere
and honest a eulogy as ever man uttered.
He had not noticed Mr. Griscom. All at
once he caught sight of him.
"Why, hello, Griscom," he cried, his face
beaming with pleasure; "what are you doing
here ? " And he shook his hand, an act quite
beyond the pale of court etiquette.
This incident reveals the man, and fur-
nishes a key to the secret of his success : he is
popular with his fellow men. He has a way
of making them like him ; not because of any
vacillating good nature, for he is outspoken
against all shiftlessness, m.eanness and deceit.
His ways are sharp and incisive and he likes
men of those same characteristics — men who
can understand thoroughly that the inch he
frequently gives may not be construed into
a mile. But he is a good companion; and
the assurance of sympathetic, whole-hearted
friendship is conveyed to the veriest stranger
by a handshake and the quick glance of his
eyes. As different from Mr. Griscom as the
late President McKinley was, the two men
may be likened in this respect — in the winning
of men. Bluff, energetic, determined, force-
ful, he is a man who does things, and does
them thoroughly. He is a fighting man, and
each victory has only opened the road to
larger fields of effort crowded with apparently
unsurmountable difficulties. When the Inter-
national Mercantile Marine Company, better
known as the Morgan Steamship Trust, was
organized, Mr. Griscom 's selection for the
presidency was inevitable. He was the logical
man for the place; for the steamship trust
was his idea, his conception fifteen years ago,
and his greatest ambition. It is attained
now, but there is still much to do, and no
one better prepared to do it than he.
Mr. Griscom was born in Philadelphia on
March 15, 1841, coming of good, substantial
Quaker stock dating back to William Penn.
His father was a leading physician in Phila-
delphia with sufficient means to allow his son
to select his own life work. As a boy he had
no special bent, and no one seems to remember
any incident of his boyhood life which might
have given a hint of his future. He had no
desire for college, although he has since been
heard to regret that he did not have a univer-
sity training. Until his sixteenth year he
attended the Friends' Central High School,
where he showed such proficiency as a student
that on the day of his graduation Aaron Ivins,
the famous old schoolmaster, offered him a
position as partner in the conduct of the
Friends' school. Young Griscom, whatever
his bent at that time, certainly had no lean-
ings toward pedagogy, and he entered the
importing firm of Peter Wright & Sons in
1857. At once those traits which distin-
guished him later began to appear. He got
his firm to purchase their own sailing ships,
and profits increased tenfold. They admitted
him to partnership when he was twenty-two
ye^ -s old. The firm purchased more vessels,
and finally it put into operation a scheme
which young Griscom had evolved in his nine-
2858
THE HEAD OF THE SHIPPING CORPORATION
teenth year — that of carrying oil to Europe
and bringing back crockery. It was success^
ful, and when steam came into general use
steamships were added to the company. Thus
Mr. Griscom's idea became the forerunner of
the great Standard Oil trade. He had but
one set plan for his life work — progress.
But that did not necessarily mean that he
must work in a rut. He saw his way clear to
a certain success if he confined himself to his
trading interest, but he began to foresee an
even greater success in a wider field. He
mastered the study of marine architecture.
Soon the Society of Naval Architects and
Marine Engineers was organized and he was
its first president. Each successive year he
has been reelected to that office. But if he
began to identify liimself with outside interests
he did not allow that to interfere with his
business. Through his efforts Peter Wright &
Sons became the agents of the old American
Line, then one of the greatest lines, operating
the famous old steamships Ohio, Indiana,
Pennsylvania and Illinois. This led to
greater things, and in 1871 Mr. Griscom went
to Belgium, met King Leopold, won him as
he did every other man, and made contracts
for forming what afterward became the
Red Star Line. Combining their lines, Peter
Wright & Sons became the International
Navigation Company, and Mr. Griscom be-
came one of the founders of a great power
in the transatlantic trade. The greatest
steamship men of the world came to be
his rivals — and is not a man's greatness
measured by the greatness of his rivals ?
They began to watch him, to copy him,
but, as with Mr. Kipling's Sir Anthony
Gloster, he left them a year behind, because
they could not copy his mental workings. In
1886 his company purchased the Inman Line
at auction in Liverpool, and here Mr. Griscom's
training in marine construction came into
prominence. He wanted new vessels, but he
felt that new vessels with new improvements
were necessary — something that would mark
an epoch in shipbuilding and bring prestige to
his company. And so the City of New York
and City of Paris were built — twin screws,
ransverse bulkheads, water-tight compart-
ments, a revolution in modern shipbuilding.
They all originated with Mr. Griscom. Twin
screws : no more wallowing helplessly in the sea-
way with a broken shaft ; no more sinking hke
an anvil when the hull was pimctured. It was
without question the biggest step made in
shipbuilding since the advent of steam.
Through his energy special congressional legis-
lation was passed granting permission for the
two vessels to sail under American registry.
In recognition 'Mr. Griscom placed orders for
the construction of the next two vessels — the
St. Louis and St. Paul — with an American
firm. The resiilts justified Mr. Griscom's con-
fidence in American shipbuilders. In these
two vessels Mr. Griscom developed another of
his stirprises — the construction of staterooms
in suites. Incidentally, all four vessels, the
Paris, Xew York, St. Louis and St. Paul,
were record breakers in their days. In the
war with Spain all these vessels played an
active part as government cruisers. And
later came the so-called steamship trust.
As president of the International Mercantile
Marine Company Mr. Griscom directs vessels
aggregating a tonnage almost twice as large
as that of any other shipping corporation in
the world. The combined tonnage of the
North German Line is 1,110,000 tons; that of
the Mercantile Marine 1,106,000 tons. Mr.
Griscom believes that the success of the
scheme rests upon the material growth and
welfare of this country. The company, which
will operate from every large American port,
can thrive, he has said, only as the grain belt
of the Northwest, the cotton belt of the South
and manufacturing throughout the Eastern
and Central States shall increase in productive
capacity. Transportation must be conducted
on a large scale. Exporters will be able to con-
tract with this company, which will standready
nearly every day in the year to take cargoes
in large quantities at any of our large sea-
ports and deliver them without transshipment
on a fixed date at any of the great seaports of
Europe. The formation of the steamship
company has not been artificial. It had
become a necessity. Mr. Griscom regrets that
the American flag will not fly over more ships
than it does. He has said that if the President
and Congress will meet indisputable economic
facts by legislation, some of the new steam-
ships may be built in the United States,
officered and manned by Americans, and
actually become a part of our national
reserve strength at sea.
Mr. Griscom matured his plans for the
steamship combination when everything
seemed hopeless, but he clung to them with
confidence that the right day would come
From 3 painting by Fedor Encke
MR. CLEMENT A. GRISCOM
THE HEAD OF THE INTERNATIONAL MERCANTILE MARINE COMPANY
286o
THE HEAD OF THE SHIPPING CORPORATION
And it came with J. Pierpont ^lorgan.
Mr. Morgan was the one man needed, and
with the vital assistance of ^Ir. Griscom's
practical knowledge and ability and acumen
the Morgan Steamship Trust came to startle
the world.
But the man. ]Mr. Griscom is essentially
a family man. He has a town house in
Philadelphia, but most of the time he lives in
his country home, ■" Dolobron," in Haverford,
near Philadelphia. Here he frees himself of
business cares. He keeps open house, and,
being a natural entertainer, he is never so
happy as when his house is filled with guests.
His office is in Philadelphia, but he spends two
davs of each week in New York. ^Ir. Griscom
is fond of pool and billiards and plays a great
deal in his house, although he is no expert
at either. In art he is something of a con-
noisseur, and he has gathered a splendid collec-
tion, the majority being important examples
of the Barbizon school of painters — Corot
being especially in evidence. Two or three
months each year he spends in Europe and is
on friendly terms with many emperors and
kings. He was recently a guest for a day on
the Emperor "William's yacht at Kiel. The
Kaiser rather admires men who put him on
his mettle; he is proud of the two great
German lines, and he likes to know what kind
of Americans are competing evenly with them.
'Sir. Griscom owns a stock farm near his
country place and he knows a good horse
when he sees one; he is fond of shooting and
owns quail lands in Florida, and he is an
enthusiastic yachtsman, owning the large
steam yacht Alvciia.
Notwithstanding the vast responsibilities of
his steamship enterprises, Mr. Griscom is
active in many other lines. He is a director of
the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Bank of North
America, the United States Steel Corporation,
Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company, Fidelity
Trust and Safe Deposit Company, and some
twenty or more other enterprises. He was
also one of the organizers of the National
Transit Company, and its president for several
years. In 1889 Mr. Griscom was a delegate
to the National Maritime Conference for revis-
ing the " Rules of the Road at Sea," at which
twenty-eight nations were represented. He
is an honorary member of the British Society
of Naval Architects, an honor conferred on
but three others at the time — the Grand
Duke Constantine of Russia, Lord Kelvin of
England and DeLome of Spain. The Queen
of Holland conferred the decoration of Knight
of the Order of Orange-Nassau upon Mr.
Griscom in recognition of the perfect disci-
pline established upon the steamships of the
International Navigation Company. The par-
ticular occasion of this was the rescue by the
crew of the American Line steamship St. Louis
of the passengers and crew from a disabled
Dutch transatlantic steamship, which sank
shortly after the last boatload had left the
wreck. He has also a Belgium decoration,
and he received recently from the French
government the decoration of Chevalier of
the Legion of Honor. Mr. Griscom is a
member of many clubs in New York, Phila-
delphia. Chicago and London.
How he finds time for all his varied interests
is a problem indeed. A business associate
recently said that Mr. Griscom's success is
due to his immense capacity for work. In
the past month, for instance, he has been at
his desk eighteen hours a day, tiring out three
relays of clerks.
And his influence in politics is marked.
He is said to know more men and to have
more influence with them than any other man
in the country. When the last Republican
Presidential Convention (the convention
which nominated Mr. McKinley), in session
at Philadelphia, was torn with strife over the
nomination for Vice-President, Mr. Griscom
stepped in and invited the leaders to his home
"to talk it over." When they left there was
perfect amity. It is in this mediatory capac-
ity that politicians think of Mr. Griscom. " He
is a real man!" some one said not long ago;
"he tells a good story, and, what is perhaps
better, he enjoys hearing one. He gives good
dinners, he is a capital host, and he makes a
rattling speech."
His hair is white now, and so is his heavy
mustache; his dark eyes gleam from under
heavv gray brows, and his cheeks with their
high color make him conspicuous anywhere.
Heavily built, with broad shoulders, he is
apparently in the prime of his vigor. You can
read the whole story by just seeing and
talking to him — the dominant personality is
there; he is genial, yet you take no advantage
of it ; he is kindly, but his eyes can grow
hard upon necessity.
And he is not through surprising the world.
He is still the personification of the strenuous
life — the typical American captain of industry.
IIIK ANCIKNT TKMPI.K AT I'HIl.Al,
Kf^-ptologists feared that the daiiiming of the Nile might destroy it
Photographed by J. P. Sebah
SUBDUING THE NILE
THE CROWNING WORK OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION OF EGYPT—
BUILDING THE ASSOUAN DAM IN A ROARING CATARACT — A WONDER-
FUL FEAT OF ENGINEERING— HOW IT WILL REGULATE THE TRADI-
TIONAL FLOOD AND THEREBY INCREASE THE WEALTH OF EGYPT
BY
CHALMERS ROBERTS
Illustrated from photographs by D. S. George nnd others
THE wonderful success which has so
far attended the British occupation
of Egypt in the financial, educa-
tional, hygienic, military and also the general
political branches of the government is to be
extended to its great engineering schemes. The
new Egypt, whose rise has been so strange
and unexpected, is about to leave a record as
monumental and material as any for which
old Egypt is famous. And this achievement
in its manifold phases has come under the
supervision and should lie to the credit of
the man who has made modern Egypt what
it is. In a recent address upon the great
dam at Assouan, the constructing engineer.
Sir Benjamin Baker, said, "When the rotten
rock in the bed of the river was first discov
ered I told Lord Cromer franklv that I could
not say what the extra cost or time involved
by this and other unforeseen conditions would
be, and that all I could say was that, however
bad the conditions, the job would be done. He
replied that he must be satisfied with this
assurance and would say that the dam had
to be completed whatever the time and cost.
With such a strong man at the head of affairs,
both engineers and contractors — who are
often suffering more anxiety than they care
to show — are encouraged, and works however
difficult have a habit of getting completed,
and sometimes, as in the present case, in
less than the original contract time. "
The world, which has always heard of the
granaries of Egypt, seldom realizes that the
400,000 square miles of Egypt are, all but
10,500 square miles, arid desert. The narrow
I
/^
THE ASSOUAN 1
The flow of water is r
LF COMPLETED
3tes in the apertures
'm^
THE TRADITIONAL IRRIGATION METHOD
For centuries the Egyptians have raised water from the Nile with primitive wheels
Pllotographed by Bundle
SUBDUING TlIK NILE
2865
ribbon-like strip of arable land upon either
side of the Nile is barely as larj^e as Vermont
and Rhode Island put together. A visitor
to Egypt can see directly across the whole
of the cultivated land from the edge of the
desert on one side to great opalescent sand-
hills on the other. For years engineers
in the Khedivial service, particularly the
engineers of the English occupation, have
urged the building of reservoirs that would
poses, or indeed for a permanent reservoir,
had ever been made on a river tlie size of the
Nile. This, too, was to be both a dam, a
bridge and a waterway — a rare and difficult
combination. It would be useless to try
to confine the Nile in flood, and therefore the
river must have right of way to run unimpeded
through the dam during several months of
the year. The dam is for use when the flood
subsides but while it is still too high for
THE MODERN IRRIGATION METHOD
English and native workmen building the Assouan dam
give a system of irrigation to Egypt not
wholly dependent upon the uncertain Nile
floods. It was agreed that the natural
advantages of the Assouan site, six hundred
miles above Cairo, with its bed of granite
beneath the river, the high granite banks on
either side and the inexhaustible supply of
stone near by, offered advantages not equaled
elsewdiere. The plans which were soon made
were unique. No dam for irrigation pur-
irrigation purposes. The dam will hold the
water for use in the parching summer.
Therefore the structure has been divided into
a large number of piers, with openings that
can be closed at will by gates. Each pier
must be capable of supporting its ow'n w^eight
and the pressure of water against the adjoin-
ing sluice gates, and the piers must be able
to pass the torrent without damage. As the
velocity of the escaping flood water will be
2866
SUBDUING THE NILE
OXE OF THE MANY SLUICES
very great, the piers are enormously massive.
Locks for steamers and other craft navigating
the Nile are nearing completion on the west
side. Already camel trains and desert cara-
vans are marching over the broad top of the
dam, and on December pth the Duke of
Connaught will formally open the dam.
As the particles of soil contributed to the
river by the wash of the mountains and hills
in Abyssinia enrich the fields, the dam is so
designed that the water released daily for
irrigation will be drawn from near the
bottom of the reservoir. EgA-ptian farmers
ask always for "red water" — far richer as a
fertilizer than clear water. In the autumn,
after the silt-laden water has passed, the
sluice gates w411 be closed gradualh^ until
the reservoir is full. This will be in January
and February. From April to the end of
August, when the Xile runs low and the
demand for water for the crops is at its
highest, the gates will be systematically
opened and the summer supply of the river
supplemented by stored water from the dam.
It is estimated that this irrigation will add
2,500 square miles of arable land to Eg\'pt.
and that the permanent benefit resulting will
reach $100,000,000. There will be added to
the revenue from the sale of water and from
taxation on the irrigated lands ;;^2,ooo,ooo.
The government will further realize con-
siderable sums from the sale of reclaimed
public lands and indirect revenues traceable
to the country's augmented producing capac-
ity. Egypt is virtually rainless, but wher-
ever the Xile water can be regularly supplied
to the soil the most bountiful crops follow,
which like cotton and sugar command high
prices because of their excellence. With a
reliable water supply, farming in Egypt can
be pursued with practically certain success.
THE DAM HALF BUILT
SUBDUING THE NILE
2867
I
Four or five hundredweight of long staple
cotton per acre may be expected, which,
owing to its excellence, easily sells for two
cents a pound more than American cotton
sells for, which in its turn does not average
two hundredweight to the acre. Even with
the general depression of sugar in the world's
markets Egyptian agriculture is confident of
obtaining similar advantages for its cane
products.
It is very difficult to bring to the average
mind any comprehension of the magnitude of
this scheme. It is useless to tell most people
that the reservoir at Assouan will contain
1,000,000,000 tons of water. This reservoir,
according to Sir Benjamin Baker, will hold
more than enough water to make one year's
full domestic supply to every city, town and
village in the United Kingdom with its
42,000,000 inhabitants. During the three or
four summer months when the Nile is low
and the needs of cultivators are greatest the
flow from the reservoir will be equivalent to a
river double the size of the Thames in mean
annual flood condition. No one who has
ever seen the century-old irrigation machines
along the Nile by which the water is lifted on
a bucket and pole system, or by an oxen-
driver chain of buckets, can fail to recognize
the advantage of this increase in water supply.
The watering of an acre of land means rais-
ing by manual power about 400 tons of water
to varying heights up to twenty-five feet.
Four or five waterings are required to raise
a summer crop. The great Nile reservoir
and dam at Assouan, the Barrage at Assiut,
and various supplementary distributing canals
are designed to supply in summer a larger
volume of water at a higher level in the canal,
so that not only can more land be irrigated,
but labor in lifting water will be saved.
The total length of the dam at Assouan is
about one and one-quarter miles; the maxi-
mum height from foundation is about 130
feet; the difference of level of water above
and below is 67 feet; and the total weight of
masonry over 1,000,000 tons. Navigation
is provided for by a ladder of four locks, each
260 feet long by 32 feet wide. No practical
man standing on the edge of one of the
cataract channels, hearing and seeing the
apparently irresistible torrent of foaming
water thundering down, would regard the
putting in of foundations to a depth of forty
feet below the bed of the cataract in the short
season available each year as anything but
an appalling undertaking. On February 12,
1899, when the foundation stone of the dam
was laid, it was planned that the work should
be completed by July i, 1903. It is greatly
to the credit of the contractors. Sir John Aird
& Company, that they have finished before
the contract time. The dam is built of
granite ashlar, much of which has been
quarried from the Assouan side of the river,
coming from the same ledges that furnished
the obelisks now standing in London, New
York and Paris.
The government let the contract for this
work without advancing a single pound — a
testimonial to the soundness of Egyptian
finances. After the work is completed they
are to receive $800,000 a year for thirty years,
aggregating about $24,000,000. This is a
long credit, and its present actuarial value
cannot be much in excess of $10,000,000.
Indirectly, the fact that English capital has
furnished the money, and that English
engineers, surveyors and contractors have
carried out the work, points to Great Britain's
intention to retain indefinitely her present
position upon the banks of the Nile.
Here will be created in the heart of the
African desert a lake having two or three
times the superficial area of Lake Geneva in
Switzerland and throwing back water for a
distance of 140 miles, crossing the Tropic of
Cancer and extended a goodly step on the
way to Wady Haifa. It will be controlled
by scientific precision, so that the impounded
flood may be turned into distant channels at
will. The engineers have estimated the
exact cost of the dam, and have computed
almost to the gallon the volume of water that
will be imprisoned and the necessary resist-
ance to be provided at every point of the
masonry. In Cairo the experts of the
Ministries of Public Works and Finance have
calculated to a nicety the sum from taxation
that will come into the public treasury
through augmented productiveness.
Subordinate to the great dam a smaller
one, not unlike the Barrage at the apex of the
Delta, ten miles to the north of Cairo, is to
be made at Assiut, to give a sufficient head
to force water into the system of irrigation
canals that water thousands of acres between
Assiut and Cairo. The completion of the
old Barrage above Cairo (it was begun by
Mehemet Ali Pasha from the plans of a
i
2868
SUBDUING THE NILE
French engineer, but was not made efifective
till England took the country in hand) so
developed the cotton culture as to add to
the public revenue of the country at least
$10,000,000 annually. It may be safely
concluded, therefore, that the Assouan reser-
voir is but one of a series that will be con-
structed southw^ard to Lake Victoria Nyanza.
Mr. Frederick Penfield, former United
States Consul General in Cairo, who has
become such an authority upon Egyptian
subjects, says of the enterprise: "Successful
in an unexpected degree in augmenting the
population of the ancient land of the
Pharaohs by enforcing hygienic measures,
the British administrators at Cairo are
recognizing the necessity for proportionately
increasing the area of 'practical' Eg\'pt.
When the British occupation began Egypt's
population was about 7,000,000. According
to an official census just completed (1899), it
has risen to 9,750,000, as the result of the
caring for child life and teaching the common
people to observe rational rules of cleanliness
and order. According to this census, practical
Egypt has a population of 928 to the square
mile, a density far in excess of any European
country, even Belgium, and not to be equaled
outside of Asiatic communities. It will no
doubt surprise most readers to be told that a
fair estimate of the value of Egypt's 10,500
square miles of cultivable territory is $115 an
acre. It is a fact as well that the foreign
bonded indebtedness, naturally based upon
the intrinsic value of the country, averages
$75.75 per acre, while the per capita propor-
tion of the external debt burden is no less
than $52.20. The average land tax of Egypt
is something in excess of $4.00 per acre.
These vital statistics are mentioned to reflect
in its fullest importance what the building of
the great dam at Assouan means to the people
of Eg}-pt and their European creditors."
It cannot be definitely stated who first
planned this reservoir. Mr. Willcocks, one
of the ablest engineers of the Public Works
Department of Egypt, who was instructed by
Sir William Garstin to survey various sug-
gested sites for the dam between Cairo and
Wady Haifa, unhesitatingly decided that the
Assouan site was the best, and the majority
of the International Commission who visited
the sites in 1894 agreed. But Sir Samuel
Baker, more than forty years ago, had antici-
pated their conclusion. The single dam pro-
posed by him is in effect the one now on the
point of completion. Mr. Willcocks' original
design consisted practically of a group of
independent dams, ciirved on plan, the
arrangement differing considerably from that
of the executed work. The single dam, one
and one-quarter miles long, constitutes a
more imposing work than a series of detached
dams, and could be more easily built; and,
further, a straight dam is better able to
resist temperature stresses from the extreme
heat without cracking. There are 180 open-
ings, all twenty-three feet high by six inches
wide, which can let out 15,000 tons of water
a second. Contrary to original reports of a
sound rock bottom, the rock proved very
unsound,in many places, necessitating founda-
tions sometimes more than forty feet deeper
than was originally anticipated. As the thick-
ness of the dam is nearly one hundred feet at
the base, this misapprehension involved a
very large increase in the contract quantity
and cost of the granite masonry.
To put in the foundation across the roaring
cataract channels, temporary rubble dams
were built across the rear of the channel
below the site of the great dam, so as to get a
pond of comparatively still water to work in.
Stones from one to twelve tons in weight
were tipped into the cataract until finally a
rubble mound appeared above the surface of
the water. The first channel was success-
fully closed on May 17, 1899, the depth
being about thirty feet and the velocity
of current nearly fifteen miles an hour. In
the case of another channel the closing had
to be helped by tipping in freight cars, loaded
with heavy stones and bound together with
wire ropes, making a mass of about fift}^ tons
to resist displacement by the torrent.
These rubble dams were well tested when
the high flood ran over them ; and when work
was resumed in the following November, on
the fall of the river, watertight sand-bag
dams or sudds were made around the site of
the dam foundation in the still waters above
the rubble dams, and pumps were fixed to
lay dry most of the river. This was the
exciting moment, for no one could predict
whether the thing could be done. Twenty-
four 1 2 -inch centrifugal pumps were provided
to deal with one small channel; but happily
the sand-bags and gravel and sand embank-
ments staunched the fissures in the rocks
and interstices between the great boulders
. A
"IllOf
2S
-^-.
MAP SHOWING THE ASSOUAN DAM
2870
SUBDUING THE NILE
covering the bottom of this channel, and a
couple of 1 2 -inch ptimps stiihced.
There was great pressure at times to get a
section completed before the inevitable rise
of the Xile, and as much as 3,600 tons of
masonr}^ were executed in one day, chiefly
at one point in the dam. The maximum
number of men employed was 11,000, of
whom 1 ,000 were E\iropean masons and other
skilled men.
When the International Commission in
1894 recommended the construction of the
reservoir, Sir Benjamin Baker was desirous
of knowing what would be the opinion of a
real old-fashioned native land-owner. He
was introduced to one — a descendant of the
prophet, very rich, who had been twice
warned by the government that he would
probably be hanged if the bodies of any more
of his servants with whom he had quarreled
were found floating in the Xile. He was a
ver}' stout old man, and between paroxysms
of bronchial cougliiAg he assured Sir Benjamin
that there could be nothing in the project of a
Nile reser\^oir or it would have been built at
least 4,000 years ago. In striking contrast
to this. Sir Benjamin quotes the most modem
and enlightened of all the rulers of Egj-pt,
the present Khedive, who, when visiting the
dam, said that he was proud that the great
work was being carried out during his reign.
The old system of irrigation was little more
than a high Nile flooding of areas or basins
surrounded by embankments. Less than
one hundred years ago perennial irrigation
was first attempted by cutting deep canals
to convey the water to the land when the
Xile was at its low summer level. When
the Xile rose these canals had to be blocked
by temporary earthen dams, or the current
would have wrought destruction. As a
result, they silted up and had to be cleared
of many millions of tons of mud each year
by enforced labor, resulting in misery and
extortion. It was only half a century ago
that the first serious attempt to improve
matters was made by the construction of the
celebrated Barrage at the apex of the Delta.
The old sheik and his contemporaries may
well look with wonder upon the work which
modem engineers have done. There is a
legend that the yearly flooding of the Xile
is caused by the tears shed by Isis over the
tomb of Osiris, and the question has for
uncounted centuries been asked, as a type of
impossibilit}^ "Can man arrest the tears of
Isis as they flow?" One of the last inci-
dents told in the life of Cecil Rhodes pictures
him last Christmas riding across the hot
and dusty desert between Assouan and the
Xile reser^'-oir works. Glancing round at the
apparently limitless desert on all sides, the
hills and valleys, beautiful in form but doomed
for all time to remain of uniform burnt -brick
hue, bare of trees, and of the many-colored
growths that adorn a rainy country, he said:
"After all there is no climate like England's;
and as for the rain there, it does its good
work and it really hurts nobody."
There is in all this triumph of utilitarianism
one note of objection and complaint. Between
December and May, when the reservoir is full,
the famous island of Philae will in places be
slightly flooded. Therefore the tourist and the
archaeologist and the artist do not celebrate
the completion of the dam with the same
enthusiasm as the workaday world. Even
if they acknowledged it as the greatest
engineering feat of modem times, they yet
deplore the partial obliteration of what is
generally held to be the most beautiful spot
on the X^'ile. A valiant fight was made for
Philae before the first stone of the giant
wall which now spans the river was made.
Engineers reported that Philae would be
swamped completely; thereupon the archae-
ologists, the tourists, and the artists rose
to object. Monumental petitions were signed
and all manner of recommendations were
made for the protection of these beautiful
ruins. In compliance with the prayers of
these agitators, the contractors modified their
plans with a view to keeping the chief monu-
ments of Philae above the water. The chief
fear was felt for " Pharaoh's Bed, " the beauti-
ful pavilion btiilt for Augustus but completed
by Trajan, for it is mainly built upon a terrace
of Nile mud and may crumble. To obviate
this risk, all of the important parts, including
this kiosk, have been carried on steel girders
or underpinned down to rock, or, failing
that, to the present saturation level. Archae-
ologists have not at all been reassured by the
precautions which the contractors have taken.
But even should the cost be complete oblitera-
tion of these famous monuments, who can say
that the price is too high or the sacrifice,
unwise? A link with ancient Egypt may
disappear, but a new state will be carved
from the wastes of the desert.
REORGANIZING INDUSTRIES: A NOVEL
PROFESSION
GREAT FACTORIES STUDIED BY A PRODUCTION ENGINEER WHO
INSTALLS ECONOMICAL METHODS — A MILL WHICH INCREASED
PRODUCTION FORTY PER CENT— THE STORY OF THE PIONEER EXPERT
BY
MINNA C SMITH
AN important Pennsylvania manufac-
turing firm, discontented with their
condition, invited a man from New
York to inspect their plant. He went. He
had access to the private records, to the most
secret information of the firm. He studied
the economy of the mills. He watched the
men at work. He asked questions. For
weeks the study went on. And when it was
finished, he was asked to suggest improve-
ments. He was the first production engineer,
an expert industrial critic, who had given
the plant the attention a trainer might give
an athlete preparing for a race. As a result
of his report, the methods of manufacture in
the plant were radically changed.
Sixty tons of material had been handled
daily fifty-one times. By changing the
course of the material through its various
processes, the engineer cut down the handling
to thirty-seven times, with a resultant saving
that surprised the president, the directors
and the general manager. They were men
who knew their business, but they had had
no idea that any outside help could so reduce
their expenses. Thus production engineering,
the youngest of the applied sciences, received
recognition.
The production engineer was requested to
rearrange the schedule of wages at a steel
mill. When he regulated it, not by tonnage
alone, but by groups of steel products accord-
ing to quantities and shapes, the resultant
rates increased the productive capacity of
the mills from five to forty per cent., decreased
the cost of production and increased the
wages of the men.
He was called to an electric equipment
factory which was growing so fast that its
managers not only did not know the amount
of their expenses, either in total or in indirect
costs, but could not keep in touch with the
general routine of the days. The expert
asked questions and was given full details.
He was introduced to every official, every
head of department, every clerk; and he asked
each, one for typewritten suggestions. He
found that the huge physical growth of
the factory had overtopped its intellectual
and nervous organization. The organization
needed a clear definition of duties and respon-
sibilities in the various offices — a more highly
organized faculty. The specialist reported a
special system, unified, yet so flexible that the
work in any department can now be expanded
or contracted without affecting the general
plan. Thirty-one departments of the execu-
tive and operating force were ordered, instead
of fourteen. There could henceforth be no
clashing of authority, no men receiving one
order from one department and another order
from another. All communications about
the general organization were authorized to
appear in executive orders from the president
of the company, who is also general manager.
The names of all officers, or heads of depart-
ments, were put at the head of every execu-
tive order, and each head of a department
was made responsible for notifying his asso-
ciates, who in turn were made personally
responsible to him. A series of executive
notices was posted insuring order of a high
degree and making certain the prompt return
of all reports and data. One man was made
responsible for all the accounts of the com-
pany, so that uniformity might be developed
in recording all the performances of the plant.
The authority for giving orders was central-
ized. Provisions were made for definite
recording of orders for material; and com-
plete and accurate means of communication
within the factory were insured. An accurate
2872 REORGANIZING INDUSTRIES: A NOVEL PROFESSION
system of labor records for all employees was
effected, insuring the charging of material
and labor expended in the course of produc-
tion. Centralization of authority stopped
overstocking. The control of incoming and
outgoing material was given to the same
central authority. The chart shows a typical
factory organization:
of the investor and the laborer. An employer,
knowing the productiveness of individual
workmen, has a basis for increasing pay for
better work. An absolutely accurate system
of cost is the only means for showing accurate
current earnings. ]\Ianufacturers will be able
to let men earn more when with increase
of output there is no increase of fixed charges,
CHART OF RESPONSIBILITIES
c
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
1 J
J
r
General
^
I
)
S.\LES
Department
ACCOUXTIXG
Production
Department
Advertising
BUSIXESS
OF Plant
Power, Heat,
Light and
Protective
Experimental
Tool
Department
Credit
Department
A
Correspondence Tracing
Steel Foundry
Blacksmiths
New York
Agency
Filing and Purchasing
Mailing
Shipping
Orders
Receiving
Commercial
Accounting
Factory
Accounting
Iron Foundry
Core Making
Annealing
Grinding
Machine Shop
Assembling
Draughting
Stores
Tumbling
Painting
Pattern
Chipping
Packing
General Labor
A full chart would contain beneath each of those departments the name of the man held responsible for the working of that
department — thirty-one men besides the five managers who make the executive committee.
The nervous system of an industry is com-
posed of records. The nervous system of the
electric equipment factory was toned up.
The factory is making its product much more
rapidly than before; and despite the growth
of the business the heads of the concern can
now keep in touch with all its details.
James Xe\si;on Gunn, the pioneer in this
novel profession, sa^'s that the production
engineer conceives of a well-equipped factory
as a man trained for his many duties, skilled
in many ways, who has each member of his
body developed and working in harmony
with the others — all controlled by the intel-
lect. The factory intellect must have a
system of records and machines and men,
serving as the nerves, bones and muscles.
Cost-keeping, which is synonymous with
maintaining the nervous system, has been
found to be a function which an outside man
of professional standing and unquestioned
integrity can serviceably fulfil.
Mr. Gunn is convinced that impartial
scientific investigation of all the facts of any
business and the solving of the problem of
cost must make clear the economic relations
for both capital and labor suffer from igno-
rance. Here the production engineer becomes
useful. His business is scientifically to make
a producing unit of any business, whether
manufacturing, mining or other productive
industry.
Weekly conferences of all heads of depart-
ments, and often in times of rush daily meet-
ings of foremen, are part of the harmonious
working of the principle Every workman is
constantly represented in conferences with
the heads of the business. A minor foreman
has been known to come to five weekly con-
ferences in succession before he took his turn
to say his say. It takes time for such a man
to realize that his trained knowledge is con-
sidered of commercial value in conference.
The whole system tends toward social ends,
toward the introduction of souls into cor-
porations.
But who is Mr. Gunn ? How did he
become a production engineer ? He was bom
in Ohio. After he was graduated from the
high school at Springfield he went to work in a
factory there that made portable forges and
grinding machinery. The president of the
THE TRAVELING POST-OFFICE
2H73
company encouraged the young man to
develop any ideas that came to him in the
work of the factory, lie worked over a system
of piece rates on forges, he assembled costs,
he systematized the orders and gathered the
expense items of the factory on cards. Soon
the boy was able, on the cards he cut out
and wrote upon, to show the exact cost
of each article manufactured, collating all
the items of indirect expense. He counted
window-cleaning and postage stamps, repairs
and the work of carrying material around in
the shop, into the cost of producing a forge.
He was at work in the glimmerings of his
first great idea. He proved the possibility
of absolutely accurate distribution of every
item of indirect expense. Next he had an
opportunity as cashier of a Southern railway
system to formulate ideas regarding the
workings of a railway organization. He had
begun to mature ideas showing the scope of
the use of cards of varying contours for
recording facts, the now familiar tab cards,
which he presently patented. In 1893 he
went with his tab cards to Boston and later
to London for the Library Bureau. This
gave him a chance to study manufacturing
methods in England and France. When he
returned he introduced cards in the assem-
bling of labor and material costs in large fac-
tories, and thus came to know more fully the
practices in American factories. He was
soon able to suggest to one factory an im-
provement in methods learned in some other
factory whose manufactures were entirely
different, for the solution of a problem having
to do with manufacturing leather belts would
sometimes suggest the solution of a problem
in rolling bars of steel ; the grouping of orders
by sizes which had resulted in a twenty-five
per cent, increase in the capacity of a steel
foundry suggested the solution of a problem
in the distribution of work to different looms
and the multitudinous orders for different
patterns in a silk mill. He came to under-
stand methods and management as a whole,
and he was and is , as a production engineer must
be, an open-minded student of economics.
THE TRAVELING POST-OFFICE
THE SUGGESTION OF IT BY A MOUSE'S NEST—
THE REVOLUTION IT HAS CAUSED IN THE
HANDLING OF MAIL MATTER — THE LOYALTY
AND PLUCK OF THE MEN IN THE SERVICE
BY
FORREST CRISSEY
Illustrated from photographs by Allen Ayrauet Green
GREEN BAY, in the Lake Superior
region, was an important distribu-
ting point on the old postal route,
and its post-office was often crowded with
mail pouches, the contents of which must be
rehandled and sent forward to the tributary
towns in the heart of the wild northern
country. Sometimes weeks were required to
repouch the glut of mail which accumulated
at the Green Bay office, and the inland ham-
lets were compelled to await the slow process
of forwarding which the inadequate method
of rehandling involved. One day the dog
team which hauled the mail from Green Bay
to the little settlement of Ontonagon was
unloaded at the latter destination and the
R
pouches unlocked. Among the letters which
were tumbled out upon the distributing table
were a mother mouse and a litter of young !
Almost a month later Maurice Crean, route
agent, told this story to George B. Armstrong,
then assistant postmaster of the Chicago
post-office. Mr. Armstrong laughed heartily
at the incident, then grew suddenly thought-
ful and remarked :
"Something must be done to move the
mails faster — so fast that mice cannot make
their homes in the pouches and raise their
families there while in transit. It will not do
to have the mails turned into mouse nests.
I am going to devise a plan which will do
away with such a possibility,"
2874
THE TRAVELING POST-OFFICE
As a mere passing measure, the foot mes-
sengers with dog sleds were supplanted by
mounted horsemen; but from the moment
when Mr. Armstrong heard the story of the
mice in the Ontonagon mail pouch, in 1856,
until he had devised and perfected the rail-
way postal system, he made its problems the
chief concern of his life.
Today the famous Burlington fast-mail
train, the "greyhound" of the service, is
composed exclusively of mail cars, generally
six in number, and these sometimes carry as
much as 150 tons of letters, papers and parcels
— the equivalent in weight of 2,100 persons,
or the number of passengers ordinarily carried
in forty-two coaches. Contrast this burden
with the volume of mail which passed across
the continent under the surveillance of the
route agent of ante-bellum days and the stride
of the service is more easily appreciated.
The distance from Burlington, Iowa, to
Chicago, 205 miles, has been covered in
188.5 minutes, or an average speed of 65.5
miles an hour. The highest fast-mail speed
for a short distance recognized by the official
records is an average of 75 miles an hour for
32.5 miles, between Bristol and Meriden,
Connecticut. This run was made May i , 1 900.
For still shorter distances an average of 85.5
miles an hour has repeatedly been made.
Resting in a small iron box in the office of
George B. Armstrong, Jr., are a score or more
of precious documents from the pioneers of the
Railway Mail Service. In the lines of these
narratives may be traced every step in the
development of the present highly perfected
system which gives employment to more than
10,000 men and is expanding at a marvelous
rate under our national prosperity. It is the
expectation of the department that before
the close of the next five years the payroll
of the Railway Mail Service will contain the
names of 13,500 employees.
Both the Civil War and the war with Spain
exerted a powerful influence on the Railway
Mail Service of the United States. Undoubt-
edly the great blockade of soldier mail in the
sixties made the necessity so great that not
only did it move Mr. Armstrong to focus his
ideas into a thoroughly practical plan, but
also enforced upon the official ears of those in
authority at Washington the fact that radical
steps must be taken to facilitate the handling
of the mails, for soldiers in camp, and women
and children waiting at home for news from
the battlefield, the bivouac and the hospital,
were equally impatient at delays. Tons of
letters were handled in the main distributing
offices every week, and tons of papers were
heaped up never to be redistributed and sent
forward. A clerk employed in the Chicago
office at that time has left a written statement
that "the vast surplus of mail accumulated
in the distributing department of our office
during the months of December, 1863, and
January and February, 1864, was estimated
to be 500,000 letters."
Mr. Crean relates that at the outbreak of
the Civil War he was sent to take charge of
the "western room" at the Cairo post-office,
which had been made a "distributing station,"
because of the great volume of army and
navy mails centering there for the western
military forces. During the four weeks when
army movements made this the most impor-
tant office in the State, Mr. Armstrong spent
all his time in Cairo working out the
advance steps which led him to complete
the "traveling post-office." He worked day
and night, but seemed never too tired to be
enthusiastic, and he "spent many a sleepless
night in his room in the St. Charles Hotel
elaborating his plans." These he perfected
"so completely that a letter mailed in Chicago
for any one of - the western or southwestern
armies reached its terminal point as soon
as a passenger on the fleetest Pullman could
reach it; so that a letter for Admiral Porter
in the War Department in Washington was
made up in the Chicago distributing post-office
in a separate pouch and reached his flagship
by way of the Illinois Central road as soon
as the Admiral's gunner himself could have
reached him from this city." This he did by
a series of direct pouchings, avoiding as much
as possible the intermediate services at
distributing post-offices.
Mr. George B. Armstrong, Jr., his father's
first amanuensis, in recounting the obstacles
against which the founder contended in
securing the confidence and support of the
public and the department, writes that "the
business men of Chicago, with many of whom
my father had frequent conferences, could not
see how the benefits of the plan would offset
the risk of losing the letters while in transit."
He also relates that three letters written
under dates of May loth, May 14th and
June 10, 1864, and addressed to the Third
Assistant Postmaster-General, were the comer-
Till': TRAXI'J.INC roS r-()l"I-I(K
2875
THROWING LETTERS INTO THE LETTER CASE ON THE FAST MAIL
stones of the system, as they covered the
entire field of postal reform, urged the aboli-
tion of "post billing'" and of "wrapping," and
so ably set forth the advantages of the travel-
ing post-office that the business men and the
Department at Washington were aroused.
The energy with which Mr. Armstrong pursued
his campaign is interestingly attested in a
document written by James H. McCausland,
in which this gentleman states that, although
a quarrel with men in political power resulted
in deposing him from a position of route
agent, Mr. Armstrong engaged him to do
missionary work among railway presidents
and officials in behalf of the traveling post-
office. "I believe to this day," writes Mr.
McCausland, "that he paid me out of his
own pocket, for I am quite sure that he had
no authority from the government to employ
me." One of the most significant and notable
■orders ever issued by the department was
that which Postmaster-General Montgomery
Blair sent out, dated July 11, 1864, giving Mr.
Armstrong authority to have an experimental
traveling post-office equipped and operated.
Mr. George L. Dunlap. then General Manager
of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway,
was the only railway man who showed a
friendlv interest in this scheme and did not
condemn it without trial. Through his inter-
est an unused baggage car was equipped with
a rude table and "letter case." The latter,
as at first designed by Mr. Armstrong, was
circular in form. Asa F. Bradley, the route
agent selected by the founder of the service
as the first chief clerk of a traveling post-
office, suggested that the case be angular
instead of circular, as the eye could more
readilv locate the various boxes under this
arrangement. His experience as a surveyor
told him this. The change was immediately
made in the design and a serious defect
avoided.
The first traveling post-office made its initial
trip over the run from Chicago to Clinton, Iowa,
about September i, 1864. Its crew consisted
of Asa F. Bradley, Percy A. Leonard and
James Converse; the first handled the papers
and Mr. Converse the letters. Of that historic
run Mr. Leonard has left the following record :
"The letters were stacked up in a generous
pile on the case. The principal stations only
had been put in separate packages. The
first series of stations, Austin, etc., were put in
2876
THE TRAVELING POST-OFFICE
a package numbered one. Distribution began
about an hour before the train was due to
leave, but because the arrangement of the
boxes was somewhat strange to the dis-
tributor, he carried a few letters past some of
the nearer stations on the first trip.
"It required but a few trips, however, to
demonstrate the immediate success of the
scheme, and soon arrangements were perfected
for introducing the system on all the railway
lines leading out of Chicago, more particularly
those running east and west. It was, how-
ever, the summer of 1865 before the railway
post-office system received the official sanction
of the department, and it was introduced on
the Xorthwestem, Rock Island, Burlington,
Michigan Southern, Fort "Wayne and ^Michigan
Central railroads in the order named.
"In the spring of 1868, when the completion
of the Union Pacific made an overland mail
feasible, two sets of clerks were put on the
Rock Island road, one of which handled the
California and overland mails exclusively and
the other the local mails between Chicago and
Davenport, Iowa. This required an entire
car, something like the present postal cars,
and greatly enlarged the sphere of the railway
post-office. From this small, crude beginning
has grown the present gigantic railway mail
service."
Perhaps the first significant step forward,
after the installation of the "traveling post-
office," was the invention of the "express
mail" by Mail Clerk S. F. Champion.
The people at Lockport, Illinois, had asked
him to send their mail on an accommodation
train from Chicago; and Lemont, eight miles
north of Lockport, asked a similar privilege.
It could not be granted. He arranged ac-
cordingly to have the Lemont mail sent in
the Lockport pouch, and at Lockport trans-
ferred to a train running back to Lemont,
thus putting a mail into that town which
otherwise would not have reached there until
the next morning. "A few days later," says
Mr. Champion, "Mr. Armstrong slapped
me heartily on the back and exclaimed:
Champion, you've given me a good idea.
Make me a list of all the offices on your run
where the mail trains meet the express trains.'
Within twenty-four hours the 'express mail'
was born and continued until night service
took its place."
For some time after the installation of the
Railway Postal Service it was the practice to
R^Jjl
mi ^"^ -v
^m
f M ■''*
READY TO SNATCH A SACK WITHOUT STOPPING
accompany each package of letters with a
"post bill" or memorandum of its contents,
classified as paid, unpaid and free matter.
These bills were made out in duplicate, the
original accompanying the package to its
destination while the duplicate was sent to
Washington. This was on the theory that
the postmaster or mail clerk opening the
POUCHING THE LETTERS
#'
2878
THE TRAVELING POST-OFFICE
CATCHING THE MAIL SACKS FOR A uClcK TRANSFER
package would check off the letters and then
forward the bill to the department at
Washington to be compared with the dupli-
cate. Tons of these bills accumulated at
headquarters and were destroyed without
any attempt at their comparison. This was
before the days of the prepayment of postage.
Under the Act of March 3, 1863, prepayment
of postage was required by means of postage
stamps affixed, which naturally did away
w4th the "post bill."
Even more burdensome was the system of
wrapping each package of letters in brown
paper and readdressing it to the post-office of
destination. If the package consisted of one
letter only it was not permitted to go forward
without its wrappings. Each car was obliged
to carry huge stacks of this manila paper,
and the mail clerks stood knee-deep in the
wrappings from opened packages. Here was
another dead weight upon the service which
I\Ir. Armstrong at once detected and abolished,
substituting the present system of tying
letters for the same destination into a neat
package with a plainly addressed envelope
uppermost.
In a document written by James E. Stuart,
an inspector in the Post-Office Department,
is an account of how the modern "route
scheme" was introduced into the service.
"In those days," writes Mr. Stuart, "no
schemes of distribution were furnished as at
present. Each clerk secured for himself an
alphabetical list of post-offices, and opposite
each office he would mark the route it should
be 'thrown to' from his own line. There was,
therefore, no systematized scheme governing
the distribution of mail matter. Experience
quickly demonstrated the value of the route
scheme and soon thereafter others were
prepared for the various States and finally
the official scheme book was adopted by the
department."
This volume is upon the distributing table
of every railway mail clerk and may be
described as his "city directory," for it
enables him instantly to locate any post-office
in a given State and itiforms him of the
various routes by which it may be reached.
"The facing slip," continues Mr. Stuart's
narrative, "now used to test the efficiency of
each clerk and to enable a record to be kept
of all errors in distribution, was the out-
growth of an experiment of my own. While
I was a postal clerk on the line from Boone to
Council Bluffs I conceived the idea of placing
a slip of paper the size of an envelope upon
each mail package which I made up for other
lines, in order that the clerks who handled
these packages might note on these slips the
lllE TKAVLLING rOSl-UMlCh
2H79
errors of distribution and return tlicin to inc.
By this means 1 was advised of my own errors
and enabled to correct theni and also to
perfect my distribution scheme. This label
slip was similar to the one now in use, and I
had the pleasure, a few years after my first
experiment with the slip, of seeing it otticially
adopted for the entire service."
It would not be altogether an easy task,
perhaps, to find a country village which has
not contributed at least one young man to the
Railway Postal Service, and it certainly would
be decidedly difficult to name one which has
not furnished a candidate for such a position.
The number of young men who compete
is concisely shown by the following table :
Took
Made
Civil Service
Passed
" Regular
Examination
Examination
Substitutes
i8q6
5 •0 1.?
3.127
655
1807
6.431
4.710
• 381
1898
4.709
3,828
698
1899
5,220
4,319
774
1900
5.1 1 5
3.844
7.36
1 90 1
5,090
3.593
933
This tells the whole story with the excep-
tion of adding that between ninety-eight
and ninety-nine per cent, of the "regular
subs" are appointed to full and regular clerk-
ships. There are five grades of clerks, the
lowest receiving $900 a year, while the
maximum salary is $1,400. While the Second
Assistant Postmaster-General is really the
official head of the Railwav Postal Service,
the General Superintendent is the active
executive officer of the system. In 1901 the
THROWING OUT THE .MAIL SACKS AT A TRANSFER
STATION
clerks distributed more than 14,181,224,420
pieces of mail.
TRANSFERRING THE MAIL FROM ONE TRAIN TO ANOTHER
288o
THE TRAVELING POST-OFFICE
That this vocation has its pecuhar perils
cannot be denied, and a constant effort is
being made to diminish the habihty to acci-
dent through the building of stronger and
safer mail cars, the construction of which is
now under government supervision. The
archives of the service hold so many records
of almost miraculous escapes from sudden
death that the clerks are naturally inclined
to feel that in some manner they will be
delivered from destruction, although the
position of the mail car in a train gives them
the maximum of exposure to accident.
One clerk was busy throwing mail in a
combination smoker and baggage car, when
suddenly, without an instant's warning, he
felt the car leap from the track and heard a
terrific crash. When he regained conscious-
ness the wreck presented this chaotic condi-
tion: the two forward cars had been plunged
down a seventy-foot embankment ; the combi-
nation car landed in an upright position with
the rear trucks on the roof, every seat in the
smoking compartment being utterly demol-
ished, while on the floor of the mail compart-
ment was a huge angular stone weighing
not less than half a ton. How the mail
clerk escaped unhurt will always be a
mystery.
There is probably no department of the
government service in which a higher standard
of devotion to duty is maintained than
in this. During a heavy freshet on the
Susquehanna River, in 1890, all bridges were
swept away and the railroad tracks along
the banks practically destroyed. Four mail
clerks remained in their car until the water
rising and flowing through the doors com-
pelled them to take to an improvised raft,
which consisted of pieces of floating sidewalks
and other debris of the inundation, lashed
together. On this frail craft they put their
pouches, and carefully propelling by poles
along with the current, gained the post-office,
a mile away. They found this abandoned,
with eight feet of water in the street at
that point. They were almost exhausted
and their condition was precarious. Finally,
however, they were rescued by boats and
taken into houses through the second-story
windows. The letter mail was all intact and
in fairly good condition.
Some time ago the "run" on a Western
road was "short" a clerk because of sickness.
An official of the service happened to be on
the train and volunteered his services. For
fifteen hours he stuck to his work at the
letter case. In the journey of more than
five hundred miles he had only a sandwich
or two for food, and stood on his feet without
relief. There are other instances on record
where entire crews have stood to the work
without food for twenty-four hours.
But the last and the best word which may
be said of the Railway Postal Service of the
United States is that it perpetuates the spirit
of its founder, and maintains to a remark-
able degree the devotion to duty, the pluck
and the unflagging perseverance with which
George B. Armstrong endowed it.
A NAP IN THF. STORAGF. CAR AFTKR A STRENUOUS DAV
SAMAlk PAVILION: A FAMOUS BATHING RKSORT
Oiii; of the few liising investments of the Mormons
THE MORMONS; A SUCCESSFUL
COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
BY PRACTICAL COOPERATION THE VARIED BUSINESS ACTIVITIES OF THE
MORMON PEOPLE CONTROLLED BY THE CHURCH— "JOSEPH F. SMITH, PRESI-
DENT," UNIVERSAL IN THE MORMON COUNTRY— THE ALMOST INFINITE
SCOPE AND POWER OF THIS PRACTICAL RELIGIOUS PATERNALISM
BY
GLEN MILLER
FORMERLY INITED STATES MARSHAL IX VTAH
Illustrated from photographs by The Johnson Company, Salt Lake City
WITH polygamy abandoned, the
Mormon Church. I presume, is
slowly going to pieces."
That was the gist of a hundred remarks I
heard during a recent trip east. It repre-
sents a very prevalent impression held out-
side of Utah regarding the " Mormon question."
The Mormon Church isn't slowly going to
pieces, or going to pieces in any way at all
On the contrary, it is, comparatively, growing
faster in numbers and in power than any
other church of the land. It is the widest
awake, most vigorous and most aggressive
religious denomination in America today.
The chief source of its strength can be defined
in two words — practical cooperation. For the
Mormon people have evolved what has so
long eluded economists and philanthropists —
a successful cooperative society.
Consulting the directories of a large number
of the most important corporations in the
State of Utah, you will find at the head of
each the words " Joseph F. Smith, President.' '
Joseph F. Smith has been President of the
Mormon Church since October 17, 1901. His
election to the presidency of every one of
2882 THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
WEIGHING SUGAR BEETS AT THE LEHI FACTORY
these corporations has occurred since that
date. As a matter of form, a separate
election takes place in each company for
president; but an election to the presi-
dency of the Mormon Church is equivalent
to an election to the presidency of these
companies.
Joseph F. Smith, prophet, seer and revealer
of the Mormon Church, presides over great
mercantile institutions, factories engaged in
producing the staples of life, railroads, power-
plants, commercial and savings banks, imple-
ment warehouses, coal mines, pleasure resorts,
educational institutions, book stores and daily
newspapers and magazines. The potency of
those words, "Joseph F. Smith, President,"
is known to every business man in Utah.
The very least significance that can be attached
to them is that the institutions over which
Mr. Smith presides have the good-will and
friendly interest of the church. The larger
interpretation is that these institutions render
allegiance to the Mormon Church and in
return receive its protection and patronage.
The concerns of which I speak are private
corporations, organized under the general
statutes of the State, engaging in business for
profit. As a matter of fact, President Smith
personally gives but little time to the affairs
of these corporations of which he is the
nominal head. His private ownership in any
of these institutions may be taken to be very
small. The institutions of which he is presi-
BOYS TESTING MOTHER BEETS TO BE PLANTED FOR SEED
The seed was formerly brought from Germany : now it is raised in Utah
Ixeculive Direilors.
j0S£ph;f smith, p.«»t
JOHN nwiNOCR. Itl V<c* P>«»t
I S. HILLS. Tr««tuf«'
T C WtBBCB. 2"d V P
JOHN J BANIGAN. W S McCGRNICK.
w J CURTIS. nuoGencLAwsON.
GCOnCE ROMNEV
CCNCRALCOUNSCL.
LC r.RAND VOUNG.
Installation;
ELECTRICAL
SALT LAKt. WATER 2400 H P.
'OGDCN.
STEAM • 1500 H i
WAT(ft -&000 H I
GAS:
SALT LAKE. 430 M CU FT OAILV.
OGOCN. 60 M CU FT. DAILY.
AdminislrjIJvr:
ROBCftT tt CAUPBtLl
G«n'l Manager •»« bacaiafy
R r HAVWARO,
Clacl'ical Cngin««f
SAVE YOUR MONEY
Zion's Savinirs Bank & Trust Co.
)um P. aMITH. Pmldrnt. GnOMUk M Canmom. CMblw
Atrmon U. Lvtto. Vic« Pkw. Lewis m CtnitQit. Amt (.Mbl«r.
Ubc-
State
Banh
of latab.
f nlanb Q^cyetal §aii ODo.
,\LT l-AKK «1tV. I'TAII.
)• W C1.AVTO!*
"IF YOUJUE fHQVO Of VOUR HO«!>E HITCH HIM TO A
.■AiliON TftiT UilL not )Eri*flCT ?m HIS VALUE "
N»w If yon Ar* not prond of yoor honie, and yoor hon«
is ■«! aoro "toppy" or nor« ahowy than thr above rqolne.
mt alMipl.v roonot %*\\ )on • vehicle (bat will be In bar-
Bioay viltb bin.
Bat we hope fon baT«> a floe piece of "borae fle*b." aad
that 70a will (Ive «■ ao opportaalty to match Itwithaflne
aad itjlUb vehicle.
We ar« glTlKg Mere for the moaey than any other ve-
hlct* eoneera, as oar aaMcroai patroao will attest; we
are aaxloa* to caroll \OV a> oae of ear well Baticfled
Consolidated Wagon
& Machine Company
JOSEPH F. SMITH. Prisilinl
EEO. T. ODELL. Simfil Mina|if
Z. C. M. I.
, Importers and Wholesale Dealers in General Me
SALT LAKE CITY. OGDEN AND PROVO. UTAH, AND IDAHO FALLS, IDAHO.
FICEKS ANO DIRECTORS:
JOS. F. SniTM. President.
OEO. ROMNEV. Vkc-Prcsldcnt.
THOS O WEBBER. Sec'ctary..
A. W CARLSON. Treasurer.
WEBBER. Oenl. Superintendent.
jBuit .fiiiinrirritiiri>|iiTTifii'iffi1if''Vmii''i1''''i'i'''n"''^''"W;
TOM
111
DIRECTORS:
H. 3. Grant John Henry Smith
J. R. Winder F H. Lyman
H. Dlnwoodey Anthon H. Lund
P. T. Farns«orth Wm H. Hclntyr*
J. R. Bomes Reed 5moot
T. O. Webber
Hss^^e^s^^si.
. JOSEPH F. SMITH,
k
v\ '^~*"'-
.Yi; THOMAS R. CUTLER,
% HORACE G. WHITNEY,
n
P
S«Tttjr> jDd Trtisuftr.
Sugar Co.^
BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
JOSEPH f. SMITH. »M. B. PRESTON. B«R10W EEROISON.
T«0\l*S R. lUTlER J4MES J«K. GEORGE H. T*HOR
HEBER J. GRIM. W. S. McCORMCK. JOHN R. WNDER,
TH0M4S I WEBBER. »M. H. MtlNURE. JOH'i HENRI SMITH.
JOHN C. CUTTER
A GROUP OF ADVERTISEMENTS SHOWING THE MANY ENTERPRISES OF WHICH
TOSEPH F. SMITH IS PRESIDENT
2884 THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
THE BEAR RIVER DAM OWNED BY THE UTAH SUGAR COMPANY
A MORMON RANCH HOUSE
dent are really under the direction of men
skilled in the lines of trade represented, but
all under the parental influence of the church.
Foremost of these great institutions or
corporations is Zion's Cooperative Mercantile
Institution. This great department store,
doing a large wholesale and retail business
that extends to every Mormon settlement,
was established by Brigham Young in 1868.
Over its main entrance on Main Street, Salt
Lake City, is the all-seeing eye, emblem of
Mormon authority, and encircling it are the
words "Holiness to the Lord." Brigham
Young was its first president, and each
Mormon president in turn has been elected
president of the Z. C. M. I. Every director
since its establishment, with the exception of
one, whose family belongs to the church, has
been a Mormon, and the bulk of its capital.
Si. 07 7, 000, is in Mormon hands. One-tenth
of the salaries of its employees is given to the
church. The store has steadily paid large
dividends, and its stock is quoted at sixty per
cent, above par. Its wholesale business is
mostly with the "Coop." and other ]\Iormon
T
2886 THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
stores of the smaller towns and settlements.
The annual sales are over $4,000,000. In
local parlance "The Coop." always refers to
Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution.
Strolling through its many aisles, the words
"brother" and "sister" will be heard oftener
than any others, being the greetings of clerks
to patrons. Naturally, the institution is
capital stock of $2,000,000 sells in the open
market at more than fifty per cent, premium.
This company owes its existence directly
to the Mormon Church. President Wilford
Woodruff officially appointed the original
committee for tlie Lehi sugar factory, with
authority to solicit subscriptions from the
^lormon people. This was the first and it is
THE COOPKR.ATIVE SUGAR FACTORY AT I.EHI
22,000,000 pounds of sugar produced this year
glad to get Gentile patronage ; but the bulk of
its patronage is within the church. Large
branch stores of the Z. C. M. I., as it is com-
monly called for brevity, are located at Ogden
and Provo — next to Salt Lake City, the
largest cities of Utah; and at Idaho Falls,
Idaho.
President Joseph F. Smith also figures at
the head of the Utah Sugar Company, whose
the largest of the factories owned by this
company, which controls the sugar output of
Utah. " Patronize home industries" was one
of Brigham Young's favorite injunctions.
Obedience to it was never more munificently
rewarded than in the sugar industry. The
company has returned to the stockholders
almost tlieir original investment in the way of
stock dividends, besides paying an annual
p
PRESIDENT JOSEPH F. SMITH OF THE MORMON CHURCH
THE HEAD OF THE GREAT MORMON COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISES
2888 THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
twelve per cent, cash dividend for a series of
years. The wonderful profits of the undertak-
ing attracted the cupidity of the Sugar Trust,
to appease which the stockholders parted with
a half-interest in their holdings. The presi-
dency continues to rest in the hands of
Joseph F. Smith. The sugar company has
been a large dealer in irrigated lands. It
owns at present over thirty thousand acres of
land and the finest irrigation canal in the
State of Utah, taking water from the Bear
River by means of a dam constructed in the
Bear River cafion. Every year this company
Another of the great industries to which
the name of Joseph F. Smith is linked as
presiding officer is the manufacture of salt.
The Inland Crystal Salt Company has its
salt fields and refinery on the shore of Great
Salt Lake. Salt water is pumped from the
lake to the flat alkali lands bordering the
shore. The water is confined by dykes, and
precipitates the salt as the water evaporates
under the rays of the summer sun. The salt
is scraped up and piled in pyramids and then
carted to the refinery and made ready for
the table. This company furnishes the larger
"^>m^
THE S.ALT BEDS OF THE INLAND CRYSTAL SALT COMPANY
contracts with farmers — ninety-five per cent,
of whom are Mormons — for the beet output of
their farms. The cultivation of the sugar beet
has been the means of utilizing the labor of
children in summer time ; and as the Mormon
family is proverbially large, it can easily be
understood how peculiarly valuable this
industry is to Utah. This year 22,000,000
pounds of sugar will be produced by the
Lehi factory alone. The sugar beet has
in recent years done as beneficent a work for
the Mormon farmer as alfalfa did twenty
years ago, the two products today forming
the staple and profitable crops of the Utah
"ranch."
portion of all the salt used in the Rocky
Mountain and Coast country.
Closely associated with the salt company
is another corporation which is also headed
by the Mormon president. The Salt Lake
and Los Angeles Railway is not so great a
system as its name might indicate. It runs
from Salt Lake City to Great Salt Lake, a
distance of fifteen miles. Here are the salt
works from which it gets the bulk of its
freight traffic. Probably none of its com-
mercial enterprises are more closely controlled
by the church than this railway, whose name
has figured unpleasantly in politics of the
State in davs not remote.
TIIK MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOl'KR A'l' I \' l'. SO(Il"rY 2889
At the western terminus of the Salt Lake
and Los Angeles Railway is Saltair Pavilion,
probably the finest bathing resort in the
worUl. This structure cost $350,000 and is
as nearly under the sole ownership of the
church as any institution to which the name
of "Joseph F. Smith. President," is attached.
Brigham \'oung's old saying, "The people
must be amused," has been ])erpetuated
through theatres, concerts and out-of-door
resorts to which the church has stood sponsor.
By far the most pretentious of these amuse-
ment places is Saltair, the central pavilion
A MtiRMON SHEEP HERDER
of which is a duplicate in shape and dimen-
sions of the famous Mormon Tabernacle.
The resort has been one of the few investments
on which the church has lost money.
Salt Lake is the distributing point for most
of the wagons and agricultural implements
used in the inter-mountain country. Over-
shadowing every other institution of this
sort is the " Consolidated Wagon and Machine
Company," with a capital of $1,160,700, of
which Joseph F. Smith is the president. The
vast quantity of implements handled by this
company may be understood when it is
stated that whole train loads of one kind of
SAI/r LAKE THEATRE
A box is always reserved for Joseph F. Smith
implement have been sent from the factory
to this house. As the hardware business
is within the domain of Zion's Cooperative
Mercantile Institution, the implement com-
pany keeps out of this department. The
Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company,
hke Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution,
has branches in other cities in Utah and
Idaho.
Commercial banking finds Joseph F. Smith
at the head of the State Bank of Utah, and
THE TITHING STORE
Here the faithful deliver one-tenth of their produce to the church
"DEPOSIT HERE"
The statue of Brigham Young and the Mormon financial institutions
THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVE SOCIETY 2891
savings banking finds him at the head of
Zion's Savings Hank and Trust Company, both
located in the same buikhng and the same room.
Opposite the corner of this building, at the
intersection of Main and "Brigham" Streets,
stands the bronze figure of Brigham Young,
with outstretched hand and finger pointing
in the direction of these financial institutions.
A wag, having in mind actual conditions, has
represented the great prophet on his lofty-
pedestal pointing toward these banks as
saying, "Deposit here." Be that as it may,
Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company has
a larger deposit than all the other savings
institutions (twenty-four) of Utah combined.
The State Bank of Utah has until recently
had the Governor of the State, a Mormon, as
its cashier, as well as the president of the
Mormon Church as its president. The advan-
tage of church connection to financial institu-
tions, not only in securing deposits, but in
warding off danger in times of panic is not
to be hghtly estimated. Not a Gentile
figures in the directory of either institution.
Both banks have assisted in financing numer-
ous church propositions.
The Consolidated Light and Power
Company, whose main offices are located
between Zion's Savings Bank and Trust
Company and Zion's Cooperative Mercantile
Institution, also has Joseph F. Smith for its
president. It takes power from the Weber
River, four miles north from Ogden, and
transmits to Salt Lake City all the power and
light used in the city, including that used by
the street car system. It also furnishes light
and power for Ogden.
The Deserct Evening News is the official
organ of the Mormon Church. It now
occupies, opposite the Mormon temple on
one corner and the two Mormon banks
just mentioned on the other, the handsomest
and most costly business block in Utah.
It is not necessary, perhaps, to mention that
it has for its president Joseph F. Smith. It
is managed by Horace G. Whitney, who is
also secretary of the Utah Sugar Company.
Indeed, it is interesting to observe how the
same directors weave in and out through the
companies over which the Mormon president
presides. The News, all editions considered,
has a larger circulation than any other
intermountain newspaper.
Scarcely a town in Utah or a ward in any
of the Mormon towns but has its cooperative
stores. The "First Ward Coop.," "Second
Ward Cooi).,"and so on through the thirty-
two wards of Salt Lake, are small outlying
stores whose names point with certainty to
the fact that they are owned by Mormons.
These small " coop." stores are the patrons
of the big " coop." stores. Still other names
indicate the -variety of directions that
cooperation takes: "Coop. Meat Market,"
"Coop. Lumber Company," and many
others. In the smaller towns these stores
generally take the name of the place,
as " Loa Cooperative Mercantile Institu-
tion," " Monticello Cooperative Company,"
"Spanish Fork Cooperative Association,"
"St. George Cooperative Store," " Nephi
Coop.," and so on down the list.
To appreciate fully how cooperation in
Utah is practically born and bred into its
"chosen people," it will be well to take a
peep into the simplest phases of Mormon
activity. The "teacher" is one of the lowest
in the scale of Mormon officers. To the
teacher in the city is assigned one-half of a
block, and with the teacher's work begins the
first object lesson in cooperation. It is the
duty of the teacher to visit, meet, counsel
with and assist every member of the church in
his district. To the teacher each member
confides his sorrows, joys, hopes and ambi-
tions. To illustrate briefly with suppositious
personages, we will take a block in Salt Lake
City assigned to Orson Dunford. Dunford is
a young man of good character, strongly
imbued with the doctrines of the church, who
has been selected by his bishop for this work
because of his natural leadership. Among
his first visits is his call upon Sister Anna
Larsen, a domestic in a prominent Gentile
family. Sister Larsen has heard from her
mother, in Sweden, who wishes to join her
daughter in America. The expense of the
trip will be $60, and of this the young servant
can furnish S25 from a year's frugal savings.
The teacher reports the case to his bishop,
and it is decided to send the money through
the Copenhagen mission for the mother's
expenses in coming to Utah. In due time the
old lady arrives, secures some place in kitchen
or factory, and eventually the loan is repaid
the bishop from the combined savings of
mother and daughter. Teacher Dunford
learns on his rounds from Brother Nichols
that the irrigation ditch running between
the Nichols and Katzmeyer gardens is the
2892 THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
cause of acrimonious dispute. After hearing
Brother Nichols' version of the trouble, the
teacher calls on Brother Katzmeyer. The
line of brotherly duty is then defined b}^ the
teacher and each neighbor admonished as to
his obligations. If this is not sufficient to
heal the wound, the matter is referred to the
Teachers' Quorum, presided over by the
bishop. The Quorum calls the disputants
before it, listens to the case and renders its
opinion. In turn, if this is insufficient, the
matter is carried still higher. In certain
grave and far-reaching differences the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles listen
solemnly to the case and pass on its merits.
Generally, however, the confidence placed in
the teacher and the Teachers' Quorum makes
their decision acceptable to both parties and
stops the trouble in its incipiency. Once a
month the teachers of each ward assemble
to compare notes and listen to reports
from each other upon visits made in the
various districts. Ordinarily a ward consists
of nine blocks, so that there are eighteen
teachers in a meeting. As each block is
called by the bishop the teacher arises and
makes a report — of which the following,
taken verbatim, except as to names, is
typical :
" Brother Brown and I visited Block Num-
ber Seven, spending two evenings in making
the round. "We found Sister Hagreen first-
rate. She has had a bad cold, but is gradu-
ally improving. Brother and Sister Johnson
we found in good health. Brother Sorenson's
boy has a broken leg and he has been laid off
work for two weeks. Brother Sorenson had a
letter from his son Henry, who is on a mission
in Australia, asking for $io to assist in build-
ing a meeting house. I think we should
furnish the money. Sister Knowles is getting
very feeble. She is nearly ninety years old,
and needs a sack of potatoes and flour. A
lady living in the middle of the block —
recently moved in — has a baby, a little boy.
He should be named. Ever}-thing on our
block is in good shape and the Saints in fine
spirit, though inclined to shirk meetings. '"
A very important part of the teacher's
duties is to ascertain whether each member
in his district obeys the law of tithing. The
faithfulness and promptness with which
tithing is paid determines largely one's
standing in the church. Accordingly, the
teacher expounds the law of the church which
calls upon every member to give one-tenth
of his "increase" yearly for the benefit of
the faith. The teacher, coming into close
contact with the individual and the family, is
in position to report to the bishop an}- short-
comings in tithing contribution or in obedience
to "counsel." The teacher looks carefully
into the conduct of the young members of
his block, whom he urges to marry young
and within their own faith. If illness, suffer-
ing or distress is discovered, it is immediately
reported to the bishop, who sends the Relief
Society (an organization of ladies in every
Mormon ward) to attend to the case. There
are no beggars among the ]\Iormons —
indeed, the spirit of mutual helpfulness is so
general that few ever reach a condition where
they ever want for the necessities of life.
More than this, there is a regard for the aged
and those incapacitated for work w^hich is
sadly lacking in Gentile communities. A
holida}' is set apart twice in each year for the
aged, on which occasion the young turn out
to assist in entertaining and comforting all
those who have passed the sixtieth milestone
of life. The teacher looks closely into all
the affairs of his flock, being at once a con-
fessor, counselor and family friend. He is
the original sotirce of information for the
church, as well as the medium of communica-
tion to the brethren. The ease and rapidity
with which "word" from the higher authori-
ties can be passed to the whole Mormon
people would surprise the uninitiated.
Another example of the cooperative system
of the Mormons, and one of the best, is found
in their colonization methods. The problem
of providing homes and employment for the
new converts, and of relieving the over-
crowded condition of other settlements, has
been constantly before the Mormon authorities.
The leaders are alwavs on the lookout for
promising new fields for colonization. Lands
capable of irrigation are always in demand.
Canada, Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona,
Idaho and New Mexico have all been the
scene of Mormon colonization at one time
or another. Seldom does a Mormon "ranch-
man" emigrate alone to a new region. The
recent settlement of the Big Horn Valley in
northern Wyoming is typical of Mormon
methods of colonization. The locality having
been visited, examined and pronounced
satisfactory by the Mormon leaders, word
was passed through the Mormon settlements
THE MORMONS: A SUCCESSFUL CO()PER ATI\"E SOCIETY 2893
of Utah that those seckinj^ new homes should
at once report to the autliorities. One of the
most practical farmers and able organizers
was "called" by the presidency to lead the
new colonv. Selling his attractive home
and quitting the neighborhood of a lifetime
at call of his church, this brother responded
promptly to the mission. At an appointed
time and place the new colonists gathered
with teams, wagons and supplies. With one
of the Twelve Apostles as a guide, and their
permanent leader — the man who had been
called for the mission — they trekked three
hundred miles northward to the Big Horn
Valley. There they have since taken out a
cooperative ditch (or canal, as it would be
known in the East) which was constructed
through the united efforts of the entire
community. A cooperative store and a coop-
erative live-stock company followed in rapid
succession. The settlers are laying the foun-
dation for the same kind of flourishing com-
munity as was years ago established in the
San Luis Valley, Colorado, the Snake River
Valley, Idaho, and scores of other places.
The Mormon farmer is conspicuous for his
industry, frugality and integrity. He bor-
rows sparingly and pays faithfully. The
paying of debts is a tenet of the Mormon
religion. He is by nature conservative and
slow, seldom taking any important action
without consulting bishop or teacher.
The habit of cooperation and of taking
counsel enters into social, educational and
political life quite as much as into business
affairs. From the days of the Mormon
pioneers the association of members into
home stock companies for dramatic, operatic,
concert and choir entertainment has been
of much the same character as the cooperative
business organizations.
Brigham Young was himself one of the most
ardent patrons of amusements. In nearly
every Mormon settlement there is some sort
of dramatic company. Maude Adams, the
well-known actress, had her first schooling
in the old Salt Lake Stock Company, of which
her mother, a Mormon, was a member. The
present Governor of Utah was at one time
leading man of the Home Dramatic Company
of Salt Lake City. Thus the paternalism of
the church has attended amusements of all
kinds. Presumably the Salt Lake Theatre
is the only theatre in the world where a
private b*ox is reserved every night of the
year for tiie head of tiie church and his
family; and rarely does it go unoccupied.
This box is reserved gratis (as provided in
every contract made by the theatre with
visiting attractions) for the president of the
Mormon Church — a relation of church and
stage that would seem strange indeed in any
place but Utah. Another box is reserved
in the same way for the president's two
counselors.
In educational affairs the same general
systems of cooperation and paternalism are
to be noticed. Church schools known as
"Brigham Young Academies" and "Latter
Day Saints' Colleges" have been established
by the Mormons in various cities. These are
supported from church funds supplemented
by tuition from students. A number of
handsome buildings are now being erected
on the tithing-house square, opposite the
temple in Salt Lake City, which promise to
be the centre of Mormon educational work.
Indeed, the educational movement has
received a remarkable impetus in the last
few years. Unfriendly commentators have
maintained this to be an indication that the
church wishes to educate its youth so that it
can supply every field from its own ranks to
the exclusion of the Gentile or non-Mormon
element. This is placing a strained and
unjust interpretation upon a very praise-
worthy movement. It is true that the spirit
of cooperation leads the Mormons to patron-
ize their own representatives in the profes-
sions in preference to outsiders. So jealous
is the church of the undivided interest of its
members that they are forbidden to join
secret societies, labor unions or fraternal
insurance companies. At the late October
General Conference, Apostle Abram O.
Woodruff advised the formation of a labor
organization within the church, that the
work of the Mormons might be reserved
for Mormon laborers.
In religious work the cooperative system
of the Mormons is so well known as to need
little more than passing reference. At the
call of the presidency every member of the
church is ready to go forth "without purse
or scrip" to preach the Mormon doctrines.
There are no salaried preachers in the IMormon
Church. As a rule, the missionaries travel in
pairs. The latest country to be invaded is
Japan, where one of the Mormon Twelve
Apostles, Heber J. Grant, with a corps of
Ik
2894
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
missionary assistants, is vigorously prose-
cuting the religious work of the church.
In politics the cooperative spirit is the
source of continual bitterness. Both national
parties continually nominate prominent
church officials for no other reason than the
expectation of winning votes through the
influence of this cooperative spirit. People
accustomed to work together in every other
relation of life are not likely to abandon the
habit when it comes to the domain of politics,
and especially when they are encouraged in it
by those who do not belong to their faith. A
few years ago one of the most prominent
Mormon apostles was disciplined and dropped
from his high place in the i\Iormon Church
because he entered into a contest for the
United States Senatorship without the per-
mission of his church. In an authorized
interview at that time with the writer of this
article, the three presidents of the church
stated that it was not thought compatible
with the requirements of religious duties that
members of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles should enter into a scramble for
political office — at least, not without asking
and securing the permission of the church to
which they had dedicated their services.
Inasmuch as one of the Twelve Apostles is
at present waging an open and aggressive
contest for Senatorial honors, it may be
reasoned that "permission" has been
granted, and the apostle will be elected
United States Senator.
Almost every other attempt in the United
States to establish cooperative industries, even
where backed by large wealth, has practical) v
been a failure. Paternalism alwaj's implies
a partial surrender of individual liberty. As
developed by the Mormon people, however,
the cooperativ systera has utilized the ser-
vices of many who would have succumbed
to intense competitive effort ; has eliminated
waste, and has at all times presented a solid
front to the enemies of the church ; and
Joseph F. Smith, the present head of the
Mormon Church, is conspicuous for the
progressive, clear-headed and fair-minded
way in which he is administering the duties
placed upon him.
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC
EDUCATION
GREATER EXPENDITURE NECESSARY — HOW PUBLIC SCHOOL CONDITIONS
SHOULD BE IMPROVED BY BETTER BUILDINGS, BETTER TEACHERS, GREATER
CARE FOR HEALTH, NEW METHODS AND STUDIES AND IN MANY OTHER WAYS
BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT
PRESIDENT OF H.\RVAKD UNIVERSITY
An address delivered before the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction October 23, 1902
OX October 17th I advocated before
Connecticut teachers the expendi-
ture of more money for education
in the United States on the ground that
the shortcomings and failures in American
education, and the disappointments con-
cerning its results, have been many and
grievous; and on the next day I advocated
before New Hampshire teachers increase of
educational expenditure on the ground that
many successes have been won by American
schools and colleges, and that these successes,
though involving increased expenditure,
have been approved and rejoiced in by
the American public. The first argument
was an incitement to greater exertions,
because of ill success or of imperfect attain-
ment of ends wisely sought ; the second was an
encouragement to greater expenditure because
of the results achieved with the expenditure
already made. Tonight I wish to describe
some of the objects for which increased
expenditure should be made in the schools
supported by taxation, and to adduce some
further considerations fitted to encourage
American communities to larger expenditure.
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
2895
The expenditure on school buildings has
been generous during the last twenty years;
but in two respects most of the buildings
erected during this period have fallen far
short of the proper standard. First, in cities
and large towns all school buildings should be
fire-proof, and particularly all halls and
stairways should be fire-proof. Wooden
staircases should be absolutely prohibited
in schools intended for children under fifteen
years of age. Secondly, the woodwork in
the interior of school buildings should be
reduced to the lowest terms, and should be
carefully constructed with reference to the
facility of keeping it clean, just as the wood-
work in the interior of a modern hospital is
constructed; and the materials of walls in
school buildings should not be absorbent,
but, on the contrary, should resist both
moisture and gases, and should be capable'
of thorough cleansing. The last remark
applies also to the heating apparatus for
school buildings. All flues, ducts, and boxes
for the reception and conveyance of cold or
hot air should be so built and disposed that
their interiors can be cleaned. Any one who
has examined with a lens the extraordinary
amount of animal and vegetable matter
which accumulates on a sheet of "tangle-
foot" fly paper placed in a cold-air box, at
any season of the year when the ground is
not covered with snow, will heartily concur
in this prescription. The observance of these
rules would, of course, demand additional
initial expenditure on school buildings, but
would diminish the cost of maintenance.
Again, whether in town or country, a large
open space, yard or garden should surround
every school building, and should be kept
with neatness and decorated w'ith shrubs
and flowers. The denser the population in
which the school is situated the greater the
need of this open space; and the larger the
school the larger should be the space sur-
rounding the building. Here again is a call
for a large additional expenditure; but it is
an expenditure which the welfare of city
children urgently demands. Every school
should have the means of turning at least half
; its pupils into the open air simultaneously,
r and the space about the school should be so
I arranged that hundreds of children can occupy
\ it without marring its decorative vegetation.
I This means, of course, that the greater part
I of every schoolyard should have a surface
of gravel or asphalt. Such grounds could
be made useful in crowded quarters to many
people besides the school children. If it be
urged that it is impossible in American cities
to depend on the permanent occupation of
any particular district by a ])opulation which
needs schools, and therefore that the con-
.struction of durable schoolhouses and the
provision of grounds about them are inexpe-
dient, I reply that if a schoolhouse and its
yard, once situated in the midst of a dense
population, become unnecessary, it must be
because the district has been abandoned as a
residence quarter in favor of factories, shops,
or some other sort of productive business;
and, therefore, if the city has provided in
such a district a large schoolyard, it will be
able to compensate itself for the loss on its
building by the rise in the value of its land.
Next to this improvement in schoolhouses
and schoolyards comes improvement in the
sanitary control and management of schools.
This control requires the services of skilful
physicians; and such a physician should be
officially connected with every large school.
It should be his duty to watch for contagious
diseases, to prevent the too-early return to
school of children who have suffered from
such diseases, to take thought for the eyes
of the children, lest the}^ be injured in reading
or writing by bad postures or bad light, to
advise concerning the rectification of remedi-
able bodily defects in any of the children
under his supervision, to give advice at the
homes about the diet and sleep of the children
whose nutrition is visibly defective, and, in
short, to be the protector, counselor and
friend of the children and their parents with
regard to health, normal gro\\i;h, and the
preservation of all the senses in good condi-
tion. Such medical supervision of school
children would be costly, but it would be
the most rewarding school expenditure that
a community could make, even from the
industrial or commercial point of view^ since
nothing impairs the well-being and produc-
tiveness of a community so much as sickness
and premature disability or death. As in
an individual, so in a nation, health and
strength are the foundations of productive-
ness and prosperity.
The next object for additional expenditure
is better teachers. Of course, teachers should
know well the subjects which they are to
teach; but that is bv no means sufficient.
2895
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
Every teacher should also know the best
methods of teaching his subjects. College
professors heretofore have been apt to think
that knowledge of the subject to be taught
was the sufficient qualification of a teacher;
but all colleges, as well as all schools, have
suffered immeasurable losses as a result of
this delusion. Of course, it is better for a
teacher to know his subject without know-
ing the right method of teaching it than to
acquire a formal method without knowing
the subject; because a conscientious teacher,
by experimenting on his pupils, may in years
acquire a good method at their expense; but
teachers who are acquainted at the start
with both subject and method are what
schools and colleges urgently need. To
secure this double proficiency means a greater
expenditure on the training of teachers
Under the head of better teachers may best
be mentioned certain specific desiderata
such as a larger proportion of male teachers
in urban school systems, a larger proportion
of women teachers who have been educated
at college, and a larger proportion of both
men and women who have received a genuine
normal school training. All these are expen
sive desiderata.
With better teachers, numerous other
improvements would come in, as, for instance,
a better teaching of literature and of history,
and better biological and geographical instruc-
tion, these natural-history studies being
pursued by the pupils in the open air as well
as in the schoolrooms. I have elsewhere
urged that all public open spaces, whether
countr}' parks, forests, beaches, city squares
gardens or parkways, should be utilized for
the instruction of the children of the public
schools by teachers capable of interesting
them in the phenomena of plant and animal
life. But this means quite a new breed of
common school teachers. ^ The teaching of
geography in the open air is a delightful form
of instruction ; but it requires a teacher fully
possessed of the principles of physiography,
and knowing how to illustrate these principles
on a small scale in gutters, brooks, gullies,
ravines, hillsides and hilltops. Some nature
study of this desirable sort has been already
introduced into American schools; but it is
not persisted in through years enough of the
school course. There is needed much more
of this sort of study, beginning in the kinder-
garten and going through the high school.
Vacation schools can give this sort of instruc-
tion to great advantage. It must be con-
fessed that it is an expensive kind of instruc-
tion; but this is one of the places at which
more money should be spent.
Given better teachers, the next additional
expenditure should be due to a large reduc-
tion in the number of pupils placed before a
single teacher. This number may now be
said to vary from forty to sixty in the differ-
ent school systems of the United States.
The higher number is monstrous and the
lower far too large. Twenty to twenty-five
pupils to a teacher are quite enough, if there
is to be secured an adequate degree of atten-
tion to the individual pupil and a proper
classification of each group of pupils according
to their quality and capacity. This is an
improvement very urgently needed in the
American schools of today. It would doubt-
less cost a good deal of money, but it would
not necessarily double the item of salaries;
for one competent teacher, with an intelligent
though less experienced assistant, can take
good care of forty pupils. When from forty
to sixty pupils are allotted to a single teacher
with no assistant, there is no opportunity
for individual instruction; the whole group
must move on together; and it is inevitable
that the brighter pupils should be sacrificed
to the duller, which is the most wasteful
thing a school can do. The improvement of
which I am now speaking would lift American
education to quite another plane of efficiency,
and would make the life of the teacher vastly
more interesting, more rewarding and hap-
pier. The personal contact between teacher
and pupil would be more frequent and inti-
mate, and the teacher's function would
change from driving a flock to leading on
and stimulating individuals.
In order to keep good a large staff of
teachers employed by a city or town, a
system of retiring allowances for teachers is
indispensable. It is the American practice
to keep in office superannuated or partially
disabled teachers who have served long and
well, and to pay them their salaries until
death or complete disability overtakes them.
This practice is uneconomical and very
injurious to the children who come under the
charge of such partially disabled or senile
teachers. It is considerate toward the few
veterans, but very inconsiderate toward the
hundreds of children whose education is
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
2897
impaired. A proper pension system gives
the managers of a school system the means
of retiring such teachers, and of replacing
them by fresh, well-selected appointees,
without causing any hardships or wounding
any feelings. A good pension system is not
expensive; for when an old teacher retires
on an allowance the retirement will ordinarily
give rise to several shif tings of place, and
the vacancy really filled is one near the foot
of the scale of salaries. There is a pension
to pay, but there comes upon the pay-roll a
newcomer's salary which is much smaller
than the salary of the teacher of long service.
Pensions, or retiring allowances, would
not therefore be the cause of a large new
expenditure, but would instead bring about
a great increase in the competency or effi-
ciency of any urban school system.
The universal employment of highly trained
superintendents in both urban and rural
systems is the next improvement of which I
would speak. This improvement has been
partially introduced; but it ought to become
universal, and the quality of the superin-
tendence should be always rising, until the
position of superintendent shall be recognized
as the highest in a school system, whether in
city or country. A single superintendent
can, of course, serve several rural districts or
towns ; and to obtain the right kind of super-
intendent such cooperation is necessary.
In general, the aid of the State is also
necessary to provide rural communities with
competent superintendents. Such superin-
tendents should be entirely independent of
political influences, and should enjoy a large
measure of authority and freedom in their
functions. They ought, as a rule, to be men
or women of college education, who have had
some experience themselves as teachers in
schools or academies. The kind of superin-
tendent that I have in mind is one who comes
into immediate contact with both teachers
and pupils. The wide-field superintendence,
such as a State superintendent may exercise,
is of course desirable; but such a remote
official may not have the immediate good
influence on the teaching, discipline and
business management of the schools which a
rural superintendent and the inspector or
supervisor in large city systems may exercise.
It is the man or woman who is constantly
going about among the schools in his or her
charge whose educational quality needs to
be raised. The head of a State system, or of a
large city system, is an administrator. The
rural superintendent or city supervi.sor is
primarily an inspector, teacher and guide.
All business or executive functions ought
to be withdrawn from the school committees
or boards and handed over in part to the
superintendent, and in part to a business
agent, who, like the superintendent, is a
permanent salaried officer. Since the present
sub-committees of school committees or
boards serve without pay, the salaries of
these business agents would, of course, be an
additional charge; but a competent and
experienced agent, by conducting school
business judiciously, will always save more
than his salary and will, moreover, greatly
increase the wholesomeness and efficiency of
the schools.
An expensive improvement in the public
schools, but one urgently needed, is the
enrichment of the school programme for the
years between nine and fourteen, and the
introduction of selection among studies as
early as ten years of age. Unless this is done,
and done soon, the public schools will cease
to be resorted to by the children of well-to-do
Americans. The private and endowed schools
offer a choice of foreign languages, for instance,
as early as ten years of age and even earlier;
and everybody knows that this is the age at
which to begin the study of foreign lan-
guages, whether ancient or modern. In large
cities it seems to be already settled that the
private and endowed schools get the children
of all parents who can afford to pay their
charges. One reason for this result is that
the programmes of the public schools are
distinctly inferior to the programmes of the
good private and endowed schools; and they
are inferior at precisely this point — they
have too limited a range of studies in the
years between nine and fourteen. It is, of
course, not desirable that each individual
child should pursue a great variety of studies ;
but it is essential that each individual child
should have access to a variety of studies.
The tendency in all American school systems
has been to segregate the foreign larrguages,
the mathematics beyond arithmetic, and the
higher scientific and historical studies in the
high school programmes — which means that
only that small proportion of children who
go on to the high school have any access to
those studies. No arrangement could pos-
2898
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
A
sibly be more undemocratic; although its
inventors did not foresee the real working of
their method in this respect. The achieve-
ment of this enrichment of the programmes
would cause the retention of children in
school for a larger number of years, and the
carrying forward of more children into the
upper schools; and these are effects greatly
to be desired. I am bound to acknowledge,
however, that these changes would be
decidedly costly; the}' would require more
accomplished and more skilful teachers for
the years between nine and fifteen, and more
apparatus for teaching; and if they were
successful there would be more children to
teach in the upper grades of the system.
An incidental effect of these changes would
be the development of departmental instruc-
tion— that is, skilful teachers would teach one
subject through several grades, instead of
teaching all subjects for one grade. It was
in 1766 that Harvard College — then no more
than a good high school — abandoned the
method of teaching all subjects to one class
by one man. The American public school
system bids fair to be nearly one hundred
and fifty years behind Harvard College in
adopting the departmental method — a
method which develops in both teachers and
pupils a growing interest in their work and
increases greatly the personal influence of
teachers, because the staying pupils work
through several successive years under the
same teacher. Another effect of this enrich-
ment of the programmes would be the post-
ponement for every individual pupil of the
grave decision between studies which permit
access to the higher institutions of learning,
and studies which do not. The later this
decision can be made the better for the
individual, and the better for the schools;
because a course of study which is prepara-
tory to all possible future routes in education
is sure to be a better course than the poorer
of two courses, one of which leads on to the
higher institutions and the other does not.
The election of studies in secondary schools
involves increased expenditure for two
reasons: first, because there are more subjects
to be taught; and, secondly, because each
subject will be carried further than it is under
a uniform prescribed course. Moreover, the
classes in each subject will be smaller than
they are under a prescribed system, because
the total number of pupils will be divided
among a larger number of subjects. The
election of studies in secondary schools is
already introduced in many places, generallv
under the form of several groups of studies
bearing different names; but sometimes, as
in Boston, in a frankly elective method. The
experience of the American colleges in regard
to the elective system demonstrates that it is
much more costly than the prescribed; but
it is also so much more effective for all educa-
tional purposes, whether mental or moral,
that it advances steadily in all the faculties
of arts and sciences, and never takes a back-
ward step. It may be safely assumed, there-
fore, that it will make steady progress in the
secondary schools of the country, and with
like results — greater cost, but greater profit.
In many scattered places in the United
States perfect demonstration has already
been given that manual training and instruc-
tion in the mechanical arts and trades are,
in the first place, valuable as means of mental
and moral training, and, in the second place,
useful for the individual toward obtaining a
livelihood, and for the nation toward develop-
ing its industries. Accordingly, manual train-
ing schools, mechanic arts high schools and
trade schools ought to become habitual parts
of the American school system; and normal
schools and colleges ought to provide optional
instruction in these subjects, since all public
school teachers ought to understand them.
Such schools are more expensive than schools
which do not require mechanical apparatus
and the service of good mechanics as instruc-
tors ; but there can be no doubt that the}' will
repay promptly their cost to the community
wliich maintains them.
Vacation schools have also demonstrated
their great usefulness in cities and large towns.
The best ones offer manual training for both
boys and girls, as well as book work, and
are heartily welcomed by both parents and
children. They combat effectively the mis-
taken policy of long vacations for children
who cannot escape from the crowded city
streets and tenements. Indeed, the experi-
ence recenth' gained in city vacation schools
and in the summer courses of colleges and
universities proves that the long summer
vacation of nine to thirteen weeks is by no
means necessary to the health of either
school children or maturer students. The
best method is to keep the pupil in vigor all
the year by means of frequent recesses during
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
2899
school hours, free half-days twice a week,
and occasional respites of a week. Then the
vacation school in summer should offer a
distinct variety of work in subjects different
from those pursued the rest of the year; for
children and adults alike find great refresh-
ment in mere change of work. For example,
the competent college professor may indeed
seek change of air and scene during the summer
vacation, but it is for the purpose of doing
under advantageous conditions a kind of
intellectual work different from that which
engrosses him in term-time, and not with the
intention of keeping his mind vacant or inert.
Furthermore, vacation schools in the poor
quarters of closely built cities are downright
refuges from the physical squalor and moral
dangers of the streets. It is obvious that
vacation schools on an adequate scale must
cause a serious addition to school expenditure
of a city or large town ; for they require the
services of an additional corps of teachers,
and they need additional apparatus, materials
and service. It is equally obvious that these
schools are urgently needed by a large pro-
portion of the population on grounds which
are simultaneously physical, mental and
moral. I say nothing here about the kinder-
garten, because, as I have twice pointed out
of late, the kindergarten has already been
somewhat extensively adopted as part of the
public school system, and is winning more
and more favor.
Another additional expenditure which
public schools ought to incur as soon as possi-
ble is a development of instruction in draw-
ing. Drawing is a mode of expression which
ought to be as universal as writing. There is
no art, trade or profession in which it is not
useful, and the enjoyment of life may be
greatly increased by the habitual use of the
pencil in sketching interesting objects of all
sorts, natural or artificial. Time for draw-
ing can be obtained in school programmes
by diminishing the time given to penmanship.
Instruction in one art will help the other,
and of the two drawing is far the most instruc-
tive, since it trains the powers of observation
and helps to make the retained impressions
both accurate and vivid. It is an incidental
advantage of drawing that it reinforces the
teaching of geometry, and particularly of
solid geometry. The comparative neglect
of geometry is one of the most curious phe-
......
importance of that subject in the mechanical
and constructive arts in which Americans
excel is duly considered.
Music is another sul)ject which ought to be
made much more of in all American schools,
I^ublic, private and endowed, than it now is.
The elementary schools do more for music
than the secondary schools; so that the
course of musical instruction is l^roken off
too early and the skill gained before fourteen
years of age is lost later through disuse. A
moderate degree of musical knowledge and
skill adds greatly to the enjoyment of life, no
matter how the livelihood may be earned.
To increase rational joy is one of the objects
which public education should always keep
in sight. I need not say that music has
always been a true culture subject, an ally
of literature, art and religion.
Lastly, the schools ought to be provided
liberally with all appliances which can
improve either teaching or administration,
and with all service which can relieve the
teachers of unnecessary bodily or mental
strains. Such appliances are books, maps,
charts, models, diagrams, lantern-slides and
electric lanterns, telephones, collections of
specimens, physical and chemical apparatus,
casts, photographs, pictures, typewriters and
pianos. To try to teach without these aids is
like trying to stop a conflagration with buckets
passed from hand to hand, or like starting
for Chicago in a one-horse chaise instead
of in the Empire State Express. The pre-
vailing poverty of our schools in these respects
is lamentable. At every stage of education,
from the kindergarten through the university,
an alert and progressive teacher can save his
or her own time and energy by transferring
the mechanical or routine parts of his or her
work to an assistant who receives a much
smaller compensation than the teacher. To
save that valuable time and energy for the
best work is the truest economy, yet this
economy is seldom practiced. In both these
respects American schools fall far below the
standards of w^ell-conducted commercial and
industrial establishments.
I have thus enumerated various ways in
which a -greatly increased expenditure on
American schools ought to be made. This
audience of teachers may perhaps have
observed that I have not said a word about
raising salaries. That is because I do not
consider that direction the best one for
2900
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
additional school expenditure. The teacher
needs many other things more than higher
pay — good light and air to work in, medical
inspection and care for the school, all avail-
able assistance in the schoolroom, all useful
apparatus for teaching — particularly that
which appeals to the eyes and fingers of the
pupils — relief from mechanical and clerical
work, a better tenure, a pension at disability,
and expert instead of amateur supervision.
And, on the other hand, the community needs
to have the teacher a more intelligent, better-
informed, robuster and gayer person, that
children will "take to" and wish to please,
and that parents will be glad to have visit
them in their homes.
With these objects in view the expenditure
in those parts of our country where it is now
smallest ought to be raised as rapidh' as
possible to the level of those regions where it
is now greatest; and in those regions where
the expenditure is now most liberal it ought
to be doubled as soon as possible.
I know that some people will say that it is
impossible to increase public expenditure in
the total, and therefore impossible to increase
it for schools. I deny both allegations.
Public expenditure has been greatly increased
within the last thirty years, and so has school
expenditure. What the country has done
it can do again; and, furthermore, it can
better its past record. Moreover, school
expenditure ought to be increased, even
though the total expenditures of the com-
munity should not rise; because it yields a
greater return than any other expenditure.
It is, indeed, far the most profitable of all
the forms of public expenditure; and this is
true whether one looks first to material
prosperity, or to mental and moral well-
being; whether one regards chiefly average
results, or the results obtained through
highly gifted individuals.
But some skeptic may ask, How do we
know that even the expenditure the country
now makes for education is worth making?
And again, how do we know what the results
of popular education are ? What test is there
for the efficiency of popular education ? Let
me try, in conclusion, to answer these grave
questions.
In the first place, as I look back on the
progress of American education since the
Civil War, I think I see that education is the
one agency for promoting intelligence and
righteousness which has ever xmquestionably
gained power in the United States during
the last half-century, the one agency which
has not only retained its hold on the demo-
cratic masses, but has distinctly gained more
and more public confidence, and received
from the democracy greater and greater moral
and material support. The democracy has
believed more and more in the efficiency of
schools and colleges ; and schools and colleges
have more and more taught and acted out
democracy. This is only saying, on the one
hand, that the popular masses perceive that
it is in large part the schools and colleges
which implant in successive generations
democratic ideals and make them fit to be
free; and, on the other, that the schools and
colleges believe in the democratic ideals, and
fervently desire to promote brotherhood,
unity and the practical acceptance of the
Pauline doctrine, "every one members one of
another. " Can we say of any other of the
organized inspiriting and moralizing forces in
American society that it has gained strength
and increased its influence dtiring the past
fifty years ? The efficiency of legislatures
and the respect in which they are held have
unquestionably declined since the Civil War.
American legislative assemblies, whether
municipal. State or national, have repeatedly
shown themselves unable to solve, or even
begin to solve, the new problems which have
arisen in rapid succession out of the incredible
changes in industry, commerce and trans-
portation. In other words, legislatures have
not been able to keep up with American
progress in other fields. Some of them have
ceased in large measure to be deliberative
assemblies, and habitually transact important
parts of their business in secret committee
meetings. Others have proved to be in the
hands of one man, himself not a public official;
so that legislation is adopted or rejected at
that one man's will — sometimes a purchasable
will. Congress has repeatedly disappointed
the people in respect both to its intelligence
and to its magnanimity; and with a rather
piteous recognition of its own incapacity it
has repeatedly taken refuge in the discretion
of the Executive.
Most persons will also agree that the courts
of our country are as a whole less efficient
and less respected today than they were a
generation or two generations ago. Their
decline is painfully apparent in criminal
THE NEKDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
2901
matters — and is plainly visible in civil matters
also. The efficacy of the death penalty
has been well-nigh destroyed by the delays
ordered or permitted by courts. The courts
often seem embarrassed by conflicting prece-
dents or contradictory decisions, and
paralyzed by multiplying technicalities and
ingenuities of counsel. Moreover, they not
infrequently give uncertain sounds. Hence
reverence for law is not maintained at its old
level; and lawless violence against suspected
criminals claims justification in the delays
and uncertainties of legal processes.
The church and its ministers cannot be said
to have risen in public estimation since the
Civil War. Its control over education has
distinctly diminished. In some of its branches
it seems to cling to archaic metaphysics and
morbid poetic imaginings ; in others it appar-
ently inclines to take refuge in decorums,
pomps, costumes and observances. On the
whole, it has not been able to keep up with
the progress of either science or democracy —
those Atalantas of the nineteenth century that
never stop for golden apples dropped in their
path — and it has shown little readiness to
rely on the intense reality of the universal
sentiments to which Jesus appealed, or to go
back to the simple preaching of the gospel of
brotherhood and unity — of love to God and
love to man. So the church as a whole has
today no influence whatever on many millions
of our fellow countrymen — called Jews or
Christians, Protestants or Catholics though
they be. We still believe that the voluntary
church is the best of churches; because a
religion which is accepted under compulsion
is really no religion at all for the individual
soul, though it may be a social embellish-
ment or a prop for the State. Yet, believing
thus, we have to admit that the voluntary
church in the United States has no hold on
a large and increasing part of the population.
By no positive fault of their own, but by a
sort of negative incapacity, legislature, court
and church seem to be passing through some
transition which temporarily impairs their
power; but the schools and colleges in the
United States, while changing and develop-
ing rapidly, have suffered no impairment of
vigor or influence. On the contrary, educa-
tion as an uplifting agency was never so
effective with the democracy as it is today.
To redeem and vivify legislatures, courts and"
churches, what agency is so promising as
education ? Next to steady productive labor
education is the prime factor in social and
industrial progress. This jirimacy of educa-
tion among the various civilizing factors
aflfords the strongest possible inducement to
spend every dollar on popular education
which can be spent advantageously. It also
gives an answer, drawn from experience, to
the question — Is the present expenditure
worth making ? A reasonable foresight sup-
plies another answer. We should ask our-
selves what better remedy than wise popular
education, what other thorough remedy, can
be imagined for the new evils which threaten
society because of the new facilities for mak-
ing huge combinations of producers, or middle-
men, of farmers, or miners, or manufacturers,
of rich or poor, of laborers or capitalists.
Masses of men are much more excitable than
average individuals, and will do in gregarious
passion things which the individuals who
compose the masses would not do. A crowd
is dangerously liable to sudden rage or — what
is worse — sudden terror, and either emotion
may overpower the sense of responsibility and
annihilate for the moment both prudence
and mercy. There never was a time when
common sentiments and desires could be so
quickly massed, never a time when the force
of multitudes could be so effectively concen-
trated at a selected point for a common pur-
pose. Against this formidable danger there
is only one trustworthy defense. .The masses
of the people must be taught to use their
reason, to seek the truth, and to love justice
and mercy. There is no safety for demo-
cratic society in truth held, or justice loved,
by the few; the millions must mean to do
justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with
their God. The millions must be taught to
discuss, not fight; to trust publicity, not
secrecy; and to take timely public precautions
against every kind of selfish oppression. To
give this instruction steadily and universally
society poss,esses no organized agency which
compares in present efficiency and future
promise with the schools. Therefore, the
present expenditure on schools is fully justified
and increased expenditure urgently demanded.
I can almost hear the objection — this expecta-
tion of popular schools is extravagant —
they are only for teaching reading, writing
and ciphering. Not so, I reply. The com-
mon schools should impart the elements of
physical, mental and moral training, and in
2902
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
morals the elements are by far the most
valuable part.
Secondly, let me deal briefly with our
skeptic's demand for a test of the results of
popular education. I think there must be
some sure-working practical tests of the
efficiency of popular education. Can they
be stated? Concerning an educated individ-
ual, we ma}^ fairly ask, can he see straight ?
can he recognize the fact ? Next, can he
draw a just inference from established facts ?
Thirdly, has he self-control ? or do his passions
nui away with him ? or untoward events
daunt him ? These are fair tests of his mental
and moral capacity. One other test we may
fairly apply to an educated individual —
does he continue to grow in power and in
wisdom throughout his life ? His body ceases
to grow at twenty-five or thirty years of age —
does his soul continue to grow ? It is obvious
that these tests are difficult of application to
a nation; but ■jve are not wholly without
means of applying them to our own people as
a mass. The people live by agriculture,
mining and manufacturing; and these great
concerns cannot be successfully managed
unless multitudes of men recognize essential
facts, and draw the right inferences from
the truths they embody.
The success with which the American
people get their livelihood shows that there is
much soundness in their mental training.
Millions of them must be able to observe
accurately and to infer justly. One of the
most difficult tasks for a man who thinks
imperfectly is to get over a delusion. When-
ever the American people through the reason-
ing power of millions get over a delusion, they
shed light on the efficiency of their own educa-
tion. We have had a recent piece of evidence
of this sort in the recovery of our people from
the widespread silver delusion. Do their
passions run away with the people ? They
did not after the Civil War, the forbearance
of the Confederates being as remarkable as
that of the Unionists. They did not at the
close of the fighting with the poor Spaniards
in Cuba. Never were terms of surrender
more generous, or, I may add, more ingenious.
The same self-control was manifested in the
intelligent withdrawal of our soldiers from
China. Do untoward events daunt the
people? No. As a rule, our population
bears calamities and losses with constancy
and calmness. The country lately lost its
singularly beloved Chief Magistrate, and lost
him in an intensely mortifying way; but our
Government never staggered even for a
moment, and the whole work and life of the
people went on without a halt, or even a
quiver, excepting the momentary thrill of
horror and humiliation. In the recent coal
strike, which doubled the price of a necessary
of life and caused widespread injuries and
anxieties, the attitude of the much-enduring
public was calm and discreet. The public
took sides with neither party, looked on
quietly at the irrational strife, accepted no
bad advice, tried no unconstitutional reme-
dies— just bore the losses, and waited five
months for the combatants to accept that
method of inquiry, discussion and mutual
consideration which ought to have been
adopted when the conflict first arose. The
strike has furnished a good illustration of
popular self-control under very irritating
conditions. Such are some of the indications
that American education has not wholly
failed of its high object.
Can we apply to the education of the nation
the ultimate test which we finally apply to the
education of an individual? As the national
life grows broad and rich does the national
soul or spirit grow with it ? Does mental and
spiritual progress keep pace with material?
God only knows; but mortals ma}' discern
some facts which make toward the conclusion
we should all like to establish. Thus, in
regard to the mental powers of the popula-
tion, whenever new machines, be they
reapers, looms, cranes, crucibles, guns or
electric motors, have required more intelli-
gent men behind them, the nation has invari-
ably supplied on demand the needed men.
This evidence is furnished incessantly on an
immense scale, and it signifies that the people
rise to their higher work. When a quiet
villager, who has been just caring for his farm
and his sawmill, is made school agent or
chairman of the Board of Health, and is
forced to think of all the children in the town,
or of all the sick in it, if he does his work well,
grasps ideas novel to him, and by energetic
and judicious action spreads them through
the town, we say that he has grown to his
enlarging work. On a higher plane — that is
just what we do say of Benjamin Franklin
and Abraham Lincoln. In like manner
the American people has grown to its expand-
ing and novel industries, arts and commerce,
THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN TUHLIC EDUCATION
2903
and has clearly done its daily work better
than the competint^ nations. Hence, the
total training of its youth, an important part
of which has been given by the schools and
colleges, must have been measurably suc-
cessful.
The extraordinary sale of dictionaries and
encyclopedias in the United States demon-
strates the existence in innumerable house-
holds of the habit of looking up the meaning
of words and the facts about unfamiliar
topics encountered in conversation or in
reading. This habit implies a lifelong desire
to learn. The reading habits of the people
prolong mental activity and growth, widen
interests and quicken sympathies; for the
great mass of the people's reading matter
is pure and instructive, in spite of the
mortifying fact that parts of most daily
newspapers are given over to Cloacina and
the Furies.
But all this refers to the national mind
applied to things material, or to the ordinary
plane of commonplace life. How about
things spiritual, the great moral movements,
and the refinements and adornments of life ?
Is there any better test of unselfish and gentle
feeling in a multitudinous people than their
habitual treatment of women and children?
Now, on the whole, Americans of all classes
treat their women in large things and small
better than any other people treat theirs.
American men are laughed at by foreigners
for making their wives and daughters extrava-
gant and self-indulgent. On farms the
women do not work in the fields as all foreign
peasant women do. For factories we have
in many States protective legislation in
regard to the employment of women and
children. There is a very significant differ-
ence between the expectation on the part of
the American people of personal purity and
domestic honor in their public men, and the
expectation in those regards on the part of
any European people concerning their kings,
princes and nigh officials. The politician
who disappoints the American people in that
respect is lost, be he ever so serviceable a
person. As to the treatment of children,
it is certain that the discipline in American
families and schools is gentler and more con-
siderate than in other countries. Moreover,
there has been a great advance in this respect
within thirty years, an advance which has
made the whole people happier and better.
This is a widespread gain, made in millions
of homes and schools; and it not only tells
on the present moral condition of our people,
but is of the highest j)romise for the future.
Somehow slavery is gone and intemperance
has been checked and made disgraceful.
The results testify to the moral forces which
produce them.
If one would estimate the progress of a
people in the fine arts and in science, one
must go to the works of the few men who best
illustrate the national art and science. In
the whole history of sculpture can any one
point to a more informing, inspiring and
touching military monument than the Shaw
monument on Boston Common ? There are
bigger and costlier; but none more expressive,
juster or more uplifting. Look through
the whole list of astronomical observatories
since such establishments existed and you
will not find one which, in proportion to its
resources, has produced so much routine
work and made so many new discoveries as
the Harvard College observatory under its
present director. In the prompt and general
application of scientific discovery to the
service of humanity Americans certainly
excel other nations. It is enough to mention
anaesthesia, the telegraph, the telephone, and
the innumerable inventions of labor-saving
machinery. The use made of riches is
another test of the moral condition and
standards of a people. Now the stream of
gifts from private persons to schools, colleges,
universities, libraries, art galleries, museums
and laboratories in the United States flows
in a volume which has never been approached
in the history of the world. It is said that
there are only six towns in all Massachusetts
the inhabitants of which have no access to
free books. It is not only the few very rich
men who provide educational endowments.
Every year thousands of Americans take part
in this most intelligent beneficence, wiser
than any endowment of hospitals, asylums
or infirmaries, because a work of construction
instead of palliation. Truly there are some
encouraging evidences that the soul of the
people keeps growing.
So, in good heart and hope, learning from
failures what not to do, and from successes
what next to attempt, we may all press on
together toward our national goal — the per-
fecting of an intelligent individual citizenship
in a Christian democracy
A NEGLECTED EPIC
HOW THE REAL HERO OF THE AMERICAN WESTWARD
MOVEMENT HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN IN LITERATURE
BY
FRANK NORRIS
AS I have tried to point out once before
in these pages, the Frontier has
disappeared. The westward-moving
course of empire has at last crossed the
Pacific Ocean. Civihzation has circled the
globe and has come back to its starting point ,
the vague and mysterious East.
The thing has not been accomplished
peacefully. From the very first it has been
an affair of wars — of invasions. Invasions
of the East by the West, and of raids north
and south — raids accomplished by flying
columns that dashed out from both sides of
the main army. Sometimes even the invaders
have fought among themselves, as for instance
the Trojan War, or the civil wars of Italy,
England and America; sometimes they have
turned back on their tracks and, upon one
pretext or another, reconquered the races
behind them, as for instance Alexander's
wars to the eastward, the Crusades, and
Napoleon's EgA'ptian campaigns.
Retarded by all these obstacles, the march
has been painfull}' slow. To move from
Egypt to Greece took centuries of time,
^lore centuries were consumed in the campaign
that brought empire from Greece to Rome,
and still more centuries passed before it
crossed the Alps and invaded northern and
western Europe.
But observe. Once across the Mississippi,
the West — our Far West — was conquered in
about forty years. In all the vast campaign
from east to west here is the most signal
victory, the swiftest, the completest, the
most brilliant achievement — the wilderness
subdued at a single stroke.
Now all these various fightings to the
westward, these mysterious race-movements,
migrations, wars and wanderings have pro-
duced their literature, distinctive, peculiar,
excellent. And this literature we call epic.
The Trojan War gave us the "Iliad," the
"Odyssey" and the "^neid"; the campaign
of the Greeks in Asia Minor produced the
"Anabasis" ; a whole cycle of literature grew
from the conquest of Europe after the fall
of Rome— "The Song of Roland," "The
Nibelungenlied, " "The Romance of the
Rose," "Beowulf," "Magnusson," "The
Scotch Border Ballads," "The Poem of the
Cid,' ' " The Hemskringla,' ' " Orlando Furioso,"
"Jerusalem Delivered," and the like.
On this side of the Atlantic, in his clumsy,
artificial way, but yet recognized as a pro-
ducer of literature, Cooper has tried to
chronicle the conquest of the eastern part of
our country. Absurd he may be in his ideas
of life and character, the art in him veneered
over with charlatanism; yet the man was
solemn enough and took his work seriously,
and his work is literature.
Also a cycle of romance has grown up
around the Civil War. The theme has had
its poets to whom the public have been glad
to listen. The subject is vast, noble; is in
a word epic, just as the Trojan War and the
Retreat of the Ten Thousand were epic.
But when at last one comes to look for the
literature that sprang from and has grown
up around the last great epic event in the
history of civilization, the event which in
spite of stupendous difficulties was consum-
mated more swiftly, more completely, more
satisfactorily than any like event since the
westward migration began — I mean the con-
quering of the West, the subduing of the
wilderness beyond the Mississippi — What has
this produced in the way of literature ? The
dime novel ! The dime novel and nothing
else. The dime novel and nothing better.
The Trojan War left to posterity the charac-
ter of Hector; the wars with the Saracens
gave us Roland; the folklore of Iceland pro-
duced Grettir; the Scotch border poetry
brought forth the Douglas; the Spanish epic
the Cid. But the American epic, just as
heroic, just as elemental, just as important
A NEGLECTED EPIC
2905
I
and as picturesque, will fade into history
leaving behind no finer type, no nobler hero
than Buffalo Bill.
The young Greeks sat on marble terraces
overlooking the /Egean Sea and listened to
the thunderous roll of Homer's hexameter.
In the feudal castles the minstrel sang to
the young boys, of Roland. The farm folk
of Iceland to this very day treasure up and
read to their little ones hand-written copies
of the Gretla Saga chronicling the deeds and
death of Grettir the Strong. But the youth
of the United States learn of their epic by
paying a dollar to see the " Wild West Show. "
The plain truth of the matter is that we
have neglected our epic — the black shame of
it be on us — and no contemporaneous poet
or chronicler thought it worth his while to
sing the song or tell the tale of the West,
because literature in the day when the West
was being won was a cult indulged in by cer-
tain well-bred gentlemen in New England
who looked eastward to the Old World, to the
legends of England and Norway and Germany
and Italy for their inspiration, and left the
great, strong, honest, fearless, resolute deeds
of their own countrymen to be defamed and
defaced by the nameless hacks of the "yellow
back" libraries.
One man, — who wrote "How Santa Claus
Came to Simpson's Bar," — one poet, one
chronicler did, in fact, arise for the moment,
who understood that wild, brave life and who
for a time gave promise of bearing record of
things seen.
One of the requirements of an epic — a true
epic^is that its action must devolve upon
some great national event. There was no
lack of such in those fierce years after '49.
Just that long and terrible journey from the
Mississippi to the ocean is an epic in itself.
Yet no serious attempt has ever been made
by an American author to render into prose
or verse this event in our history as "national"
in scope, in origin and in results as the
Revolution itself. The prairie schooner is as
large a figure in the legends as the black ship
that bore Ulysses homeward from Troy. The
sea meant as much to the Argonauts of the
fifties as it did to the ten thousand.
And the Alamo ! There is a trumpet-call in
the word ; and only the look of it on the printed
page is a flash of fire. But the very histories
slight the deed, and to many an American,
bom under the same flag that the Mexican
rifles shot to ribbons on that splendid day,
the word is meaningless. Yet Thermopylae
was less glorious, and in comparison with
that siege the investment of Troy was mere
wanton riot. At the very least the Texans
in that battered adobe church fought for the
honor of their flag and the greater glory of
their country, not for loot or the possession
of the person of an adulteress. Young men
are taught to consider the Iliad, with its
butcheries, its glorification of inordinate
selfishness and vanity, as a classic. Achilles,
murderer, egoi.st, ruffian and liar, is a hero.
But the name of Bowie, the name of the man
who gave his life to his flag at the Alamo, is
perpetuated only in the designation of a knife.
Crockett is the hero only of a "funny story"
about a sagacious coon; while Travis, the boy
commander who did what Gordon with an
empire back of him failed to do, is quietly
and definitely ignored.
Because we have done nothing to get at
the truth about the West, because our best
writers have turned to the old country folk--
lore and legends for their inspiration, because
"melancholy harlequins" strut in fringed
leggings upon the street corners, one hand
held out for pennies, we have come to believe
that our West, our epic, was an affair of
Indians, road agents and desperadoes, and
have taken no account of the brave men who
stood for law and justice and liberty, and for
those great ideas died by the hundreds,
unknown and unsung; died that the West
might be subdued, that the last stage of the
march should be accomplished, that the
Anglo-Saxon should fulfil his destiny and
complete the cycle of the world.
The great figure of our neglected epic, the
Hector of our ignored Iliad, is not, as the dime
novels would have us believe, a lawbreaker,
but a lawmaker; a fighter, it is true, as is
always the case with epic figures, but a
fighter for peace, a calm, grave, strong man
who hated the lawbreaker as the hound hates
the wolf.
He did not lounge in barrooms ; he did not
cheat at cards ; he did not drink himself to
maudlin fury ; he did not ' 'shoot at the drop
of the -hat." But he loved his horse, he loved
his friend, he was kind to little children; he
was always ready to side with the weak
against the strong, with the poor against the
rich. For hypocrisy and pretence, for shams
and subterfuges, he had no mercy, no toler-
2906
A CONSERVATIVE WORD OF WARNING
ance. He was too brave to lie and too strong
to steal. The odds in that lawless day were
ever against him; his enemies were many and
his friends were few; but his face was always
set bravely against evil, and fear w^as not in
him even at the end. For such a man as this
could die no quiet death in a land where law
went no further than the statute books and
life lay in the crook of my neighbor's fore-
finger.
He died in defense of an ideal, an epic
hero, a legendary figiire, formidable, sad. He
died facing down injustice, dishonesty and
crime; died "in his boots"; and the same
world that has glorified Achilles and for-
gotten Travis finds none so poor to do him
reverence. No literature has sprimg up
around him — this great character native to
America. He is of all the world-types the
one distinctive to us — peculiar, particular
and unique. He is dead and even his work
is misinterpreted and misunderstood. His
very memory will soon be gone, and the
American epic, which on the shelves of
posterity should have stood shoulder to
shoulder with the " Hemskringla " and the
"Tales of the Nibelungen" and the "Song of
Roland," will never be written.
A CONSERVATIVE WORD OF WARNING
THE DANGER THAT OUR PRESENT RATE OF EXPANDING
CREDITS MAY HAVE IN STORE FOR US— A THOROUGH
REVIEW OF OUR FINANCIAL SITUATION — IS IT SOUND. >
BY
FRANK A. VANDERLIP
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THK NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK CITY
An address delivered before the Chamber of Commerce of Wihnington, North Carolina
WE are all aware that we are in a
unique period of commercial, finan-
cial and industrial development. It
is undoubtedly the most important, the most
remarkable and the most interesting period
of industrial and financial evolution in the
history of the nation. We have witnessed in
the last half-dozen years a commercial expan-
sion and a financial movement alike unparal-
leled in the achievements of our own country
or in the growth of other lands — of which
I shall emphasize a few noteworthy facts.
In the domestic field we have had both a
series of extraordinary crop years and a period
of extraordinary industrial activity. On the
agricultural side we have seen the annual
value of far.Ti products increase far over
$1,000,033,030 in the last half-dozen years,
and we have seea the value of the farms them-
selves ad/ance more than $4,000,000,000 in
the same time. In the industrial field we
have had a period of the fullest employment
of labor (except where labor has chosen to
refrain from work) and of the highest general
level of wages which has ever been known.
either with us or with any other people. The
definite evidence of this prosperity we have
seen in a doubling of the individual deposits in
national banks, the total going up from roundly
$1,600,000000 in 1896 to $3,200,000,000 this
year. In the same time the deposits of sav-
ings banks have increased $700,000,000, the
deposits of State banks $1,000,000,000 — con-
siderably more than doubling the total of
six years ago — and the deposits in trust
companies also more than doubling, the
increase there being $600,000,000. In these
half-dozen years the credits represented by
individual deposits in banks of all classes
have increased roundly $4,000,000,000, an
increase nearly equal to the total deposits
of all kinds half a dozen years ago.
Bank clearings — an excellent measure of
general trade — increased in these half-dozen
years 150 per cent., and it is estimated that
the total wealth of the country has had more
than $20,000,000,000 added to it in that
period.
We have increased our coal production
100,000,000 tons, and passed easily to the
A CONSERVATIVE WORD OE WARNING
2907
l)osition of the greatest of coal-producing
nations. Wc liave almost trebled our pro-
duction of steel, leaving our competitors far
behind in any comparison 'of volume of busi-
ness. We have added $400,000,000 to the
annual product of our mining industries.
Whichever way we turn we find that the
figures measuring the volume of business, the
extent of industry, the growth of financial
importance, have in these last half-dozen
years made an apparent gain equal to the
entire total six years ago. It is hardly too
much to say that in six years we have doubled
the figures measuring the apparent extent of
our annual domestic business.
Now, for a moment, to turn from the
domestic side of the account to the foreign
situation. Here we have recorded gains
which have given deep concern to the whole
commercial world. In 1896 we passed the
$1,000,000,000 mark with our exports,
and in five years more the total stood just
under $1,500,000,000. At the same time our
imports were declining, so that we were not
only making wonderful inroads upon foreign
markets, but we were more than holding our
own in our own markets in competition with
foreign manufacturers. Our foreign trade
balances began to show incredible totals in
our favor, running up well over $600,000,000
a year, and causing the gravest apprehen-
sion in the minds of our commercial rivals
in regard to the industrial readjustment
which the world must look forward to if such
totals were to be maintained. In a single
year we imported $105,000,000 of gold. The
world suddenly discovered that we were not
alone its granary, but we were likely to become
its workshop. We pushed into the foreign
markets with the handiwork of our mechanics
and the products of our machines, month
by month increasing our sales, until from a
total of less than $200,000,000 of exports
of manufactures we had soon far exceeded
$400,000,000, making increases so rapid that
Europe was brought face to face with the
problem of reorganization of her industries
to meet this new-born competition, and a
readjustment of her finances to pay for her
increased purchases, which she seemed unable
to offset by increased sales.
I had the privilege a year ago of meeting
many of the foremost statesmen and financiers
of Europe, and of discussing with them the
pommercial questions which had been raised
by our rapid industrial development and by
our wholesale invasion of their markets. I
found everywhere the problem receiving
most serious attention. Everywhere it was
regarded as the most vital of economic
questions, and nowhere did I find anything
but wonder over the development which we
were showing and apprehension in regard to
the effect of its continuance. Where it was
to lead in its effect upon European industries
and European finances, if it were to continue,
was the unsolvable problem of finance min-
isters, bankers and industrial captains. I
had the privilege of a conversation at that
time with Germany's most distinguished
financier and industrial upbuilder, the late
Georg von Siemens — the creator of the
Deutsche Bank, the adviser of the govern-
ment, the originator of vast industrial enter-
prises. I asked him what was the future of
the Old World in respect to this new industrial
development and this sudden show of financial
strength in America. I asked him what was
to be the result, if we were to go on selling to
Europe $600,000,000 of goods a year more
than we bought, increasing our exports,
decreasing our imports, building up a theoreti-
cal trade balance of such totals as were new
in international finance.
Herr von Siemens was a wise and an experi-
enced man. He had passed through crises
and through periods of inflation, and he
viewed the outlook with calmness.
" I am not concerned about what will happen to
Europe if you are to go on in this triumphal way,"
he told me, " because you will not go on. There will
be something which will stop you. Something
always does happen in such a situation as this, and
something will happen now. I do not know what
it is ; my vision is not broad enough or clear enough
to foresee it, but you will make mistakes and a halt
will be called."
It is my purpose to examine somewhat
critically the present industrial and financial
conditions, with a view to seeing if this shrewd
German observer was right, with a view to
determining if something has happened to call
a halt in our progress toward a command of
the world's markets, and then to offer, if I
can, some suggestions as to why it is that we
have failed to keep up the pace and as to what
can be done to remove the obstacles that are
retarding our progress.
I am just back from another European trip,
and have again met many of the most distin-
guished of European statesmen and financiers.
2908
A CONSERVATIVE WORD OF WARNING
The change that the year has made in their
point of view is extremely interesting. They
are no longer fascinated by our progress.
Instead of that, I found in every capital I
visited, and in the mind of almost every keen
observer of international affairs with whom I
conversed, a belief that we have for the
present marked the high-water point of our
overflow of exports into the European indus-
trial field. And instead of credulous belief in
the unlimited possibilities of our develop-
ment, which seemed to be the average state
of mind a 3-ear ago, there is today a feeling of
grave conservatism and anxious interest in
our future.
The}- note that the rapid increase of our
exports came to a halt two years ago. They
note that our imports in the last two 3'ears
have been rapidly rising, the record for the
fiscal 3'ear just closed being more than
$900,000,000, against only a little over
$600,000,000 in 1898. They note, too, that
in spite of that tremendous balance of trade
which government reports showed in our
favor, a balance running, as I have said, up to
an average of almost $600,000,000 a year,
we do not seem to have any unusual com
mand upon international credits, but we are
as a matter of fact a considerable debtor in
the world's exchanges, and that now, in the
midst of extraordinarily bountiful harvests,
and at the season when a movement of gold
in this direction might normally be expected,
we are concerned lest a high rate of sterling
shall lead to gold exports.
If we are honest with ourselves, we must
admit that the edge is off our invasion of
foreign markets. Our totals are still colossal,
but the rate of increase which they were mak-
ing has been checked, and decreases have
been recorded. Our exports of manufactures
for the fiscal year just closed are $30,000,000
less than the point they reached two 3-ears
ago. Our total exports of domestic mer
chandise fell off more than $100,000,000 in
the year. Instead of decreasing exports we
have made some large increases in our pur-
chases of foreign goods, and the total for this
fiscal year stands more than $300,000,000
above 1899.
If we chose to examine critically our
domestic condition we might find there, too,
developments not in every respect satisfactory.
It must be with the keenest regret that we
recognize unfavorable conditions that threaten
a break in the unparalleled magnificence of
this story of industrial growth. Nothing
will better repay thought and study than
inquiry into those causes, which seem to
imperil a continuance of this wonderful period
of prosperity. Nor can any investigation be
of more vital importance than a considera-
tion of what safeguards it is possible for us to
provide, against the recuirence of these cycles
of depression which seem always to follow
periods of prosperity.
It is not my purpose, however, to dwell
upon some of the evidences of inflation, upon
a too free issue of securities larger than the
value of properties warrant and more rapid
in creation than investors can absorb, nor
upon labor conditions fraught with serious
menace which already mark their eff'ect upon
industrial totals. Instead of a broad survey
of the whole situation, I wish to take up a
single phase of it, a phase which has been well
illustrated by a recent episode in financial
affairs.
The Comptroller of the Currency, a few
days ago, completed his report showing the
condition of all national banks last month.
That report, it seems to me, is one of the
most significant that has in a long time come
from the Comptroller's office, and it will well
bear some analysis and comparison. If we
are merely looking for large totals, we may
again find them here, figures in some
respects surpassing all previous records.
The total deposits, individual, bank and
government, in all national banks, foot up
$4,527,000,000. Now, if we turn back to
a similar report for the beginning of 1899,
we will find the total of the same items
$3,226,000,000. Now, for a moment, bear
these figures in mind. Roughly, $4,500,000,000
deposits now, against $3,200,000,000 in 1899
— and with that increase in the liabilities
of national banks in mind, let us look at
the figures representing the reserve basis.
The total of specie and legal tenders held
by the national banks last month was
$508,000,000. The total at the beginning of
1899 was $509,000,000. Here we have had
an expansion of $1,300,000,000 in deposits,
while the basis of gold and legal tenders
upon which that inverted pyramid stands is
actually slightly smaller than it was at the
beginning of the period. Now, in that same
time the deposits of other banks — State banks,
trust companies, savings banks, and private
A CONSERVATIVE WORD OF WARNING
2909
banks — have probably incrciised not tar from
$3,000,000,000, and there is httlc hkchhood
tliat their gold and legal tender reserve is
materially larger than — if it is as large as — at
the beginning of 1899. We have had, tlicn,
in less than four years, an increase in the
total bank deposits of the country of over
$4,000,000,000, accompanied by no increase
in the specie and legal tender holdings of
those banks.
What has brought about this remarkable
development of bank credit ? The answer
must at once come to the mind of any observer
of finance, that the principal reason for the
expansion of deposits and the accompanying
expansion of loans is to be found in the great
movement which has been the significant
feature in financial affairs of the last half-
dozen years — the movement to aggregate
industrial establishments into single great
corporate units, and to convert the evidence
of ownership into corporate securities 'which
have entered actively into the stream of finan-
cial operations. Vast amountsof new securities
have been created in these half-dozen years,
based in large measure upon properties which
were before held as fixed investments by indi-
viduals, or if standing in the form of corporate
property the securities of those corporations
were more closely held, and in but small
measure entered into the financial operations
of the day. This movement — tending to
convert the evidence of ownership of a great
amount of fixed property into a form which
has been considered a bank collateral, and
which has been made the basis of loans and
of corresponding increases of deposits — is
undoubtedly the most important single cause
for this increase of more than $4,000,000,000
in bank deposits and bank loans of the
country in the space of three or four years.
Another important contributing influence
has been the vast expenditures of corpora-
tions— railroad companies particularly — for
the improvement, betterment and extension
of their properties. New securities have been
created, and the capital which was obtained
by their sale has been converted into a fixed
form of investment. When our railroads
were first built economy in construction was
the prime consideration. Now it has come
to be that economy in operation is demanded.
At first it was economy in the use of capital;
now it is economy in the use of labor. And
so we have seen, not onlv with the railroads,
but in every department of industry, a lavish
investment of capital in order that the cost
of production might be cheapened.
Now let us sui)i)ose that all this great
expenditure has been wisely made, and in
the main I believe that it has, that every
dollar which has been expended in the im-
provement and betterment of railroads,
in the extension and better equipment of
industries, will effect economies which will
result in a saving equal to a fair interest
return on the capital so invested. But,
granting that the investment, from that
point of view, has been wise, a consideration
which we have perhaps in some measure lost
sight of is that this whole great movement of
improvements and betterments has been
drawing from the fund such liquid capital and
converting it into a fixed form, so that such
capital cannot be fully returned into liquid
shape, from the result of increased earnings,
before the next ten or fifteen years.
If a farmer were to ask a country bank
to loan him $10,000 to put up new buildings
and generally improve his property, the
banker, while admitting that the expendi-
ture might be a profitable one in the added
return which the farm would give, would
say that the proposal was not a good bank-
ing proposition — that bank funds could
not properly be tied up in an investment of
that character, but must be loaned for objects
which, in the natural order of the commercial
season's progress, would liquidate the debt in
a much shorter time than would be possible
were the capital to be converted into such a
fixed form of investment. Recognizing this
principle, the National Banking Act very
wisely prohibits loaning upon real estate.
Sound as the security is, it is not within the
lines of the banking principle which embodies
the practice of making only such loans as will
in the natural order of business liquidate them-
selves within a few months.
If a railway manager were to ask from
his larger bankers a $1,000,000 loan to put
into better bridges and heavier track, the
same answer would be made. It would be
unwise for a bank so to tie up active capital
by converting it into a fixed form of invest-
ment. Profitable as the banker might be
convinced the investment would be in the
greater economies which it would bring to the
operation of the railroad, he would see that
it would be unwise financiering for him to
2910
A CONSERVATIVE WORD OF WARNING
loan his deposits for conversion into a fixed
form of investment which could not be liqui-
dated should his depositors begin to reduce
their deposit lines. Securities issued for
just such purposes, however, form much of
the basis of this increase of $4,000,000,000 of
loans. The loans are excellent so long as A.
can sell his collateral to B. should A. be
called upon to repay, but if A. and B. should
both be called upon to pay, there is nothing
in the nature of these loans which will permit
them rapidly to work out toward liquidation
in the natural order of things. It is, in effect,
a loaning of bank credit for conversion into
a fixed form of property.
If, say, two-thirds of the total income from
industrial investments were to be returned
to the betterment of properties, and there
should be issued in place of the capital so
spent additional securities, the process wotfld
be wise and beneficial. If, on the other hand,
there should be converted into the form of
fixed property by expenditures for improve-
ments and betterments a total amount of
capital considerably exceeding the total
annual income from such investments, the
result in the end could lead only to disaster,
no matter how wisely these expenditures for
betterments and improvements might be
made — because in the process there would be
absorbed a larger and larger amount of liquid
capital into the form of fixed investment,
banking reserves would be reduced, and when
bank deposits were demanded, though there
might be the soundest of security back of
them, it would be in a fixed form unavailable
for liquidating the debts due to depositors.
It must be admitted, I believe, that we have
been converting too great an amount of liquid
capital into fixed forms of investment. What
is the cure ? The cure is, of course, to reduce
the expenditures of that character so that they
will come within the line of safety. What
is the line of safety? It is, it seems to me,
something well within the total income from
such investments. If we go beyond it — if we
convert into fixed forms of property more
than the total income from the property —
we have gone beyond the line of safety and
are borrowing from the future temporarily
to bury the capital. We have the choice of
one of two things: Either to practise wise
discretion or to go on borrowing of the future
until we are brought up against a wall. The
first course is consistent with continued pros-
perity, even if we do, to some extent, reduce
the expenditure of capital for new construc-
tion, extensions and betterments. The
second course, if persisted in, will bring con-
fusion, disorder and paralysis on the whole
constructive investment.
Another phase of this situation, and one
which has aggravated the causes leading to
an expansion of loans, and which has cut off
from us the relief which we hoped for in the
way of a foreign trade balance made tangible
by gold imports, has been the rapidity and
extent of the advance in prices. Back in
1895 and 1896 we were on a low level of
prices, and we were imbued with economical
ideas of administration. It was then that we
began making great inroads into foreign
markets and our exports had passed the
$1,000,000,000 mark. In 1898 our exports
had so increased and our imports so decreased
that we had a balance in our favor of more
than $600,000,000, and that balance was
tangibly reflected that year in a net importa-
tion of $105,000,000 of gold. Then prices
began to rise, the total of our exports did not
hold up the next year, while our imports
began to show a marked increase. In the
subsequent years we were fortunate in
exceptionally favorable agricultural condi-
tions, of bountiful harvests at home and
scantily filled granaries abroad, so that our
exports showed some further increases; but
our imports went up more rapidly than did
our exports until, in the fiscal year just
closed, we showed a total of imports nearly
$300,000,000 more than in 1898.
The whole general level of prices has
advanced, and some of these advances, from
the extreme low level of 1897 or 1898 to the
high level which has been reached within the
last two years, are the sharpest in our com-
mercial history. Pig iron, for instance,
advanced from less than Si 2 a ton in October.
1898, to $2 5 at the beginning of 1900. Steel
rails doubled in the same period, the price
going up from $17.50 to $35. Bar iron scored
even a greater percentage of gain within a
shorter time, the price advancing from 95c.
a hundred in July, 1897, to $2.60 in October.
1899. The quotation for clear pine boards
has advanced from S45 to $73 a thousand; for
brick, from $4.50 to $6; rope, from 5/ic. to
13c.; and salt, from 21c. to $1. Take the
advance of some of the Southern products in
that same period. We see linseed oil marked
A CONSERVATIVE WURU OE WARNING
291 r
up from 29c. to 68c.; turpentine from 26c. to
50c.; molasses from 28c. to 550.
These extreme advances in prices have not
been fully maintained, but the present level
of market cjuotations is still 50 to 80 per cent,
above prices in 1897 and 1898 for many
commodities.
So the list might be continued. These
examples are extreme, and the low level was
probably unduly depressed. But they tell
the story of why our exports have failed to
go on increasing, and they have been an
important influence in the inflation of bank
credits.
When a railroad company had to pay $35
a ton, as against $17.50, for steel rails, its
improvements become relatively very costly
and its issues of securities against permanent
betterments must be on a much more liberal
scale. The cost of production in every
direction has been increased until we find
ourselves actually importing from some of
the identical markets that two or three years
ago were in a panic over our invasion.
Prices of securities advanced along with
other prices, and attracted the holdings of
foreign investors, until we swept the con-
tinent of Europe almost clean of our stocks
and bonds, and greatly reduced the holdings
of English investors.
We still had an ample total of excess of
exports, however, and out of our favorable
trade balance we could pay for reams of
securities and still have something left. We
did not stop at buying our own securities,
but began making great foreign investments,
to the astonishment of the financial world,
turning the tables upon Europe and sending
a great stream of credit for investment there.
The result was that by the year 1900, in
spite of a nominal foreign trade balance of
nearly $550,000,000 in our favor, the net
result of the gold movement that year was an
export of about $4,000,000. The next year
we brought in a few more millions of gold
than we sent out, and we did the same last
year, but since 1898 there has been, in
spite of the theoretical trade balance, no
significant shipment of gold in our direction .
There has, however, been a movement in
international finance which is not reflected in
the customs statements. We have been build-
ing up a floating debt to Europe, made up of
borrowings in the fonn of short -time bills.
The exact total of that floating indebtedness
at the present time is one of the difficult prob-
lems of finance, but it must be very large. I
have heard it estimated by financiers in
foreign capitals as high as $200,000,000 to
$300,000,000. That estimate, I believe, is far
too high; but, even so, the total we must
admit is important.
Particularly is it imjjortant in view of the
statistics of bank reserves, to which I have
before referred. In 1899 the national banks
held 7,7, per cent, of reserve. In their vaults
was a good part of the $105,000,000 of gold
which had come in from abroad the ])receding
year. It was this excess of reserve which per-
mitted loans to expand $1,300,000,000 since
that date without adding a dollar to the
stock in the bank vaults of specie and legal
tenders. But now we have gone to the limit
in that respect. This last report shows less
than 21 per cent, of reserve for all the national
banks of the country. Not one of the three
central reserve cities was up to the legal
limit. Twenty-two of thirty other reserve
cities were below the legal limit.
We have seen what a great expansion of
deposits and loans, both, remember, almost
wholly but evidences of bank credit, could
follow the increase in the reserve basis that
came with the gold importations of 1897 and
1898. We see from this last statement of the
Comptroller that the expansion has reached
the utmost limit possible with the present
basis of specie and legal tenders. Is it not
well to ask. What of the future? If a
$100,000,000 importation of gold can serve
as a basis for an expansion of so many
millions of deposits and loans, what will an
exportation of $100,000,000 mean? Will not
the answer lead us to ponder on the probable
effect of future gold movements ? Does our
foreign commerce give promise of a trade
balance great enough again to induce gold to
flow in this direction ? Let us examine recent
records. For the first nine months of this
year our imports increased over last year
$56,000,000, and it must be remembered
that the total imports for last year were
$300,000,000 more than in 1898. On the
other side of the book, our exports for
the nine months of this year decreased
$108,000,000, so that the record for the
nine inonths shows a net balance of
$164,000,000 more unfavorable than the
corresponding nine months of the previous
vear. In the same time we have lost
2912
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT BOOKS
$8,000,000 of gold. For the twelve months
ending with September our favorable
trade balance was $420,000,000, against
$641,000,000 for the previous twelve months,
a decrease of $221,000,000.
The evidences, then, of advancing prices
that check exportation and increase importa-
tion, the absorption of our favorable trade
balance in foreign investments and in the
repurchase of securities, the uncertain totals
of our floating indebtedness represented by
short -time finance bills, all taken in connec-
tion with the fact that any reduction of the
specie reserve held by banks must be followed
by liquidation which will again establish the
proper relation between reserve and deposit
liability, would seem at least to point to the
conclusion that this is not a time favorable
for the expansion of bank credits.
I wish by no means to present an alarming
view of the outlook. What I do wish to do
is merely to sound a conservative note of
warning. I believe there are in the situation
tendencies in which are elements of possible
danger. On the other hand, I by no means
forget the long list of favorable conditions
upon the opposite side of the account. I
have the most absolute faith in our ultimate
commercial ascendency. I believe no one
who has carefully studied industrial con-
ditions in this country and in Europe can
reach a conclusion unfavorable to the prospect
of our own progress. We have the cheapest
and most nearly inexhaustible supply of raw
material, the greatest genius in the handling
of machinery for its conversion into manu-
factured products, the broadest single homo-
geneous market in the world upon which to
base substantial domestic business, which will
serve as a foundation for foreign commercial
conquest. We have numerous advantages
over our competitors, and in the end the com-
bined effect of these advantages is absolutely
certain to place us foremost in the world's
commercial ranks. It is in no wise opposed
to this view of ultimate commercial suprem-
acy— a view which no one more strongly holds
than I do — that I have pointed out conditions
which I believe, if not guarded against, will
threaten for the time being our continued
progress toward that goal. A judicious recog-
nition of the restricting conditions now visible
in our financial situation may save us from
disaster and humiliation later on — a humilia-
tion from which recovery will be slow and
painful.
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT
BOOKS .
THE World's Work sent a letter to
some of its literary friends asking
them what recent books they had
read with the greatest pleasure and profit,
and requesting that their replies be after the
manner of a personal letter. Some of these
replies are as follows:
HENRY D. SEDGWICK, JR.:
Of all the books I have read latelv,
neither a very large nor a very miscellaneous
company, the one which makes me most
glad that it has been written is Mr.
William James's "The Varieties of Religioiis
Experiences." In the first place, Mr. James
is the only master of prose whom we have
in America, where the lack of early Greek
training leaves most of us at the mercy
of the commercial idiom; and, in the second
place, his is the voice which gives utterance
to ideas that, however vaguely apprehended
and crudely held, are yet widespread and
serious. Our religious beliefs, our religious
life, if they are destined to any quickening,
must receive fresh vitality and health from
these or similar ideas; but so long as the
people who held them were both dumb and
also outside the pale of scientific sympathy,
and, one might add, of scientific politeness,
their ideas were useless to anybody except
themselves. Today in Mr. James those
people and that body of thought have a
spokesman whose scientific reputation is
unassailable, whose prose will travel farther
and quicker than that of their adversaries,
whose personality, so conspicuous in his pages,
is a most persuasive argument. It is an odd
turn of fortune's wheel that brings once more
out of Harvard University, for so long a time
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT HOOKS
2913
a hotbed of anti-religious thought, a leader,
perhaps the chief leader of enlightened
religious thought in America.
Mr. Scudder"s" Life of James Russell Lowell"
is the most interesting American biography
1 have read. Its goodness is due in part to
Mr. Scudder's skill and tact, and in part to
the exceptional position which Lowell held
among distinguished Americans. He lived
at a time when Massachusetts was the leading
State in the Union, and he was an excellent
representative of her morality, lier intelligence
and her conservatism. In the period which
ended with Emerson's death, Massachusetts
embodied an American edition, as it were, of
English ideas and traditions, of English
civilization in short, with modifications of
course, but not such marked modifications
as were at one time thought, and Lowell is a
characteristic Massachusetts Yankee. Now
America has become American, whether that
be a gain or a loss, and her leading common-
wealths are no longer under the direct
influence of English tradition, and Mr. Lowell
has stepped into his historical niche as a
figure of a past epoch. Mr. Scudder wrote
with admiration, wnth sympathy, with justice,
and described the romantic period of Lowell's
fervent youth, the time in any man's life
most worth the reading, with the grace and
refinement habitual to him. The best praise
I can give the book is to say that it awakened
my first feelings of admiration and liking for
Lowell.
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE:
As usual I am a belated reader of certain
books that for a year or more a goodly num-
ber of worthy persons have been insisting
are quite worth while. As usual I have
become convinced that these worthy readers
have reason for their complimentary conclu-
sions.
Take, for instance, the "Cabbage Patch."
The humanity of Mrs. Wiggs goes straight
from her heart to the reader's, and the matter
of a little artistic crudity, more or less, counts
but poorly against tears that creep out
unaw^ares and laughter that rings true.
Then there is that great — that almost pon-
derous— book, the "Octopus." Long it cer-
tainly is — filled with careful, almost minute
descriptive passages that the author w^orks
out with a lavish w^ealth of word and color,
and is prone to repeat later, either in sentence
or paragraph ; but above and beyond all that
is the glory of its wonderful picture of
California with the wealth and mightiness
of its product, with the play and passion of
its struggle and its upbuilding — the struggle
and the upbuilding of the West . Artistic faults
h
are here, too, but rather from an overabun-
dance of art than from any lack of it. Mighty
in conception. Titanic in execution, no other
such book has been produced in a generation.
I have likewise read "Kim." There are
no flaws in Kij)ling's art. He is the great
master of technique, and for the writer there
is strong literary stimulant on every page.
As the "Octopus" is a great canvas of
California, so is " Kim " of India — a wonderful
panorama of the under side of Hind. If it be
not true, if it be only an illusion that this great
Yogi of letters has prepared for our entertain-
ment, then at least it is perfect in its decep-
tion, which, from the literary point of view,
is equally to the purfjose. The ending ? Yes,
I had expected that it w'ould end with the
death of the Lama, and Kim going forth into
the world alone. But Kipling, the great
master, did not do this, and he must have
known why.
Remembering "Kim," recalls a book for
those who, as Kipling's Lama would say, are
"bound on the Wheel — of Things" and who
"seek the Way." The "Kingdom of the
Invisible," by Mary Piatt Parmele, is a very
small book — a short paper, in fact, read before
the Wednesday Afternoon Club, but it con-
tains the vital gist of whatever has resulted
from investigation and progress along the
paths of new science, pointed out by such
pioneers as Spencer and Tyndall and illumi-
nated by the Roentgen ray. The union of
science and religion is the ideal consummation.
The sorest of human needs is analytical proof
of immortality. Perhaps w^e have not achieved
these greater triumphs, but the way to them
grows plainer, and to those still groping this
little book may prove such a chela as was
Kim, who led the holy lama to the little
River of Peace that flowed through the
gardens behind Saharunpore.
SARAH BEAUMONT KENNEDY:
There are certain books with so human a
touch that in the reading they become as per-
sonal friends. Four such volumes lie on the
comer of my table w^aiting to be transferred
to the bookshelves, and with each of them I
am loath to part.
"The Misdemeanors of Nancy," by Eleanor
Hoyt, made of life a bubbling spring of
laughter for an entire morning. This girl
"with the Kentucky impulses and the New
Hampshire conscience," telling her misde-
meanors or flirtations to "the man wdio came
often," is so deliciously entertaining that at
the last page I bade her good-by reluctantly,
saying, as one says to a delightful visitor,
"Good-by, Nancy; come again."
The second book in my pile is also by a
2914
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT BOOKS
"woman. In "Amos Holmes," the old miller
who says that "he and the old century came
in together on an ox-cart and are going out
together on a streak of lightning," Annie
Fellows Johnston has drawn an indelible
picture. . . . From the fine, well-seasoned
character of Amos, through the coterie of
rural philosophers in jean trousers and raw-
hide boots who congregate in the cross-
roads store, down to "Perkins' oldest" trying
vainly to establish a connection between the
signs of the zodiac and the disemboweled
gentleman they surround — in all the little
company there is not a character that does
not bear the stamp of nature.
In Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler's "Fuel of
Fire" there is no one who equals the Lady
Silverhampton of her other stories. To my
way of thinking. Lady Silverhampton is the
brightest and most vivacious woman who
flashes through the pages of recent fiction, and
it is a disappointment not to meet her again
in this new story. As a novel, 'Tuel of Fire"
is scarcely up to the author's standard; but
Miss Fowler can never be anything but delight-
ful in her characterizations and dialogues ; and
with Nancy Burton dropping epigrams as
that fabled princess dropped diamonds and
pearls when she spoke, and with Lady Alicia
setting up her cheap sentimentalities in such
serious form and patronizing "dear Shake-
speare" and "dear St. Paul," I did not lack
for entertainment from cover to cover of the
book. Miss Fowler is one of the few authors
who bear reading twice.
And now I have come to the last of my
four printed friends — and the last is by no
means the least. In "The Right of Way"
Gilbert Parker satisfies the reader's thirst for
originality of conception and boldness of
execution. Full of dramatic sit.iations, the
most dramatic of them all — probably the
most dramatic touch in all modern literature
— is in the death scene, where the hero, with
his old daredevil spirit triumphing to the end,
says to the wavering death-shadow he sees in
his fevered fancy: "I beg your pardon —
but — have I ever been — introduced to you?"
The book had two other logical endings, but
it was well worth the sacrifice of the logical
to secure that thrilling scene. Gilbert Parker
is a master of situations.
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS:
In trying to remember the recent books
that have made an impression upon me, it
will be best to confess that every book I read
makes an impression more or less lasting.
But one of the most recent books, and one the
effects of which are the most vivid, is "The
Fortunes of OUver Horn" by Mr. F. Hopkinson
Smith. The narrative is the least impor-
tant thing, but the characters stand out as do
the figures in a painting, strong, clear, power-
ful. Another book on parallel lines is the
story of "Aladdin O'Brien," which is vigor-
ously wrought out, and in which the dramatic
effects are complete. It is in order for the
older hands, who never had any vigor or who
have lost it if they had, to pout a little when
they are confronted by things done by those
who have youth at their elbows.
Another book that has given me great
pleasure, and that has been a treat to some
little girls of my acquaintance, is the story
of Emmy Lou. I don't recall the title, and
the book is not at hand, but it is a very
beautiful study of childhood, and not less
beautiful for its realism. The man who
knows childhood completely knows every-
thing that is worth knowing.
Along with this should be mentioned
Mr. Mowbray's "Journey to Nature," where
the boy is pictured forth with such exquisite
ease, and where the young woman is made to
shine in all her native simplicity. I don't
know why, but Mr. Mowbray's method of
handling his material reminds me of a
series of acute social studies which
appeared in the New York World when
Manton Marble was editor.
I must not forget Booker Washington's
autobiography, which is a very strong book.
I could wish that everybody at the North
could read everything Booker Washington
writes or says. There is great need of
education in that section with respect to
the real relations between the men that
represent the Negroes and the men that
represent the South.
Then there is "The Quiet Life," by Charles
Wagner, which interested me very much.
But something in it (I have never been able
to decide what it is) jarred on me and left a
bitter taste in my mouth. Yet it is a book
full of the largest and most important tniths.
In "The Heroines of Fiction," Mr. Howells
gives some delightful pictures in the way of
comment or criticism. You may not agree witli
everything he says, but you are certain to
agree with the way he says it, and you are cer-
tain to admire his catholicity of taste. I coni«
mend his book to young women who have not
the opportunity to read all the books in which
the heroines are embalmed. In introducing
them to modem readers, he covers the whole
ground of English fiction, and presents the
young women in a way that is delightful.
And now, if you please, I will return to the
works of the late Mr. Charles Reade. I was
deep in "The Cloister and the Hearth" when
you interrupted me.
AA\OMG
TAE WORLD'S
WORKERS
:^:u^:-M
AN AMERICAN IRON-WORKER IN CENTRAL
AMERICA
ON the wave of American activity that
pulsed round the world in the Spring of
last year went an iron-worker from New York
to a Central American republic. His task
was to superintend the iron work of an Ameri-
can building going up b}' no plans more
definite, he asserted afterward, than a wash
drawing of how the structure would look
when completed, and under the direction of
an engineer whose books said a foot of con-
crete would support 30 tons, without telling
what would support the concrete. Thus it
came about that the concrete foundation was
set on the top of the ground — and made
ground at that. The iron frame-work had
not twisted very far out of plumb, as the con-
crete sank, when the engineer resigned and
the iron-worker foreman was made construc-
tion boss, inheriting the prophetic wash draw-
ing, by this time somewhat soiled, and a very
pretty problem.
"I am a housesmith and bridge builder,"
said he to the company's superintendent,
"but if you say 'Tackle the whole thing,'
why, I'll tackle^ it."
And he did. He was then but thirty, w^th
the blackest of hair : he is thirty-one now, and
his hair is gray.
"Hot!" said he, "the sun is onlv about
a foot above your head down there ! And
in the rainy season the water comes up to
your chin ! And trouble — there is nothing
but trouble."
His first task was to jack the building up
and put in new foundations fifteen feet deep.
He discharged the other American foremen,
chiefly because they were poor workmen and
incidentally because they fought one day.
Then he turned architect and engineer, mak-
ing his own plans as he went along. Later
by turns he became boss mason, boss carpen-
ter, boss plumber, boss blacksmith, forced by
inefficient native foremen to oversee every
petty detail.
Two hundred negroes and fifty peons were
his workmen — the peons from the interior
dying like flies of the fevers in that swampy
coast-land : yellow fever and black water fever,
with malaria as the normal state of health
between the attacks. He took the yellow
fever himself, and after walking four miles to
hospital under a broiling sun, with his tem-
perature at 103, returned to work in a week,
just in time to see a peon holding the guy rope
of a gin-pole drop the rope to light a cigarette,
while the gin-pole majestically toppled over
and broke.
"I'se a carpentah, boss," would plead one
of the itinerant negroes that voyage about the
Indies and through the Isthmus in search of
work.
"I don't need a carpenter."
"Well, sah, I'se served mah time as a black-
smith in the Barbadoes."
"Nor a blacksmith."
"But I'se a mason, too."
"I don't need a mason; I want an electrical
engineer."
"Well, sah, I learned that profession in
Jamaica."
"All right. Take that hod and go to work.
You'll find the mortar over there."
This was the formula. No negro lacked
verbal education; no negro was ignorant of
any trade or profession nameable ; and all were
lazy and unteachable. All of them claimed
to be "English gentlemen, 5 ah," and "mis-
tahed" one another. If back pay was forth-
coming, they considered discharge a joke.
It is no uncommon thing for foremen to
coerce them with revolvers; one foreman, a
little cold-blooded man from Alabama, had
moved from the west coast of the Isthmus
clear around South America to the east coast.
"leaving," his reputation ran, "a trail of dead
niggers behind him." But the iron-worker
kept his revolver dumb, and discharged the
workmen in squads. In the year and four
months the work lasted the gang of 250 rep-
resented between 4,000 and 5,000 different
men.
To add to fever and heat and exasperat-
2916
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
ing workmen came revolutions. In one the
President called for volunteers. Away from a
nearby ranch marched forty peons headed by
the overseer, who carried this note: "I send
forty volunteers. Please return the rope."
A few days later the alcalde of the town sent
a file of his barefooted soldiers, armed with
old Remington rifles longer than the men,
and long-barreled pistols himg so low in the
middle of the back that they gave a ludicrous
suggestion of tails, and arrested all the iron-
worker's peons. Building stopped. All that
day came official reports of a battle at the
capital: first "150 dead and 400 wounded;"
later "800 dead and impossible to count the
wotmded." Xext day's more accurate report
showed two killed and none wounded. The
battle had consisted of penning a handful of
insurgents in a building and shooting all day
at the stone walls with an old Spanish bronze
cannon loaded with American wire nails. At
six the insurgents surrendered on the plea that
they were willing to die for liberty, but that
going without supper was not nominated in
the bond. Thus ended the revolution. The
following day the peons returned to work.
And so it went. The framework proved
to be too slight and when the building was all
up the beams began to give and bend under
the w^eight. That meant a thorough strength-
ening of the frame with patches and new
beams — not an easy problem at that stage of
the construction. Then at the very last the
iron-worker received notice for the first time
that the company had "planned" to have
three large water tanks in the top of the build-
ing— there was more tearing up of old work
and more strengthening of the frame.
But it was finished at last. " It took," said
he, "250 men sixteen months. Properly
planned, 100 American workmen could have
done it in three."
TELEPHONING THROUGH THE EARTH
FOLLOWING directly on Marconi's wire-
less experiments and success come
with peculiar interest the achievements of
Mr. James Tarbotton Armstrong, a well-
known London engineer.
The man who shares the credit of these
developments of wireless telegraphy and the
discovery of the wireless telephone with
Mr. Armstrong, is Mr. Axel Orling, a young
Swedish electrician. He is two years younger
than Marconi, to whom, inevitably, he has
b en described as a rival. ^Ir. Armstrong is
a Devon man in the prime of life, energetic,
enthusiastic, full of schemes. Messrs. Arm-
strong and Orling appear to have stumbled
across their system of wireless telegraphy
while at work on something else. They met
first about five 3-ears ago. Mr. Orling's fame
as the "Edison of Sweden" had reached
Mr. Armstrong, who secured him to work
upon certain experiments. One Saturday
afternoon three years ago they were busy
experimenting w^ith electric light, when Mr.
Armstrong suggested that, with the extra-
ordinary power they were getting, it would be
well to try whether they could not send elec-
trical impulses through the ground for tele-
graphic purposes. The success of the experi-
ment marked the beginning of what are known
as the " Armorl" discoveries — this word being
derived, of course, from the first syllable of
each of the inventors' names.
A familiar illustration will explain the
theory of the discoveries. Cast a stone into
a pond, and you start circles which grow ever
wider till they reach the bank. As a pond is
full of water, so is the earth full of electricity..
Messrs. Armstrong and Orling found it pos-
sible to start the electricity in the earth into
waves by a slight impulse. Briefly put,
therefore, their system consists of tapping
the ground and sending electrical impulses
by means of a specially constructed trans-
mitter to a very sensitive receiver. In the
transmitter and receiver lie the secrets of their
invention.
The Armorl system of wireless telegraphy
was publicly exhibited last autumn at Des-
burga, Mr. Armstrong's residence on the north-
east confines of Highenden parish. Besides
utilizing the earth as a conductor, the system
is distinguished from others by the fact that
the currents discharged are of very low poten-
tial. A current of eight volts is more than
sufficient to transmit a message twenty miles;
it has actually been done with a current of
only four volts. Another advantage the
Armorl system claims over the Marconi is that
an elaborate apparatus is not necessary;
there are no induction coils, coherers, or high
masts. The whole apparatus weighs five or
six pounds, and can be put into a little box.
It comprises a receiver and a small battery
packed in a case, having two contact screws
on the outside. Two pointed iron stakes are
driven into the ground to a depth of about
eighteen inches and about twelve feet apart.
To each of these is attached a wire connect-
ing respe tively the negative and po itive
poles of th ■ instrument. A small key similar
to that used for dispatching Morse code signals
is attached, together with a telephone receiver.
The current thus set up flows through these
wires and stakes into the ground. The oper-
ator holds a telephone receiver to his ear with
one hand, while with the other he transmits
AMONG 'nil': WORLDS WORKERS
2917
the message in the ordinary dots and dashes.
At the opposite station similar iron stakes are
phiccd to receive the impulses, and here, if
necessary, the receiver can be connected to
a Morse tape-printing machine, and the mes-
sages printed as they are received.
The important thing is the receiver, which
supplants the "coherer." It is an electro-
capillary relay, by means of which the
most feeble impulses are able to operate a
receiving apparatus, the operation depending
upon the electro-capillary force exerted at
the surfaces in contact of certain dissimilar
fluid conductors when an electric current
passes from one to the other.
For long-distance telegraphy — that is to
say, beyond twenty miles — the air is used as
a conductor, but here again superiority is
claimed for the Armstrong-Orling system.
"Whereas the best relay in the market with
eight volts is equal to a transmission of 1,699
miles," says Mr. Armstrong, "ours is equal
to one of 12,990." It has not actually been
tested over that distance, but it has been
tested by opposing to it a resistance equal to
that distance. There are, therefore, the two
systems of wireless telegraphy — a ground
system for short distances, and the ordinary
pole system of spark telegraphy for long dis-
tances. But the poles in this case are only
one-tenth the height of those employed by
Marconi; and it is also claimed that a hundred
letters can be sent in the time needed by
Signor Marconi for sending thirty-six. "Our
'coherers' are so much more sensitive than
his," says Mr. Armstrong; "and where he can
send a message a hundred miles, we can send
one a thousand. We are able to take up
impulses, through the sensitiveness of our
apparatus, that no other system can take up."
Marconi uses the Hertzian waves, and Hertz's
apparatus for receiving them. Messrs. Orling
and Armstrong receive the Hertzian waves
by a receiver designed by themselves.
A WIRELESS TELEPHONE
THE wireless telephone — perhaps of all the
Armstrong-Orling inventions the one
most likely to affect the general public — is a
later adaptation of the same system, and repre-
sents a great addition which the inventors
made in the interval tc the power of their
transmitter and the sensitiveness of their
receiver. Compared with present-day tele-
phones, it recommends itself on the ground
of cheapness and simplicity. The transmitter
[consists of a wooden pedestal twelve inches
high, surmounted by a dial of thin wood,
behind which are microphones. Under the
edestal is a network of switches, screws and
wires. In addition, tlicre is a small bar with
four brass screws and four wires; the screws
are marked Ei, b, B, and K2 — the letter E
denoting "earth," and B "battery." Two
wires are connected to B and then to the bat-
tery— an ordinary ])rimary battery — and two
wires to Ex and E2; and the latter are then
run a foot or so into the earth. Five miles
away the other man does exactly the same
thing, with a precisely similar apparatus.
You press a button, a bell rings at the othei
end, and the conversation begins. The
instruments are sent out in pairs, each instru-
ment having its affinity. "It is," Mr. Arm-
strong explains, "solely a question of vibra-
tions." A tuning fork pitched to C will, if
set vibrating, vibrate another tuning fork
pitched to C, but will leave one pitched to D
unaffected.
I asked Mr. Armstrong how the presence of
many instruments together in a city will affect
the ef!iciency of the system. "Suppose," he
replied, "an exchange as the centre for hun-
dreds of instruments. They are all varied in
their vibrations. Suppose you want to call
me up, and I vibrate at 10,000, you at 5,000.
You call up the exchange, and either you are
raised to 10,000 vibrations or I am brought
down to 5,000, and we are at once in sympathy
with each other and can speak. Even a private
installation is capable of, say , half a dozen vari-
ations of vibrations ; thus six places may be at
your call. But beyond that, the mechanism
might be too complicated for a private installa-
tion, and you would have to speak through
the exchange." The capacity of the telephone
is not determined by the intervening space;
a greater distance can be covered according
as the transmitter is made more powerful
and the receiver more sensitive.
WIRELESS INVENTIONS IN NAVAL WARFARE
AS factors to be reckoned with in the naval
warfare of the future, the Armstrong-
Orling inventions have won great praise from
an authority so high as Sir William Laird
Clowes, the historian of the British Navy.
"Cheap and simple in application," says this
expert, "requiring no expensive or permanent
installation, being independent of atmospheric
conditions and material instructions, and
working through earth and water instead of
through air, they should revolutionize naval
signaling, especially in fleets They should
also open a new era in submarine mining and
countermining, and lead to the displacement
both of the Whitehead and other automobile
torpedoes, and of submarine boats in favor
of controllable weapons manipulated from a
distance without the intervention of wires."
2918
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
They furnish, for example, among other
things, an improved means of propagating
electrical impulses and of giving them a defi-
nite character; an efficacious means of restor-
ing the detectors to their normal condition
after the reception of such impulses; and
means by which a torpedo or other craft may
be caused automatically to follow the course
of a beam of rays.
A practical demonstration of controlling a
torpedo by these means took place at Stock-
holm four years ago, in the presence of King
Oscar, and in 1900 an "actinaut" — a vessel
so propelled and steered — was run successfully
at Portsmouth over a distance of three miles.
The name "actinaut" seems to have been
applied first by Sir William Laird Clowes,
who derives it from the circumstance "that
the actinaut is to the dianemic torpedo what
wireless telegraphy is to the older telegraphy."
The actinaut is very small, containing only her
engine, power chamber, steering mechanism
and explosive head; she is shaped for great
speed; the depth at which she is to strike a
doomed vessel is about ten feet, and that
is her constant depth when running. Mr.
Armstrong described as follows the best means
of installing a system of coast defense, and
the same, he says, will apply with ver}^ small
modification if worked from a ship.
(It is suggested that the actinaut is even
capable of being controlled from a balloon.)
It should be explained that the apparatus
worked by the controller measures only nine-
teen inches long, by seven inches broad, by
eight high.
"Supposing," says 'Mr. Armstrong, "that
at the Coast Guard station, say for instance
at the top of the cliffs at Dover, there is placed
the apparatus necessary to guide the actinaut.
Out at sea or in the harbor are anchored
several actinauts. An enemy's ship is seen
advancing, say from the French coast, and as
soon as the operator (who is well trained)
thinks fit, a button is touched and this imme-
diately releases an actinaut, and at the same
time starts her machinery. The operator
simply guides her by means of invisible radia-
tion, entirely under his control till she strikes
the vessel, but another operator can at the
same time be working another actinaut having
the same object in view, without in any way
interfering with the first one, or a third ope-
rator can be directing still another actinaut
to another vessel, if one is seen approaching.
Supposing now it is thought best not to allow
the actinaut to follow the ship — she can be
brought back to any station or ship." Need-
less to say, the actinaut has been brought to
the notice of the British Admiraltv At the
time of writing, also, the Navy Department
of the United States is engaged in testing the
Armstrong-Orling inventions.
Another and vastly important application
of the system enables ships to learn automati-
cally whether they are near to the coast, and
if so, to what coast. The value of this during
foggy weather or on dark nights needs no
emphasizing ; it would also obviate the danger
peculiar to small vessels where no special
watch is kept. A ship is supplied (at the cost
of a few dollars) with a transmitter and a
receiver; a similar apparatus is placed on the
shore (or on a lighthouse or a lightship) ; both
can be set for one, two, three or more miles,
as may be required by the coast authorities.
Immediately the ship comes within this radius
it is made aware of the fact by its instrument,
and can communicate with the shore. This
can also be applied to "ships that pass in
the night" in midocean, enabling them to
"speak" each other. Other uses of the
system embrace railway and fire-alarm sig-
naling— it is capable of lighting and extin-
guishing a light from a distance of several
miles; and the explosion of mines.
It is, however, in the private and commer-
cial spheres of life that these inventions will
doubtless find their widest scope for the
present. Inquiries have come to the makers
from all parts with regard to installations.
It will indeed be a revolution when the
unsightly overhead wires disappear, and when
one is no longer confronted with the "no
passing" for telephone repairs.
Suppose — from the point of view of diver-
sion, if you like — 3"ou have one of these tele-
phones in your dining-room. Your neighbor,
accompanied by a boy carrying two crowbars
and a sledgehammer, walks into his garden;
the two crowbars are driven into the ground
to a depth of a few inches, about twelve feet
apart, and the wires are fastened to them.
Without further ado, he converses with you
with the greatest ease This at least will
convey an idea of how convenient, how
matter-of-course, how much a part of every
one's daily home life — to say nothing of how
important a part in army signaling in the
field — the telephone of the future may
become.
AN ENGINEERING FEAT ON LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN
TOURISTS, from President Roosevelt
and Prince Henry to the humblest,
include Lookout Mountain in their itinerary-
It possesses historic interest, for here Hooker's
famous "Battle Above the Clouds" was
fought Low in the northern slope of the
mountain, not much above the level of the
AMONG Till': WORI.D'S WOK KICKS
2919
river, is the entrance to a cave. Some years
since a party explored this cave. They met
the usual obstacles of the cave explorer,
and after climbing and crawling, pulling
themselves through small holes, squeezing
themselves flat in tight places, wading and
scrambling, they at last reached an immense
vaulted chamber. A beautiful room it was,
with stalagmites and stalactites to adorn it;
but its striking feature was a stream, spark-
ling and cold, which dashed roaring from the
roof, far above them. The scarcity of water
on the mountain had always been remark-
able. Indians had roamed the slope, war-
riors had scaled the heights, countrymen
had lived out their lives there, summer
residents had come and gone, sightseers had
gazed, and wondered, and pursued their
vvav, while here below them, all unsus-
pected, old Lookout had held his deep stores.
There was found no possible way of scaling
the walls of the lofty room, to follow the
stream to its source, and the party retraced
their way. Then the active brain of one
young man fathered a daring plan. Born
under the shadow of the " Point," and grown
to a manhood full of energy, he proposed to
bring this deep-lying water and give it to
drink to the people in Chattanooga. He was
laughed to scorn. "Wild idea; utterly im-
practicable; visionary," met him on every
side. His friends did not encourage him, and
capital was hard to interest. With engineers
he again sought the cave. It was not possible
to measure the height of the fall. Original
experiments with lighted balloons were in-
vented, and its height estimated. This,
then, was the perpendicular of a right-angled
triangle; the way they had come, from the
entrance to the cave, was its base; the rough,
uneven slope of the mountain side was its
hypotenuse. If they could find exactly the
point at which the hypotenuse met the per-
pendicular (extended) they would reach the
water. The chances of failure did not daunt
Mr. Anderson. A shaft was sunk. Into solid
limestone it went, daily a little deeper, until,
at a depth of forty feet, it reached the spot
where the mountain stream began its plunge
into the cavern they had visited, three hundred
feet below. It was found to be of greater
volume than they had anticipated, flowing
one and one-half million gallons in twenty-
four hours.
Some plan for bringing the w^ater to the sur-
face must now be adopted. It was decided
(to tunnel in a straight line from the stream
to the surface. This interesting tunnel
is 200 feet long, six feet high, and from five
to eight feet in width. Its walls, its floor,
its roof, arc the everlasting rock of the moun-
tain, and scarcely a break or a fissure mars
them. The stream was turned into this tun-
nel, and now no longer thunders down into
the lower cave. Once at the surface, only the
ordinary problems of the water-works man
were to be solved. A reservoir was built,
and the water piped to Chattanooga, two
miles away and three hundred feet below.
And now it is also pumped to the top of the
mountain.
A ONE-MAN SURVEY
THE United States Geodetic Survey,
among many other things, has charge
of the charting of the coast and river lines
of the country. This branch of surveying
is done usually by means of preliminary
triangulation, followed by actual plotting in
the field with plane-table and alidade.
On one of these survey parties a certain
young college graduate from the South se-
cured a position as temporary aid, taking the
trip, which was along the shores of the Chop
Tank River in Maryland, more for his health
than anything else. He had some knowledge
of surveying, and was able to be of enough
assistance to his chief to be allowed to do
much of the real work of the plotting, re-
lieving in no inconsiderable degree the failing
sight of the supposed surveyor. It thus
happened that when the captain in charge
of the party was taken ill and had to leave
for home, Franklin was ordered to complete
the remaining unfinished thirty miles of
coast line as best he could.
Everything went well for the first twenty
miles, and he was calculating on finishing up
two days before his expected time, when his
table man and one of his rodmen left him in
the lurch, one from malaria and the other for
reasons unknown. Nothing daunted, the
young aid secured the services of two young
negroes for rodmen, and although their
stupidity retarded work a good deal, seven
more miles were done when the remaining
rodman, promoted to table man vice the
deserter, sprained his wrist. Still not dis-
couraged, Franklin continued work with his
two colored helpers, until only the south-
western part of a small island near the mouth
of the larger Chop Tank remained to be
plotted.
Arriving there on the last morning of his
time, he set up his table, and as soon as it
was light enough, started his boys to work,
doing the sight taking, measuring and plotting
himself, besides signaling his own rodmen. This
continued for half an hour, and he was about
to move his table to a new station, when both
2920
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
boys returned on the run, dropping their rods
and informing their indignant employer that
"dey's a house ovah dar wut's got de small-
pox, Boss, and we'uns ca^m't do no more wuk
hyer — no sah ! Deed'n we cayn't ! "
Threats and entreaties were alike useless.
The negroes refused to move, and finally
slouched down the beach to an old boat and
paddled to the mainland.
His first thought was to give up, but re-
membering that only two miles remained to
plot, he set about the unheard-of task of sur-
veying it by himself !
Procuring the two discarded rods, he set
them up in the sand at the proper points.
Returning to his table, the rods were sighted,
the distance measured and the angles plotted,
after which another tramp was made, the
rods replaced in new stations, his steps re-
traced to the table and the process repeated.
It was very slow and very hard work, par-
ticularly discouraging, when, as happened
once, both rods fell over in a sudden gust of
breeze, just as the first sight was being taken.
That, of course, meant another quarter-mile
tramp and return. Every three-quarters of a
mile, and sometimes oftener, the heavy table
had to be moved and a return made to the
base for the instruments and accessories.
It was nearly dark when the last line was
drawn, and the stars were out when a very
tired and hungry one-man surveying party
got his traps to his launch. A ten-mile ride
up the river to his farmhouse quarters re-
mained, and he found that running a forty-
foot gasoline launch and being engineer and
pilot, too, was rather hard work.
It would be pleasant to chronicle a real
reward for such pluck and stick-to-it-ive-ness,
but the only meed of appreciation out of the
ordinary which he received was a cordial
letter from his chief, praising his effort and
faithfulness, and carefully omitting mention
of the fact that a week or two of delay in that
particular chart would have made no vital
difference.
AN ADVENTURE OF A NEWSPAPER MAN
NEWS of the blowing up and sinking
of a steamboat on the Ohio River
some distance from Pittsburg reached the
office of a Pittsburg paper one evening some
vears ago. A supply of money was hastily
thrust in a young reporter's hands — a re-
porter who has since risen to journalistic
prominence — and he was instructed to get to
the scene as rapidly as possible. A hurried
trip to the station, without stop for any-
thing, enabled him to leap on the first express
bound westward. Once on board, he was
informed that the train did not make a stop,
after Allegheny, until about sixty miles be-
yond his destination. A cautious hint from
a Pullman porter apprised him of the presence
of a division superintendent on the train, and
in a few minutes he secured an order on the
conductor to have the train stopped for him.
Reaching the little station late at night, he
asked the telegraph operator to remain until he
returned. Walking several miles to secure his
"story," he returned as quickly as possible,
only to find that the operator had disregarded
his request and had closed the office.
With time creeping into morning hours,
and the prospect of his work going for naught
unless he secured an operator to get the storv
to his office, he desperately tramped about
the unlighted village, only to find that the
man he wanted lived several miles distant.
Unsympathizing country folk who vouched
that information through closed doors cotdd
not be induced to exert themselves further.
The young fellow, thinking hard, walked
back and forth on the railroad platform.
Suddenly he noticed the sleeping form of a
tramp huddled against the station. Dis-
turbing the latter with a vigorous foot, he
offered the prostrate man five dollars to make
a hurried trip for the operator.
The man quickly got to his feet.
"Do you want an operator.'" he asked.
"Certainly," with some emphasis.
"Well, I'm a 'bum,' but I was an operator.
If you can get into that station, I'll send your
stuff, but I won't touch a door or a window
myself."
Without talking fvirther, the reporter found
a cudgel, broke the window, clambered in
and cleared all obstacles. The tramp made
good his claim and the reporter's last diffi-
culty was dissipated. The tramp clicked off
the story, and the copy reached the office in
time to go to press. The reporter told the
story once — many years later — as an exam-
ple of what "luck" will do for a man.
THE STORY OF A BOTANICAL COLLECTOR
FATE had placed me in the far South-
west, on a ranch, removed from town,
and in a sparsely settled community. I had
had only the ordinary high school training
in an educational way, and as most of my life
had been spent in the city, the usual avoca-
tions of the farmer's daughter — butter making
or poultry raising — did not appeal to me.
I had always been fond of the study of
botany in my school days, and I had made
some very creditable collections at one time
AMONG TIIK WORLDS VVORKKRS
3921
and another. I began analyzing the flowers
about me, and noting those which might be
most achaptaljlc to floriculture. Then, as the
seasons came on, I made several sets of dried
plants, carefully selected for study, and one
hundred varieties in a set. In the meantime,
from catalogues and from magazines, I had
secured the addresses of leading seedsmen and
florists. I wrote these people, and fully ten
per cent, of them replied encouragingly with
small orders for seeds. Many of them con-
gratulated me on my new enterprise and
promised larger orders for the future, and a
half-dozen volunteered information about
varieties desirable for the European market
and best methods of gathering and saving.
Two men sent me the addresses of other firms
that would have patronage for me, and
among them some large European dealers.
Through the Academy of Science in the largest
city of my State, I secured the addresses of
leading curators in such institutions as the
Arnold Arboretum at Harvard and like
institutions East and West. I easily secured
orders for herbarium specimens unmounted,
and within a year I had a considerable busi-
ness, conducted entirely by mail.
My correspondents were most of them
college men, and the letters of instruction I
received from notable botanists for whom I
eventually made collections for study pur-
poses were as good as a course of lectures at
college for me. I never filled an order with an
inferior specimen. I always carried out to
the minutest detail all instructions. Very
frequently I was detailed to make special field
notes concerning trees and plants for busy
men who could not leave their classes and
home w^ork. At the end of three years I
calculated thus: Net gain: perfect health;
a horse and buggy ; a small house that served
as the herbarium; a business which was
equivalent to about eight hundred a year,
with the best of prospects for increase; new
and valuable friends; and much training in a
delightful branch of natural science.
HOW A SMALL INDUSTRY HAS DEVELOPED
RAISING watermelons solely for their seed,
to supply the Eastern seed firms, has
become a profitable industry in Kansas.
Most of the watermelon seeds used in the
United States are now produced in the semi-
arid region of this State. Melons are grown
by hundreds of acres, on the same large scale
that corn is raised, and are harvested and
threshed after the manner of other crops.
No account is taken of the fruit, which is
treated as the chaff of the product.
Two years ago an Eastern seed firm sent a
representative to western Kansas to interest
the farmers in the experiment of raising
melons for the seed, with the guarantee of
a market for their product ; farmers were taken
with the idea, and the venture has proved
profitable to them and to the seed firms.
From a small beginning the industry has
grown until many farms are now devoted
exclusively to watermelon raising. Some
farmers in the dry portions of the State have
abandoned even such a staple crop as corn,
preferring to take chances with melons, which
thrive in dry weather, while corn often fails
for lapk of rain. Land which in dry weather
will not produce an average of a thousand
pounds of corn to an acre will produce from
thirty to fifty tons of melons to an acre, even
under the most unfavorable- conditions. The
fact that melons can draw sustenance from
dry soil makes them a desirable crop in the
extreme western part of the State. Another
important consideration is, that the cost of
producing an acre of melons is but little more
than the cost of producing an acre of corn,
and the profits are from three to five times
greater than could be realized from any other
crop which would grow in that climate.
Home-made threshing machines, constructed
especially to meet the requirements, are
used for separating the seeds from the
melons. At the bottom of a huge hopper is
a cylinder armed with long, sharp spikes,
which is run at high speed by horse power.
The melons are thrown into the hopper, and
the teeth of the cylinder quickly separate the
seed-bearing pulp from the rinds. The hop-
per discharges into a great cylindrical screen,
set on a slight angle, in which long arms
revolve on an axis, constantly stirring the
mass of pulp and pushing the seeds through
the screen. By the time the mass reaches
the waste pile all the seeds have been sepa-
rated from the rinds. The seeds are stored in
a vat with a portion of the pulp which comes
through the screen. Water is turned in, and
when fomentation begins the seeds float to
the surface. They are skimmed ofl and dried,
and are then ready for market.
MAKING AUTOMATIC MACHINES TO ORDER
A LITTLE New England factory makes,
among other things, a useful kitchen
utensil which is sold yearly by the hundreds
of thousands. Small as the article is, it is
somewhat complicated, and requires a large
number of different "operations," to use the
factory term, before the completed utensil is
ready to be packed for the market. That is
to say. the material went down line after line
of laborious foot and hand presses to be cut
2922
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
and punched and shaped and fitted. With
an idea that many of these slow, costly and
wearing processes might be done away with,
one of the officers of the company talked
one day with a concern near by who make
automatic machinery. He showed them the
article in the various stages of its develop-
ment.
"Now, gentlemen," he said at last, "can
you simplify, cheapen and quicken our pro-
ductive power, and if so, what will it cost?"
The men figured for a few minutes.
"Yes," they said, "you can do practically
all of the detail work with two machines, which
will require only sliding on the belts and a
fraction of one man's time to watch them.
These machines will do as much in an hour
and a half as a dozen workmen and presses
are doing now in a day. They will cost you
and you can have them in two months.
You can figure your own costs, and if the
change is worth your w^hile we'll go to work
immediately."
In two months that part of the work was
entirely changed; men w^ere put at other
tasks where they had long been needed, money
was saved daily, and the output of this par-
ticular article has been larger and much more
simply obtained, and people are buying the
utensil more cheaply all over the world.
The concern that made these machines does
nothing else but fill orders of this sort, and
with other similar companies it is helping to
conserve to New England by ingenuity the
first place in American manufacture, while
great factories are being built and run near
the supply of raw material.
BUSINESS TRAINING FOR COLLEGE MEN.
THE just graduated college man who has
no further plans for the future than
that he is "going into business," has con-
siderable difficulty in finding an opportunity.
The employer everywhere is looking for young
men of education and ambition. Employ-
ment committees and bureaus of information
at the colleges try to find places for their gradu-
ates, but the problem of bringing the two men
together, the one wanting work, the other
wanting men, has perhaps never been so
practically solved as it was last summer
by Mr. Gage E. Tarbell, of the Equitable
Life Assurance Company. Mr. Tarbell had
worked his way up from small beginnings ; he
had indeed written insurance to pay his way
while he was studying law, and he was inter-
ested in the possibilities of young men who
get started properly. As an officer of his
company he saw, furthermore, that the
colleges every year were turning out men
who were potentially splendid agents for
insurance. The problem was to get them
interested, to teach them the business and
to set them to work.
Last spring, therefore, almost too late to
get the best results, he wrote to a large
number of colleges, telling them that he was
planning to run a post graduate course in
insurance during the summer; that he was
ready to pay the boys' living expenses during
the course, and that he would guarantee every
fellow who took the course a living salary
when the short study period was over. He
invited their cooperation and he got it to a
surprising degree.
On July ist, when the classes began,
1 20 college graduates entered to learn the
insurance business. All w^ent to work imme-
diately, the boys, dignified heads of depart-
ments, who told them in concise, business-
like fashion the important things they
needed to know, and Mr. Tarbell himself, who
plunged with inspiring earnestness into this
plan he had developed. A good share of his
teaching was in practical demonstration of how
to write insurance. He set the men at -work
in the city and held every day testimony meet-
ings of their experiences. He had the different
men in the class insure each other before the
rest of the 120. And he did not forget that
the boys needed recreation. He sent them
to the theatre and out for other pleasant
evenings. The result was that these college
men had a busy and enjoyable month in
which they learned the elements of practical
insurance work from the men who could most
directly and most quickly teach them. At
the end of the course most of the men took
two weeks' vacation, and were then assigned
to definite territory at a guaranteed salary of
$75.00 a month and an opportunity to make
much more in commissions. They were
enthusiastic about their work and about the
man who had given them their opportunity.
And the reports of their achievements so far
show that the experiment has succeeded
beyond even Mr. Tarbell 's hopes. Plans are
now being made for next summer's session.
The importance of this successfully carried
out plan is many sided. It not only gives a
large number of educated young men free
practical schooling in insurance, and then
offers them a splendid business opportunity,
but it may very possibly be the beginning of
a generally accepted scheme by which college-
bred men can quickly find their places in
whatever business they care to choose, and
by which, as well, employers can immediately
reach and train well-equipped employees.
It shows a new and higher appreciation
of the value of college men in business,
and is replacing old-time prejudice.
REPRESENTATIVE JOSEPH G. CANNON, OF ILLINOIS
WHO WII.T, PROBABLY BE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE
Photographed by Clinedinst
THE
World's Work
JANUARY, 1903
Volume V
Number 3
ZTbe fIDarcb of lEvcnte
WE start the new year with the same
group of domestic problems with
which we started the old year.
In our foreign relations and in the tasks pre-
sented by our island ward> we have made
headway, to the steady upbuilding of our
national character and of our influence in
the world. The year just gone was note-
worthy for the ending of wars, for the sub-
sidence of national jealousies, and for the
increasing prosperity and strength of the
Repubhc. But our familiar home-problems
are with us yet — the trusts, labor-unions,
the tariff, the currency, municipal adminis-
tration, and race feehng in politics.
These involve tasks that cannot be done
by sheer energy, however well directed. Such
problems are in fact symptoms of defects
that yet exist in our national character. In
a perfectly developed public opinion they
would dissolve as fog dissolves in sunlight;
and we move toward their solution as we
move toward the building-up of the character
and the intelligence of the people. They are
important matters of economic, fiscal and
political education.
There are many problems of a different and
more difficult sort. Such were the tasks of
the Civil War and of the Reconstruction
period. Such were the tasks presented at
first by the Philippine Islands. These were
structural. In doing them we were making
new experiments with republican govern-
ment itself. We were putting it to new
tests. But even the trusts, and surely
labor-unions and the tariff and the currency
and city government, involve no such funda-
mental activities. Grave and stubborn
as these are, they are problems rather of
regulation, of administration, of social growth,
of education. For the solution of them we
need long tuition. We shall bungle through
many experiments; we shall have many a
year of discussion. There is, in fact, no such
thing as a solution of them. We shall simply
grow toward their settlement; and as we
grow they will naturally and gradually
eliminate themselves.
SOCIAL, NOT STRUCTURAL, TASKS
AS the public mind releases itself from
holiday recreations and again takes on
a thoughtful mood, we may fairly claim that
we have at least learned more than we knew
a year ago about some of these familiar
political and fiscal ailments.
About trusts, for instance, there is less
vague discussion. Thanks chiefly to the
energy of the President and to the clear
thinking of the Attorney General, public
attention is now concentrating itself on a
definite plan of experiment at wholesome
regulation. The Federal Government will
try, if not at the hands of this Congress then
at the hands of some subsequent one, to hold
them to responsibility and to some degree
w
2926
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
of publicity. This may be done — at least,
an effort may be made to do it — by the
Federal Government's power to regulate
interstate commerce. We may try to make
an ineffectual trust-regulating law effective.
It is a great gain to get so definite a plan
instead of the vague discussion of a 3'ear ago.
But even with a clear plan there is a stubborn
and perhaps an ineffectual struggle ahead.
It may even be said that we have made at
least a negative kind of progress with the
social problem of organized labor. Some of
the unions have tried the public patience too
far by ill-advised boycotts and by an unpatri-
otic attitude toward the militia, and there
has been a reaction of public opinion against
them. The kindly and indulgent and the
generally sympathetic attitude of a large part
of the public has given place to a critical
mood. The harm that ill-led unions may
do themselves has again become obvious;
and such a public attitude is the first step
toward a return to conservative leadership.
And so with the rest. We slowly educate
ourselves by experiment, by mistakes, by
discussion, by collision, and by more dis-
cussion. We are safe so long as there are
unmistakable signs of social gro"wi;h. And
the main matter of clear thinking about all
these problems is to know that we shall
get rid of them only by outgrowing them.
Statutes may help, good theories may be
useful, constant effort is indispensable. But
all these fall short except as they help toward
a better-developed public opinion.
THE SAVING OF INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY
IX all our thought of trusts and labor and
such things we shall avoid confusion and
be the more likely to steer our thinking true
if we keep a firm hold on the one great aim of
our social structure. The very comer-stone
of a democracy is the preservation of indi-
vidual opportunity. It is for the best gro'v\i:h
of the individual that our whole system of
society and of government was wrought out
and fought for. This is fundamental. With-
out this we fail. Old World societies and
systems have nurtured classes. It is the
peculiar distinction and the everlasting glory
of a democracy — the sole hope, in fact, of
any continuous advancement of human
society — that ever\' man shall have, so far
as society can give it to him, a free oppor-
tunity for his own development. If we keep
this fundamental fact in mind many tangled
problems will become straight in our thinking.
It is as true this new year as it was in the
year when men first dreamed of a democratic
society that the saving fact of it is that there
shall be no fixed class. The worst of these
domestic problems that are always with us
turn on this pivotal truth. If any tendency
appear that looks toward permanent class-
distinctions and toward making men fast in
certain classes, forthwith we have a social
problem; whether it come in the form of
trusts, or of a tariff, or of labor-unions, or
whatever form it take. The mobility of our
society is its salvation. It is from this point
of view that we are likely to get the most
helpful conception of our uneven develop-
ment and of our social and public duties.
AN IMPORTANT LAW OF SOCIAL GROWTH
AX important and interesting social law
is illustrated by the growth of the
postal service. The business of the depart-
ment has responded wonderfully to every
increase of postal facilities. For instance,
when free city delivery was established in
1857 the receipts were $8,000,000. A
little more than ten years later they reached
$20,000,000. There has been a similar
increase because of the establishment of
rural free deliver^-. "The experience of the
Department," says the Postmaster General,
"in counties where the service has been fully
established for a period of two years, justi-
fies the belief that the revenues in the
rural districts will increase fivefold." He
incidentally shows another interesting result
of the rural delivery system:
" It was claimed that rural delivery ■would
increase the value of farm lands. Official reports
indicate that in communities served by rural free
delivery isolated farms have been enhanced in value
because of that service at an average rate of at least
5 per cent . in the older settled States : and in the
more remote States and Territories, -where postal
facilities have heretofore been few and far between,
the increase of value has been much greater."
The incalculable value of these extensions
of the postal service — the increase in the
worth of property and the even greater
stimulus to the social and commercial activity
of the people — emphasizes this great social
law; the masses seldom see beforehand the
value of new forces for their development,
but they eagerly profit by them when they are
set going. To wait till the people demand
THE LATE HERR FRIEDRICH ALFRED KRUPP
THE GREAT GERMAN IRON-MASTER
Copyright, 1902, by Aim6 Dupont
THE LATE EX-SPEAKER THOMAS BRACKETT REED
J
OUR RAl'IDLV INCREASING SKA TOWKR
2929
an ini])rovement of service or of conditions
is to lioUl social |)rogress back. Real
statesmanship or wise leadershij) foresees
that every facihty for advancement will be
welcomed and will be used. The growth
of periodical literature ha'= proved this. Cheaj)
railway fares have proved it. The extension
of library service has proved it. This broad
and practically universal law has been proved
by every facility for social improvement that
the people of a democracy have profited by.
The cheapening of every public service enor-
mously increases its utilization.
Moral: a parcels post — that is, cheaper
postage on merchandise and the admission
to the mails of heavier packages than four
pounds — would pay. It would pay in money
because of the increase in business, and it
would pay enormously in convenience; for
it would make life easier by that much.
Another moral: a great reduction in tele-
graph tolls would pay — pay in the same
fashion ; and one of the crimes of our time is
the successful prevention of such an increase
in telegraphic convenience as we yet suflfer.
It costs twenty-five cents to send a ten-word
telegram from one town to the next, but a
letter can be sent to inland Alaska and drawn
hundreds of miles on a dog-sled for two cents.
The people are slow to foresee and to
demand new conveniences, but they eagerly
use every convenience for their general social
advancement when it is provided.
THE DEBAUCHING AFTER-COST OF OUR WARS
IF there were no other reasons why peace
at any honorable cost is desirable to
a democratic government, there is reason
enough in the long after-cost of w^ar. We
have paid more than two and three-quarter
billions of dollars (if anybody can compre-
hend such a sum) in pensions on account of
the Civil War, and the expenditure goes on
at the rate of one hundred and forty-four
millions a year. But the cost of pensions is
not the worst fact. The worst fact is the
demoralization of a large part of the public.
All these years systematic and organized
fraud has been practised in the name of
patriotism, and thousands of men and families
have come to regard the Government simply
as a dispenser of incomes. The administra-
tion of the pension bureau now prevents all
the palpable frauds that it can, but under the
ioose laws that exist there is no way to sup-
l)ress the activity of the j^cnsion attorneys,
who continue to debauch the character of
veterans and the kinsmen of veterans. There
are even at this late day about a million
names on the pension roll
The pension after-cost to July i, 1902, oi
each of our wars was :
War of the Revolution $70,000,000
War of 181 2 45,025,297
Indian wars 5,814,206
Mexican War 3 i ,86 1 ,337
War with S])ain 3,275,184
Civil War 2,728,878,276
How large a part of this sum has gone to
the degradation of character and how large a
part to veterans whose pensions are properly
badges of honor no man will ever know. All
that we know is that the granting of pensions
has revealed the weakest place in our sy.stem
of government. No political party has shown
itself strong enough to withstand the threats
and the criticisms of the "old soldier" vote,
nor has the private virtue of vast multitudes
of men and women withstood the organized
seduction of pension attorneys.
We have very nearly got rid of the scandal
of the spoils system, to which the demoraliza-
tion that followed the Civil War gave a strong
inipulse ; but we shall yet have to endure the
twin-scandal of pensions till by the sheer
lapse of time most of the children and the
wives and the connections of the soldiers of
forty years ago are dead. In the meantime
we shall for a considerable period continue
to disburse about one hundred and fifty
millions a year, much of it to the degradation
of citizenship and manhood. The shame of
it is not that so much money is wrongly spent
by the Government (though this were
shame enough), but that it is so spent as
to encourage a debasing conception of the
function of governmen":.
OUR RAPIDLY INCREASING SEA POWER
THE fighting strength of the navy, when
the vessels that are building and those
authorized by Congress have been finished,
wall be four times as great as it was during
the war with Spain. We then had armored
cruisers, but only four first-class battle-ships
— the Iowa, the Indiana, the Massachusetts
and the Oregon — and one second-class battle-
ship, the Texas. We have built or author-
ized the addition of fifteen more first-class
battle-ships — the Kentucky, the Kearsarge,
the Alabama, the Wisconsin, the Illinois, the
MISS JANE ADDAMS
FOUNDER AND HEAD OF HULL HOUSE, CHICAGO
Copyright, 1902. by Elizabeth B. Brownell. Chicago
HOW THE PRESIDENT HAS STAKED HIS FORTUNES 2931
I
Maine, the Georgia, the Pennsylvania, the
Rhode Island, the Ohio, the Virginia, the
Missouri, the A^^w Jersey, the Louisiana, and
the Connecticut — and two armored cruisers,
the Tennessee and the Washington. The
Louisiana (whicli will cost nearly four mil-
lions) and the Con}iccticHtv!\\\ be better ships
than the navy has ever had. The Secretary
of the Navy recommends "a continuance
without interruption of the increase of ships "
— at least two more battle-ships in addition to
cruisers.
"The country approves," Secretary Moody
says, "with hardly a dissenting voice, of the
policy of strengthening our power upon the
sea," since we now have large interests in the
Pacific as well as in the Atlantic, to both
of which the cutting of the canal will add.
Dissent to this policy is heard, but it is
ineffectual; and we seem sure to continue to
increase the navy till we become at last — a
long time hence — a great naval power, second,
perhaps, only to England, which now has
forty-seven first-class battle-ships. Germany
has thirteen, France twenty-four, and Russia
twenty-two.
But we already lack officers for the ships
that we have. The present navy requires
1,600 officers, and we have only about 1,000;
and four years hence (in spite of the cadets
that will be graduated at Annapolis in the
meantime) we shall require at least i ,300 more
than we shall have. The wish of the service
is that the number of cadets be greatly
increased.
The navy offers a career that is attractive
to a large number of youth of the best
qualities, and graduates of the Academy are
practically and properly the only men who
now become offixers. They constitute a body
that any country may . be very proud of —
these alert and capable specimens of the best
American manhood and patriotism ; and there
will never be an insufficiency of them if the
number of youth admitted to the Academy
is large enough.
There are now less than 22,000 enlisted
men in the navy, nine-tenths of whom are
citizens of the United States (all who enlist
must now become so), and more than three-
fourths are native Americans.
The conclusion of Secretary Moody's report
is a graceful paragraph about Admiral Dewey :
" I cannot close this report without acknowledging
the sympathy, cooperation and aid which I have
received from the Admiral <>f llu- .\a\y. ^^s
President of the General Board of the Navy his
services have been of great value to the deiiartmcnt
and the fleet. The security of his own fame has not
lessened his interest in the service or diminished his
effort for its improvement. His zealous earnestness
in the cause is the good fortune of the department,
and gives him an added title to the favor (jf the
nation."
HOW THE PRESIDENT HAS STAKED HIS
FORTUNES
REFERRING again to the effort to regu-
late trusts — and the public mind will
not get away from it for some time to come
— the political aspects of the situation are
interesting, even if the immediate outlook be
not hopeful. The Republican party in a
general way has been the friend of trusts and
other vested interests. The tendency has
been for them to feel reasonably safe from
objectionable interference under Republican
administrations. But Mr. Roosevelt has,
in a way, staked his political fortunes on
calling them to account — has, in a sense,
stolen the Democratic position. He would
do in a conservative way what many Demo-
crats would do radically.
Now, the Republican leaders may do any
one of these things:
They may follow the President's wishes and
suggestions with earnestness and try to bring the
great corporations practicallv under the National
government's supervision. But this course seems
unlikely at this session of Congress. Perhaps it is
unlikely at any time.
They may frankly do nothing and thus try to
force Mr. Roosevelt to give up his party programme.
This effort is probable — its success very improbable.
They may feign earnestness about the matter
and thus try to get credit for an efTort, but still do
nothing. This course is the most probable of all.
If the Republican leaders do nothing the
next year and a half to carry out the President's
programme, he or they will have to surrender.
If they find his personal popularity too great
for them, they will make a virtue of necessity
and be his ostentatious friends, and the party
may show under his leadership a renewal of
vigor. This is the party's best chance for an
indefinite continuation of power. But it is
not likely to take this course willingly.
If the President finds his party in Congress
unwilling to follow him, he may appeal suc-
cessfully to the country; or the Democrats
may persuade the country that nothing can
be hoped for from a Republican Congress.
Thus we have a most interesting set of
forces at play —
2932
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
The President is in earnest about calling
the trusts to responsibility.
The Republican leaders are not in earnest
about it.
The Democrats would like to do it, but
they lack initiative and leadership.
But a large part of the people are in earnest
about it ; and whenever hard times come they
are likely to become still more in earnest
unless some positive action be taken in the
meantime.
With all these forces, there are chances for
many interesting things to happen. The
most probable event will be an unwilling
concession of leadership to the President
because of his personal popularity. Then
the task will be his to put his programme into
execution — against enormous pressure. He
will have created an unparalleled opportunity.
THE PRESIDENT'S SUMMARY OF OUR
"COLONIAL" ACHIEVEMENTS
WHEN one recalls all the grave trouble
and loss both of life and treasure
and the great political difficulties that we
have been through these four years of our
"colonial" responsibility, these sentences
are the most gratifying utterance in the
President's Message to Congress, and they
tell a story that we may well be proud of:
"Of Porto Rico it is only necessary to say that the
prosperity of the island and the wisdom with which
it has been governed have been such as to make it
serve as an example of all that is best in insular
administration.
"On Jul}^ 4th last, on the 126th anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence, peace and amnesty
were promulgated in the Philippine Islands. Some
trouble has since from time to time threatened with
the Mohammedan Moros, but with the late insur-
rectionary Filipinos the war has entirely ceased.
Civil government has now been introduced. Not
only does each Filipino enjoy such rights to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness as he has never
before known during the recorded history of the
islands, but the people taken as a whole now enjoy
a measure of self-government greater than that
granted to any other Orientals by any foreign power,
and greater than that enjoyed by any other Orientals
under their own governments, save the Japanese
alone."
TWO PACIFIC CABLE SYSTEMS
THE last link of the British Pacific cable
v/as laid a few months ago and within
a few months the American Pacific cable w'ill
be finished. A man in London may now
send a message around the world to himself
both westward and eastward, and each may
circle the globe by British wires and be
delivered in thirty minutes. The American
Pacific cable will touch only American land-
ings till it reaches China; for its intermediate
stations will be Honolulu, Guam and Manila.
Although it is the private enterprise of the
Pacific Cable Company, our Government has
a guarantee of priority of service for its own
messages, and of reasonable tolls for the public
and the right in time of war to assume control
of it. It has even the right at any time that
Congress may so direct to purchase the cable
at a price set by a board of appraisal. Thus
our Government has secured Pacific cable
facilities without the expenditure of public
money.
The new epoch in commerce and politics
that was begun when the Atlantic cable was
laid will have no parallel ; but a second stage
in that same wonderful change begins with
these Pacific cables. They will unite the
Orient and the Western world as these could
not be drawn together in any other way.
The tolls from China and Australia westward
to the United States have been practically
prohibitory of private use. They will now
gradually become cheap enough to have a
quick influence on trade.
A PROGRAMME FOR SELECTING PUBLIC
OFFICERS
A GOOD working theory for the selec-
tion of candidates for important
offices may be constructed from the truthful
remarks of District Attorney Jerome of New
York and of Circuit Attorney Folk of St. Louis.
Mr. Jerome, who is not afraid of those tasks
which none of his recent predecessors dreamed
of undertaking, said just after his election,
quoting a wise public man of a generation ago:
" The only kind of man to fill a public office is the
man who does not want the ofnce and does not
wish to be reelected."
Mr. Folk, who has sent to the penitentiary
for giving or taking bribes some of the very
men who nominated him, recently declared:
" I told the men who nominated me that I didn't
want the office. I don't think that I could be elected
for another term."
THE OUTLOOK FOR PERMANENTLY DECENT
GOVERNMENT IN NEW YORK CITY
A YEAR of the Reform Administration
of New York City under Mayor Low
has passed and half his term of office is gone.
In November, 1900, Mr. Low defeated Mr.
Shepard, the Democratic candidate, by 31.500
DECENT GOVERNMENT IN NEW YORK CITY
2933
votes. In November, 1902, Mr. Coler, the
Democratic candidate for Governor, and a
far less attractive personality than Mr.
Shepard, received 122,000 more votes in New
York City than Mr. Odell, the Republican
candidate. The politicians and the friends
of non-partisan municipal government have,
therefore, naturally been taking stock of the
political assets and opportunities of Mr. Low's
Administration. Wliat has the Administra-
tion done, and what is the outlook for perma-
nently decent government of the metropolis ?
This single year of Mr. Low's mayoralty
has brouglit great gains — very much greater
than the superficial observer is likely to know.
In the first place, the personnel of the city
government — at least, of most of its impor-
tant departments — is dignified and well-bred.
Dignity and good-breeding are not govern-
ment, but they are very important qualities of
good officials. The city has had in its chief
executive office a man of whose personal
character and civic qualities it may be
proud, a representative of its best citizenship.
And he has no entangling obligations. This
is much.
In the next place, those great departments
of the city government wliich are practically
scientific offices, and which clean the city and
look after its sanitary welfare, have done their
work well. Some of them have done it better
than it was ever done before. And this is
what was to be expected. Politics have been
eliminated from these departments. They are
under the direction of competent men ; they
are well conducted, and the city and the
whole country have gained much by their
demonstration of the practicability of attack-
ing these difficult problems of city life scien-
tifically. And surely this is a great deal.
Even in so short a time as one year some
remarkable changes have been wrought —
enough to convince anybody that the work of
cleaning the streets, of doing sanitary inspec-
tion, of caring for the health of the city and
l_ all such functions ought never to be at the
tW mercy of politicians. The heads of these
great departments ought to serve during
good behavior and competent work.
Yet this is not all that the year has revealed.
• While it has shown these enormous gains, it
has shown also certain unfortunate weak-
nesses of the Reform Administration. In
the more directly political parts of his work
Mayor Low has been hindered by the holding-
over of incompetent officials and by the low
character of other departments than the
executive. In these directions he has not
had a fair field nor sufficient time to work a
revolution by slow methods. Every fair-
minded man will remember these facts before
he pronounces judgment.
But it cannot be forgotten that a year ago
the police work in New York was a world-
wide scandal. There was organized vice, for
there was organized protection of vice. It
was the most diabolical condition that existed
anvwhere in Anglo-Saxon Christendom. The
worst of it was, not that vice and all manner
of uncleanness flourished, but that large
masses of the American people came to regard
municipal government (and hence all govern-
ment) as a power in league with vice — as a
thing necessarily and always corrupt. It was
as low a plane of political life as any American
community has ever touched. And it was
the moral indignation that this state of things
provoked which made Mr. Low's election
possible. It was this degrading condition
that he was elected to change.
To change it meant a revolution; and to
work such a revolution some quick, energetic
and even dramatic method was necessary.
This is not a task like the others. It is a
task in which millions of people are directly
involved, and they must be convinced that a
change has come. They must see that the old
order of things has passed forever. Such a
change can hardly be wrought gradually, for if
it is not wrought quickly the old forces of evil
easily renew their activity. Half the battle
is an early demonstration of earnestness.
Mr. Low is a good type of the reformer.
But he is not a revolutionist; and a revolu-
tionist is what is called for.
It is the old trouble of most efforts at reform
politics. The reformers are too gentle; they
rely too much on moral suasion; they shrink
from the rougher work of dealing energetically
with men; they are too likely to assume that
good intentions and good moral principles
win by mere formulation. They talk, but
they are too slow to fight. They shrink from
rough action for fear of criticism.
The grave danger, therefore, is that the
Reform Administration in New York City will
be followed by a Tammany Administration,
and that much of the most excellent work
done under Mayor Low will be undone and
have to be done over again. But there are
2934
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
yet ten months; and in ten months even a
New York poHce force could be remade and
the city and the country and the world made
to confess that the metropolis had a police
army above suspicion. It is a Napoleonic
task, and it requires Napoleonic qualities —
certainly a Napoleonic vigor of action. The
conservative temper is the best temper 'to
bring to all the ordinary affairs of life; but
there are occasions in war and in politics
when nothing but dash, akin to recklessness,
wins.
THE UNDOING OF DELAWARE
WHEN a witness from Delaware in the
impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson
said to the United States Senate, without
the faintest trace of humor, "The eyes of
Delaware are upon you, " a ripple of laughter
ran over the country-. The conditions are
now reversed, and the eyes of all good men
are turned on Delaware; but nobody laughs.
After having long been unrepresented in the
United States Senate, that State is about to
try again to elect two Senators. The question
is not whether Delaware shall be represented
by Republicans or by Democrats, but whether
the long-vacant seats shall be filled by a
man whose sole claim to political distinc-
tion is his wealth and by an associate of his
choosing, or by two men who represent the
majority as expressed at the recent election.
The history of the contest for the senator-
ship in Delaware is a shameful thing. Four-
teen years ago, when, for the first time since
the Civil War, Delaware had a Republican
majority in the Legislature, a brazen stranger,
who had recently by accident, it is said,
acquired a technical residence in the State,
presented himself at the capital declaring
his willingness to aid the Republicans with
money, and to accept as compensation a seat
in the United States Senate. J. Edward
Addicks, whose effrontery then astonished
all who met him, was not elected, but by his
large contributions to the campaign fund
he became a perpetual candidate. And then
began a most "liberal" use of money in
politics. There was money for the leaders
of counties and of "hundreds"; there was
money for newspapers; there was money to
pay off mortgages of farmers; there was
money to aid embarrassed business men ; there
was money for local poli^"icians who chose to
speculate in Addicks' gas stock; above all.
on election day there was money for voters,
black and white, such as the Delaware elec-
torate never before had known.
Two successive Legislatures had Republican
majorities, but in each there were enough
anti-Addicks Republicans to prevent this
adventurer's election. Addicks, in turn, held
his men together to prevent the election of
anybody else, so that for a time Delaware
had but one Senator, and at length none at
all. Then Addicks, angered at the resistance,
declared that he or nobody should be Senator.
The more frank of his supporters said, "He
has paid for it and ought to have it."
Undismayed by defeat, Addicks in the last
political campaign put forth greater efforts
than ever. The members of the new
Legislature, together with a few Senators
that hold over, make a majority nominally
Republican, but not a majority favorable
to Addicks.
Mr. Addicks is quoted as saying that he has
expended thus far only $250,000. How much
more he will spend nobody can guess ; but he
has discovered, he hopes, a money-saving
device in the use of Federal patronage.
Although the Republican National Convention
of 1896 heard Mr. Addicks denounced as a
"moral idiot," the Convention of 1900
recognized him as the Republican leader in
Delaware, and he is now claiming control of
Federal patronage in the State, with the hope
that the countenance of the Administration
at Washington may coerce the so-called
"regular" Republicans of the Legislature to
support him and such an associate as he may
designate. Such aid as this every friend of
the National Administration expects to see
withheld from him. The recent unfortunate
reappointment of Mr. Byrne, an Addicks
Republican, as the United States District
Attorney in Delaware, was made by the
President for purely personal reasons. If the
country has reluctantly accepted that expla-
nation it would not accept the recognition
of Addicks without grievous disappoint-
ment.
This era of political debauchery has had
its effect also on Democratic politics in
Delaware. The little State is a sad example
of the baleful effects of the persistent
ambition of a single unworthy man to reduce
it by the use of money to his political control.
It were better to remain unrepresented in the
United States Senate for an indefinite time
THE CUKE FUR EABOR IRUUIU.ES
2935
than to yield to hini. It is an anomalous and
shamiful situation that hardly has a parallel
in our political history.
DEEP WATERS OF THE RACE PROBLEM
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT has again got
himself into the deep waters of the
race conflict in the South. The proposal
to appoint a colored man, who is said to be
personally capable and thoroughly fit, as
Collector of the Port of Charleston, South
Carolina, raised two questions.
The first question is, whether in making
Federal appointments a man should be
excluded simply because he is a colored man.
White public sentiment in the South almost
unanim usly declares that a man's black skin
should debar him, that such an elevation of
a Negro disturbs the whole social and political
status of Southern society, that it encourages
"Negro supremacy," and that it gives the
support of the Federal Government to a
principle that Southern society will never
admit. Very determined is the Southern
whites' opinion on this subject.
Equally frank and clear is the President's
attitude — that he cannot and will not make
a distinction between men on account of their
race or color. Assuming individual fitness,
a colored man stands in the same relation
to American citizenship and to the Federal
Government as a white man. There is even
an incidental theoretical difference, if there
be a difference at all, in favor of the colored
man; for the recognition of the ability and
the character of worthy colored men is the
more necessary for the encouragement of
colored youth to develop character.
When the matter is once brought to argu-
ment the President clearly has the humane
and fair side of this contention.
But the other question raised is a question
of expediency rather than of principle. If a
man is for any reason objectionable to prac-
tically all the persons who have to deal with
him as a public officer, ought he to be made
a public officer ? Ought not the appointing
[power to have due regard for the public senti-
ment of the community ? Isthe main matter in
making a political appointment the acceptable
1 service of the community or the insistence on
a humane and fair principle in regard to race
relations ? Or, for that matter, are the race
relations made better by such an insistence,
or may they rather not be made worse ?
i
The Negro is now practically disfranchised
in the South and made as unwelcome in
several States in the councils of one political
party as of the other. From his point of
view what is the outlook ? If the Federal
Administration were to follow the Southern
political example and were to yield to
the Southern white feeling, such an attitude
would mean that the Negro, however capable
and personally worthy, cannot hope for
political recognition from any quarter until
by the general development of the race and
the slow work of time a humaner and more
tolerant public opinion prevails among the
Southern whites. No National Administra-
tion, certainly no Republican Administration,
can take such a position.
There is no more pathetic figure in modern
life than the educated and capable Negro of
high character. He has the white man's
civilization, and he has the white man's
responsibilities as a citizen; but he may not,
in the dominant Southern opinion, indulge
in the white man's aspirations nor open doors
of opportunity that to the white man are
flung wide. The National Government is his
only political hope.
T
THE CURE FOR LABOR TROUBLES
HE ease with which industrial disputes
can now be peacefully adjusted re-
ceived its annual emphasis at the conference
of the Civic Federation early in December.
True, nothing was finally proved, but the
mere concentration of a roomful of representa-
tive capitalists and labor-union leaders on
the varying phases of a single problem was
bound to afford illumination. It became
clear, for example, that the unions are com-
mitted to a demand for the eight -hour day.
Restriction of output was talked of. But it
took a meeting of this sort to set forth the
practicability of a union's foregoing restric-
tion in exchange for the eight-hour day.
Mr. Marcus M. Marks, President of the
National Association of Clothing Manufac-
turers, told of a case in which the exchange
had been made. Compulsory arbitration
was frowned upon by every one. Incorpora-
tion of unions could get no serious considera-
tion; it remains, as it has always been, an
academic theory. Unanimously the members
of the conference — none more strenuously
than Mr. Gompers of the American Federation
of Labor — deprecated strikes ; and at the last
2936
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
meeting of the conference the consensus of
opinion became crystallized on the panacea
for labor troubles. In cases of industrial
disagreement, it was felt, both sides should
discuss the points at issue in face-to-face
sittings, then come to a decision either by
mutual consent or by arbitration, and then
make agreements binding the parties for a
definite period. Concrete examples were
given by actual parties to such agreements
to show their complete success.
If industrial difficulties are ever to be
solved by diplomacy rather than by war, the
result will come only through such frank dis-
cussion as marked this conference. The value
of such conferences, however, lies in the
rapid-fire of questions and answers — as in the
tilt between Archbishop Ireland and President
Gompers regarding non-union men — and not
in academic papers. If future conferences
are to have their greatest value — and their
value is great — there should be more cross-
examination and fewer lectures.
HUMANE CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
PRESIDENT ELIOT of Harvard Uni-
versity pointed out with instructive
clearness, in a recent address delivered in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, five prime con-
ditions of humane employment; and they
make a trustworthy chart to sail by in our
thinking over this whole sea of troubles.
These conditions are :
(i) A rising wage for efficient work.
(2) Steady emplojTnent after adequate probation.
(3) Encouragement for the making of a perma-
nent home.
(4) The opportunity to serve generously and
proudly the interest with which the laborer is con-
nected: and
(5) A pension on disability.
Mr. Eliot declared that all these conditions
of humane employment have been realized in
Harvard University. A college professor is
a hired man — hired generally under excep-
tionally satisfactory conditions. Yet it may
be said in parenthesis that these very condi-
tions present a somewhat notorious difficulty
— the difficulty of getting rid of incompetent
men in college faculties. It is a difficulty,
however, that is not peculiar to this kind of
employment; and it can always be overcome
by vigorous and frank administration.
As a system — so to call it — Mr. Eliot's out-
line is as nearly ideal as any system that has
been reduced to practice. He is, as the long-
time president of our largest university, an
experienced employer of skilled labor; and
this system has been wrought out tmder his
administration.
"These five conditions of humane employ-
ment, " he says, " I believe to be not theoretical
or fanciful, but perfectly capable of realiza-
tion. I venture to say that ten years ago no
large American industry recognized these
principles throughout its service. That is,
no large American industry recognized all of
them, or even a majority of them, and yet all
these humane conditions of employment are
founded on perfectly well known and moral
qualities, physical habits, normal desires of
mankind. Today the large services in which
these principles are adopted are few in number
in our country. "
Most of these conditions, it will be observed,
are not directly encouraged by most labor-
unions. That is to say, the organization and
the methods of most unions do not, as a rule,
encourage indefinitely continuous service.
So long as a man may be commanded to quit
his job because of a wrong done by an employer
of whom he never heard to an employee of
whom he never heard, there is small chance of
such permanent employment, or expectation
of it, as underlies these humane conditions.
There is needed, therefore, such a modi-
fication of labor-unions as will enable
employers and employees to establish per-
manent personal relations. Social reformers
who have the ability to manage men and
to shape organizations and institutions
may find a large field of usefulness in
the guidance of unions. Many of them
are now chiefly fighting organizations. But
this is only the first step in their development.
What is the next step and the next ? Here is
a chance for constructive work of a very high
kind, for leadership that may rise to the
level of statesmanship.
RAILROAD PROSPERITY AND A $43,000,000
INCREASE IN WAGES.
WITHIN a few months the wages of rail-
way employees have been increased
about ten per cent, on roads that comprise
about three-fourths of the mileage of the
country. Almost every important system
has voluntarily increased the pay of its men
except those who receive large salaries. Some
made the increase by a single order, as the
Pennsylvania system did; others by a more
THE HUMAN ATOMS OF A STEEL-BUILT CriY
2937
gradual method, taking one department
after another. This increase of wages is
equivalent to about one and three-quarter
per cent, of the net earnings of the roads. It
will cost the Pennsylvania system, for ex-
ample, nearly $4,000,000 a year ; the New York
Central nearly $3,000,000; the Burlington,
the Atchison and the Southern Pacific each
more than $2 ,000,000 ; and it is a total addition
of about $43,000,000 a year to wages.
This increase was made, not in answer to
definite demands of the employees, but as a
far-sighted and just method of fair-dealing
and of forestalling discontent. Railroad
employees are, as a rule, among the best paid
men in the ranks of labor. They have the
advantage, too, of permanent employment ;
and on a few roads there is a pension system.
The railroads, in fact, come nearer to carrying
out the conditions of humane employment
laid down by President Eliot than any other
employers of large numbers of men.
The railroad companies use this increase of
wages as an occasion to increase rates. Thus
the public will pay the increase — properly
enough, provided the rates are not increased
unduly; for that they shall remain as low as
possible is a prime condition of prosperity and
progress. But the only way in which men
who work for wages or salaries can share in
the general prosperity is by an increase of
wages or salary; for the cost of living is
increasing rather than diminishing. Farmers,
merchants, manufacturers — all other classes
except wage earners — earn more by an
increase of business even when the price of
what they sell does not rise. Not so with men
on salaries.
But the great railroads have been prosper-
ous enough to raise wages to some extent at
least, even without increasing their rates
appreciably. Their gross earnings were
$540,000,000 more in 1902 than in 1892; their
net income was $113,000,000 more; and they
paid $48,000,000 more in dividends. It is
noteworthy that this ten per cent, increase in
wages is almost as great as the increase in
dividends paid in 1902 over those paid in 1892.
In general it may be said that at no pre-
ceding time in our history have our great
railroad systems been in so good a condition
or have made so good a showing as now, nor
has their great army of employees fared so
well. This is much to say when it is remem-
bered how enormous these great interests are,
how large the army of railroad employees is,
and how intimately the service touches every
part of the population. There were, for
instance, 607,000,000 passengers carried by
railroads in 1902 — which means that, on an
average, every man, woman and child rode
about eight times during the year.
ECONOMIC SERMONS FROM THE PULPIT
BISHOP LAWRENCE, of the Episcopal
diocese of eastern Massachusetts,
wearied perhaps by the frequent and some-
times unfortunate use of the coal strike in
sermons, maintained in a recent article that
the preacher as a citizen has the right, and it
may be his duty, to talk about current events ;
but that in the pulpit it is his duty to preach
the gospel. Yes, and the pulpit would gain
much if there were fewer sermons on economic
tendencies and social and political events; for
the gospel has these advantages over such
subjects — it is easier to preach, it is easier to
listen to, it is safer to expound ; and it is more
edifying.
Yet throughout the history of Christianity
many of the greatest preachers have preached
about current subjects. They have fulmi-
nated against thrones; they have rebuked
social crimes ; they have denounced entrenched
wrong. But there is a difference. A great
preacher may do what a little preacher cannot
do; and most of the contemporaneous preach-
ing on "current events," especially on
political and economic subjects, has the
sound of the amateur even when it has not the
sound of the sentimentalist. The safest rule
for all preachers, except those who know that
they are great, is to stick to the gospel. Even
platitudes are preferable to economic theories
that are not sound and to political discourses
that are transcendental.
THE HUMAN ATOMS OF A STEEL-BUILT CITY
FEW things in this wonder-age in which
we live are more astonishing than
the passenger traffic in New York City.
When the elevated railroads were built in
Manhattan and in Brooklyn the prediction of
many sensible men was that the street-car
travel would suffer greatly. But the street-
car travel increased and has kept on increasing
to a point of unbearable discomfort in the
busiest hours. The increase has been at so
rapid a rate that a man who only read the
statistics would never guess that any other
2938
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
means of travel was needed. Yet the elevated
trains also during the busy hours are always
so crowded as to provoke wonder both at the
number of passengers and at the willingness
of thousands of men and women to stand in
packed cars (packed as sardines are), and to
go and come swinging to straps. One
wonders at this till one sees the still greater
rush and crush at the Brooklyn Bridge.
There is no other such spectacle under the
wide heavens — men and women struggling
not for seats but for standing-room. They
literally push and are pushed, more densely
crowded than cattle on cattle-boats, to and
from their daily work. The wonder grows
why civilized human beings wilt submit to
such an experience twice every working day.
Well, street cars, ferries, sidewalks, cabs,
elevated roads, and the Bridge — all these do
not accommodate the throng. New bridges
are building, and they, too, will be as crowded
as the old one almost as soon as they are
open. The great underground subway now
under rapid construction will become the
greatest thoroughfare on the globe. Yet it
is already obvious that all the other means of
travel will then be as crowded as they now
are; for the Interborough Railroad Company,
which will operate the subway, has made
a perpetual lease of the elevated roads in
Manhattan, guaranteeing to pay a seven per
cent, dividend on their stock. The elevated
roads in ^Manhattan alone carry nearly
200,000,000 passengers a year !
This urban travel gives a hint of the devel-
opment of the great office buildings down-
town and of the apartment houses uptown —
of the working and living in high structures.
of urban groui;h upward. The steel building
and electricity as a motive power are fast
changing the character and the habits of the
swarming millions in New York. The rapid
transition from the old kind of city to the new
gives the social philosopher such a field of
study as was never before presented — at least,
the social philosopher who is not a part of it ;
for not the least remarkable thing about this
change is the apparent unconsciousness of it
on the part of the people who are pushed and
jammed and shot up and down and who live
and work in such an intimate compression of
population as Chinamen never dreamed of —
many of them, alas ! at the same time in such
isolation as no country folk except shepherds
ever knew.
THE SMOTHERED DWELLERS IN "FLATS"
THE man died in Xew York the other day
— a Mr. Kilpatrick — who is said to
have built the first " flat," or apartment house.
The necessity that families should live one
above another was inherent in the growth of
the modem city, and it is not just to hold any
individual responsible for such a degradation
of urban humanity. It was bound to come;
and, if one man had not had the ignominious
distinction of first building such a dwelling,
another man would have had it. But it was
an evil era that was then begun.
For, although it has been only fifty years
since the " fiat " began to dwarf the dwellers in
cities, it has already so distorted the character
of thousands of families that they consider
apartment life normal. There are men who
have so far fallen from nature as to put gas-
logs in country houses ; and nothing but death
in childhood is so pathetic as this revelation
of the abnormal. Now a certain proportion
of unfortunate mankind will perhaps always
have to live in sunless cells out of sight of all
things that grow; but as long as living under
such conditions is frankly regarded as a
misfortune of poverty — as life in the slums —
all is not lost. Tenement dwellers may keep
some memory of green fields and dream of the
joy of stepping on the unpaved ground ; there
is still hope of normal life for them. But,
when men and women pay large sums of
money for fashionable "apartments" and by
choice live under conditions that dry up the
sap of individuality, a hopeless social condi-
tion follows . Such persons regard the count^^'
as a thing that they have discarded except for
condescending summer uses. Caged life has
become the natural life to them, and they
have forgotten that they are a sort of zoo-
logical specimen rather than healthy indi-
viduals.
Our grandfathers regarded it as a misfortune
that they were obliged to live in tunnels for
houses — that is. in city houses built in blocks,
which could have sunlight only from the front
and the rear. They could not foresee the
contentment of well-to-do people of our gen-
eration with the still greater surrender of indi-
vidual freedom which has come with the
" fiat." The hived and smotheredmillions that
from necessity or from choice know only a
contracted indoor existence and have become
reconciled to it or even content with it — these
are our real paupers, whether they be rich or
MR. NAST'S IMMORTAL DONKEY, ELEPHANT AND TIGER 2939
I
I
poor. It is not easy for a man to dwell in a
"flat" and to be a generous-natured gentle-
man, nor can a natural womanhood flower
out of reach of sunlight and the soil. The
convenient artificiality of apartment life is
the more dangerous the more comfortable it
is made, for the more persons it then seduces
from the fundamental virtue of a natural
individuality.
MR. REED
IT has been long since the death of
any public man, except President
McKinley, -caused keener regret than the
death of ex-Speaker Thomas B. Reed.
Although he had not been in public life for
three years, he was called "Mr. Speaker"
oftener than he was called Mr. Reed; for
it was as Speaker of the House of Representa-
tives that he impressed his strong personality
on the country. The act by which he will
longest be remembered was his revolutionary
change of the custom of the House whereby
members who were present but chose not to
answer to a yea-and-nay roll-call were counted
as present. By this ruling an end was put
to the obstructive tactics of the minority,
who, by simply refusing to answer the roll-
call, had prevented a quorum from appearing
to be present. For this revolutionary change
in the rules of the House he was denounced
as perhaps no other public man has been in
recent years. Yet the Democrats subse-
quently adopted the same rule, and thus one
method by which a minority used to thwart
a majority in the House is gone forever; and
its going was a great gain. It will be by this
achievement more than by any other in his
public life that Mr. Reed will be remembered.
But he has other claims to remembrance, for
distinguished service on the floor as well as in
the chair.
He enlivened the public life of his period
of service by a keener wit than any of his
contemporaries had. In private life, too,
this made him attractive ; but it was a quality
that probably cost him a general popularity
among politicians. During his long service
few prominent men or important measures
escaped his sharp sallies ; and sometimes they
stung and stuck. The irresistible impulse to
prick a humbug doubtless cost him many
political friends — such friends, at least, as
a man finds useful when he becomes a candi-
date for a presidential nomination.
But il was not .Mr. Reed's wit only that
made him an unsuccessful candidate for the
Republican nomination for the presidency;
for he did not know how to set about a task
of this sort. He had to a remarkable degree
.he quality of good companionship with those
whom he knew and really cared for, but not
with the crowd. He was at once too shy and
too critical to become a popular idol. Nor
did he know how to cultivate the masses nor
to impress himself upon them. This was not
all ; he did not know the masses of the Ameri-
can people as Mr. McKinley, for instance,
knew them. In thought and temperament
he kept too close to the Atlantic seaboard.
To the rank and file of the voters in the
middle Western States he was merely a name,
not a personality; and, as they saw him, he
was oftener criticizing policies than making
them. Indeed, his mind was critical rather
than constructive. He retired from public
life because he could not approve of the war
with Spain, nor of the Republican policies
that grew out of it. Since he was too loyal
to his party to forsake it (for he was a stanch
partisan always), he could either openly
oppose its policy and try to shape it to his
liking or he could retire. A greater man in
his place would have made a constructive
effort to change the party policy; but it
suited his temperament better simply to retire.
In his private life, after he became a
citizen of New York, he held all his old friends
and made new ones by the charm of his
personality and by his inflexible character.
Mr. J. G. Cannon spoke the feeling of many
men when he said:
"Thomas B. Reed, the greatest in intellect, the
broadest in understanding and the most courageous
in conviction of all American statesmen I have
known."
He was a courageous, able and stalwart
man — attractive but not constructive. For
this reason he is missed as keenly as any man
of his generation would be, but he will take a
less important place in our political history
than he filled in his lifetime.
MR. NAST'S IMMORTAL DONKEY, ELEPHANT
AND TIGER
THE late Mr. Thomas Nast, who recently
died at Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he
was Consul General of the United States,
added three symbolic figures to our political
life that (so far as men now living can see
into the future) give promise of perpetual use.
2940
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
The Democratic donkey, the RepubHcan
elephant and the Tammany tiger seem
likely to live as long as these parties exist.
A no less apt cartoon by Mr. Nast represented
Tweed in his checked suit of dollar marks.
This followed Tweed relentlessly to his cap-
ture and death. In the active days of his
pencil Mr. Nast did many other clever and
effective things. But the three great party
symbols, the donkey, the elephant and the
tiger, have ever since remained indispensa-
ble to us. No other cartoonist has added so
much to the permanent vocabulary (so to call
it) of our politics. They are parallel in their
finality with those phrases from the Farewell
Address, the Declaration of Independence and
the Gettysburg Address that have become, as it
were, the very alphabet of our political thought
and speech. Such things are called, for short,
works of genius. The many clever cartoonists
since Mr. Nast's active days have probably
created nothing so fundamental and lasting.
THE DURBAR AT DELHI
THERE have been few more remarkable
things in modern life than the durbar
at Delhi — the celebration in India of King
Edward's coronation on a scale of magnifi-
cence that the coronation itself did not
approach, if an Oriental fete may be compared
with an Occidental one. The incongruity of
the elaborate spectacle is emphasized by the
American birth and rearing of the lady who
is the wife of the viceroy of India and by
the presence, of many American spectators.
The political significance of this unparalleled
display of Indian wealth and splendor and
pomp and ceremony by the Indian princes
(all really empty of power) is that England's
rule over them is made easier by a show of
power. There is an irony in this that is at
once ludicrous and pathetic.
Few of the Indian princes have a real
loyalty to Great Britain. If you scratch a
Hindu you find an enemy of Occidental civili-
%0^ BERMUDAS
ATLANTIC OCEAN
.VnA55AU ^ ^
ORUBA^^^ ^ "^^^ ^MARTINIQUE
"^ <£5T. LUCIA
cD^ FORTIFIED STATION
A MAP SHOWING THE GEOGRAPHICAL RELATION OF THE WEST INDIES TO THE UNITED STATES, TO
SOUTH AMERICA AND TO THE ISTHMIAN CANAL, APROPOS OF THE NAVAL MANOEUVERS
THE INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY FUR PANICS
2941
zation. Yet England's rule over them, after
reckoning in all the evils of it, has been and
is the best force for good that exists in these
swarming areas. It is the only hope of the
application of modern forces to those vast
populations, the only hope of sanitation, of
health, even of food-supply. The future of
India is as interesting a speculation as its
past is an interesting study; but a little more
than a hundred years of active English
experience is not enough very f)rofoundly
to affect the results of thousands of years
of over-crowded inaction. Such a task must
be judged by century- results.
THE INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR
PANICS AND DEPRESSIONS
(Thb World's Work publishes every month an article in which some timely and vital subject of the financial world
is taken up]
ALTHOUGH the new year finds us
still in the enjoyment of that excep-
tional prosperity which has made
the last five years the most remarkable period
in our history, and although nobody sees any
peril definite enough to cause immediate
alarm, yet there is a very general feeling that
a stringency in the money market, stagnation
in trade and perhaps a panic must sooner or
later come, and that perhaps they will come
at an early time. Is there good reason for
such a fear ?
One argument for fear may be safely dis-
missed— the argument that, because periods
of depression have come at more or less
regular intervals, they are inevitable — that,
do what we will, we cannot avert them. To
believe that the commercial world is bound
to become depressed at regular intervals,
with or without cause, is to harbor a super-
stition.
Yet every period of prosperity does bring
temptations to the use of reckless methods,
and reckless methods w411 bring disaster if
enough men indulge in them. On the other
hand, a panic or the recurrence of any long
period of depression is for this very reason
preventable ; for there is no occult or necessary
reason why they should come. The whole
thing is a matter of conduct — a matter of
the personal conduct of men who carry on
the activities of the business w^orld. The
question is whether the business world is yet
sufficiently intelligent and self-restrained and
can work sufficiently in union to prevent the
coming of depression.
Serious disasters have been caused chieflv
by mortgaging future profits or values. The
clearest example of panics of this sort is given
by those that have followed land speculations.
In a given community land values rise,
whether for a legitimate or a speculative
reason. If they keep going up men make
big profits. The bigger the profits and the
more men that make them, the more easily
the insidious craze spreads. Presently every-
body is speculating in land. There never
was a better example of crowd-craziness or
of the loss of judgment by whole communi-
ties than the great land "booms." Sensible
men have forgotten real values in the excite-
ment; they have forgotten the legitimate
causes of a rise in value. They have lost a
sense of proportion. In these crazes the land
itself has sometimes dropped clean out of
mind. Lots that never existed have been
bought and sold and sold and bought at
continually increasing prices — prices that
bore no relation to values, but that w-ere
determined wholly by the mood of the specu-
lators. Most communities have at some
time suITered more or less -from such a craze;
and many times in our history large numbers
of people over wide areas have run the course
of this madness.
Such an extreme and familiar example of
anticipating real or imaginary future values
or profits has been cited to show how con-
tagious any movement of this kind may
become, and how under the excitement of it
sensible men lose their heads. Other ways
of anticipating future profits and values are
far less direct and more insidious; and they
are less easily recognized.
2942
THE INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR PANICS
Take, for example, the organization of a
prosperous industry. Suppose that there are
ten competing factories, each earning a net
profit of fifteen per cent. Seven and a
half per cent, is, of course, a good profit if it
can be continuously maintained. The ten
factories are consoHdated under one financial
management. If its securities — in stock or
bonds — can be sold on a "guarantee" or an
expectation of seven and a half per cent.,
they are marketed. The promoters, the
underwriters — everybody on the "inside" of
the consolidation — receives some of this
watered stock. Among the owners of some
of the factories are men who prefer cash to
securities. Securities are, therefore, sold to
the public for this reason as well as for other
reasons.
Here we have a dangerous situation. An
adverse change in the trade of this particular
product — which may come from any one of a
dozen or a hundred causes — may lessen the
profits. But we are anticipating the course
of events.
In our present period of activity and of
large profits hundreds and hundreds of com-
binations such as the foregoing have been
made, some of them of enormous magnitude.
Not all have been "watered" in direct and
open ways, but most of them have in some
way mortgaged the future. They proceed
upon the assumption that large profits are to
continue indefinitely. The same tendency,
of course, has shown itself in many other forms
besides industrial consolidations. The point
is that in such a time as this there is an
inevitable contagion to trade on future
prosperity.
What happens next ? The men who have
released their money from the organized
or consolidated factories and shops invest it
in other enterprises. In other words, they
"fix" it — make it fast. It ceases to be
"liquid" capital. It takes forms that could
not be turned into cash quickly. Then those
who hold the stocks and bonds of industrial
organizations use them as collateral for loans
to carry on business or speculation or pleasure,
as they choose. Most of this borrowed money
also goes into "fixed" investments in a pros-
perous time.
In this way the property of the ten factories
is mortgaged ; and the mortgagees (the
borrowers on the combination's securities)
invest the money mainly in " fixed" ways.
Suppose the real value of these ten factories
be Sioo,ooo each. Each could be mortgaged
for, let us say, $60,000 at the utmost. But
men do not usually mortgage their factories
except under the severest pressure so long
as they remain "unconsolidated." But as
soon as the consolidation of these ten fac-
tories takes place, they are valued at (say)
82,000,000 instead of $1,000,000. If thev
pay seven and a half per cent, on $2,000,000
for a reasonable period their stock and bonds
in good time will approach par in the market .
They can be used as collateral for the bor-
rowing of sixty per cent, of $2,000,000. or
Sr. 200, 000. In other words, these ten fac-
tories, which are really worth $1, coo, 000 and
would probably never be mortgaged at all
so long as they remained separate and inde-
pendent, are likely to be used, after they are
consolidated, as collateral for more than
$1,000,000 of loans. Incorporation, and
especially consolidation, almost always lead
to the taking of a mortgage on the future.
When this process has been extended far
enough, and enough productive enterprises
become thus mortgaged, a more or less danger-
ous state of things follows. The lessening of
profits — not to speak of the failure of enter-
prises— may at any time cause a fall in these
securities. A hundred and one things may
cause a disturbance. Whenever such a dis-
turbance comes, the banks and other lenders
on such collateral must call their loans — or
run the risk of loss. Then follows the same
thing that follows when a land "boom"
reaches its height. Distrust begins, and a
collapse or a panic or at least a "stringency"
follows. Whatever artificial structure of
value has been erected topples. Nor is this
the worst; real values also fall.
The more or less regular recurrence of
panics, while not inevitable or mysterious,
is thus caused by the tendency in human
nature to mortgage the future, which becomes
too strong to be resisted in times of unusual
prosperity. An artificial structure is then
likely to be built higher and higher till it
collapse. But, given a sound currency and
crops of normal or even approximately
normal abundance, there is no other reason
why serious depressions and panics should be
recurrent. The whole matter is one of
prudent conduct and of good business fore-
sight— this, and nothing more.
It would be an immense gain if. as the
THE INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR PANICS
2943
New Year begins with our prosperity still
running high, every man of affairs would bring
the matter home to himself, would examine
carefully to see how far he has built on an
artificial or possibly dangerous basis, how
far he has a part in the gigantic structure of
credit and confidence that has been reared
these five or six years and whether it be
sound as far as he can afifect it. Individual
care and foresight by a large enough number
of men of the right kind can prevent the
recurrence of serious depression ; and there is
no good reason why we should have a panic
again in the United States for as long a period
as men can foresee.
It is a magnificent and impressive thing —
this vast structure of confidence and credit
that now exists in our world of finance and
commerce. Almost all productive industry
is making large earnings. There never were
such large dividend payments before. So
nearly universal is practical success that every
man and every corporation that has not been
convicted of dishonesty has better credit than
ever before.
But the basis of it all is not real values,
great as real values are. The basis of it is
credit, is confidence. If this be shaken to
the slightest extent trouble will follow. The
continuance of prosperity, then, depends on
the individual character of every man of
financial or commercial importance. If every
such man keep his credit within safe distance
of his real values we shall go on indefinitely
as a prosperous people, and prove by a happy
experience that panics are not bound to come.
Such is the obvious general principle of
danger, of temptation and of prevention.
Let us see in a general way if facts now
warrant fear.
As regards the solidity of our actual recent
growth in wealth there is no doubt. Nothing
like it was ever before seen in the world. The
output of iron and steel, for example, increased
eight million tons during the last five years —
as much as it gained in the preceding quarter
of a century. The enormous increase in
railroad traffic and earnings and of dividend
payments every half-year, the growth of our
export trade in manufactures — all these
substantial facts have been presented and
(explained over and over again in this maga-
zine. It is a substantial basis of prosperity.
Most of this phenomenal growth is solid and
most of it is permanent. More than that, it
will go on. Our commercial "invasion" of
other countries has only begun, if we are wise.
Nor are the opportunities of expanding
domestic trade by any means all used. We
have created real values.
As regards the danger — we have built up
speculative values also, and we are using
money faster than we are making it — at least
in the prodigious development of industrial
enterprises. We are mortgaging those that
we have in order to build others. The whole
question is whether we are doing this at too
rapid a rate. The enormous increase of
bank loans and discounts tells the story.
Now as to prevention — the general appre-
hension of danger is perhaps the best pre-
ventive of disaster, if it lead to conservative
action soon enough. There are many evi-
dences that such conservative action is being
taken in time. The banks are gradually
lessening their loans. They are lending
smaller sums on those industrial securities
that are known to be watered. Another
very strong conservative force is the ever
increasing unification of the commercial and
especially the financial world. When one
important institution encounters danger, the
others quickly come to the rescue, so that no
panic may ensue. This unification of interest
and action is becoming in effect an insurance
against fright. It supplies the one thing
needed to prevent disaster from spreading
by sheer contagion from cases of merely per-
sonal mismanagement or misfortune.
But the greatest preventive force of all is
individual — the extent or degree to which
every man of affairs regards the financial and
commercial community as a thing in his own
keeping, and looks upon himself as personally
responsible for so much of it as he touches or
can affect. It is at last a matter of character.
The time will come, and surely we ought
already to have reached such a stage of
commercial civilization, when every man
will have a feeling of responsibility to the
business community — will have a commercial
conscience which will forbid his doing danger
to the great fabric of credit upon which the
modern commercial world rests.
FRIEDRICH ALFRED KRUPP
THE funeral procession of the great
German ironmaster, Krupp, the
other day wound out of a small,
dingy, smoke-stained cottage at Essen. The
Emperor with his suite followed bareheaded
among the chief mourners. Many of the
most noted men of the empire were there.
The man they bore to his last rest was the
third head of the firm of Friedrich Krupp,
and the small cottage whence the long and
brilliant train of sorrowers started was the
humble cradle of this world -renowned house.
Nearly a century ago — in 1810 — the firm
was founded with very small capital, during
the dreariest days of Germany's political
debasement, when Napoleon's eagles flew
wide and unhindered. In this little frame
building, with barely space enough for him
and his large family, the founder of the firm
in 1826 died of a broken heart, at the early
age of thirty-nine, leaving his business affairs
in an embarrassed condition. But his eldest
son, Alfred, a precocious boy endowed with
indomitable energy, with the consent of his
mother became at once the active head of the
firm. He was then just fourteen. In 1873
Alfred Krupp, having achieved meanwhile a
measure of business success such as had never
before fallen to any man in Germany, affixed
a small and modestly worded tablet to the
door of this low-eaved cottage, and declared
that it should stand as a memento of his
family's humble origin and as a warning to
his descendants' pride.
In 1887 Alfred Krupp died. He was a
bom leader of men, and with matchless pluck,
strong common sense, thorough and practical
acquaintance with the manufacture of steel
and iron in all branches, he coupled a wonder-
ful resourcefulness and a combative and
domineering spirit. He left his son, Friedrich
Alfred, the sole owner of the huge enterprise,
which even then was composed of many and
diverse branches.
Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the third head of
the firm, who recently died, was bom on
February 17, 1854, and he was a man of
entirely different fiber.
There was nothing aggressive in his nature.
On the contrarv, he was of a mild and amiable
disposition. He disliked publicity and the
bustle and clamor of public life. He left an
estate valued at $150,000,000, and enjoyed
the largest income in Germany. Wealth and
the power that great wealth brings were at
his command. At his palatial estate, the
Villa Hugel, near Essen, he dispensed on
many occasions more than royal hospitality,
and he associated with monarchs on terms
of intimacy. Yet he was never a happy man,
and his career, which was determined by an
inheritance whose responsibilities he could
not shirk, was not the career that he would
have chosen if he had been free to choose.
The Emperor of Germany was his intimate
friend, and to him he once said: "This big
fortune has been a curse to me. If I had not
had it my predilections would have been
for art and literature. "
He had great natural talent and a sound
and well-trained taste. He was a generous
but judicious patron of art. His admirable
collection of paintings in Villa Hugel, which
comprises none but masterpieces, and his fine
aggregation of objets de vertii, attest this.
During conversation he would often dwell
regretfully on the fact that the responsibilities
of his position left him no choice in life;
he cordially disliked pomp and circumstance,
affectation and insincerity. He married a
lady of rank, Margaret Baroness von Ende,
and the match was a love match. He, like
his father before him, scorned all titles and
distinctions, except those that came to him
in the way of business. He preferred to
remain plain Herr Krupp. He entertained
his friend, the Kaiser, many times and (just
to name a few others) the Emperor Francis
Joseph of Austria, King Edward VII. when
he was Prince of Wales, King Carlos of
Portugal and King Leopold of Belgium; but
his manner toward them was never tinged
with that obsequiousness to which monarchs
are accustomed. With them, as with his
workmen, he. was always unaffected and
unassuming.
He was a man of fine feelings, of a lofty
nature and of thorough and wide culture.
His education had been most comprehensive.
He went through the usual eight years' course
FRIEDRICH ALFRED KRUPP
2945
at the public "gymnasium " (or lower college)
in Essen, then studied at several of the best
German universities, and was afterward
appointed Commcrcicnrath (Counselor of
Commerce), later on Wirklidicr Gchcimcr
Rath (or Privy Counselor of the Crown), and
was made a member of the Prussian Staatsrath
(Council of State). In 1893 he was elected
to the Reichstag, and was likewise elected
to the Prussian Diet.
He was a bitter foe of Socialism. During
one of his few Reichstag speeches he fiercely
attacked that party, saying among other
things: "It is the business of the Socialists
to stir up strife between employers and
employees — right or wrong, with or without
reason. The Socialist leaders and agitators
hate no one so much as the large employer
who tries, so far as in him lies, to be just,
kind and sympathetic to his men, for that
robs their arguments of power and relegates
them where they belong — to oblivion. " The
Socialists never forgave him this. Indeed,
there was war to the knife between him and
them from the time he succeeded his father,
and he would tolerate no Socialists, especially
no Socialist agitation or literature, in his wide
domain.
He took a deep and steady interest in the
welfare of his employees, high and low alike;
and, though he did not very often meet them
personally, through his counselors and chiefs
of departments he kept himself always accu-
rately and closely informed abouL every
detail that entered into the life of even the
humblest of them. The unbroken chain of
benefits with which he loaded his vast army
of men — benefits running into many millions
and comprising everything that thoughtful
and wisely directed kindness could suggest —
are uncontestable proof of this. He went,
in fact, much further than his father ever did.
To mention just one particular, he has made
it possible for his employees to build and own
comfortable homes of their own, the number
of such houses (in every instance including
land for gardens and fruit trees) amounting
at present to several thousand in Essen alone.
Friedrich Alfred Krupp possessed the great
gift of choosing able men for his assistants,
and of not interfering with them except in
case of necessity. Of the most competent
and original-minded of them he formed his
"cabinet." This Board of Directors num-
bered fourteen members at the time of his
death, of which twelve are in Essen and one
each is in Magdeburg and Kiel. He made it
the interest of these able men to serve him
well, for, like Mr. Carnegie, he paid them not
only large and increasing salaries, but admit-
ted them to a share of the profits in those
particular enterprises over which they exerted
control. It was largely owing to this far-
sighted and shrewd policy that the firm pros-
pered after 1887 at an even more rapid rate
than during his father's long management.
Within the fifteen years of Friedrich Krupp 's
control the business of the firm was more
than doubled, its capacity was trebled, its
enterprises were multiplied, and its profits
accumulated so that the total property now
owned by the firm of Friedrich Krupp is
valued at twice as much as at his father's
death. More than 150,000 persons are de-
pendent upon the Krupp enterprises for
their bread, and of these 43,083 are men.
Since the father's death the son introduced
smokeless powder, and ordnance for the same ;
began the manufacture of armor-plate (now
one of the most important branches of the
firm's work); he purchased the gigantic
Gruson Works near Magdeburg, the specialty
of which is the manufacture of turrets;
he purchased and immensely enlarged the
Germania Shipyards in Kiel and elsewhere;
and he made practicable a number of the most
important inventions in the making of steel
tools, implements, ships, guns, etc.
W. Whit well. President of the English
Iron and Steel Institute, in conferring the
golden Bessemer medal this year upon
Friedrich Alfred Krupp, paid a glowing
tribute to his skill and far-sighted wisdom
as shown in the singularly successful man-
agement of the works.
Without being an enthusiast as a manu-
facturer, as his father had been, the son's
wider horizon had doubtless much to do with
the phenomenal growth of the firm under his
leadership. During a visit paid the Essen
Works a number of years ago, I had the
pleasure of a conversation with him in which
he spoke about the industrial development
of the United States in a manner which
showed him little less than a prophet. His
remarks then came particularly true as
regards that branch of trade with which the
great ironmaster was most familiar, viz.. the
production and utilization of iron and steel.
And a year before, at the Chicago World's
2946
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
Fair, Herr Krupp had already proved by
the quality, size and arrangement of his
special exhibit what an immense importance
he attached to this market and its coming
competition.
He had some peculiarities. For one thing,
he hated to be spoken of as the " Gun King. "
Small wonder, for whatever the firm may have
been in his father's time, it now owns a series
of great enterprises of which more than
seventy per cent, of the total values produced
are other things than guns and ammunition —
things like railroad and ship implements that
work for peaceful ends. He was a foe to war.
a thorough man of peace. He led a spotless
and tender family life, and was a most devoted
and indulgent husband and father. He
leaves no sons, but two daughters, Barbara
and Bertha, survive him. The management
of the firm wnll devolve upon his nephew, who
has been verv active in it for a number of
years. In demeanor he was singularlv
gentle, almost shy, and this was probably, at
least in part, due to the fact that he never
enjoyed robust health. His digestion was
weak, and he was debarred from most of the
pleasures of the table. At the grand banquets
he used to give he contented himself with
Apollinaris water, and he rarely was allowed
a cigar or cigarette by his physician. For
several years past, too, he had been under
constant medical treatment because of a
nerv^ous depression. This, with some organic
troubles that came to torment him, made the
last five or six years of his life a burden rather
than a pleasure. His failing health was
generally understood and discussed in Essen
for years ; but it is probable that but for the
savage attack upon him by the Socialist press
his life would have been prolonged. He was
one of the greatest captains of industry that
modem conditions have produced.
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
HOW NEW INVENTIONS HAVE SIMPLIFIED AND MADE
SUCCESSFUL MANY A WRECKING OPERATION — OLD
METHODS CONTRASTED WITH THE NEW — STRIKING
STORIES OF WRECKS— HOW THE SHIPS WERE SAVED
BY
MORGAN ROBERTSON
(.M^THOR OF "masters OF MEN," ETC.)
A BRIGHT lantern, elevated above the
water at the end of a long pole,
and given a slow right and left
movement across the wind, would look on
a dark night very much like the riding
light of a craft rolling at anchor; and strange
vessels, seeking port and good holding ground,
would head toward the light. When they
struck the bottom and became, under the
law of custom and precedent, " wrecked,"
they became the perquisites of the discoverers
— always the men that manipulated the
lantern — stout-hearted, strong-limbed fellows,
able to enforce their rights against the protests
of misguided mariners.
That was old-time wrecking. Today it is
a business that requires integrity and ability,
big central offices with long-distance tele-
phones, big tugs and towlines, and a complete
equipment of diving apparatus, pumps,
pontoons and derricks, with a force of men
trained for 3'ears in this peculiar work.
On the Florida Reef, it is true, every fisher-
man, sponger, or beachcomber — "conches,"
they are called — who owns or can lease a
boat of any size, takes out a wrecker's
license. Let a vessel but strike a reef and
up will come the wreckers by the dozen to
wait in a circle, like vultures, while the anxious
officers and men strive. Not a conch among
them can be prevailed upon to work, even at
the highest wage. When hope is given up —
when, with a gale coming on, the sore-hearted
captain decides to abandon, and save the lives
of his crew, no sooner does his boat leave the
side than there is a rush of the wreckers; and
MODERN MK'IIIODS OI-' SAVING SIIII'S
!947
THE WRKCK iiF THl, BLAIRMORE
Pushed into shallow water after coming to the surface in San Francisco Harbor
the first one aboard has the legal right to
salve the ship and cargo.
If these simple-minded people would com-
bine instead of competing, many a ship
and cargo could be saved to the owners or
underwriters and their ultimate reward would
be heavier; for the "chance of loot" is little
compared with the certainty of salvage. So
certain and so generous is this salvage that
wreckers of larger growth and knowledge of
law — the wrecking companies of the sea-
ports— on learning that a ship is in trouble
will rush their tugs and equipment to the spot,
and labor, often against the wishes of the
ship's officers, who may think they need no
help. But a bargain is made if possible for
a sum greater than would be the award of
the courts, and this, if contested later, need
only give way to the always certain salvage.
The wrecking companies also respect the
unwritten law of the craft, and the first tug
to get a line to a stranded ship, or an anchor
down near a sunken craft, has first rights.
Wrecking has two distinct phases — the
pulling of stranded craft from the beach
and the raising of sunken craft from the
bottom. Another and new method, the
salving of cargoes with submarine boats, is
not generally used, though a modest man
named Simon Lake, with a genius for keeping
out of print and a very practical submarine
boat of his own invention, has been nosing
around under water for the last three or
four years and getting rich on his findings.
Wrecking has to do with the reclaiming of
wrecks, not of cargoes.
When a ship goes ashore she lies broadside
on and punches holes in herself or strains her
planking, so as to fill with water up to the
outside level. If she does not, the divers are
saved the work of patching and pumping
her; but when they have made her tight,
the floating of her is merely a question of a
long, strong pull of tug, capstan or windlass.
Tugs are tried at first. Six tugs dragged the
Kilbrannan, ashore on a beach nearly as flat
as a floor, into deep water. But in heavier
effort, when six tugs, or as many as the ship
Photographed by Higgms
THE POTRIMPOS
Wrecked in the breakers off North Beach, Washington
2948
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
THE STEAMSHIP PARIS ON THE ROCKS
Copyright by W. M. Harrison, Falmouth
Photographed by Majiiard
THE BOW OF THE UNFORTUNATE UMATILLA,
BEACHED IN ESQUIMALT HARBOR,
BRITISH COLUMBIA
has bitts and masts to fasten to, cannot pull
her afloat, advantage is taken of elasticity
and buoyancy. There is a trick known to
teamsters and horsemen, on which bets and
reputations for strength have been won, which
illustrates this. A moderately strong man
may brace his chest against a tree and.
extending his arms at full length, grasp the
whiffletree of a team of horses. Provided
that his grip is not loosened by the first plunge
of the animals, they may tug with all their
strength and not tear that whiffletree from
his hands; but, if the whiffletree be extended
at the end of a long, elastic rope, they could
not onlv drag his arms from their sockets,
but might pull the tree down if his arms and
his grip and the rope were strong enough.
A tug may not be able to drag a heavy weight
from a dock if it is attached b}' a chain, but
if a long hawser be substituted the tug stores
up in it the momentum of her mass during
the time she is stretching it, and this, acting
with her undiminished pull at the moment
the stretching ceases, will jerk the weight
into the air. In this way the ponderous ship
is dragged down the sand toward deeper
water; and it matters little at which end of
the elastic cable the power is applied. In the
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
2949
case of a large craft— a steamer, for instance,
thrown higli on the beacli and inil)C(l<le(l in the
sand, too lieavv a drag for tugs and tow-lines
— four large anchors, each nearly four tons in
weight, will be carried out and dropped witii
cables of 200 fathoms' length and fifteen
inch circumference leading in to the ship.
Four powerful tugs might drag on these four
cables until they parted, or a strain could be
put upon them from the ship that would part
them or drag the anchors home, without
budging the wreck an inch. The iifteen-
inch cables must be tautened, at first with
capstans and winches, then by tackles and
luflfs. The power that can be gained is
enormous — sufficient to tear out the sides of
the ship. But the cables must l)e considered ;
their elasticity, which is about thirty feet to
the 200 fathoms, must not be destroyed. But
Photofjraphcfi by McCurdy
THE SCHOONER MINNIE E. CAINE ASHORE
On Smith Island, Washington
I
WRECKERS RAISING THE UMATILLA
Showing the cofferdam at work
Photographed by Maynard
2950
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
SHIP KILBRAXXAX ASHORE
Photographed by Fisher
IX PUGET SOUND
beach ages a craft more than a score of storms
at sea; every plank and frame has been
twisted a Httle ; every bolt and spike is looser.
And in an iron ship no one can tell how many
rivets are half sheared through.
Sometimes a ship can be pushed instead of
pulled into deep water. This operation
occurred in the case of the big four-masted
schooner 'Minnie E. Caine, ashore on the
precipitous beach of Smith Island. A row
of hydraulic jacks arranged along her side
moved her the short distance necessan,' to
float her.
A craft caught in a quicksand is usually
a total loss, though a coffer-dam some-
times saves her.
if they are tautened to moderately near a
straight line the wreckers may wait for the
aid of the sea.
If the ship has gone on at low tide, moderate
waves and a high tide will suffice to lift her,
but if at high tide, nothing but a storm
nearly as severe as that which threw her
ashore will furnish seas heavy enough; and
often the wreckers must wait for the spring
tides.
A sea that will lift a stranded ship will first
break over her. and when at last she quivers
and "goes to the cables. " she comes down with
a shock that seems to start every spike and
bolt in her framework. But after each jump
seaward the cables are tautened, and little
by little — it may take two, three or a dozen
tides — the ship hitches down toward deep
water until she floats. An experience on the
bisn, "RESURRECTED"
A vessel coming to the surface after being pumped out by wreckers
F!i t j;Taphed "by Holmes
A SHIP ASHORE OX NORTH BEACH
If a tight ship gets into the grip of a
quicksand it will be sucked down until solid
bottom is reached or the quicksand solidifies;
and inertia and friction will hold it there.
A quicksand wrecked the big ship Glemnorag,
which ran ashore near the mouth of the
Columbia River in the winter of 1 896-9 7 . The
wreckers pulled her off, but carelessly allowed
her to touch a soft spot, and she is there now.
It is often necessar}' to lighten a ship of
cargo and ballast in order to float her, and
this brings an additional danger: she may
2952
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
capsize when water-borne. The German
bark, Potrimpos, which grounded at high tide
near where the Gleuiuorag piled up, and which
made much work for the wreckers thereby,
undid the whole by toppling over immediately
the support of the sand was taken from her.
this limit a small craft can be lifted, cargo
and all, by a derrick scow until her deck
openings are out of water; then she can be
patched by the divers and pumped out on the
spot; or, half submerged, she may be towed
in her slings to a dr3-dock and there repaired.
ICE-BOUND
Tlie WTecking operations on the Minnie E. Caine hindered by the freezing of the apparatus
She filled and sank in the surf. Yet there
was not a leak in her.
No method of raising sunken craft is of use
for a depth greater than twenty-five fathoms
— the limit of diving operations. "Within
But a big craft is too heavy to lift with
derricks. Pontoons are employed in most
cases, though when a ship can be patched and
sealed up by the divers, and wind, tide and
sea are easv and favorable, she may be raised
MODERN Mi:ril()l)S OI' SANIXC SIIII'S
2953
bv her own huoyanr)'. The l-^iij^Hsh ship
Blainuorc, whiili ca])sizc(l and sank in San
Francisco harbor, was raised in this manner.
Slie came up on lier side and was ri^lited hiter
by skihul grounchng.
One successful trick in the trade, when the
craft is not too large, and wlicn the deck can
be sealed but not the leak in the bottom, is
to pump in compressed air, which, of course,
forces the water out. But a craft rising from
the bottom of her own volition is apt to be
erratic in her movements; she may turn over
as she comes, or may come like a bubble and
upset the helpful wrecking craft above her.
But, all in all. pontoons are the main
reliance of wreckers in raising sunken craft.
They are strongly built, scowlike hulks,
submergible, with pumps to empty them,
and wells from the deck down into which
lead the heavy chains by wdiich wrecks are
lifted. Two pontoons at least are required,
and the chains pass down the wells of one,
under the bottom of the wreck, and up
STEAMSHIP lyiLLIAMETTJi ASHOKE AT UNION,
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Its bow was lifted from the ledge by logs running through the hull and
resting upon scows
through the wells of the other. Thev are
tautened at low tide, with the pontoons full
of water, and made fast. Then, from the
rising of the tide and the lifting power of the
DIVERS AT WORK PATCHING THE HULL OF A VESSEL
PhotOi^r^phed by Gleason
^954
MODERN METHODS OF SAVING SHIPS
Photographed by Dalies
COLUMBIA RIVER LIGHTSHIP EN ROUTE FROM
PACIFIC OCEAN TO BAKER'S BAY
The ship «-as taken about a mile through the woods
pontoons as the water is pumped out, the
wreck leaves the bottom. At high tide, and
with the pontoons empty of water, it is towed
into shallower water until it grounds; then
with the going down of the tide the pontoons
are again flooded, the slack of the chains
taken up, and the operation is repeated. By
and by the receding tide will expose the leak
or bring it within reach, and when it is
plugged or patched the wreck may float of
its own buoyancy. But it requires months
of hard work. Pumps may break dov>-n,
pontoons leak, chains part, anchors drag, or
drifting and unmanageable craft may crash
into the outfit at the last moment and the
work of weeks must be done over again.
Where the tides are high, as they are in
English and Canadian waters, pontoons need
not be emptied and pumped out. They
are merely an aid to the lifting power of an
ordinary tide such as runs in New York
harbor, and a good substitute where there is
no tide at all. The Thames Conservancy, the
largest wrecking company in London, seldom
needs submergible pontoons — "camels," as
they are called over there — and on the
Great Lakes the pontoons are large and
deep, sufficiently so to lift a wreck to the
surface. And as shelving beaches are scarce
,in these waters, a wreck is usually patched
and pumped out while slung in the chains.
The wrecker's life is full of danger and
daring, with rush of storms and high tides,
with the blow of the salt sea in his face,
trusting his life to swaying ropes and the
worn windlass, and through it all governing
and mastering the sea. His work, in its
application of modern invention, is a new
evidence of growing human control over
natural forces.
Photographetl by F. H. Can-iri'i
THF. LAST STAGE— DISMANTLING AN OBSTINATE WRECK
Glenmorag on the beach near the mouth of the Columbia River
ON THK KlKTEENTIl SIORY
Jill
THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN OFFICE
BUILDING
HOW THE TYPICAL AMERICAN SKY-SCRAPER IS DEVELOPED FROM THE
SIGNING OF THE CONTRACT UNTIL THE BUILDING'S COMPLETION
BY
ARTHUR GOODRICH
Illustrated in part from photographs loaned by Clinton & Russell
ABOUT the time that a foreign traveler
remarked that New York was begin-
ning to look like a burying-ground
that was all headstones, and a quick-witted
American retorted: "Fifteen-story head-
stones that mark the decay of European
supremacy," the directors of a well-to-do
company which owned land in the centre of
the business district in New York held their
annual meeting. The solid old four-story
building that had covered the site for half a
century was scarcely paying for itself. The
land had increased enormously in value, and
taxes and general expenses had grown in pro-
portion. Business firms were clamoring for
office room, and there was a large space
between the plot of ground and the sky if it
were onlv enclosed. "Within a few weeks the
company selected architects to enclose it as
high as nineteen stories. And so began the
construction of another of these great auto-
matic machines of modern business through
which, day after day, thousands of human
beings are hurried, leaving a product that
scatters to the ends of the earth and helps to
feed, clothe, carry, inspire, ruin, and bring
justice to hundreds of thousands in its track —
a versatile but inexorable force over which its
makers have no control.
It was made much as any other automatic
machine is made, a machine built on a
model that has already been used a hundred
times, nearly every part of which merely
carries out an old formula. The only varia-
tion is made to meet some difference in the
ground on which it is set or some particular
AFTER THE OLD BUILDING HAS BEEN CLEARED AWAY
Two derricks already at work
I
SINKING THE PNEUMATIC CAISSONS
Into the midst of the quicksand to the solid rock
k
THE FRAMEWORK BEGINNING TO RISE
THE inOGRAl'IlV C)l<- AN OFl-ICK liUlLIHx\(}
J959
procUul il will c\()l\c. A iM-enclunan who
looked twice within two months from the lop
of one of these buildings at the bare skeletons
of steel that rose on every side, said in wonder:
"You build these high buildings more
rapidly than we build cottages of wood."
lie saw only the putting together of the
structures — their ])hysical erection. They
were built months before in brightly lighted
offices in buildings almost identical with them.
This building, the architects and contractors
found, presented its individual difficulties.
sons were tlicrefore decided u])on, the num-
ber of them was settled and the exact sjjot
where each was to be sunk and their probable
deptli, and the time to be allowed for tlieir
com])lction was estimated, all with the aid of
a foundation specialist, a man who builds
downward only.
This done, the building began to rise on
paper, an enormous ])uzzle of interwoven
lines and numerals and hieroglyphics worked
out on many broad drawing-boards. Each
floor as it was completed and checked was
WORKING ON THE EDGES OF THINGS
Putting together the office-building framework
The ground upon which the old brick structure
stood was, as one of the engineers epigram-
matically remarked, "just as near being
quicksand as it could be without being," a
running, unsteady foundation for any heavy
load. New York is founded on a rock, but in
many places this foundation of the island is
far down below the surface. Nothing but the
rock itself, however, would be sure to hold
the hundreds upon hundreds of tons of the
building and its contents. Pneumatic cais-
filed away in a small oaken case. Meanwhile
the great machine with its innumerable posts
and cogs and shafts was rising as clearly in
the brain of its master mechanic, the engineer,
as if he already saw it standing straight and
clean in the heavens, silently grinding its
human atoms at the speed they themselves
had set for it.
In only one wav did this building differ
materially in the making from many of its
predecessors. From the nearest of the cais-
2960
THE BIOGRAPHY OF AX OFFICE BUILDING
sons which were to bear the great weight the
wall of the adjoining building was distant
more than three feet. To gain a support for
that edge of the structure steel girders were
planned which ran obliquely from the nearest
caisson up to the outer framework of the
ground floor. These, with the cross-girders
of the floor and the broad, upright steel beams,
THE DERRICK
Which lifts the great weights of beams and girders
formed triangles by which the load was dis-
tributed to the caissons. Except for this,
the structure was merely a skeleton of steel
beams and girders mounting upward with
unvarying progression until the topmost
framework was in place.
Long before the first squad of workmen
was sent against the old building, every piece
of steel and all the stone and brick that was
to cover the frame was planned and ordered.
Each specific beam was marked for its place
and for the exact position it was to occupy;
each hole for rivet or bolt was located, each
stone was measured for its final resting place.
The machine was built before a part was
made, before the ground was cleared for
action, before the great rushing public that,
only a few doors away, was settling values
for the republic, and which surged past and
through the old building day after day, knew
that the transformation was to come. It
was like the plan b}^ its leaders of an arm}'
campaign in which there was to be no opposi-
tion and no chance of failure. The campaign
was made in the commander's tent before
the men marched.
So the building went out on paper through
the mails to mills where the furnaces glow
with the heat of seventy times seven, and
clashing machines mold and form and punch
the heavy steel, and creaking overhead
trolleys carry its great weight, while men,
obscured by the mighty forces they have
created, direct them; to quarries where
power drills loosen granite boulders and
derricks lift them upon cars which carry them
away to be shaped ; to yards where hot ovens
bake brick for the body of wall and terra cotta
for the outer shell and the floors. And when
it returned it came like a well-formed army
of steel and stone; so many parts today, so
manv tomorrow, enough for each day's work,
and every piece minutely ready to take its
place in the structure.
In a little more than a month after the first
workmen were turned loose on the old build-
ing it was gone. Two heavy derricks lifted
the weights and its four stories were soon
carted away. Then began the sinking of the
fortv-one caisson shells, and the foundations
were dug down fifty feet to the solid rock.
As the digging went deeper and deeper, the
sandy ground would have caved in and would
have run if additional air pressure had not
been crowded down upon it to hold it in place.
One of the new men coming, tired, out of the
caisson where he had been working under the
additional weight of air, remarked to another
going in to take his place :
"It's aisy for you down there. You're so
small there ain't much pressure on ye."
And when the other tried to explain, and
did so by telling him that, in the open, there
was alwavs fifteen pounds pressure to the
THE STEEL SKELETON TAKING SHAPE
After the first stories are outlined
BUILDING FROM THE TOP DOWNWARD
Sliovving ihe central stories built upon the mere framework, while tlie upper stories are still uncompleted
THE OFFICE BUILDING COMPLETED
2964
THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN OFFICE BUILDING
AT THE EXTRANXE
square inch, he scratched his head and said
thoughtfully :
"Is that so, now? That must be how it's
so hard to work. It ain't decent for an
Irishman to work continuously under pres-
sure. Let's strike."
From the rock foundation up they filled
the caissons with concrete and capped each
with a broad square of granite. This had,
in all, taken two months. The floor was ready
for the great machine.
Half a
races and creeds
regiment of men
men of many
met the first load from the
THE CROWD ON THE STREET
THE TVPICAL CIGAR STORE
rolling-mill, and the upward march of con-
struction began. Steam-engines began to
puff and sigh as they lifted the big girders up
to where workmen caught them and riveted
them into place. Gangs of men, each under
a foreman, rushed enormous chiseled boulders
across the rough flooring other gangs had laid,
and still others, as the building progressed,
laboriously swung loads of wood up the
elevator shaft. With the increasing floors
derricks were rushed upward to support the
work of the men. Individual deeds of daring
were done on the frontier floors as they
THE BIOGRAPHY OV AN OFMCE BUILDING
2965
pushed up two stories at a time.
Men, perched at the top of protruding
beams in the track of the cold wind,
cauglit and fastened the great shafts
of steel that might either crush them
or send them hurtling off into space.
Others, in pairs, were swung upward at
the end of long hawsers, and still
others, in pairs, walked the narrow
girders of the top stories, each carry-
ing the end of a bit of temporary floor-
ing. Back of these, full companies
labored less spectacularly, carrying
hods to the hoist, distributing ma-
terial, laying the enclosing wall or the
floor of hollow terra-cotta and cement,
handling the engines and the derricks,
tending the camp fires on each floor
from which the glowing rivets made
certain the ground already gained;
all marching steadily upward as if, the
earth having been conquered, they
were storming the heavens.
All this grim, noisy, effective activ-
ity was under the control of a workman
who had risen from the ranks. Some
Italiars were here carrying hods for
him who had worked beside him years
before. He knew the plans of the
construction to a detail, but rather as
a man who follows than as one who
creates. It was his duty merely to
direct the distribution of material so
that it would be easiest at hand, and
to get the work done. To him delays
were fatal; speed and care the end of
existence. Once when the framework
stood ready for the wall which was to
close it in, he found that the brick
and stone for the walls of the lower
stories had not been delivered. He
reported his difficulty to the engineers.
"You have the material for the
upper floor walls ? " they asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Then finish those first."
And so he set his men at work
building apparently from the top down-
ward, for in these steel buildings the
framework carries the entire load; the
brick and stone merely close in the
building and decorate its exterior, and
each floor carries its own load. Thus
the subordinate officer carried out the
mechanical plan quietly. He overheard
LOOKING DOWN AN OFFICE-BUILDTNG CANYON TO
THE COMPLETED STRUCTURE
IN THE OFFICE-BUILDING DISTRICT, NEW YORK
In irregular lines, the high buildings rise like fortresses
THE BiOCiRArUV OF AN OFFICE BUILDING
2967
I
one of tlie younger workmen answer
questions from a bystander with a blank
" I don't know." And he promoted the
boy because, as he told him, " If you
don't tell what you don't know to people
who know it all, there isn't any time
lost. " But he led his men vigorously, holding
his subordinates strictly to account for the
men under them, and getting the work com-
pleted within the specified time.
But back of them all were the men who
created the plan. To them each story was a
duplicate of one they had already constructed
on paper. The army of workmen were merely
assembling the parts they had formed Each
shaft of steel was located by its number, and
the upper or right end was marked so that
only stupidity would turn it end for end.
An engineer, inspecting the work one day,
pointed to a few out of a hundred beams that
lay ready to be hoisted into place, which were
all exactly alike, and said quickly:
"What are those doing here? They go in
the fourth story of the Windsor building. "
And at another time, as he casually passed
the structure and looked up at the ninth story,
he called out to the superintendent that one
of the small girders at that height was wrongly
set. He knew, because that girder did not
coincide with the visualization of the building
he had had before his mind for months. To
him the superintendent came when material
was delayed, when there was some seeming
mistake in the filling of an order. To him
a walking delegate of one of the unions came,
knowing that the building was contracted to
be finished at a certain time, and demanded
higher wages for the men.
" Is that the limit you will ask for doing the
job ? " he asked the delegate.
"Yes."
"Will you sign a paper to that effect?"
"Yes."
"All right, they shall have it. "
To him the directors of the company which
was paying for the construction came with
objections and suggestions. Such a firm
would take this entire floor if these alterations
could be made to fit their needs. All these
things must be arranged and carried out.
Plasterers and decorators were at w^ork below
long before the upper construction was com-
pleted; and while the workmen were still
laboring at the elementary finishing on some
floors, on others the offices were alreadv
occupied, the elevators were running regularly
and the building was being heated and ven-
tilated and lighted. It was more than a week
before the contract time for the building
was up — a year from the first breaking of the
ground — when the final decorations on the
last floor were finished. But when the shell
was completed the engineers lost their heart-
iest interest. There were new constructions
awaiting that would tax their skill and care
much as this one had.
" In the old buildings," one of them said
the other day, " I felt a real interest. Each
had a personality. I've always considered
them old friends. These are mathematical
problems that are interesting to solve, but
once they are done they are forgotten."
The reinforcement of workers which at first
aided and in the end superseded the men who
had constructed the shell of the building was
of many sorts: plasterers, painters, paper-
hangers, decorators, marble workers, mosaic
workers, metal workers, each rushing to com-
plete the task of his predecessor, whose mortar
or whose paint was scarcely dry. The swift,
smooth-running hydraulic elevators had been
churning up and down for a month with more
or less regularity. Below, in the cavern
around the granite caps to the caissons, the
big boilers and bins were installed, with a great
wheel like a windmill to fan cool, fresh air to
the furnace men. Back of this grimy space
ran the exquisitely clean tiled floor of the
engine-room, where the great engines swing
their thick muscles to drive the elevators; to
send air with the aid of sweeping fans — past
heated pipes if warm air is needed — into the
hundreds of rooms above; to light any or all
parts of the structure by electricity, and by
their very waste to furnish heat by steam at
any degree to the building. Over at one side
the refrigerating plant was placed from around
the ammonia coils of which chilled water is
sent into various parts of each floor. On one
of the upper floors ranges and shelves and all
the apparatus of the most modem kitchen
were set up rapidly for the restaurant.
Marble counters over which all manner of
interesting everyday things were to be sold
fell into line on the street floor, and a big
bronze booth for a telegraph company
accompanied the many bronze decorations
into place. Thousands of dollars' worth of
gold and paint and burlap covered plaster
that was hardlv drv. Smooth marble columns
2968
THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN OFFICE BUILDING
rose where two months before were open air
and debris. Back of the engine-room, resting
on the ground, was built a big safe deposit
vault, guarded by heavy metal doors with
many alarms for the building detectives, by
massive gates, by constant attendants, and,
below, by the impassable quicksand. A house
telephone was installed connecting the various
important stations with the complete apart-
ment which was built on the roof for the man
in charge of the building. By this means he
is able to communicate quickly with any of
the half a hundred helpers he has from the
cellar to the roof.
In the midst of all this rush of final prepa-
ration, the men from the outside who had
been already attracted to the offices the
biiilding was to offer were examining and
deciding and demanding alterations in the
suites of rooms. Ever^-thing was done to meet
their wishes. Whole floors were remodeled
until upwards of half a million dollars were
spent remodeling the already completed inte-
rior. When the last workman on the building
had gone and it was in working order, there
were two suites unoccupied, and these were
rented in a little more than a month.
The population of the building is as varied
as that of a town, and it is safe to say that
more business is done within its walls than
in any town of ten times its one thousand
inhabitants. Banking houses handle, behind
handsome marble desks, their hundreds of
thousands, which go out to mingle with the
coiintry's prosperity and develop new projects
of industry and ingenuity. Insurance com-
panies pledge their enormous capital to the
lives of men in California and Florida, and
to the safety of ships rounding the Cape.
The tickers in many brokers' offices, over
which noisy stock speculators and sober
investors touch elbows, chck out the news
concerning the great mass of world wealth
for bits of which thousands daily match their
wits and their energies. Lawyers make plans
in these rooms that will free the innocent
and punish the guilty; and promoters sell
South American mines and West African
land rights. The offices of a great Western
railway system bind the East and the West
with bands of steel and commerce, and
exporters send goods from Xew Hampshire
mills to the Orient. An energetic man with
military carriage, after an hour's conference,
is just completing the sale of an important
block of land to the proprietors of a great
department store, while directly above him
an insignificant looking little man, wheeling
nervously in his chair, is outlining to con-
federate capitalists a scheme that will give
them control of a big street railway system.
At his left, in turn, separated by a thin
partition, an engineer is solving the problem
of building a fifteen story building on a
narrow triangular plot of quicksand in such
a way that no disturbances of the soil shall
shake the foundations of adjoining structures.
Typewriters, rapid fire guns of industry,
rattle away in every comer of the floors.
Bells, each ringing for a purpose, sound
in unmusical confusion on every side.
Every landing is an eddy in its swirling
crowds that hurry up and down, in and
out, throughout the long days.
From the time these men enter their offices
in the morning until they go at night , many
of them need not leave the building. Mes-
senger boys rush in and out with messages.
By telegraph, cable and telephone they
can talk with London, San Francisco, or
Fiftieth Street, as they wish. Supplies are
there, their restaurant is there, their barber,
their newspaper, their bank, their insurance
company, their own police and detective
service, their own fire department, their
broker, their lawyer. It is a complete com-
m\inity in itself.
At night the thousands drift away, the
engines are quieted, the outer gates are closed,
a single elevator runs irregularly. Outside
there is the deathlike stillness of a deserted
town, and the tread of the policeman on the
pavement echoes bleakly down the cavernous
streets. Within only the caretaker and a few
helpers remain. But the great machine has
scarcely time to rest before it is again throb-
bing away with its entire strength, straining to
handle smoothly the masses of hurrying people
that crush in upon it. Every day the force
it unconsciously, mechanically manufactures
reaches further into recesses of unknown lands
and increases its grip on world-important
affairs. The army of stalwart buildings which
is growing up from every comer of the island
forms the rampart of American industrial
defense, the vanguard of American commer-
cial supremacy. In years to come they may
pass one by one and be replaced by others
greater than they, but the forces they make
today are a part of history.
THE BATTLE-SHIP OF THE FUTURE
HOW NAVAL WARFARE WILL PROBABLY CHANGE— THE
INFLUENCE OF THE SUBMARINE BOAT— OFFENSIVE AND
DEFENSIVE TACTICS WHICH ARE ALREADY F^ORESHADOWED
BY
LEWIS NIXON
THERE is one possibility that makes
anything hke an accurate forecast
of the type of war-ship of the future
very difficult. This is the chance that there
may come at any moment a complete revolu-
tion through the discovery of some agent of
])ropulsion that will do away with coal and
the steam-engine. At present the stowing of
machinery and the carrying of coal in a
measure control the construction of our
ships. The room occupied by these two all-
important elements is enormous and dictates
arbitrarily construction along certain lines.
Venturing on the future, nothing positive can
be laid down, because we do not know how
long the present system of fuel and machinery
will endure. The use of compressed or
liquefied gas, or gas made on board ship in
i)oilers of vessels, is a possible development
wliich will save weight and men and simplify
boiler arrangement, even with steam boilers
and engines as they are now. The nineteenth
century was the age of invention. The human
mind today is in a state of intense activity,
and is developing by its experience during the
century just closed. It is fair to presume
that it will bring forth new inventions at a
much more rapid rate. At this time, how-
ever, there is not in sight anything that would
give us even a clue as to what we may expect
in the way of a new driving power. Liquid
air, compressed air, electricity, gas, or any
one of a dozen forces may be developed over-
night, so to speak, in a manner that will
compel the complete remodeling of our
enginery both on land and on sea. Naturally
this would bring a type of war-vessel entirely
different from what we have at present. But
a nation, to be abreast of the times, cannot
speculate in future developments. It must
take advantage of the best existing conditions
and work up to them, if it desires to control
at sea. So far we have done this admirably
in the new American navy.
For a generation past the creation of a
battle-ship has been as conventional as the
trimming of a hat. The trimming may be
varied here and there and the shape slightly
altered, but the frame always remains about
the same.
The battle-ship has been of slow growth,
and there have been few radical changes.
Take the Ironsides and the Monitor and form a
composite of the two on steel brought up to
the time of the Inflexible in armor and gun and
you will be surprised to note the similarity.
Yet the two types were twenty years apart.
The Inflexible, barring modern guns and
armor distribution, does not differ greatly
from the battle-ship of the present.
Hence it is in the factors going to make u\)
the battle-ship that we must look for the
probable changes that will be made in the
vessels themselves. As to these factors,
naval opinion, in America at least, is radically
divided. Pick out five of the brightest officers
of the service and ask them whether a battle-
ship should have a high freeboard or only
enough for seaworthiness ; whether she should
have turrets at all or only barbettes; whether
speed or armament is more important — and
it is quite possible that one may get five
different opinions. This does not mean that
battle-ships are inefficient. They are all good,
and the merits of particular factors must be
proved in the supreme test of battle. No
nation can have too many battle-ships if it
aspires to world power.
It has been asserted by eminent con-
structors that we are approaching an era
where armor will be subordinated ; that the
battle-ship of the future will depend upon
speed and quick handling for defensive pur-
poses. Personally, I doubt this very much.
I look to see a constant development of
armor — an increased rather than a decreased
protection. The tendency has been right
along to protect more and more, and ulti-
2970
THE BATTLE-SHIP OF THE FUTURE
mately, I believe, there will be on a battle-ship
no exposed parts where men are stationed.
Those who suggested the sacrifice of armor
in the interest of speed forgot that the first
duty of a battle-ship is not to insure her own
safety, but to destroy her opponent. She
is essentially a fighting machine.
Battle-ships are like prize-fighters — they go
into the ring to fight to a finish, and realize
that they must be prepared to take many
good blows in return for those that they deal
if they want victory. Armor being a measure
of endurance, the more a ship carries the
better able she is to take blows and the
better able to administer punishment at
short range^the most effective range. The
armor and the gun have so far kept pace
with one another very well. The plate can
be made thick enough to resist any gun,
but today such plate is too heavy to carry ;
so the gun is perhaps ahead.
From the time that explosive shells first
came into use armor became imperative.
In the days of solid shot it made no
particular difference whether a vessel was
pierced or not, unless at the water-line.
The shot seldom hit any one inside, and the
holes made in the vessel were plugged up with
comparative ease. Even chain-shot was not
fatal to a sturdy vessel, nor impaired seriously
her fighting qualities, but a shell carrying a
high explosive is different. If one of these
pierces a vessel it practically means destruc-
tion to all in the neighborhood where the shell
strikes, as well as the danger of fire. There-
fore,it is necessary to take protective measures
that will explode these shells on the outside,
and such protective measures are found only
in armor, and even increased armor. If there
should come a time when there is discovered
a projectile that nothing can resist, or that
is so powerful that protection against it would
involve armor of such thickness as to make
a battle-ship an inert mass, then we may
expect to turn from armor and depend upon
an overwhelming battery, but at present
nothing of the kind is in sight.
However, we are only at the threshold in
the matter of explosives. There is certain to
come more rapid development along these
lines. Also, we may confidently look for a
striking advance in the matter of propulsive
power to regulate the discharge of shells.
Smokeless powder has marked an important
step, and is now at a high state of efficiency.
It has enabled us to reach a point where we
have reasonable control over our projectiles.
As investigation progresses we will be able to
control this force absolutely. In discussing
smokeless powder it is a common error to
attribute its value chiefly to its smokeless
quality. This is merely an incidental value,
except for riflemen ; the main value is that in
smokeless powder we secure perfect combus-
tion. We are relieved of the necessity of
carrying around a great bulk of matter, of
which a large percentage is useless, serving
merely to darken the atmosphere. The smoke
seen in common powder is that part of the
substance which remains unconsumed, and
is therefore useless. The smoke is made of
particles of certain unconsumed ingredients
of the powder that float in the air. The idea
in powder is to have a substance that shall
have powerful propulsive effect at a very low
degree of heat.
It is the heat that plays havoc at present
with our guns, so that the life of a gun is
perhaps seventy-five discharges. At the end
of that time the interior of the gun-barrel is
all torn and seamed and the weapon is use-
less. A new form of gun in which practically
all the energy of the charge is imparted to
the projectile is the ideal after which all in-
ventors are striving at present. Even in the
most advanced types much energy is lost.
An increased range in our guns is made diffi-
cult by the fact that we are handicapped
bv certain mechanical difficulties that limit
the length. When a gun is too long it is
impossible to prevent its stretching under the
impact of the exploding charge, thereby
lessening the effectiveness of aim. This may
be overcome by powerful trussing, so that the
gun-barrel will be perfectly supported and
held rigid, but even then there is a chance
of disturbance that will interfere materially
with the aim; consequently guns cannot be
lengthened indefinitely nor the range indefi-
nitely increased.
In the matter of explosives a good indica-
tion of what may be expected in the future
are the "thunderbolts," as the Spaniards
called them, hurled by the Vesuvius against
the Cuban fortifications. So far no great
range is possible in discharging projectiles of
this class. The problem of giving a suffi-
cientl}' strong impact to insure long flight
without exploding the material with which
the shell is loaded has not been perfectly met.
TIIK BATTLE-SlllP OF TIIK FUTURE
2971
But progress along that line is rapid, and in
the next war we may be reasonably certain
that high explosives will be thrown from
powerful guns at long range. Various sug-
gestions have been made that noxious gases
may be used in the future for some forms of
shells. Humanity will probably not admit
the employment of such forms of offensive
warfare, but I certainly believe that some
form of gas which produces insensibility will
be developed as the air-ship comes into use,
and perhaps before.
I have no doubt that soon electric influences
will be projected and that the metal work of
an enemy's guns may be able to transmit
shocks to those serving them. The most im-
portant factor we have at present to influence
the future navy is the submarine boat. It
is a peculiarity of this new addition to our
fighting forte that its influences will be outside
itself. By that I mean, that so far as the
submarine boat is concerned, it is at the very
outset a practically perfect craft. Such
changes as will be brought about by its enrol-
ment in the navy will be in the conditions to
which it is opposed.
I was challenged some time ago when I
said that the submarine boat was less of an
experimental vessel than the battle-ship. It
seemed an unreasonable proposition to those
who had not investigated it, in view of the
fact that battle-ships have been afloat for
centuries, while a submarine boat has not yet
seen its first engagement.
We know that the submarine boat is
practically a perfect type of its class, because
of the limitations of the field. The sub-
marine boat must be able to go at a fair speed
above and below the water. It must dive
successfully, and be capable of going in a
straight line at a desired depth, and when it
fires its torpedo under water it must not lose
its longitudinal stability. This is all that has
yet been asked of it. The type of submarine
boat which we have — the Holland — does all
these things. Therefore, w^e are perfectly
safe in saying that, unlike battle-ships, the
opportunities for extension or development
are more limited and less likely to be made.
The problem we are confronting now is to
find something that will give us protection
against the submarine. At present we have
nothing. The only measure that an enemy
menaced by one of these boats can take is
flight, and battle-ships are not built to run
away. Therefore, some of the greatest minds
of the day are wrestling with the problem of
finding something with which to combat this
new form of offense. It has been suggested
in some quarters that the bottom of war
vessels be heavily armored, but this proposi-
tion has met with no favor. It would mean
an additional loading down of our ships, which
are already carrying as much armor as weight
can be spared for. Experts are not wont to
view favorably any device that will retard
the speed or further cumber our fighting
machines.
But whatever the influence of the sub-
marine, I doubt that it will change materially
the general type of the battle-ship. There
may be deeper double bottoms, more bulk-
heads and a general increase of honeycomb
structure, but the exterior shape will, after all,
remain about the same.
One thing certain is that as naval equip-
ment advances there will be a concurrent
advance in the relative cost. This is shown
conclusively by experience in the past. The
expense of firing a hundred rounds from the
1 3 -inch guns of the battle-ship Massachusetts
in ammunition alone would exceed the
entire cost of the old Constitution battery in
1 8 1 2 , with ammunition enough thrown in to
fight all her batteries. Each one of the
13-inch turrets of the Massacliusetts, with its
two guns and all its actuating gear, costs more
money, so far as construction is concerned,
than the cost of the old Constitution entire,
from the time her keel was laid until she
bombarded the bashaw's castle at Tripoli.
The cost of the whole battery of the Massa-
chusetts, including the armor used as gun
protection, would have built, armed and
equipped ready for battle two 120-gun three-
deckers like the old Pennsylvania; the cost of
the side armor alone of the Massacliusetts
would have built and put in motion the
Hornet and Wasp of our little navy of 1 8 1 2 ;
and the cost of the Massachusetts' machinery
would have provided sailing power for our
whole naval force at that time.
But while the first cost of the fighting ship
is large, it represents a very low rate of
national insurance. By a vigorous stand
wars are prevented. It is almost impossible
to estimate what a war costs in the loss of life,
in the destruction of public structures, closing
up of channels, cutting of cables, diversions
of trade and other losses. Of course, the idea
29/2
A TOWN MADE IDLE BY A TRUST
that the cost of the thing to be desired is not
to be counted is all wrong, as nothing should
be bought unless it is clearly worth what is
paid for it. England, with the most power-
ful navy in the world, is adding to it con-
stantly, and while we need no such establish-
ment as England, when we see almost every
maritime nation adding armored vessels to
its navy, a nation as rich as the United States
cannot say that it is not able to do likewise.
It is an insurance against material loss, as
well as against loss of national prestige, and
the best guarantee of peace.
The development of our new colonial policy
will greatly influence the navy of the United
States, in regard to both numbers and types.
In this swift-moving age, subjugation and
even assimilation of new ideas of government
can be accomplished in years instead of
decades and generations as formerly; hence
our colonial policy is sure to be of much
quicker growth than has been that of other
nations, where the government, being less
responsive to the wishes of the people, can
carry on abuses and mistakes in a way that
our people will not tolerate.
We have entered into active competition
for the world's markets, and we have to
face a severe commercial rivalry with other
nations. This condition enormously increases
the chances of war. Its bearing will be direct
and specific in developing both the type and
the character of the navy. The ocean is for us
now no longer a mere geographical division,
but a connecting highway, the control of
which means world-wide power and boundless
wealth. The navies of the twentieth century
will write its history.
A TOWN MADE IDLE BY A TRUST
HOW NEW HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT. SEEMED TO BE
BLIGHTED WHEN A TRUST MOVED ITS COTTON MILLS
SOUTH— IN A FEW DAYS THE OPERATIVES WERE AT
WORK AGAIN ELSEWHERE— THE TOWN RECOVERING
BY
FRANKLIN MATTHEWS
OXE of the great evils in the operation
of industrial combinations, from the
point of view of the wage-earner, is
their power to scatter a community to the
four winds or starve its people into submis-
sion to the demands of capital. It has been
pointed out that perhaps one man or a small
group of men, by the mere act of signing an
order to close up a plant, could exercise a
power of life or death over thousands of
hixman beings. Something akin to this
happened in the beautiful New England
village of New Hartford, Connecticut, last
August and September, when the compara-
tively large cotton duck mills of the Green-
woods Company of that place were ordered
closed by the so-called Cotton Duck Trust,
the Mount Vemon-Woodberry Cotton Duck
Corporation. Nearly one thousand persons
of the 2,300 in the place were compelled to
leave the town. Nearly a hundred houses
were boarded up and rents wer? offered free
to the mill hands who remained, for some
men who had worked thirty, forty or even
fifty years in the plant were too old to get
work elsewhere.
With the population cut almost in half,
the merchants of the place thought they saw
ruin before them. The pay-roll of the mills
had been more than $175,000 a year, and
with the spending of this money stopped it
seemed as if the community must die. The
income of the churches was cut down , a large
part of the foreign congregation of the
Catholic Church disappearing as if swept out
bv a cyclone. There were fewer children
for the schools. The value of real estate
declined, and those who had put their savings
into homes found themselves unable to get
rid of them. There were too many merchants,
too many physicians, too many barbers — and,
one and all, they sat down to see who would
go away or go to the wall first. Gloomy
forebodings as to the increase of the poor fund
A TOWN MADE IDLE HY A TRUST
2973
of the town arose; the bells of the mills ceased
to ring; the town band, that gave a public
concert every week, ceased to play; a water-
power estimated as worth from $200,000 to
$300,000 lay idle; the machinery of the mills
was being shipped to the trust's mills in
Alabama; only the four walls of three large
buildings remained. Tlie town was dead;
the heavy hand of a trust seemed to have
crushed it.
And why ? Because it could make goods
cheaper in the South. The residents of
New Hartford said the days of evil began
when the owners of the mills sold out to the
trust. Reproaches were cast at former stock-
holders who live in New Hartford, particularly
at the descendants of the founder of the mills.
Then a clamor arose in the country. It was
reported that the mills were closed because
the laws of Connecticut would not permit
child labor under fourteen years of age. In
the South child labor, it was declared, was
unlimited in supply. Editors from one end
of the country to the other attacked the
managers of the company, and those who fear
trusts as a menace and see in them the force
that can make white slaves of all humanity
pointed to the New Hartford example and
prophesied the downfall of New England's
cotton industry.
Nearly three months have gone by; men
have become calmer in the foothills of the
Berkshires around New Hartford; and the
actual results of the trust's action are visible.
It is true that the town has been depleted of
its people by nearly one-half. But it is also
true that not one person who left New
Hartford to work elsewhere failed to get a job.
It is also true that in most cases the mill
operatives bettered themselves. There has
not been one dollar added to the poor fund of
the town. Only two small stores in the place
have closed. The trade of the merchants has
fallen off only about one-third. One school
has been closed, but it was a small affair of
less than fifty pupils. The income of the
Congregational Church has fallen ofT from ten
to fifteen per cent. ; that of the Catholic Church
probably nearly fifty per cent., because
one of its congregations was wiped out.
The savings bank deposits, however, have
increased in the town, and the number of new
accounts opened has shown a greater per-
centage of increase than last year. The post-
office receipts have fallen off to such an extent
that next year it will probably be a fourth-
class odicc or the postmaster's salary will be
cut $200 or $300.
There has been no case of actual distress as
a result of the closing of the mills. Three
grades of people have incurred loss : the mer-
chants who had large stocks of goods on hand
when, without warning, the closing orders
came, and who now have had to purchase
another grade of goods; the owners of real
estate, particularly those who worked in the
mills and now cannot sell; and the farmers
who brought in large quantities of garden
truck for sale.
On the other hand, newcomers to the
surrounding hills are giving new life to the
place. One man, Frank Jones, who lived
there as a boy, has recently bought an entire
mountain at the town's edge and is building
a large country estate there. A dozen or
more country houses of considerable pretense
are scattered about, among them being the
delightful and superbly kept home of Clara
Louise Kellogg-Strakosch. The hills are as
picturesque as the Berkshires and there are
more streams in them. The water is declared
to be purer, as shown by analysis, than in
any other part of the State. The town has
shaken itself together and finds that it is not
so badly oflf as it feared.
It is altogether improbable that a waterfall
of 1,500 horse-power is going to waste, and
although there is no immediate prospect of
a new industry coming to the town, some
industry will come in time. It will not be a
cotton industry, but Connecticut is full of
others.
These New Hartford mills were closed
simply because they were losing money.
The president of the so-called trust has given
me his personal word that the mills would not
have been shut down if they had "brought
back a new dollar for every one that had been
expended." For the last three or four years
they have brought back only from ninety to
ninety-five cents on the dollar. The industry
was moved to the trust's mills at Tallassee,
Alabama, because it could be made to pay
there. It didn't pay in New Hartford for
three reasons : the machinery was antiquated ;
the freight rates on the 8,000 or more bales
of cotton used in the mills every year were
too heavy a drain, compared to the freight
rates to the mills built almost next to the
cottonfields in the South; adult labor, not
2974
A TOWN MADE IDLE BY A TRUST
child labor (there seems to be considerable
misapprehension about this child labor of
the South), was about fifty per cent, cheaper,
to use round numbers, in the South than in
the North.
If the trust had not taken these mills they
would have been closed several years ago,
because they did not pay. The machinery
was moved South precisely for the same
reason that other cotton mills have been
moved thither — to make money. Factory
Inspector George L. McLean, of Connecticut,
has prepared this table of the average yearly
wages for cotton mills in the countr}'
Massachusetts, $35 1. 06; Rhode Island,S334.26
Connecticut, $332.98; Georgia, $194.82
Alabama,. $177.89; North Carolina, $169.33
South Carolina, $167.77. Those figures tell
why the New Hartford mills, using about
20,000 spindles out of a total of 7,000,000
in the industry, were moved.
This is what happened when the orders
came to close the mills: Agents arrived at
once from other mills to give the operatives
work. The closing order came on a Friday.
By Monday 200 of the 750 hands employed
in the mills were on their way to other places,
where they had already been hired. Before
the managers of the trust could reach New
Hartford to offer to take their operatives to
Baltimore where excellent labor laws prevail,
the plant had been cleaned out by agents
of other places. Mr. James E. Hooper, the
president of the trust, informs me that it
was the intention of the company to take care
of every employee who would be willing to go,
not to the far South, where cheap labor pre-
vails, but to Maryland, where wages are as
high as in New England. But the operatives
found work immediately in Rhode Island;
Danielson, Connecticut; Torrington, Con-
necticut; North Adams, Massachusetts, and
smaller towns near by. Their traveling
and household moving expenses were paid
for them. One agent brought a special car
three times to New Hartford and filled it each
time. The rush for the nev/ work was such
that one day the train employees had to
sweep off the train people hanging to the cars.
They even went in freight cars. The great
point is that not one capable of working failed
to get work, and that the trust would have
cared for its emploj-ees if it had had a chance.
The general prosperity of the country
may have brought this condition about, but
nevertheless it is true that no one actually
suffered more than nominal loss.
Of the 750 employees in the mills, fully
450 were Hungarians. Many of them worked
for as low as $5 a week — starvation wages,
it would seem. And yet they saved money.
One man the day before he left town took out
eight $100 money orders, representing his
savings, to be sent to the old countr3^ Half
a dozen others took out from four to six
money orders for $100 each. The chief
merchant of the town, who forwarded money
by check to a certain New York banking firm
for transmission to the old country — there
is no bank to do this work in the town —
showed me dozens upon dozens of vouchers
representing the savings of these people.
Scores were for sums more than $100. One
was for $1,300. One man who had worked
seven years in the mills at $5 a week had
$850 as his savings. It went to the old
countr}'. One woman who had worked for
$4 a week took out a money order for $100,
and told the post-office people that it repre-
sented her savings for just one year.' These
low wages were paid because other cotton
mills paid the same wages ; because such cheap
labor could be secured for the industry.
These Hungarians lived in comfortable
houses owned by the company. The highest
rent was about $100 a year — for houses
occupied by foremen. In some of the dwell-
ings— which were quite comfortable — the
rent was as low as $1.50 a month. When the
mill ran on half time no rent was charged.
The company raised large quantities of
potatoes and wood on its lands, and often
these were to be had free by the employees.
The Hungarians lived largely on barley,
which the leading merchant of the town
bought by the ton. They did not keep
boarders in the ordinary sense. Those who
rented cottages sublet their rooms at so much
for a bed, so much for a trunk, and so much
for the cooking rights of the stove. Not one
of them had a bank account. They saved
money in stockings; they lived on soup
three times a day and seven days of the
week; thev saved money and they counted
themselves prosperous.
All these are gone. Many of the French
and most of the Americans remain. Only
about 150 children, all above fourteen, worked
in the mills, and that is why their closing has
affected the schools so little.
CONDUCTING A RUSSIAN NEWSPAPER
FOR PERMISSION TO PUBLISH A NEWSPAPER A PETITIONER MAY WAIT
TEN YEARS — THE LIMITATIONS PLACED ON CENSORED PERIODICALS
— THE DANGERS RUN BY PUBLICATIONS THAT ARE " CENSORI-REE"
BY
WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND
WE often read about the censorship
of the Russian press. How does it
work in everyday practice ? How
does a Russian editor conduct his paper under
it ? Outside of Turkey there is no other
country where the pubHc intellect as ex-
pressed in newspapers, periodicals and books
or pamphlets is fettered as in Russia. This
more than anything else makes amalgama-
tion with Russia inexpressibly hard for the
Finns, bred as they are to untrammeled
assertion of their thoughts and convictions;
and perhaps no other form of Russian official
life gives a clearer insight into the difference
between Russia and the rest of the world.
The greatest and most multiform restric-
tions are those imposed upon the daily press.
For the dominating idea of Russian censor-
ship is to guard the mind of the whole nation
against intellectual influences inimical to pre-
vailing political and social conditions — against
everything which Western notions deem
progressive, in fact, to change of any kind.
That the influence of the daily press, exerted
incessantly and upon broad strata of society,
is most to be dreaded from this point of
view cannot be denied. A whole chain of
obstacles and safeguards therefore tightly
encompasses the Russian press.
First, to issue a periodical organ, the
Government concession must be obtained.
This requires time and money, and even with
these is uncertain. First the sum of 5,000
roubles (about $2,800) must be deposited
with the Government when the application
is made, this money remaining permanently
in its hands. Then at best comes a long,
long wait, generally several years. But that
by no means insures success, even if assiduous
and never-tiring efforts are used to fortify the
application. A concession cannot be insisted
upon as a right, nor is it subject to certain
specific and inflexible conditions. Neither
the applicant's admitted eminent literary
qualifications and repute, nor his irreproach-
able political belief and conduct, nor his high
and influential social position, suffices in
itself to obtain one. The Chief of the High
Press Administration and the Minister of the
Interior can act entirely as they please, and *
give their final answer in either one or ten
years. Sometimes not a single concession
is accorded for a number of years, and then
there follows a plethora. Curious stipula-
tions are often made. Thus, the recently
displaced chief of the bureau stated publicly
that he would confer concessions exclusively
upon petitioners known personally and favor-
ablv to him, and he adhered to the rule.
Every newspaper must have a "responsi-
ble" editor and publisher, specially confirmed
by the High Press Administration. Thus
they become quasi Government officials.
The "responsible" editor can lose his qualifi-
cation only by becoming guilty of specific acts.
The owner or publisher of the paper cannot
discharge him, although he can diminish or
take away his salary. The only remedy is
then for the paper to ask the bureau to
sanction a change — which may or may not
be done. Only in case of the "responsible"
editor's leaving Russia or becoming guilty of
some distinct crime will he lose his place and
title. The publishing rights can likewise be
transferred only with the previous permission
of the bureau, which is very difficult to
get. Religious faith is important. Jews are
excluded under all circumstances.
If a paper or periodical has its concession
annulled, both editors and publishers lose
forever the right of issuing or writing for any
similar publication.
Concessions are always granted only after
the approval of a programme closely out-
lined by the petitioner, to be adhered to
during the lifetime of the publication. The
2976
CONDUCTING A RUSSIAN NEWSPAPER
High Press Administration curtails in advance
this programme as much as possible. Hence
Russia has many publications of oddly cir-
cumscribed scope. Many of them — particu-
larly in the provinces and in the rural regions
— have only the concession to publish adver-
tisements, while others must not publish
political articles or telegrams, and nearly
all of them are not allowed to report the
public military trials. If the subscription
price of a newspaper does not exceed six
roubles a year, it must not engage in any
discussion of the existing laws, nor in what
is called " high politics. " On the other hand,
if a publication fails to make a regular
feature of any topics included in its scheduled
programme, the programme is then corre-
spondingly cut down. In case of suspension,
no matter from what cause, the permit of
publication ceases within a year.
A concession to publish a paper or periodi-
cal is given only to persons toward whom
either the High Press Administration or the
Minister of the Interior feels well disposed.
A real journalist is hardly ever made " respon-
sible" editor. The authorities do not feel
confidence enough in him. It is nearly
always Government officials, retired army
officers and similarly situated persons who
receive the sanction of the authorities. The
late Chief of the Bureau, Ssolovieflf, went
further. He forced upon the publishers his
personal friends as "responsible" editors.
Despite all these precautions, most new
concessions get into the hands of writers
more or less identified with the progressive
movement in the empire ; for the publications
of the reactionary, autocratic, old-fashioned
type cannot exist — if one excepts a bare
few — without large Government subsidies.
The educated classes in Russia, high and low,
simply refuse to read and support them, and
this less from reasons of political and social
conviction than because these old-fashioned
sheets are too dull, since they have to exclude
nearly all sensational and entertaining news
matter. There is also another element,
omnipresent in the Czar's domains — official
corruption, which accounts for the transfer
of concessions granted to men of reactionary
tendencies to men of different leanings. A
glaring case is that of M. Ssasonoff, for-
merly the official publisher of Rossya, an
influential daily recently suppressed. He
sold his concession for an immense sum. M.
Golovinsky sold his concession for the
Sseverny Courier to Prince Bariatinsky for
50,000 roubles in cash and other emoluments.
If these precautionary measures have not
been quite successful, their baleful effects are
nevertheless very perceptible. It is due to
them that M. Ssuvorine has maintained the
practically monopolistic position of the Xovoe
Vreniya, a paper which is a very chameleon
of political opinion — now Governmental,
again moderately liberal, next jingoistic or
reactionary, just as the weather vane of
political current in Russia indicates, and
which precisely by these methods has forged
to the head of Russian newspapers. For a
short time it looked as if the Rossya would
dispute its rank, but its editor-in-chief one
day recklessly began to attack the Imperial
family in the guise of ironical praise. He
and his publisher had the highest connections
at court and in the army, as well as in
Government circles, and on this account
Prince Chakhovskoi had pardoned many
transgressions. But this last escapade was
not forgiven. It precipitated the ruin and
permanent suppression of the Rossya, and
landed M. Amfiteatroff in Siberia. It is,
therefore, opportunism turned into a fine art
which alone will enable owners of and writers
for Russian papers to avoid, at least for a time,
the fate of being ruled out of existence,
though in the long run even the most acc6m-
plished artist cannot escape that fate.
According to the experience of the last
twenty years in Rtissian journalism, if a
paper succeeds it will be suppressed; if it is
not suppressed it must forego success. The
Russian papers are forever oscillating between
these two goals. Even the blackest, dyed-
in-the-wool reactionary sheet realizes from
time to time that it must make a bid for
popular favor by printing something it
ought not to print and thereby risking or
actually incurring penalties, even suppres-
sion, simply to increase again its dwindling
subscription list. Even the most liberal sheets
must at times spread the cloak of reaction-
ism over their columns in order to save
themselves from annihilation.
There are two classes of newspapers in
Russia — the so-called "censor-free" and the
"censored." The "censor-free" paper is,
of course, a misnomer, for it is not only sub-
ject to censorship, but is also forbidden from
printing whole departments of legitimate
CONDUCTING A RUSSIAN NEWSI'AI'KR
2977
news, and many specific items. But, after all,
it enjoys more latitude than the "censored"
papers. The latter, which print only news,
comment, editorials, literary matter of every
description, criticism, etc., apjirovcd by the
censor, as testified by his signature on every
proof slip, run, of course, no danger. But
such censored papers have neither influence
nor a large number of readers. Financially
they lead a very precarious existence, and
are never heard of outside their immediate
neighborhood.
It is the "censor-free" papers that alone
represent the Russian press, taking that word
in its Western sense, though they are subject
to preventive censorship and delay in just
those features of news which in other coun-
tries are hastened, and which form, in their
greater wealth of details and in their speedier
receipt, the chief diflference between the less
enterprising and successful newspaper and
its more enterprising and successful rival.
This list comprises telegrams, reports of the
sessions of city councils, zcmstvos, and other
important local news, all court news, the
appearance of cholera and other epidemics,
and so on. Many departments of news must
only be given after official information (if
obtainable, else not at all), such as news of
riots, revolutions, movements of the army,
all Government measures and appointments
and dismissals. Some kinds of news must
never be touched on: for instance, suicides,
internal conditions of Russian schools and
universities, strikes, lockouts, and all other
labor news, even including editorials on labor
statistics, the duration of working hours and
wage scales. Political murders, all plots of
a political nature, dissertations on ana/chism,
socialism (even in other countries), and any
other news " calculated to disturb the peace
of mind of the Russian subject," as the
Government decree has it, are also strictly
tabooed. Religious news, including such
cases as Tolstoi's, is, of course, excluded.
Very often circulars are issued prohibiting
the press from mentioning certain events,
such as sensational trials, and in many cases
extending this prohibition to matters trivial or
worse. One of these recent circulars forbade
" further mention of the wives of the Sultan, "
for instance. Another time it was forbidden
to discuss a theatrical scandal in connection
with a new drama, called "The Smugglers,"
and still another tune the papers were inter-
dicted from chronicling tiic boycotting of
the Novoe Vrcmya because of that paper's
attitude on the university students' riots.
For many years it was not allowed to speak
of the sessions of the National Economic
Society. Mention of particular newspaper
articles, and polemics engendered thereby,
is frequently proscribed.
This, then, is what is meant in Russia by
the term "censor-free." Yet, with all these
difficulties, most papers prefer this limited
supervision, with all its attendant dangers
and penalties, to the complete serfdom of the
"censored" press. But the number of such
"censor-free" papers is very limited, for
the Government does not issue many con-
cessions, even in place of those annulled.
In the main it is only in St. Petersburg that
such concessions are granted. In Moscow,
even, no concessions for "censor-free" papers
are any longer accorded. And it took a
periodical of considerable ability in St.
Petersburg several years to obtain per-
mission to change from a "censored" into
a "censor-free" publication.
The "warning" is one of the most formida-
ble censoring weapons. According to the
Imperial ukase, it requires three warnings
before a paper or periodical can be entirely
squelched. There are other weapons, of
course, such as "temporary prohibition,"
"disallowance of the street sales of papers,"
and "interdiction to receive and publish
advertisements." All these modes of pun-
ishment are, of course, severe enough, and
if insisted upon long enough will sometimes
ruin or embarrass a publication. But the
"warning" is the most dreaded of all, next
to complete suppression. Such "warnings"
are given entirely according to the whim of
the Minister of the Interior or of the Chief
of the High Press Administration, sometimes
for ludicrously small contraventions of the
press regulations.
The worst punishment, suppression, is
now meted out by the so-called "confer-
ence of ministers," composed of the Chief
Procurator of the Holy Synod, the Minister
of the Interior, the Minister of Education,
and the Minister of Justice.
Censorship in Russia certainly retards
progress. But will it stop it eventually?
Signs are not lacking that it will not.
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF
CANADA
THE MARVELOUS RESOURCES OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND HOW MEN
FROM THE UNITED STATES ARE DEVELOPING THEM— A STUDV OF AMERI-
CAN INFLUENCE MADE DURING A JOURNEV ACROSS THE CONTINENT
BY
ROBERT H. MONTGOMERY
CECIL RHODES once passed his hand
across the map of Africa and said,
"I want to see this all red" — or,
in other words, all British. A like American
expansionist who hoped to see the North
American continent "all red" — or controlled
by the United States — could readily fancy,
in taking such a trip as I recently took
from Sj-dney, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver,
that a reddish tinge covers territory far to
the north of our northern political limits;
for the industrial boundary of the United
States runs in a waving line across the conti-
nent well within Canadian territory.
The story begins at the Atlantic threshold
of Canada and proceeds to the Pacific Ocean —
with American achievements all the wav.
And how did it begin? What, for example,
called I\Ir. Henry M. Whitney, of Boston, from
his finished task of giving Boston a rapid
transit system, to a bleak and obscure coast
village in Nova Scotia, and how did he
manage great steel plants there ? And what
called other men across the boundary line ?
This is what I set out last June to discover.
"Why, if we Canadians had asked the
bankers for a third of the money he secured
and expended at Sydney, " said a Montreal
manufacturer, telling me of Mr. Whitney's
methods, "they would have laughed at us."
Yet Mr. Whitney had merely been acute
enough to perceive what I found at Sydney,
when I began my investigations, to be a
unique opportunity and to explain it lucidly
to other financiers. In the civilized world
there is no other tide-water district where
iron ore, limestone and coal are found so close
together, so good and so easily obtainable.
Coal, Mr. Whitney found, could be mined
and put on shipboard at less than a dollar
a ton. Limestone and iron ore were handy.
Accordingly he set to work. As mining lands
in Canada are merely leased to operators who
pay such high royalties that one-third of the
Government revenue of Nova Scotia comes
from the mines alone, it was necessary first
to give strong guarantees to pay large royal-
ties. He gave them. Thus political objec-
tions were overcome. Next the various
Sydney coal companies were consolidated
into the Dominion Coal Company and affili-
ated with the Dominion Iron and Steel
Company. Limestone quarries were secured,
and at Great Belle Island immense deposits
yielding fifty-three per cent, of iron were
obtained, lying so close to the water's edge
that the cakes of ore were shoveled directly
into the holds of ships. Cargoes of iron ore are
delivered at Sydney from the Wabana mines
for less than $1.25 a ton. Stephen Jeans, an
English • authority, computes the cost of
manufacturing hematite iron at the great-
est steel centres of the world as follows:
West Cumberland, England, $15.65 a ton;
Westphalia, Germany, $13.50 a ton; Pittsburg,
S9.57 a ton. At Sydney the cost is $7.45
a ton — without deducting the government
bonus of $2.70 on each ton of native ore and
$1.80 a ton for foreign ore manufactured in
Canada, which would lower the net cost to
$5.65 or S4.75 3. ton according to the soujce
of the ore. This was Mr. Whitney's discov-
ery in Canada. When the works at Sydney
are completed, they will turn out half a
million tons of steel a year, and already plans
are on foot to begin ship-building there.
Mr. Whitney has disposed of his control of
the Dominion Iron and Steel Company, but
it was his genius that created this typically
American industry beyond our borders.
Sydney is i ,200 miles nearer European ports
than Baltimore, the port nearest Pittsburg;
2,300 miles nearer Liverpool than Pensacola,
the port nearest the Alabama iron district ; and
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
2979
through the fact, not usually borne ni mind,
that South America lies far to the east of the
United States, 600 miles nearer Rio de Janeiro
and Buenos Ayros than New Orleans and
Mobile. It is also 900 miles nearer Cape Town
than these Gulf ports are. In fact, it may
not inaptly be termed "The nearest port to
anywhere." Its deep reef-free harbor, on
the shore of which stands the steel plant, is
untroubled by fog and is ice-locked only
twenty days a year; and furthermore, it is
supplemented by Louisburg Harbor, forty
miles south, which is never ice-bound.
Between the two is the Marconi wireless
telegraph station. Already fast developing,
what shall this region of great natural wealth
and easy communication with the world
become in the future ? And yet it might still
be slumbering undeveloped if it had not been
that an American industrial pioneer had seen
there an opportunity.
With this thought in mind, I journeyed
westward up the great Laurentian Valley.
Here, running to waste, was the greatest
natural advantage next to abundance of raw
material and access to markets — namely,
power. Quebec and Ontario possess in their
vast systems of lakes and streams the largest
reservoir of hydraulic energy in the world.
And already I found American industries
making a beginning in those two provinces.
Within fifty miles of Ottawa, energy of
nearly a million horse-power is susceptible of
cheap transmission to the city, though only
one-sixteenth of that amount is now used.
The standing timber of Canada equals that
of the continent of Europe and is nearly
double that of the United States. I asked
an American manufacturer of wood-pulp
what the resources of his business are.
"About half of that," he replied, sweeping
his hand across the map of Canada. Forty per
cent, would be more nearly accurate.
The timber belt stretches from the Atlantic
coast to the plains beyond the Great Lakes,
and from the slopes of the Rocky Mountains
to the Pacific Ocean; while on the north,
beyond the "Height of Land," is a vast area
of timber sweeping across the continent from
Labrador to Alaska, 700 miles in width and
4,000 in length. Of these forests no small
proportion is spruce, white and black, the
preferred material for wood-pulp, used for
paper and other commodities ranging from
car- wheels and water-buckets to buttons.
A single district, that of Lake St. John, north
of Quebec, bears spruce ecjual to the entire
forest area of Norway, and has 700,000 horse-
power in its streams waiting to be harnessed.
Throughout this territory the American of
characteristic enterprise and ability is ubiqui-
tous. Millions of American dollars are being
expended yearly on huge pulp mills equipped
with the best American machinery, and large
towns are fast springing up around the once
lonely cataracts in this vast hinterland.
Apart from numerous small concerns and
new ventures still under construction, I was
able to visit immense pulp mills at Sturgeon
Falls, at Sault Sainte Marie and at Grand Mere
on the St. Maurice ; corporations whose timber
limits aggregate many thousand square miles,
and handle many millions of logs per
annum, producing pulp which, from its high
quality, is driving the Scandinavian article
from the markets of Europe, is supplying
many mills in the United States, and is
largely used in Australasia, India and Japan.
These American investors are determined
to make their position in Canada that of
sovereignty in the paper-using world. Twenty
years ago wood-pulp went into the manufac-
ture of but eight per cent, of ordinary paper.
Todaymore than eighty per cent. of such paper
is made with wood-pulp as the chief ingredient.
The pulp has become one of the prime neces-
sities of civilized peoples. The supply in the
United States is dwindling as its forests dis-
appear, and that of Europe also, while the
demand continually increases. Attention is,
therefore, now transferred from exhausted
districts to the new Canadian field, and a
flow of English, French and Belgian capital
has set in which promises phenomenal devel-
opment. Americans, it need hardly be said,
are still foremost in expansion, as they were
pioneers in the inception of the industry.
Ezra B. Eddy, of Hull, near Ottawa, who
operates the largest manufactory of pulp
products and matches under the British flag;
General Russell A. Alger, of Michigan, who
initiated the development of the Laurentide
Pulp Mills at Grand Mere; Francis Clergue,
of Maine, whose pulp processes at the
Canadian "Soo" are the world's criterion
of excellence ; the Clarks, of New York, pio-
neers on the far northern shore of the Gulf
of St. Lawrence; the late Ex-Senator Warner
Miller, of New York, one of the organizers
of the International Company, in the St.
2980
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
Maurice region — led the van of the American
invasion. And largely, too, upon American
machinery, engineers and employees are
European investors in the region depending
for success.
Crossing the gardenlike peninsula of On-
tario, I proceeded to the upper lake region,
and that portion of its north shore known as
Algoma or "New Ontario." Here is demon-
stration of American discovery and conquest
even more recently achieved than that in
eastern Canada. On the Canadian shore of
the "Soo, " by the original purchase of a
small power canal, Mr. Francis Clergue, of
Maine, representing a Philadelphia syndicate,
has developed in a few years, and by natu-
ral, conservative progress, the "Consolidated
Lake Superior Company," a corporation
including water-works as well as the original
canal, light and power plants, pulp mills,
chemical and mechanical, railroads, telegraph
and steamship lines, iron mining, smelting
and blooming, and electro-chemical works,
with all their subsidiary industries. Mr.
Clergue was, as he says himself, "fortunate
enough to come to Sault Sainte Marie in
1894, and sensible enough to stay there."
His original investment was modest — the
acquisition of a 5,000 horse-power canal and
its enlargement to fourfold that capacity. The
company was then prepared to lease power
to manufacturers, but there was apparently
no one sufficiently far-sighted to seize the
opportunity. The power company, tired of
waiting, erected a pulp-mill and went into
manufacturing on its own account. The
story, as Mr. Clergue tells it, of how the need
of sulphur for the process of chemical pulp-
making led to scientific investigation by his
experts, resulting in a performance of the
"impossible" feat of roasting sulphur from
the Sudbury nickel, near at hand, and how
the resulting "matte" was discovered to be
a superior quality of ferro-nickel, eagerly con-
tracted for by the late Herr Krupp of Essen, is
curious enough. Press him a little further
and learn the stranger sequel of how the
excess of nickel in the "matte" beyond
contract requirements led to a search for
iron ore to qualify it, and of the accidental
discovery of the rich Michipicoten mines.
An ignorant prospector, thinking he had
found gold, brought his specimens to Mr.
Clergue to be assayed. On learning that his
treasure was only iron, he was so disgusted
as to sell the claim for $500. Later, when
it was discovered how rich the mines are,
Mr. Clergue made a life settlement of $75 a
month upon the lucky prospector, who thus
found his gold mine after all. The develop-
ment of Michipicoten required the construc-
tion of railroads and the purchase of a
fleet of steamers, and these in turn led to
other developments; but they cannot be
related here, though the story would read
like a romance.
One thing failed Mr. Clergue: coal is not
available at Sault Sainte ^larie unless brought
from Pennsylvania; but in place of coke for
the blast furnaces, charcoal is made by a new
process and can be used economically; char-
coal cannot be afforded at rival plants except
for the manufacture of the finest crucible steel.
The thousands of acres of forests comprising
the company's timber limits supply an
abundance of hard wood for the charcoal,
and the utilization of the by-products will
necessitate new structures, extending the
already large territory covered by the com-
pany's picturesque buildings of red stone.
Every dollar of the vast expenditure for the
construction and equipment of these works
and transport lines came from the pockets of
the syndicate. There is not a mortgage nor
bond of the concern in existence, and the
funds at Mr. Clergue 's command seem unlim-
ited. He occupies, with his brother, pictur-
esque bachelor quarters in the remodeled
block-house which once guarded the Hudson
Bay Company's post, around the premises
of which, as guardians, two or three large
bears are usually tethered. His method is
Napoleonic ; his outlook is no less remarkable
than his appetite for detail.
Educated as a lawyer and trained as a
banker, he is also a mechanic and an engineer.
When not inventing an improvement in a
machine, he may be dreaming before his fire
of a few hundred miles more of railway ; both
will be executed. He required an apparatus
for drying pulp to save freightage on fifty
per cent, of useless moisture; there was no
such machine. He drew plans for it, but the
makers of pulp machinery declined to build it,
declaring the idea to be erroneous and the
plan impossible. He built the machine in his
own shops and made it work. The saving
over the old method is represented by. $1,000
per day.
Many of Mr. Clergue's schemes have seemed
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
2981
impossible, as did this machine, but eventually
they have succeeded and have paid as
handsomely. The completion of the Algoma
Central Railway, of winch Mr. Clergue is
manager, from the "Soo" via Michipicoten
to Moose Factory on Hudson Bay, will mark
the beginning of a new era in North American
history; and when, in addition to Canada's
already valuable export of fishery products
to the United States, the salmon of the great
sub-Arctic sea are delivered fresh on the
Chicago markets, nine hundred miles due
south, as Mr. Clergue promises, it will stand
as an achievement in the history of man's
struggle to subdue the Northland. This line
of railroad will open a country equal in area
to one-half the State of New York, and with
a soil more fertile and a climate more equable
than prevails in many more southerly and
already settled portions of the continent.
The company is pledged to bring in, and
provide farm homes for, 1,000 settlers an-
nually for five years, this in return for the
Government grant of 6,400 acres of land per
mile of railroad. Mr. Clergue is therefore not
only a discoverer but also a colonizer, as well
as an industrial czar in what was not long
ago a howling wilderness.
I have here touched upon American indus-
trial outposts located in portions of the
Dominion widely separated from one another.
But bear in mind that in the whole of her vast
territory Canada has fewer inhabitants than
the State of New York; that the revenue by
which the Government is sustained, great
public works constructed and the laws
efficiently administered is less than the
revenue of the City of New York. To a
population so widely scattered, means of
intercommunication are accordingly of exigent
importance. Canada has, as the result of an
enormous expenditure, a system of water-
ways by which sea-going vessels may pene-
trate almost to the heart of the continent.
These were for a time suflficient, but years ago
a few public men began the agitation for a
policy of railroad construction which was then
largely in excess of the country's requirements.
The Grand Trunk was the pioneer line, and
for many years was alone in the field, increas-
ing its Canadian mileage from two or three
hundred miles in 1 8 5 5 to more than three thou-
sand in 1 901 . Its history has been checkered,
as the English capital most largely interested
was slow to realize that a Canadian railroad
cannot be successfully managed from a
transatlantic base; but the lesson once learned
was taken thoroughly to heart. In 1895
Charles M. Hays, then Vice-President of the
Wabash system, was selected as General
Manager of the Grand Trunk, and, except
for a few months, when he succeeded Collis
P. Huntington as President of the Southern
Pacific, has occupied that position ever
since. Mr. Hays cut away deadwood ruth-
lessly, and effected a thorough reorganization
of the twenty-five lines comprising the Grand
Trunk system, putting the whole upon a
modern and efficient basis. The great increase
in the road's business and prosperity is
entirely due to Mr. Hays and the American
railroad men he selected as his subordinates.
But though the Grand Trunk, for some time,
met the requirements of eastern Canada, and
the Intercolonial Railway, a national under-
taking, connected the Maritime Provinces
with Quebec, it was felt that until there was a
comprehensive railroad system from ocean to
ocean, to bind the incoherent confederation
together, Canada could not become a nation.
This was the inspiration that American
experts crystallized as the Canadian Pacific
Railway.
In 1 88 1 the political party in power
opened negotiations to construct a trans-
continental railroad with the capitalists who
eventually completed it. The first task of
these builders was to find capable and experi-
enced men to carry out their project. It was
then that two American railroad men of
mark, William C. Van Home and Thomas G.
Shaughnessy, first became interested in the
great enterprise. Sir William Van Home,
before he accepted the management of the
Canadian Pacific, had had a varied experience
of railroad life. In his fourteenth year he was
an office boy in an Illinois railroad station,
rising to the posts of telegraph operator and
ticket agent, and ascending grade by grade in
the employ of various lines in different parts
of the Union until he became, in 1880, General
Superintendent of the Chicago, Milwaukee &
St. Paul Railroad. In the following year he
was chosen as General Manager of the pro-
jected Canadian line, and given the task of
constructing it across the plains and over
the mountains to the Pacific Coast. He
selected as his right-hand man, Mi., now Sir,
Thomas Shaughnessy, who had served with
him in Milwaukee and has since succeeded him
2982
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
in the presidency of the Canadian Pacific.
The last rail of the line was laid fifty-four
months after the commenceinent of the road
by the company, and in less than one-half
the time required by its contract with the
Government.
The day came when the first train for the
Pacific Coast was scheduled to leave ^Montreal.
On time to the second, it pulled out of the
station with as little demonstration as if it
had set out daily for years. Ten minutes
later a battery of field artillery dawdled up,
unlimbered, and prepared to fire a salute
when the train should depart. Great was the
disgust of the major in command when he
learned that the object of his attentions was
already some miles on its way west. " Well,"
said Mr. Van Home, in humorous reference to
the leisurely methods of the rival road, "I
guess he thought he was to salute the Grand
Trunk!" Sir William Van Home, knighted
by the late Queen Victoria, is accounted the
ablest as he is certainly the most versatile man
in Canada. He is repeating for Cuba just
such a triumph of trunk line railroading as
he accomplished for the Dominion. He is a
member of a score of boards of manufacturing
and banking enterprises, and fills a seat at the
councils of McGill University. By way of
recreation he gathers canvases by Velasquez
or Corot, his love of the masters all the keener
because he is himself an artist of talent. His
collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelains
is one of the best in America; he can stay up,
after a hard day's work, till two in the morning
transferring to paper the outlines and hues
of his jars and vases. He talks admirably,
writes well and has a hearty appreciation of
the best literature, and naturally Stevenson
and Kipling are among his favorites. He is
in intelligent sympathy with science. There
is nothing mechanical, from the proportions of
a chimney to a folding berth for a steamship,
that he cannof set forth with pencil and
specification. At rare intervals, perhaps
during a transcontinental journey, he draws
up to the card-table. Then he becomes an
object of dread, for never was there such a
bluffer before.
Under the successive supervision and man-
agement of Van Home and Shaughnessy
the Canadian Pacific has grown to control
railroads aggregating 6,874 miles within the
Dominion and owns fleets of steamships on the
Great Lakes, and on the Pacific Ocean royal
mail liners to China, Japan and Australia.
The company is now tendering for the pro-
jected fast mail service between Canada and
Great Britain. By rail and water it main-
tains a continuous transcontinental route
between Halifax, Nova Scotia, or St. John,
New Brunswick, to Victoria, on Vancouver
Island, British Columbia, the only single
ocean-to-ocean railroad on the North American
continent. The original purpose of the
Canadian Pacific was political and military;
its financial success was purely speculative.
There were not wanting men of influence who
jibed that it "would never pay for the grease
on the car-wheels." Needless to say, its con-
structors had more confidence, and to one
who has traveled by it through the Northwest,
of which it is the main artery, it is incredible
that men of intelligence could ever have
doubted the future of the country or the
success of the road. So rapid has been the
development of the country through which
the Canadian Pacific runs that the Grand
Trunk is now preparing to share in the pros-
perity of the Great West of Canada by
extending its line to the Pacific. Nearly
3,000 miles of railway will be built across
the continent at an expenditure of from
$75,000,000 to $100, 000, coo — another monu-
ment to the " forward policy " of Mr. Hayr.
The joke of Sir William Van Home in the
matter of the battery that arrived too late
no longer has point.
The gold fields of western Ontario have
just begun to produce gold, but a large
amount of development work has been done,
and the prospects are that in output these
fields will rank with the Rand and the great
Comstock lode. Americans are almost en-
tirely responsible for all the work done on
the mines in the Rainy River District, as
the Ontario gold fields are generally known,
and the capital has been drawn from " the
States." Many mills are already in opera-
tion, though it is hardly ten years since the
gold-bearing quartz veins were discovered
when the Canadian Pacific line was cut
through. Shafts have been sunk in many
places chiefly by American compressed air
drills bought by American capital and
operated in many cases by American miners.
Though these new gold fields are almost
on our very borders, little is known to the
public in general, but the mining men are
thoroughly alive to their importance.
OUR INDUS'IRI AL INVASION OF CANADA
2983
THE FIRST IMPORTATION OF SHLILAND PONIES INTO THE NORTHWEST
I-etlibridge, N. W. T., Nov. 22, 1890
During the past autumn Sir Wilfrid
Laurier, the Premier of the Dominion, in a
speech at Liverpool, said that within two
decades Canada would be able to supply the
total wheat requirements of Great Britain.
One of the most notable features of the
decorations in London for the coronation
ceremony this past summer was a triumphal
arch of cereals at Whitehall bearing the
illuminated legend, "Canada the Granary of
the Empire." This was a bold bit of adver-
tising, but its boast and Sir Wilfrid's state-
ment have a basis of fact. But Sir Wilfrid
did not consider it necessary to add that the
development of the "Empire's Granarv" was
being effected, not by English immigrants
or Canadian pioneers, but by farmers from
the United States.
There has lately been a steady migration
of Western farmers into Canada. It is now
generally conceded that the bulk of the wheat-
bearing lands of North America lie beyond
the international boundary. The western
wheat belt of Canada is estimated to equal
an area of 400 miles from north to south and
900 miles from east to west. This does not
include the cultivable area of Manitoba and
the Northwest Territories. As an example
of the vastness of this new cereal Eldorado I
will specify one territory, Saskatchewan, one
of the most fertile districts in western
America, equaling in extent the combined
area of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Delaware and Kentucky. This deep-soiled
river valley has at present a population of
about 25,000 souls, over a third of whom are
Indians.
As I passed through Manitoba, from the
Lake of the Woods to Brandon, and still west-
ward to Regina — through one vast wheat-
field awaiting the reaper — it was an effort
to realize that but a few years ago the entire
country was deemed a worthless wilderness,
unfit for any purpose except the production
of furs for the Hudson Bay Company. This
impression was due partly to ignorance, but
also, to a considerable extent, to the deliberate
misrepresentations of the servants of the
company, who wished no intrusion on their
preserves. The United States Consul at
Winnipeg was one of the first to realize
the great opportunity, and his reports were
corroborated by millers at Minneapolis and
2984
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
KURN'ACES OF THF. DOMINION IRON AM)
A monument to the enterprise
St. Paul long before the attention of the world
at large had been directed to the "wilderness"
which in 1902 produced 75,000,000 bushels
of the finest wheat in the world.
Mr. Theodore M. Knappen. addressing the
Bankers' Association of Minnesota not long
ago, said that at the present rate of American
immigration into Canada there would in
ten years be farmers enough to produce
250,000,000 bushels of wheat; and deducting
the comparatively small amount required for
home consumption, Canada will then export
cargoes nearly double those of the American
shipment of today. The farming population
which produces the present relatively great
crop of "No. I Hard" is at present insignifi-
cant in numbers and occupies a territory that
is trifling compared to the area capable of
cultivation. In Manitoba and the Northwest
Territories 260.000.000 acres of arable land
today await the plow.
Seeking contact with American trekkers, I
spent a most interesting day in the busy office
of the Commissioner of Immigration at
Winnipeg, and conversed wit la a remarkable
variety of land seekers. Shrewd-faced depu-
ties from Indiana and Nebraska came in to
report their impressions. I found them,
without exception, enthusiastic about the
country they had been sent to spy out.
"See that rye," pointing to a specimen
sheaf seven feet four inches in height. "Tlie
land that grows that is good enough for us."'
one of them replied to my question.
In the first six months of 1902 eighty-six per
cent, more emigrants entered Canada than in
()l\< 1 N 1)1 SIR I A I. IWASION Ol- CANADA
J985
STEEL WORKS AT SYDNEY, NOVA SCOTIA
of Mr. Henrv M. Whitnev
»
anv preceding year. A large proportion of this
immigration, 25.000 at least, was of American
citizens. The estimates published in the
American and Canadian press may in many
cases be inflated, and it is extremely diffi-
cult to procure accurate statistics. Careful
inquiries and my own observation would go
to show that forty per cent, of the American
immigrants are not entered on the Immi-
gration Commissioner's books, having trekked
singly or in parties across the frontier, and
not having entered by the ports of registration
on the lines of rail. I should say that there
are already 70.000 people of American
extraction in that country.
It would be erroneous to assume that this
migration of Western farmers is due to dissatis-
faction with their old homes. Apart from the
tendency of certain adventurous spirits to
push toward v'irgin territory, and the overflow
of young men from already congested farming
districts, the bulk of the immigrants go to
Canada because they can sell their old farms
for from S30 to $40 an acre in manv cases,
and can buy as good land under the British
flag for from S7 to Sio an acre, starting anew
under favorable conditions with ready cash
in hand. A certain proportion of each new
township is of crown lands on which the
"homesteader" may secure an allotment on
the payment of a nominal fee of Sio for 160
acres of land, and after a residence of three
years, in compliance with homestead regula-
tions, receive an absolute title. Or he may
purchase lands from the large grants owned by
the Canadian Pacific and Canadian Northern
>
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I—. _-
O o
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'a.
C
OTK INDISIKIAI. INVASION 0 1-" CANADA
2987
New barn
HOW WKALTH INCREASES IN MANITOBA
Old bam
N
e\v house
Old house
railroads, or buy a farm from one of the many-
land companies, chiefly American, which have
recently acquired large tracts of the railway
lands. The Hudson Bay Company also
controls enormous holdings. The total land
sales during the summer of 1902 were fivefold
those of 1901, with prices steadily rising.
Lands selling at $3 an acre fiv^e years ago are
now bringing double or treble that price.
American capitalists are forming syndicates
for the purchase of large tracts for "bonanza "
farming. A syndicate headed by T. B. Hoard,
of Nebraska, has bought 40,000 acres in an
unbroken stretch at $5 an acre. This farm is
near Davidson, on the Prince Albert branch
of the Canadian Pacific, and will throughout
its great extent be sown in wheat.
I give this as only one example of several
large sections of the wheat belt which .within the
year, have passed into American hands, chiefly
those of experienced farmers from Montana,
Minnesota, the Dakotas, Indiana and Nebraska.
Many immigrants have selected their home-
sites in what is known as the semi-arid
region, comprising most of Assiniboia and all
of southern Alberta, a district already con-
taining a larger population than any other
equal area of the Territories. The soil is deep
and exceptionally fertile. The Americans
settled on the " Soo " line, near Estevan, have
gone largely into flax growing. They told me
that in their old districts they considered a
crop of fifteen bushels an acre as first rate.
Their new farms are yielding twenty bushels
ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK, FROM FAIRVILLE
MR HENRY M. WHITNEY
Who developed the resources of Nova Scotia
SIR THOMAS G. SHAUGHNESSV
PRF.SIDENT OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAII.WAV
Photographed by Notman
2990
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
A CORN PLOT
At Indian Head, Manitoba
per acre. They attributed this to the fine
quality of the soil and the long solar light of
the northern summer day. The reports these
men and others similarly situated send to
their old neighbors help the steadily growing
migration from the Western States. In this
district, irrigation, where necessary, is easier
than in the higher altitudes of the southern
division of the continent. Manv canal sys-
tems have been completed bv individual
FARMERS DELIVERING GRAIN AT THE RAILWAY
ELEVATORS, MANITOBA
enterprise ; all are under government super-
vision. These already irrigate several million
acres, and more ditches are being surveyed
and constructed. The rainfall is usually
abundant, and irrigation is essential only in
exceptional years. In the Western and
Southwestern States artesian wells are largely
relied upon for water supply; in southern
Alberta the natural reservoirs contain enough
water to irrigate every foot of land. Wind-
mills or steam pumps are not required; the
natural fall of the ground toward the north-
east is amply sufficient, and, indeed, the main
engineering problem has been to modify this
descent. On an average the cost of irrigation
has been $2.25 an acre, or less than one-half
the cost in Montana, which has the cheapest
svstem in the Union. Some of the Mormon
BRANDING A S PEER AT A ROUND-UP
In Alberta
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
2991
settlements in the irrigated districts of
western Canada have been very successful in
the growing of sugar-beets; so that wheat is
by no means the sole dej)endence of the new
settler. All the sta])le cereals are raised in
longer a menace; the last serious frost took
place as long ago as 189.5. Climatic con-
ditions here as elsewhere have been bettered
l)y the ojK'ning uj) of the country. An
Agricultural Commission once gravclv re-
the Territories, ami mixed farming, dairying ported on the climate of Illinois as being
IN THE SAULT SAINTE MARIE CANAL
A whaleback after a storm on Lake Superior
and ranching, the latter on a large scale, are
profitably conducted.
An important efTect of irrigation is that it
considerably mitigates the danger of summer
frosts, though even in the more northern and
non-irrigated districts this seems to be no
unsuited for wheat culture I Since then the
wheat belt has made two northward jumps
of 300 miles each. Climatic conditions give
western Canada an advantage over the
eastern portion of the Dominion with whose
icy breath Kipling's "Lady of the Snows"
I
MR. CHARLES M. HAYS
VICE-PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY SYSTEM
Photog^-aphed by Notman
i.
IMtolographed b^* Notirtan
SIR WILLIAM C. VAN HORNF
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND EX PRESIDENT OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY
2994
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
made the world familiar. The isotherm of
sixty degrees, which in July lies north of
Quebec, in the east, touches the mouth of the
Mackenzie River above the Arctic Circle in
the west. As it is rather solar light than
solar heat that growing wheat demands, these
northern lands, with their long summer days
of sunshine, are far better suited to its success-
ful, rust-free cultivation and speedy ripening,
than are more southerly stretches. I made
particular inquiries concerning the severity
ranches are conducted both on the plains and
in the foothills, and of late years have proved
most profitable.
Though the recent progress of all this
country, since the American discovery, has
been phenomenal, it is but an earnest of a
development unprecedented in the histor\' of
the continent. Already the railroads are
taxed to their utmost capacity to handle the
crops, and despite the annual increase of
branch lines, the construction of new cars,
MOUNT STEPHEN
British Columbia
of the winter, but was assured bv American
settlers in different sections that it was far
milder than an experience in ^Montana might
suggest as existing farther to the north.
Temperature is less an affair of latitude than
of altitude, and the elevation of the
Northwest Territories is considerably less
than that of their southerly neighbors. The
cattle range free all winter and come through
in good condition. Cattle, sheep and horse
engines and elevators, transportation facilities
still lag behind the demand. In 1901, with
a crop of 50,000.000 bushels produced in
Manitoba alone, that grain inspection district
had an elevator capacity of less than half the
requirements. More railroads and elevators
are urgently needed, and it seems probable
that Americans will build them.
The share that United States citizens have
taken in the discovery and exploitation of the
p
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2 -
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z
299^
OUR INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF CANADA
Yukon, or Klondike, is well known ; in the rich
mining districts of the Kootenay eighty per
cent, of the capital invested is Western
American. ]\lr. James J. Hill is interested in
the coal mines of Crow's Xest Pass, and
Americans control lignite deposits in neigh-
boring localities. British Columbia is one of
the richest gold-bearing sections in the world,
and miners have a saying that "If the head
eflt'ect of the American invasion from sea to
sea. What the social and political result will
be it is too early to prophesy. In some
quarters of Canada anxiety is expressed,
but, it would seem, needlessly. That the
fusion of the two peoples caused by counter
migration of Americans and Canadians across
a purely arbitrary boundary is inevitable
is the conclusion of some observers ; but
A TYPICAL CATCH OF SALMON
Fraser River, British Columbia
of the rat is in Alaska, and his tail in Montana,
his body is in British Columbia." The
American mining development of that
province has steadily advanced since 1862,
when it was initiated by Californians, and the
average output of recent years has been more
than $4,000,000 annuallv.
I have
an outline of the industrial
at any rate, it guarantees the final occupa-
tion of the land by men of the same sturdy
stock, speaking the same language, and with
customs, laws and religion essentially alike.
All the way across the continent American
pioneering energy is pushing its conquests
northward across the line and the industrial
frontier is spreading farther and farther.
THOSE WHO LOSE IN THE GAME
OF LIFE
INCIDENTS IN THE DAY'S ROUTINE IN THE OFFICE OF
MR. JEROME, DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF NEW YORK COUNTY
BY
ALFRED HODDER
PKIVATE SBCRSTARY TO MR. JRROMB
I
TO the man in the street the business
conducted in the District Attorney's
office of the County of New York
seems to be one of almost unmitigated
severity. There, amongst two milhons of
people, all of the vice and sin and shame and
criminal negligence, when they reach the
intensely dramatic point, are brought to be
dealt with according to the sense of justice of
the community. There you may see the
murderer, with the heat of passion in which
he committed his crime died out, tranquil and
self-possessed; the thief and the swindler,
buxom and debonair, with all their wits about
them; the blooming young girl, she, too,
perhaps, accused of murder, consciously
making the most of her graces and powers of
allurement. To the man inside the office
the dominant note, as the theologians would
say, of the business conducted there is not
one so much of severity as of pathos.
I do not vouch for the old adage that there
is no Irishman so poor that he has not another
Irishman living at his expense, but it seems
certain that there is no man so degraded that
there is not a woman to intercede for him when
once he has brought himself into the hands of
the ministers of the criminal law; and the
girl whose trouble has found her has at least
a mother. From the time a criminal is
arrested, until he has been pardoned by the
Governor or has served out his sentence, his
wife or his mother or his sweetheart haunts
the District Attorney's office, interrupting
the graver business of the day by testimony
to the prisoner's virtues and the petitioner's
distress. Even in the case of an accused
police captain, a prosperous, smartly gowned
woman, her ears and bosom radiant with
jewels, will come to the District Attorney's
office and with tears in her eyes explain to
him her own and her husband's poverty.
The labor of the District Attorney today
begins at No. 8 Rutgers Street as early in the
morning as his Japanese servants are willing
to answer a ring at the doorbell. A few
mornings since his first client was a neat,
meanly clad Jewish woman, who explained
with much agitation and gesture that her
daughter, aged seventeen, had been abducted.
At the close of her story she offered him a
ten-dollar note. He afterward ascertained
that she was a seamstress earning between
fifty cents and a dollar a day. When he
refused her money she burst into a passion of
weeping and left the house. In a few hours
two detectives had found the girl and brought
her home, much against her will. In the
afternoon the mother paid a visit to the
District Attorney's office to give him her
thanks. "Oh, sir," she said, "when you
would not take my money I did not think you
would do anything for me."
On his breakfast table, and later on his
desk at the office, he finds letters of which the
following may serve as a sample :
New York, June 4th, 1902.
Hon'ble Attorney Gerome,
Dear Sir — This is a letter for a respectable
Woman writing by a friend for the Benefitt for her
familie & Husband to stop the Husband gambling.
This man is going every evening after 8.30 p. m.
playing the open game in the back of a Segar store
at Avenue between 1 1 2-1 1 3 Street loosing
the most of his money he earns. The game he
plays is so called 2 1 with cash money on the table.
Kindly take notice of this above if this plase get
pulled you will do good about 20 working mens
familie.
Your respectfully
A Friend of Honest Life.
District Attorney.
Honorable Sir — Would you take the trouble to
find out if the Girl from Brooklyn, that is lost, is in
No. Park Ave. Often very young girls call
there, and don't leave the house before night, then
a carriage is coming to take them away, it must be
for a certant purpose, and sure not a good one.
3000
THOSE WHO LOSE IN THE GAME OF LIFE
District Attorney Mr. Jerome please take interest
in this.
I beg you because We live right near there and
we see everything.
Mrs. .
New York, the 4 June, 1902.
28 Precinct.
New York, Octr. 19th, 1902.
Dear Mr. Jerome — I hope you will pardon the
liberty a few broken harted women takes in sending
you thoes few lines hopeing you will do something
to Put a stop to the Badness that exists on the
East Side, it is far worse than the tenderline and
Particularly — street & first Avenue & Avenue E.
Their is a salloon on — St. & Avenue and
it is a disgrace to the city, it is open all day Sundy
from five in the morning untill one on Mundy
morning. It is full of gamblers & Drinkards all
dy and their is nothing but men, woman and children
bringing cans all day long. It is the cause of starv-
ing poor decent families so we will aske you for God
sake to do something to give some rehef, their
would be no use to speke to the poliece of — St the
know it and you will get them there drinkeing late
& erly. I have seen a drunken man lying on —
street for four howers and not a poliece man ever
came along untill a lot of boys draged him away,
in fact you would nevr seen a poliece man on Sundy
and if the men in the — st station hears of this the
will send tips to all the saloons so we trust in God
you will do some thing for us. Hopeing you will
Pardon us for troubleing you
FROM Poor women.
Jime 10, 1902.
Mr. Jerome:
De.\r Sir — I am 17 years old & my Brother & I
are the only ones that keep my mother. I make S6
a week & my brother 18 — but he spends all his in a
gambling room on cor. — th & Ave N. E. cor
on horses. They are open every day.
Yours truly,
Joseph Blank.
New York, Oct. 6, 1902.
Dear Mister Jerome — my son is a member of
the Club E. — th St. and he is loosing his
monney Knight after Knight and I am afright he
will get in trouble. He work for a dn,- good hose
and he is giving me bother about monney he said it
was the best crap game in the place around and
he owns two games.
A Friend.
The ignorance and the helplessness of the
writers of these letters must be sufficiently
apparent. Not only the District Attorney,
but each of his assistants, is obliged all day
long to deal face to face with people of the
same stamp as the writers of these letters.
Indeed, the letters themselves have been
chosen amongst the complaints of those to
whom it was possible for members of the office
to give some relief; there is a parallel line of
cases in which it is impossible for members of
the office to give any relief whatever. These
are cases in which the man who makes the
complaint has without any doubt been
grossly wronged, but in which no evidence can
be ascertained sufficient to convict some
particular evildoer. The man who has been
injured is naturally and perhaps rightly cer-
tain of the person, man or woman, who has
made him a victim, and is also naturally
ignorant and impatient of the technicalities
of the law of evidence. The maxim of the
law of evidence is that it is better to acquit
ninety-nine guilty men than to convict one
innocent man. With this maxim the victims
of the ninety-nine who are guilty have little
sympathy.
A few weeks since an honest German
and his honest German frau complained
that they had been robbed of $600, their
savings for some years. Upon investiga-
tion there was no doubt whatever that he
had been robbed, and was in consequence in
circumstances literally desperate. But there
was no evidence whatever at his command
or at the command of the District Attorney's
office to show who had committed the crime.
He insisted that the janitor of the tenement
house in which he lived was guilty, on the
ground that fresh, crisp bank-notes, such as
the complainant had laid away amongst his
savings, were found in the janitor's possession.
He could not be persuaded that there was in
existence a number of crisp, fresh bank-notes
other than those which were a part of his
savings. After every effort had been made
by the District Attorney to discover who had
wronged him, he shook his fist in the face of
one of the Assistants and said, " By Gott, if
you vill not do me justice I vill even take der
law into mine own hants, unt it vill be you
dot iss guilty. "
It was necessary to have him carried to
the elevator, his wife weeping and protesting
amongst the cortege. To all intents and
purposes he had been driven mad by his loss.
He was in much the same position as a score
of other clients whose misfortunes have put
them undisguisedly out of the ranks of the
sane.
There is one woman who on an average
of once a month writes twenty closely
written pages about the genealogy of per-
sons unknown, which are filed in the waste-
paper basket, and who sends jewelry of
value, which is returned. There is a man
in New Jersey who writes twice a week,
on wrapping paper, letters of twenty and
even fiftv folios, mainly in comment upon
THOSE WHO LOSE IN THE GAME OF 1.1 IE
3001
the conduct of the President and his
Cabinet in matters of international affairs,
and in a postscript requests a loan of ten
dollars. There is a woman who has a case
which no one amongst the officers of three
administrations has been able to understand.
At a recent date she insisted on explaining her
troubles to chance passers-by in the corridor,
and emphasized her explanation by wrecking
her parasol over the head of the attendant
who warned her that she must not block the
passage. She also, no doubt, has been the
victim of some one's wrong. She also was
carried to the elevator. With all sympathy
and consideration for the victims of undis-
covered crimes, the business of the county
must go forward; and, if necessary, kicking
men and screaming women must be carried
bodily to the street.
Side by side with this thread of pathos in
the day's work runs the thread of delight
that every virile Anglo-Saxon feels in the
hunt and especially in hunting a man. An
Assistant District Attorney at the last
moment may be almost frightened at his
success. One of them now in office recently
exclaimed while he was waiting for a verdict :
" My God, I am afraid they will find him
guilty of murder in the first." But the grim
satisfaction in having exercised the skill
and force necessary to bring a subtle and
ruthless animal to bay appeals to an instinct
for the chase which is strong in most men.
It is strongest perhaps amongst the detect-
ives. The detective feels a sheer glee in his
power and gives the details of his clever-
ness with a juvenile enthusiasm and a grown
man's sense of dramatic climax. He talks
about himself as an actor might and takes a
frank pleasure in his success, and, indeed,
displays much of the technique and many
of the talents which make for success on the
stage.
"Say, that was a great arrest we pulled off
last night," he says to you. Most likely you
don't know that he has been detailed to make
any arrest whatever. "We went in," he
continues, "and bought a drink yesterday"
(Sunday) " afternoon, and when we had paid
for it I handed the barkeep a warrant for his
arrest and said: 'Here is a little piece of
paper I want to give you.' When he had got
all that was coming to him in the way of
information, he said: 'Say, boys, just wait
will you till I send upstairs for Charlie to take
my place;' and we said, 'Sure, we are not in
any hurry; we are doing our best to be polite.'
When Charlie came in the barkeep said,
'Take off your coat, Charlie, and get behind
the bar; I have been pinched.' And we said,
'Hold on a minute, Charlie, you need not take
off your coat — here is a little piece of paper for
you, too.' We wanted Charlie. A more dis-
gusted pair of men you never saw. Then
they said they would send for Joe, and when
Joe came they asked him to take off his coat
and go behind the bar. Joe was the last of
the three men we wanted. We said he
needn't take the trouble to take off his coat,
we had a piece of paper for him, too. All
three challenged us to give Joe's last name.
We didn't know Joe's last name, but we said:
'That's all right, his name is John Doe,' and
we handed him a warrant made out for John
Doe. They were so stampeded they wouldn't
take a chance on getting another of their pals
to look after the bar, and they sent for a shoe-
maker in a cellar next door."
What robs this spirit of the hunt of the
element of savagery is the childlike uncon-
sciousness on the part of the prisoner that he
has committed a crime. A member of the
city government a few days since was exam-
ined in the office on the charge of attempted
bribery. When he was brought in under
arrest he said, "Why, everybody does that;
you do it yourself." It is difficult to con-
ceive a more complete picture of injured
innocence.
A member of the police department
assigned for duty under Mr. Jerome's orders
was examined in this office on the charge of
having spent a hundred dollars in marked
bank-notes. The notes had been passed in
his presence in an attempt to blackmail on
the part of a public official. The official had
been arrested by him and the notes taken
from his person and kept in custody by him
to serve as evidence at the trial. When he
was summoned in a preliminary star-chamber
hearing before Mr. Jerome and the Assistant
District Attorney who had discovered the loss
of the money, he said: "I lost the bills on
the way to the station-house. But I have
deposited ten other ten-dollar bills with the
Property Clerk, and I'll swear that those are
the same bills, so that the case will go on all
right. There's nobody but us three knows
anything about it. I don't see any reason
why we can't keep it quiet between ourselves."
3004 THE PROPORTION OF CITY AND COUNTRY POPULATION
accompanying table will show these facts
more specifically.
Other reasons for believing that urban
population will grow more slowly in the future
are less matter-of-fact, perhaps, but hardly
less convincing. Among these is the increased
attractiveness of country life due to modem
improvements, the better and easier utiliza-
tion of the land under a more scientific agri-
cultural system, the constantly increasing
demand for such food products as are grown
by farm labor, and the further extension of
facilities for communication and transporta-
tion. Country life today in most parts of
the United States means something very
unlike what it meant a generation ago.
Rural mail delivery, telephone service, the
consolidation of schools and the provision of
public transportation for school children, the
cheapness and general circulation of news-
papers, magazines and books, the improving
of common roads and the multiplication of
railroads and electric lines — all these and
many other things are revolutionizing the
life of the farmer.
It is contended by some that the further
introduction of scientific farming will so
reduce the number of men needed for agri-
culture that a constantly increasing surplus
will be left to drift to the city. But the
advance of science is made to serve the manu-
facturer even more than the farmer. It
has been estimated by an expert in the
employ of the Government that agricultural
machinery reduces the number of men
employed to do a given amount of work to
one-third, while manufacturing machinery
reduces the number to one-fiftieth.
Another change which will almost inevi-
tably occur along with the application of
science to the practical work of agriculture,
but which has too often been overlooked, is
the growth of intensive farming. Small
farms, economicalh'' administered, will be
the rule in the future. The day is coming
when such a thing as a "worn-out " farm will
be unknown. Land and its products will
become too valuable to permit of further
impoverishing of the soil.
Obviously this will mean an increase in
rural population and the production of food
in greatly increased quantities.
It is true that there must always be a limit
to the amount of food products which the
world can consume. And it is likewise true
that this limit is much more easily reached
than is that of the quantity of manufactured
goods which may be disposed of. Even if
there were nothing to be taken into account
but the strictly proportionate increase in
food consumption as the number of people to
be fed increases, the outlook for agricultural
activity would be exceedingly bright. But
the gro-v^-th of wealth and better conditions
of living tend to augment in increased pro-
portion the demands upon the farmer. A
hundred people in these days consume more
than twice what fifty people consumed half
a century ago. The very surplus population
which we are told must continue forever to
gather in the cities must be fed, and it is the
farmer who must meet the demand. Then
there are the European and Asiatic markets
to be considered.
Already it is beginning to be felt that the
most serious difficulty in the way of agri-
cultural enterprise in the United States is a
scarcity of labor. Even with all the labor-
economizing devices and machinery that have
been introduced there is yet a need for more
workmen. Doubtless the solution of the
problem lies in increasing still more the
profits and pleasures of rural life.
The city will continue to grow, and grow
rapidly. But as time goes on, rural popu-
lation may be expected to increase relatively
as fast as the urban population. More food
products and raw materials will be demanded,
so that it will be increasingly profitable to
belong to the agricultural classes.
What vast room we 3'et have for increase
of our population almost staggers belief.
Although it has practically doubled every
quarter-century since 1789, the extent of our
territory robs this remarkable increase of
the ill omens that it would carry in many
Asiatic or even European States. Professor
Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, some
years ago advanced the opinion that the
Mississippi Valley alone is capable of support-
ing 350,000,000 people in comfort. The
population of this same region by the census
of 1900 was less than 41,000,000. The rate
of increase per decade has recently been from
20 to 25 per cent., so that we may expect at
least two centuries to elapse before the
Mississippi Valley population will have .at-
tained Professor Hart's figure. Even then
the density will be no greater than the
present density of Massachusetts.
THE MAN THAT FAILED
THE SAD KATE OF GENERAL TORAI., WHO COM-
MANDED THE SPANISH FORCES AT SANTIAGO
BY
THOMAS R. DAWLEY, JR.
IT is a sad story that conies from Spain
that General Toral, who surrendered
Santiago, has suffered an ecHpse of
mind. He is the Spanish culprit of the war.
I saw him shortly after the surrender. In a
drizzling rain he stood in one of the lower
streets of Santiago, a water-proof cloak drawn
over his shoulders, his Panama hat pulled
down in front, taking leave of a group of
officers about to go on board the transports
for Spain. They were gathered around him
in a semicircle.
"Gentlemen," said he in a low voice, "it is
not your fault that you find yourselves in this
situation. You did not lack courage, you
did not lack bravery or energy on the field
of battle. You fought valiantly, but we were
left without resources, without adequate
munitions of war, even without food supplies,
and we were obliged to give way to an
enemy no braver than you, but better
provided with the elements of war. You
have all done your duty, and now that you
embark for Spain, remember that should
circumstances call us together on the other
side, and should you need me, you can count
upon me as you have in the past."
With these words the Spanish General
turned sadly away and the officers slouched
on board the ship which was to carry them
home with their f^maciated, dying soldiers.
As the old General with bowed head went up
the street I could not restrain my impulse of
going up to him and offering him my hand
with an expression of sympathy. He grasped
it, saying that he felt deeply gratified at my
words, and he could only thank the victorious
Americans for their kind treatment of him
and his officers; and then his words seemed
to stick in his throat.
He was the last officer to leave the capitu-
lated city. A few days before his departure
I called upon him at his residence. It was a
stormy night, and the house was shrouded in
darkness. An orderlv answered my knock-
ing, and in the gloom told me that the General
was ill, but he invited me in and shuffled off
after a light. Presently he came back with a
lamp and led me into a room in which there
was a hammock, a plain board table and a
single chair. In the dim light I would not
have recognized the General, who lay in the
hammock wrapped in a blanket, had he not
held out his hand bidding me welcome. He
was ill of fever, and, directing the orderly to
place the chair close to his hammock, he bade
me be seated.
I spent an hour or more with him, in which
he asked and answered many questions,
gave his views of the war and his opinion of
the American soldier. "We Europeans have
studied all about European armies," he said;
"we have studied and compared them — the
spirit and dash of the French, the plodding
earnestness of the German, and the sober
tenacity of the English, but the Americans
we ignored. We never considered you a
military people. We were made to believe
that you were a nation of shopkeepers and
merchants, and that the few soldiers you had
were mercenaries with neither discipline nor
a knowledge of the rules of war. But the
fighting around Santiago has been a revela-
tion. It was nothing like anything we have
been taught in the books of the European
schools. Your soldiers did not advance upon
our positions with the esprit de corps of the
French, nor with the steady advance in solid
rank of the German and the English, but
they came as individual units, each man
seeming to suit himself how straight and how
fast he should come. And they kept coming,
firing as they pleased, and our volley-firing
seemed to have little or no effect upon them."
Referring to his surrender he said: "Since
I accepted your terms and sent my soldiers
into camp outside the city, I have lost eight
hundred men from the fever; and there are
eight hundred more dying. I don't see why,"
and then hesitating with a far-off look, as he
3004 THE PROPORTION OF CITY AND COUNTRY POPULATION
accompanying table will show these facts
more specifically.
Other reasons for believing that urban
population will grow more slowly in the future
are less matter-of-fact, perhaps, but hardly
less convincing. Among these is the increased
attractiveness of country life due to modem
improvements, the better and easier utiliza-
tion of the land under a more scientific agri-
cultural system, the constantly increasing
demand for such food products as are grown
by farm labor, and the further extension of
facilities for commiuiication and transporta-
tion. Country life today in most parts of
the United States means soinething very
unlike what it meant a generation ago.
Rural mail delivery, telephone service, the
consolidation of schools and the provision of
public transportation for school children, the
cheapness and general circulation of news-
papers, magazines and books, the improving
of common roads and the multiplication of
railroads and electric lines — all these and
many other things are revolutionizing the
life of the farmer.
It is contended by some that the further
introduction of scientific farming will so
reduce the number of men needed for agri-
culture that a constantly increasing surplus
will be left to drift to the city. But the
advance of science is made to serve the manu-
facturer even more than the farmer. It
has been estimated by an expert in the
employ of the Government that agricultural
machinery reduces the number of men
employed to do a given amotint of work to
one-third, while manufacturing machinery
reduces the number to one-fiftieth.
Another change which will almost inevi-
tably occur along with the application of
science to the practical work of agriculture,
but which has too often been overlooked, is
the growi;h of intensive farming. Small
farms, economically administered, will be
the rule in the future. The day is coming
when such a thing as a "worn-out" farm will
be unknown. Land and its products will
become too valuable to permit of further
impoverishing of the soil.
Obviously this will mean an increase in
rural population and the production of food
in greatly increased quantities.
It is true that there must always be a limit
to the amount of food products which the
world can consume. And it is likewise true
that this limit is much more easily reached
than is that of the quantity of manufactured
goods which may be disposed of. Even if
there were nothing to be taken into account
but the strictly proportionate increase in
food consumption as the number of people to
be fed increases, the outlook for agricultural
activity would be exceedingly bright. But
the gro\^i:h of wealth and better conditions
of living tend to augment in increased pro-
portion the demands upon the farmer. A
hundred people in these days consume more
than twice what fifty people consumed half
a century ago. The very surplus population
which we are told must continue forever to
gather in the cities must be fed, and it is the
farmer who must meet the demand. Then
there are the European and Asiatic markets
to be considered.
Already it is beginning to be felt that the
most serious difficulty in the way of agri-
cultural enterprise in the United States is a
scarcity of labor. Even with all the labor-
economizing devices and machinery that have
been introduced there is yet a need for more
workmen. Doubtless the solution of the
problem lies in increasing still more the
profits and pleasures of rural life.
The city will continue to grow, and grow
rapidly. But as time goes on, rural popu-
lation may be expected to increase relativelv
as fast as the urban population. More food
products and raw materials will be demanded,
so that it will be increasingly profitable to
belong to the agricultural classes.
What vast room we yet have for increase
of our population almost staggers belief.
Although it has practically doubled every
quarter-century since 1789, the extent of our
territory robs this remarkable increase of
the ill omens that it would carry in many
Asiatic or even European States. Professor
Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, some
years ago advanced the opinion that the
Mississippi Valley alone is capable of support-
ing 350.000,000 people in comfort. The
population of this same region by the census
of 1900 was less than 41,000,000. The rate
of increase per decade has recently been from
20 to 25 per cent., so that we may expect at
least two centuries to elapse before the
Mississippi Valley population will have .at-
tained Professor Hart's figure. Even then
the density will be no greater than the
present density of Massachusetts.
THE MAN THAT FAILED
THE SAD FATE OP^ GENERAL TORAL, WHO COM-
MANDED THE SPANISH FORCES AT SANTIAGO
BY
THOMAS R. DAWLEY, JR.
IT is a sad story that comes from Spain
that General Toral, who surrendered
Santiago, has suffered an ecHpse of
mind. He is the Spanish culprit of the war.
I saw him shortly after the surrender. In a
drizzling rain he stood in one of the lower
streets of Santiago, a water-proof cloak drawn
over his shoulders, his Panama hat pulled
down in front, taking leave of a group of
officers about to go on board the transports
for Spain. They were gathered around him
in a semicircle.
"Gentlemen," said he in a low voice, "it is
not your fault that you land yourselves in this
situation. You did not lack courage, you
did not lack bravery or energy on the field
of battle. You fought valiantly, but we were
left without resources, without adequate
munitions of war, even without food supplies,
and we were obliged to give way to an
enemy no braver than you, but better
provided with the elements of war. You
have all done your duty, and now that you
embark for Spain, remember that should
circumstances call us together on the other
side, and should you need me, you can count
upon me as you have in the past."
With these words the Spanish General
turned sadly away and the officers slouched
on board the ship which was to carry them
home with their (^maciated, dying soldiers.
As the old General with bowed head went up
the street I could not restrain my impulse of
going up to him and offering him my hand
with an expression of sympathy. He grasped
it, saying that he felt deeply gratified at my
words, and he could only thank the victorious
Americans for their kind treatment of him
and his officers ; and then his words seemed
to stick in his throat.
He was the last officer to leave the capitu-
lated city. A few days before his departure
I called upon him at his residence. It was a
stormy night, and the house was shrouded in
darkness. An orderlv answered mv knock-
ing, and in the gloom told me that the General
was ill, but he invited me in and shuffled off
after a light. Presently he came back with a
lamp and led me into a room in which there
was a hammock, a plain board table and a
single chair. In the dim light I would not
liave recognized the General, who lay in the
hammock wrapped in a blanket, had he not
held out his hand bidding me welcome. He
was ill of fever, and, directing the orderly to
place the chair close to his hammock, he bade
me be seated.
I spent an hour or more with him, in which
he asked and answered many questions,
gave his views of the war and his opinion of
the American soldier. "We Europeans have
studied all about European armies," he said;
"we have studied and compared them — the
spirit and dash of the French, the plodding
earnestness of the German, and the sober
tenacity of the English, but the Americans
we ignored. We never considered you a
military people. We were made to believe
that you were a nation of shopkeepers and
merchants, and that the few soldiers you had
were mercenaries with neither discipline nor
a knowledge of the rules of war. But the
fighting around Santiago has been a revela-
tion. It was nothing like anything we have
been taught in the books of the European
schools. Your soldiers did not advance upon
our positions with the esprit de corps of the
French, nor with the steady advance in solid
rank of the German and the English, but
they came as individual units, each man
seeming to suit himself how straight and how
fast he should come. And they kept coming,
firing as they pleased, and our volley-firing
seemed to have little or no effect upon them."
Referring to his surrender he said: "Since
I accepted your terms and sent my soldiers
into camp outside the city, I have lost eight
hundred men from the fever; and there are
eight hundred more dying. I don't see why,"
and then hesitating with a far-off look, as he
30o6
THE MAN THAT FAILED
waved his hand toward the San Juan Hnes,
"it would have been far better to have lost
these men in battle."
I inferred that he was going to say that he
did not see why he had surrendered, and he
now regretted that he had done so; but
recovering himself, he added in an explana-
tory way: "I could not have done otherwise;
I did not have ammunition enough to last
through another battle, and my soldiers w^ere
starved and weak. I had to — I capitulated,
but I did not surrender."
General Toral returned to Spain. The
populace which witnessed the disembarking of
his fever-stricken, emaciated troops at Ferrol
proceeded en masse to his lodgings and pelted
the house with stones, breaking the windows
and crying out against him. Arriving at
Madrid, he was arrested and thrown into
prison, because it is the unwritten law of
Spain that an officer who surrenders must die.
After an imprisonment of five months and a
trial he w^as released because he was able to
show that he w^as authorized by the Madrid
Government to capitulate, but he was sen-
tenced to retirement from the army and
prohibited from ever holding office of any
kind again.
When the war was all over a New York
publishing house conceived the idea that an
account of the surrender written by General
Toral himself would be interesting and would
be of historical value. When the subject was
proposed to me I volunteered to undertake
the commission of going to Spain after it.
Arriving in Madrid I found few who could
teli me an\-thing about the fallen General.
At length I found his lodgings. An old
woman told me that he had retired to
Murcia, a southeastern comer of Spain. I
arrived in IMurcia after a ride of all night
and all day.
Coming down to my breakfast at about
eleven o'clock, I fairly ran into the arms of a
little Spaniard in civilian attire who recog-
nized me at once. He was Major Langoziaste,
Toral's field-aid at Santiago. While the
Major was talking to me as though he were
glad to see me, his wife appeared.
'T must see you at once," she said stiffly,
and bowing, she led the way down the corridor,
little Langoziaste looking back, waving his
hand and smiling as he said: "We will go and
see the General; I know he will be glad to
see you." I can only imagine what his wife
said to him for receiving a Yankee so joyfully
in a public place. There could be no other
reason for my appearance there, in the eyes
of the people, than to pay the rest of the
blood money for which it was supposed
Toral had surrendered.
The little Major disappeared as if swal-
lowed by the earth, and though I remained
in Murcia more than a week, I was unable to
see either him or General Toral. The people
treated me kindly and talked with me freely.
But many of them believed that the Spanish
troops had been surrendered for gold.
One man said: "General Toral escaped the
death sentence because he was ably defended,
but he is condemned by the Spanish people,
and Murcia is the only place in Spain where
he can live, because it is his native town."
I called at his house. But my knock
was answered by an intelligent girl who
declared that the General was not at home. I
then wrote him a letter explaining my mission.
My letter remained unanswered. That was
three years ago. Now the story comes that
while the General was w^andering around
Alhama, a message was delivered to him from
the Spanish Government instructing him to
draw up a full account of the battles and
surrender at Santiago. The old General
continued his walk, muttering, "The sur-
render ! the surrender !" and then it was
discovered that his reason was unstrung.
It is a sad story, especially when it is
believed by a few in a position to know that
the responsibility of the surrender was shirked
by General Linares, who was in actual com-
mand of the Spanish troops at Santiago till
their defeat in what is known to the American
soldier as the big fight on the hills around the
city. A Spanish priest who was a canon of the
Santiago Cathedral during the time, assured
me in Madrid that Linares had wounded
himself slightly in the arm at the close of that
day's battle purposely to avoid the responsi-
bility of the surrender which he evidently
realized must come. The father said that he
saw him brought in from the front carried on
a litter as though seriously wounded, but the
moment the litter was set down in front of his
door he got up and walked upstairs, there
being nothing the matter with him except the
slight wound in the arm. Arriving in Spain,
he was loaded with honors, while poor Toral,
upon whom the command of the army
devolved, was condemned to disgrace.
AN IN'l'AN IKV DIVISION (;(»IN(; INKJ Al IION
A DAY IN THE REGULAR ARMY
THE LIFE OF A PRIVATE CAVALRYMAN FROM RE
VEILLE TO TAPS IN A WESTERN MILITARY POST
BY
HAMILTON M. HIGDAY
LATE LIBRARIAN U. S. CAVALRY AND FIELD ARTILLERY SCHOOL, FORT RILEY, KANSAS
PRIVATE SMITH of "B Troop," of the
— th Cavalry, knew to a certainty it
was 5:15 A. M., and that the trumpeter,
having blown "First Call" before the bar-
racks, was already stalking toward the flag-
staff to send more and nearer blasts down the
"line" — the officers' street; and that a few
seconds later the echoes would be stirred by
new waves of sound.
So Trooper Smith, with half -humorous, half-
protesting growl, swung his feet from under
the gray army blanket, and his towsled head
and undershirt came suddenly upright. All
along the row of iron cots in the squad-room
springs creaked and the sound of rough
waking calls arose: "Git up, y' dog-robber!"
"Climb out o' th' bugs !" The soldiers had
just ten minutes to dress — trigly and coni-
pletely, too.
Then, as the last eye of his leggings was
corded up, from out on the centre of
parade ground came the trumpet corps'
resounding salute to the sun — the march —
and the instant the first note sounded on the
quadrangle, the deep "boom!" of the morning
gun down behind the guard-house hurled its
impact against the round green hills across the
river whence came successive reports; then
"Reveille," clear and shrill —
" I can't get 'em up — I can't get 'em up — I can't
get 'em up in the morning ;
I can't get 'em up — I can't get 'em up — I can't
get *em up at all !
Corp'rals worse 'n privates !
Sarjents worse 'n Corp'rals !
Lieut'nants worse 'n Sarjents !
And the Capt'ns the worst of all ! "
Down the stairs from the second story
squad-rooms and across the main porch
swarmed the troopers, coming down upon the
brick pavement — straightening a belt here,
pulling down a blouse there, stepping auto-
matically into line before the call "Assembly"
and the First Sergeant's stentorian "Fall
in !" and "Atten-shoioi ! Roll-call ! D— n it,
keep yer faces t' the frotit ! " The roll-call
proceeded :
30o8
A DAY IN THE REGULAR ARMY
Ai< AR^ry PACK TRAIN ON TEE IvlARCH
"Private Allen '." — -Yer-r-r V
"An'ersn I"— "Yike !'"
"Beale I'" — "Yhope I"
"Brown:"— -Yow!"
And so on down the alphabet,
the "top" Sergeant "about-faced"
At closing
and saluted
flagstaff — a Captain standing straight as a
statue and not unlike one as the yellow ravs
of early sun glinted on scabbard and sword-
belt, danced on the reddish leather of polished
leggings, and played over his campaign hat
and khaki uniform.
At 5 :45 — it was now summer, and in this
season and garrison the "Mess Call" was
early — down the stairs clattered eightv or a
hundred feet again to breakfast: fried beef-
steak, a little tough from overfr\-ing; brown
gravy, "too greasy" the cook would have
been told had the Captain inspected mess that
morning: potatoes, roasted "with their jackets
.on"; bread, heavy and dark — a healthful and
sufflcient breakfast, despatched with greater
ease than elegance— a judicious combina-
tion of the regulation ration issued by the
Commissary Department and careful economy
of the troop's share of the profits of the post
exchange or "canteen."
"Xot less than twentv minutes for break-
r.s :.;*#»»•
'■,.^mmmw^^iM^l^i¥
A MAIN DIVISION
Rapid fire mountain guns leading
toward the centre of the parade ground with
a "Troop B, — th Cav'ry, all present and
accounted for, s-i-r !" The answering "All
right !" came from the Officer of the Day
somewhere on the cinder path toward the
AFTER I>klLL AND MESS CALL
fast," says the "Blue Book" — U. S. Armv
Regulations; but the Colonel of this post
gives three-quarters of an hour, as anv one
would find from "General Orders Xo. 4" in
the Sergeant-Major's office over in the
Administration Building — the printed sched-
ule of garrison routine, "Bv Order of Colonel
Blank."
The trumpet again:
" Come all who are able and go to the stable
And get out your horses and give 'em some
com,
For if you don't do it the Col'nc^ will know it,
And then vou will rue it, sure as vou're
bom!"
This in the soldier's language is "Stables."
Five minutes later at "Assembly" the line of
men before the barracks, this time in white
canvas stable clothes, march off to the stables,
where ev^ery man advances to his numbered
horse and proceeds to "police up," feeding,
watering and currying. Or perhaps it is
"Boots and Saddles." when, in the uniform
A DAY IN Till'. REGULAR ARMY
3009
designated in "orders," the entire trooj) march
with heavy, ([uiek tread and tnaehinehke
uniformity to tlie stables, sadtlle up and lead
forth the horses into line. "Count fours !
Prepare to mount ! Mount !" and they arc
in the saddle for mounted drill, moving for-
ward at the "Howm]) !" of the Captain — the
unspellable eonmiand for any and all things
— who has meantime ridden u]) with clanking
saber and rattling si)urs.
As the column moves past the i)arade
grotmd, Trooper Smith catches a glimpse of
three squads of "Rookies" (raw recruits) on
the quadrangle, each in charge of a Sergeant
drillniaster, the nearest one at saber drill —
"Port sabalis! 'Gainst infantry left parry!"
come the commands, short and sharp, and
miniature lightnings flash where the polished
blades catch the glint of the sun. Farther
CAVALRY GUARD MOUNT
he closes his lips tightly and flashes a glance
of rebellion at the non-com. (a Sergeant, bv
the three-striped chevrons on his arms) who
has "bawled him out" for "yanking" the
tossing head of his restive mount. But he
dares olTer no word of explanation or excuse.
A SQUADRON OF CAVALRY
aw^ay another Sergeant is swearing volubly
and vigorously while a particularly awkward
squad blunders through ' 'setting up exercises . ' '
On the most distant side the men are spread-
ing out in a skirmish line ("deploying"),
running forward with the "rebel yell," and
dropping flat as so many frogs in the grass,
operating their carbines aimed at imaginary
Filipinos "at 500 yards !" and then rising for
rapid volley firing.
A mile or two miles, across a bridge, or
through a neck of woods, or over a hill road to
the drill ground selected rides the troop —
perhaps all three or four troops of the cavalry
squadron under the eye of the Major — alter-
nating a walk and trot, now and then a
gallop.
"Quit jerking that horse I" bellows a non-
commissioned ofhcer, riding alongside the
column. "Hain't ye got no sense a' tall?"
And as Trooper Smith is the offending object
The rigid rule is — Xo talking back. Trooper
Smith has no desire to forfeit a month's pay
to the Soldiers' Home at Summary Court in
the morning, or to dig up sewer pipes and
scrub the guard-house floor with an armed
sentry ten feet behind him, for three months.
TRAINING HORSES IX THE RIDING-SCHOOL
30I0
A DAY IN THE REGULAR ARMY
FIRING A SIEGE GUN
Three hours of the morning are taken up in
drill — often two mounted, one dismounted —
and the men today are in blue army shirt,
khaki trousers, leggings and campaign hat;
the commissioned officers alone resplendent
in khaki blouse, belt, saber and polished
leather leggings. For today the exercise
happens to be "monkey drill" — men without
equipment, horses without saddle — vaulting,
Cossack and backward riding, mounting at
gallop; sharp, quick work, exhibiting the
splendid horsemanship of the cavalry and the
agility and admirable physique of these blue-
eyed healthy-faced Anglo-Saxon fellows of the
American Army.
Nine o'clock and "Recall," by token of a
A
<^Ll
PRACTISING ON THE RIFLE RANGE
trumpet blast, which the horses recognize as
the signal for return fully as well as the
troopers on their backs ! At the stables
again, tired from drill and the increasing
heat of a humid day and glaring sun, horses
are to be watered, rubbed down, and the
stable "policed up" — the saddles and fittings
hung in precise order according to regula-
tion; then the formation "out front" and the
march back to the barracks to "wash up,"
clean and burnish equipment and put cloth-
ing in order.
The Captain and his Lieutenants ride off
to their quarters for a bath and a rest before
"officers' call" at noon, when they report at
the Adjutant's office for orders, given orally
or filed in pigeonholes.
A SOLDIER'S FUNERAL IN WINTER
A DAY IN THE REGULAR ARMY
301 1
At noon out on tlie i)arade ground the
bugler says:
" Soup-y, soup-y, soup,
Without a single bean;
Pork-y, pork-y, pork,
Without a streak of lean ;
Coffee, coffee, coffee,
The meanest ever seen ! "
From one o'clock until four is a daily holi-
day for the soldier except when on guard or
"doing fatigue" — a season, however, wherein
arms, uniform and man must be kept clean
and presentable, bedding aired, and cot-
covers rolled in the manner prescribed.
At half-past four the ubiquitous trumpeter
is again heard "wind-jamming" out in front of
quarters — "Stables" again, and amid groans
and oaths and rallying jests the troopers
"tumble out" to be in line at assembly call.
Guard mounting is the spectacular per-
formance of the day. Out upon the parade
ground in perfect military formation moves
the band, the chief musician and his privates
— the "oom-pah" man in all his glory and
fine raiment. To hear, to see and be seen, if
the day be fair, the ladies of the post gather
along the "officers' line"; the Major at the
Officers' Club leaves his mug of beer and
arnxy journal to join them; the Lieutenants
postpone the contest at billiards for the same
reason, and the Captains come out on the
clubhouse porch, tilt back their chairs, with
feet on the banisters, to look and listen. Out
beneath the flag (which flutters on the staff
from "Reveille" and the morning gun to
"Retreat" at sunset) stands the Adjutant —
the Colonel's representative. Martial airs
thrill through the garrison. From the bar-
racks come the guard details, our Trooper
Smith among them, marching to music with
a surge of blood and a firing of patriotism
that the monotony of routine, social isolation
and the bumptiousness of officers cannot
extinguish. They "left front into line,"
these men selected by the Sergeant-Major to
stand guard during the coming night and day,
"order arms" until they are verified and
inspected — while the band plays on. Every
article of clothing and equipment must be
in perfect condition, and the smartest -looking
soldier is selected to act as the Colonel's
orderly the next day — a desirable duty w^hich
Trooper Smith narrowly misses because the
cartridges in his belt, rubbed to glisten like
silver, are deemed not sufficiently brilliant to
outshine the polish on the shoes of Trooper
No. 6, who consequently does not have to
remain with the others in the guard-hou.se
during the night.
At last the band strikes up a march and
swings across the parade ground and back
again, and then again past the Ofliccr of the
Day — this time followed by the new guard in
column of platoons led by the Adjutant.
Finally in column of fours they proceed to the
guard-house preceded by a trumpet cor])s
whose tooting, in contrast with the band
music, grates harshly on one's ears, or makes
one smile as the mocking chorus of garrison
dogs accompanies with yelps and yowls.
Before the guard -house, where the sentries
stand on either side of the prisoners (the latter
in brown fatigue clothes painted conspicu-
ously "P 9," "P 27," etc., across the back and
on the legs), the "old guard" is drawn uj).
"Atten-slioii'ii! Present harms!" bawls the
sergeant of the guard as the blaring trum-
peters and heavy treading new guard march
past. The guard just mounted salutes the
old with guns at the "present," and the
Captain or Lieutenant who has been for a da}'
practical commander of the post, as soon
as the prisoners are counted and verified with
the records, is relieved with his guard by the
new Officer of the Day.
Out of the "new guard" Number One, as
sentry, day and night (two hours "on" and
four "off") marches up and down the beat
before the guard-house; Number Two, Num-
ber Three, etc., patrol the hay-corral, the
stables, the commissary and the quarter-
master's storehouse ; and mounted patrols ride
to and fro through the post until daybreak,
challenging after eleven o'clock with a sharp
"Halt ! Who is there?" all who may be pass-
ing, requiring mounted parties to dismount
and advance to be recognized.
The old guard has dispersed. On the
morrow at seven, when the dreaded "Fatigue
Call" sounds, they assemble before the Provost
Sergeant, clothed in the fatigue uniform of
brown duck, and go where he directs, armed
with garden rakes or shovels, some of them
in charge of an army wagon and a team of
Government mules, to perform "police duty."
After "Mess Call" and supper and near the
sunset hour, "Retreat" brings all enlisted
men to "attention" and "parade rest" before
the barracks and guard -house; the evening
gun echoes along the hills, and all officers
stand at "attention" with bared head while
30I2
AMERICAN MANUFACTURES
the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
rise on the air and Old Glory is being hauled
down.
As dusk comes on happy children romp on
the lawns "down the line"; along the drives
floats silvery and deep-toned laughter accom-
panied b}^ the clatter of horses' hoofs and the
ring of spurred heels on stone walks.
But Trooper Smith tries not to hear such
sounds. It is a world not open to him. The
Chinese Wall of rank is an impassable barrier
between him and the " West Point aristocracy . ' '
He is treated by his officers as though contact
were contamination, and his American soul fills
with bitterness at the tyranny of army "disci-
pline." He therefore bets the drinks with
his "bunkies" on the outcome of the Sunday
baseball match between rival troop teams, or
gossips about a recent row in "Mike's place" —
one of the typical, parasitic dens in the nearby
town that reaps a monthly harvest of soldiers'
squanderings of their Si 3 pay. He listens
to the click of billiard balls in the barracks
poolroom ; he tells the corporal he wishes to
h — 1 he were tramping around down town
"Attention !"
Trooper Smith springs to his feet and stands
rigid at attention with the other enlisted men
on the guard-house porch. An officer is
passing. Sentry Number One presents his
piece and, as the salute is acknowledged by
the officer, resumes his march.
At half -past nine as "Tattoo" (lights out)
is blown, Trooper Smith is marching from the
guard-house with a "relief party"; and he is
sauntering to and fro along a solitary beat
himself when "Call to Quarters" and a few
minutes later "Taps" are sounded — eleven
o'clock, and all men not then to be found in
quarters or on pass or duty are absent with-
out leave and subject to military punishment.
"Five months and thirteen days more,"
mutters Trooper Smith as he changes his
carbine to the other shoulder and looks
toward the arc of light where the belated
moon is rising, " — and a breakfast !"
AMERICAN MANUFACTURES
THE ADVANCE OF INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED
STATES AND THE DIRECTION IT IS TAKING
BY
EDWARD D. JONES
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
THE Twelfth Census marks the close of
the first complete century of manu-
factures in the United States. It
will thus become the most important statis-
tical basis by which will be measured the
future advancement of American industry.
It is with these words that the final report of
the Twelfth Census on manufactures begins.
It might have been added that the Twelfth
Census is the first to occur since the United
States has become distinctly a manufacturing
nation and has produced a surplus of manu-
factured goods with which it has entered
the world's trade to acquire foreign markets.
Our industries have grown to giant size, and
we have begun to feel and act upon commer-
cial policies which have radically altered our
relations both to European nations and
to undeveloped countries and peoples.
HISTORY
In 1 791, when Alexander Hamilton sub-
mitted his celebrated "Report on Manufac-
tures" to Congress, he was able to refer to the
household system of manufacture by means
of which each family unit supplied many of
its own needs; and he described the remark-
able development of this type of manufacture
in southern New England, where considerable
c[uantities of coarse cloth, clothing and nails
were produced. In addition to this, some
twenty industries were mentioned which had
reached a considerable development, involving
special buildings, the division of labor, the
ingathering of raw materials from distant
localities and the distribution of the manufac-
tured articles throughout the States. Among
these were tanning, iron manufacture, ship-
building and furniture manufacture, the mak-
AMERICAN MANUFACTURES
3013
I
ing of cordage, brick, distilled liquors, paper,
wool, hats, whale oil and candles, copper
utensils, tobacco, turpentine, flour, etc.
While this was a respectable beginning, the
chief task of the American people was to be
for at least five decades to push forward the
frontier.
Up to 1840 this work went on. By that
time compact settlement had reached the
Mississippi River, and the further growth of
population required the building of railways
and the establishment of manufactures. By
1850 the chief forms of labor-saving agricul-
tural implements of American origin were
introduced and began their work of liber-
ating an increasing proportion of the popu-
lation from agriculture. The Civil War
increased the need of the country for manu-
factured articles, and, accompanied as it
was by a high tariff to provide Government
revenue, provided a powerful impulse to
develop home manufactures. Down to 1880
agriculture was the chief source of wealth
in this country. The last two censuses have
shown manufacture to be dominant. In 1900
the value of agricultural products was four
and seven-tenths billions of dollars; the net
value of manufactured products was five and
nine-tenths billions.
We may group our industrial history into
periods, therefore, roughly as follows:
1609 — 1789 Colonial period.
1790 — 1840 Period of Western settlement.
Agriculture for home consumption
except cotton.
1840 — 1880 Period of agricultviral dominance.
Large export of raw materials.
1880 — 1900 Dominance of manufactures for
home use.
1900 Period of foreign trade in manufac-
tures as well as raw materials.
GENERAL COMPARISOXS
To gather some of the chief results of the
recent census investigation into a few sen-
tences we may say that when we speak of
"American mantifactures " we mean 512,339
establishments, using $9,835,086,909 of
capital, and involving the labor of 397,174
officials and clerks and 5,316,802 wage
earners. This vast equipment consumes
$7,348,144,755 worth of raw materials annu-
ally and makes out of the same manufactured
products worth altogether $13,014,287,498.
These figures all show a healthy increase
over those of 1890. There are forty-four
per cent, more establishments now than
then; fifty per cent, more capital is used; a
fourth more wage earners are employed; and
the annual value of the gross product is forty
per cent, more than in 1890.
Our rank among the manufacturing nations
of the world is first, for, according to the esti-
mates of the late Mr. Mulhall, we produce
about half as much as all of Europe combined.
The United Kingdom ranks second, Germany
third, France fourth and Austria- Hungary
fifth.
The significance of $13,000,000,000, the
value of the manufactured articles produced
in 1900, is difficult to realize. It is nine and
one-third times the authorized capitalization
of the greatest corporation on earth, the
United States Steel Corporation. It is one-
fifth of the true value of all real estate and
personal property in the United States
reported by the census of 1890, or about the
value of New York and Pennsylvania com-
bined at that time. So great an annual prod-
uct has been produced by our manufacturing
establishments only in recent years. The
product of 1890 was $9,372,437,283, that of
1880 $5,369,579,191, that of 1850 but
$1,019,106,616.
In 1 810 the manufactured goods produced
in this country were worth $27.58 per capita
of the population, or $165.48 for the average
family. In i860 manufactures were worth
$60.06 per capita, or $318.32 for the average-
sized family of that period. In 1890 the per
capita value was $149.72, or for a family of
4.9 persons $733.63. In 1900 the per capita
value of manufactured goods was $172.21, or
$809.39 for the average family of 4.7 persons.
CLASSIFICATION OF ESTABLISHMENTS
There are three ways in which manufactur-
ing establishments may be classified :
1 . According to the general economic class
to which they belong.
The 512,254 establishments considered by
the census as "manufacturing establish-
ments," in the strict meaning of the term,
are divided into:
Household industries and repairing 215,814
Manufacturing — other 296,440
To these we may add small establishments
producing annually goods valued at less
than $500 127,419
Government establishments 138
Educational, charitable and penal establish-
ments ,^83
2. The second classification of establish-
3014
AMERICAN MANUFACTURES
ments is according to the form of organization
employed. It is as follows:
Individual ownership 372,703
Partnership 96,715
Company or corporation 40,743
Cooperative association 1.765
Miscellaneous 1 74
The corporation is the form in which the larger
businesses are usually organized, and controls
59.5 per cent, of the product. Cooperative
associations are confined to the manufacture
of butter, cheese and condensed milk.
3. The third classification is according to
industry. The Twelfth Census has given us
for the first time a carefully digested grouping
of manufactures. It involves fifteen head-
ings and is as follows :
(i) Food and kindred products, (2) textiles,
(3) iron and steel, (4) lumber, (5) leather,
(6) paper and printing, (7) liquor and bever-
ages, (8) chemicals, (9) clay, glass and stone,
(10) metals other than iron and steel, (11)
tobacco, (12) vehicles for land use, (13) ship-
building, (14) miscellaneous, (15) hand trades.
Of these classes the most numerous, excepting
the hand trades, is the first, " food and kindred
products," with 61,302 establishments. The
least numerous class of institutions is that for
shipbuilding, in which there are 1,116.
THE .MAXUF.A.CTURING POPULATION
The statistics show that 29,000,000 persons
over ten years of age are engaged in produc-
tive industry. A little over a third of these
are in agriculture, a fifth are in domestic and
personal service, a fifth are in trade and
transportation (16.4 per cent.) and the pro-
fessions (4.3 per cent.) combined, and a fourth
are in manufactures and the mechanical pur-
stiits, including mining.
To this latter fourth belong the 5,713,976
persons engaged in manufacture. In the last
twenty years the number of persons in pro-
fessions, trade and transportation and manu-
facture has increased relatively. The number
of persons in agriculture has decreased rela-
tively. The domestic and personal service
class has remained constant.
The proportion of men, women and children
in manufacturing establishments is such that
if a given establishment emplojdng 100 per-
sons desired the typical division of men,
women and children, it would be obliged to
employ seventy-seven men over sixteen years
of age, twenty women over sixteen and three
children or young persons under sixteen.
POWER
Half of our manufacturing institutions use
power of some sort to supplement hand labor.
So liberally and skilfully is power used in the
United States that the average output per
employee is between three and five times what
it is in England. The most prominent fact in
the evolution of sources and forms of power
is the increase in the use of electricity.
GROWTH OF LARGE ESTABLISHMENTS
The census shows the increase in the size of
plants by showing that, while the product of
mantifacture has been increasing in almost
all lines, the number of establishments has been
declining in many of them. There was in
1900 a smaller number of establishments than
in 1890 manufacturing agricultural imple-
ments, boots and shoes, carpets, glass, iron
and steel, leather, woolens and the products
of slaughtering and meat-packing; neverthe-
less, in each of these industries the average
capital, the average number of employees
and the average product per establishment
increased and the total product of each of
these industries increased.
A more direct but not more positive proof of
this tendency is shown by the enumeration of
large establishments. In 1900 there were 452
plants in each of which over 1,000 employees
worked. Of these 120 were in textile manu-
facture (one in New Hampshire employing
7,268 persons), 103 were in iron and steel
manufacture (one in Ohio having 7,477 per-
sons), forty-eight were in vehicle manufac-
ture, twenty-nine in food products, twenty in
metals other than iron and steel and 132 in
miscellaneous lines.
Turning to the question of industrial com-
binations, we find some interesting statistics
in the census. A list of 185 such organiza-
tions is presented. They controlled 2,040
plants, possessed a combined capital of
$1,436,625,910, employed 400,000 wage
earners and 24,640 officials, and manufactured
products annually valued at $1,667,350,949.
That is to say, 8.4 per cent, of the
wage earners engaged in manufacturing in
America were employed by these combina-
tions and 1 4. 1 per cent, of the value of our
manufactures originated with them. The
census report does not include the United
States Steel Corporation nor any other com-
bination organized during or since the census
year. The steel corporation is largely cov-
AMERICAN MANUFACTURES
3015
I
I
ered by the above figures, however, since most
of its constituent companies rank as combina-
tions. The great dividend payers among
the "trusts" in 1900 were the Standard Oil
Company, American Steel and Wire Comj^any,
Federal Steel Company, American Sugar
Refining Company, Amalgamated Copper
Company, Pullman Company, American
Tobacco Company, Continental Tobacco
Companv and the United States Leather
Company.
LOCALIZATION OF MANUFACTURES
The industries of the United States are
most of them strongly localized in certain
regions. This tendency to develop a terri-
torial division of labor has always been
marked in this country, in agriculture as well
as in manufactures. The causes which lead
to the location of industry in certain places
are enumerated by the census:
1. Nearness to materials. This is illus-
trated by the oyster canning of Baltimore.
2. Nearness to market. The agricultural
implement manufacturers of Chicago find
their best market in the region which is tribu-
tarv to that city.
3. Water power. Fall River, Mass., with
its textile manufacture, Cohoes, N. Y., with
its knitting industry, and Niagara Falls, with
its electro-chemical industries, have resulted
from the utilization of water power.
4. Favorable climate. The Piedmont sec-
tion of the South attracts cotton mills, not
only because of its nearness to materials and
its water powers, but because of its favorable
climate.
5. Supply of labor. The garment trades
are largely monopolized by New York City,
Philadelphia and other large cities on the
coast because there a large population of
foreign birth, with low standards of living,
furnish adequate supplies of cheap labor.
6. Capital available for investment in
manufacture. When the whaling industry
declined, New Bedford, which had become
wealthy by means of it and was ranked as one
of the richest cities in the United States, put
considerable of its capital into cotton manu-
facturing. The city of Chicago was not able
to surpass Cincinnati as the centre of the pork-
packing industry in the West until the local
banks acquired enough money to aid the
packers in carrying the enormous financial
load of buying the raw materials, which for
that business constitute about 75 per cent, of
the value of the finished product.
7. Momentum of an early start. Sir
Wm. Johnston early brought glovers from
England to Johnstown, N. Y., and started the
industry for which that city and Amsterdam
and Gloversville are now noted. Had the
celebrated "shoemaker of Lynn" settled in
a neighboring village Lynn might not now
signify shoes wherever the name is heard.
If we examine a map showing the location
of American manufactures we shall observe
that they are markedly concentrated along
the Atlantic seaboard, from the middle of
Maine to the latitude of Baltimore, and cover-
ing a region extending perhaps 100 miles back
from the coast. West of this an irregular
belt of country, including middle New York,
western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio,
stands out prominently. Passing still farther
west we find the manufacturers not so evenly
distributed, but rather concentrated at cer-
tain points, such as Cincinnati, Louisville,
the gas belt of Indiana, Chicago, Milwaukee,
St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City and
Omaha. The South shows a large number of
small, rather isolated manufacturing localities.
These occur most frequently upon the
Piedmont plateau, from southern Virginia to
northern Alabama. In the Rocky Mountain
States and the region west of them, five centres
stand out separated from one another by wide
intervals of undeveloped country. They are
the middle portion of Colorado, Salt Lake
Valley, the Butte region of Montana, the
Puget Sound and Columbia River cities, and
San Francisco, with the adjacent cities from
Sacramento to Alameda.
The national centre of manufactures has
been fixed at a point east of the middle of
Ohio, about twenty-five miles southeast of
Mansfield. It has moved west only about
forty miles in ten years. The centre of popu-
lation lies 200 miles southwest of this, at a
point about eight miles from Columbus,
Indiana.
California is first in preserving vegetables
and fruits, vinous liquors, lead smelting and
refining.
Connecticut is first in ammunition, brass-
ware, clocks, corsets, cutlery, needles and pins
and hardware.
New York is first in thirty-one industries,
among which are butter and cheese, gloves,
factory-made clothing, furniture, chemicals,
30i6
AMERICAN MANUFACTURES
hosiery, malt liquors, lithographing, printing
and publishing, millinery and lace goods,
paper and pulp, patent medicines, soap and
candles, sugar refining, cigars and cigarettes.
Illinois is first in the manufacture of agri-
cultural implements, bicycles, cars, glucose,
and distilled liquors, and in slaughtering and
meat packing.
Wisconsin is first in lumber and timber
products.
Minnesota leads in flouring and grist mills.
Texas leads in cotton ginning and the manu-
facture of products from cotton seed.
Some manufactures are limited to very
restricted areas, a group of States or a single
State or even a portion of a State confining
them. The most highly concentrated indus-
try is the making of collars and cuffs, of which
99.6 per cent, is within New York State and
85.3 per cent, is in the single city of Troy.
The tendency to centralize industry has
given rise to cities which are chiefly devoted
to one occupation. The city most wholly
given up to one thing is South Omaha: 89.9
per cent, of the products of this city are the
output of the great packing houses located
there. A list of cities of 20,000 and over in
population, in each of which 40 per cent, or
over of the industrial products belong to one
branch of manufacture, is as follows:
Shoes — Brockton, Haverhill, Lynn.
Agricultural Implements — Springfield, O.
Collars and Cuffs — Troy.
Cotton Goods — Warwick, R. I., Fall River,
New Bedford, Lewiston, Me.. Manchester,
N. H.
Fur Hats — Bethel, Conn., D anbury. Conn.,
Orange, N. J.
Glass— Millville, X. J., Tarentum, Pa.,
Charleroi, Pa.
Knit Goods — Cohoes.
Iron — McKeesport, Youngstown, Johns
town. Pa., New Castle, Joliet, Pittsburg,
Trenton.
Jewelry — North Attleboro, Attleboro.
Gloves — Gloversville, N. Y., Johnstown,
N. Y.,
Pottery — East Liverpool, 0.
Silk — West Hoboken and Paterson, X. J.
Slaughtering and Meat Packing — South
Omaha, Kansas City, Kan., St. Joseph.
CITIES
About one-half of the manufactures of the
United States are turned out in our 100
largest cities. These cities contain 23 per
cent, of the population. About two-thirds of
these products come from the 209 cities
having over 20,000 population. The greatest
concentration of a manufacture in cities is
found in the case of men's and women's cloth-
ing, hats and caps, cars, umbrellas and canes,
lithographing and engraving. The smallest
degree of concentration is found in the case
of flour and grist mills, distilled liquors and
brick and tile.
New York City is most cosmopolitan in its
manufactures, exhibiting the greatest variety
of them, and having a number of establish-
ments which are the only ones of their kind
in the country. In 1900 there were 39,776
manufactories in New York City, employing
89,250,000 capital and 500,000 persons,
turning out goods annually to the value of
Si, 3 7 1,000,000. The most numerous class of
establishments in the city was for custom
work and repairing of boots and shoes, of
which there were 3,341. There were more
than 1,000 establishments each for the
manufacture of cigars, women's clothing,
dressmaking, carpentering, men's clothing,
and also for plumbing, painting and black-
smithing. There was only one establishment
each for the manufacture of bells, felt goods,
firearms, leather board and car-fare registers.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND THE OUTLOOK.
The general causes which have made us a
great manufacturing nation and the advan-
tages which we now possess have been placed
under five headings:
1. Agricultural resources.
2. Mineral resources. It is plain that a
country which produces nine-tenths of the
world's cotton, one-third of its coal, one-
fourth of its iron ore and one-half of its copper
and a similar generous share of many other
things, such as lumber, grain, hides and petro-
leum, has a great advantage in the matter of
raw materials upon which to set labor and
capital at work.
3. Transportation facilities. These include
the remnants of a neglected canal system, a
magnificent but scarcely used system of navi-
gable rivers amounting to 18,000 miles, and
a highly important system of Great Lakes
waterwa3-s extending for i ,000 miles and carry-
ing a tonnage "equal to nearly 40 per cent, of
that of the entire railroad system of the
United States." Our railway system, con-
AMKRICAN MANUFACTURES
3017
structed with great rapidity between i860
and 1880, is now over a third of that of the
world. In 1899 the total length was 189,295
miles, as against 172,621 in Europe, and the
cost of moving goods was less here than in
Europe, being on the average less than six
mills for carrying one ton a distance of one
mile.
4. Freedom of interstate commerce.
5. Freedom from traditioti.
As an example of American ingenuity we
may cite the invention of the system of
interchangeable parts, which has made
possible the use of complex machinery
in agriculture or other industries at a
distance from machine shops 'or the point
of original manufacture. Activity, skill
and willingness characterize the best type
of American workmen, and this willing-
ness is shown, in part, by a readiness to pack
bag and baggage and move to those places
where manufacture can be carried on most
economically, especially if it be to a large city.
The organizing ability of American capitalists
cannot be doubted. There is scarcely an
industry upon which the peculiar genius of
the American has not wrought an effect.
In food manufacture we began with the
slowly revolving millstone, but Oliver Evans
originated the system of automatic conveyors
now in use. When later this was coupled with
the middlings purifier, also of American origin,
and the Hungarian roller process in a modified
form, the modern mill first became a reality.
Here the factory system was first applied to
the making of cheese and butter, resulting in
the cheese factory and creamery. An instance
of a wonderful application of machinery to a
complex process is afforded by our slaughtering
and meat-packing establishments. While the
production of beef extract in South America
is reputed to be one of the most wasteful indus-
tries in existence, involving the destruction of
an entire carcass of beef to produce a few
pounds of extract, the American method with
beef and pork products is based upon the
utmost despatch through the division of labor,
continuous refrigeration from factory to con-
sumer, and the utilization of every product
so that there is no waste. It has been said
that the packer gets ever}'i;hing out of the hog
but its squeal, and this he gets out of the
public.
In textile manufacture we are now the
second nation in the world in the number
of cotton spindles operated, and first in the
amount of cotton fiber used.
In iron and steel manufacture we have
passed our chief rival. Great Britain, several
years since, and now English ironmasters who
visit us say that nowhere in the world are
labor-saving devices so masterfully designed
and employed as here. In the using of steel
we are quite as original. To this the heavy
rolling-stock and rails and bridges of American
railways testify. Here structural steel was
first employed in buildings. The structures
into which the first girders went are still stand-
ing— Cooper Union and Harper's Publishing
House in New York City. An enormous
demand for iron and steel is created for
agricultural and mining and manufacturing
machinery and also for electrical equipments
and gas and water pipe. Nowhere are stoves
and-ranges made so large and beautiful as here,
and nowhere is tin plate used so lavishly.
In lumber and leather and paper and other
lines the record is similarly encouraging.
There are some things lacking, however,
some lines of effort along which we have not
progressed as far as we might have wished.
We do not yet convert into fiour all the bread-
stuff s we export. This is partly due to foreign
tariffs on flour. We have never developed
the manufacture of linen beyond the coarsest
kinds of toweling. The difficulty with this
industry is that the retting of flax must be
done by skilful, patient agriculturalists, willing
to work for small wages; and American
farmers are neither skilful nor cheap laborers
at this task.
While in steel shipbuilding the construction
of our own navy has been a worthy achieve-
ment, we have contributed little to the steel
tonnage used in international trade, and this
is true not so much because ships cannot be
built well and reasonably here as because the
cost of operating them with American seamen
is prohibitive and is not counterbalanced by
liberal subsidies.
True, as a manufacturing people we have
rather made a hobby of "production on
a large scale," and "quick returns," and
"machine methods." We have perhaps
overrated quantity and cheapness of price,
and undervalued solidity and durability
of wares and subdued colors and correct pro-
portions combined with simplicity and hon-
esty of material beneath the surface. These
are the natural defects of a people accustomed
30i8
AMERICANISM FOR BRITISH TRADE-UNIONS
to dealing chiefly in raw materials, among
whom wages are high and life is lived fast.
Machinery must always be excepted from
this criticism. That is a means to an end,
and hurries us on to our goal. We are
more exacting in the choice of means than
we are discriminating in the choice of
ends themselves. To put this in the phrase-
ology of the economist, producers' goods
maintain a higher standard than consumers'
goods. We are more proficient in the process
of wealth production than in living the ideal
life to which wealth is intended to minister.
If we could so simplify life as to gain oppor-
tunity to examine things closely, we might
learn to appreciate them when well done,
and we might then find time to make
things better.
AMERICANISM FOR BRITISH
TRADE-UNIONS
WHY I BROUGHT A COMMISSION OF BRITISH LABOR LEADERS TO
STUDY AMERICAN INDUSTRIES — WHAT GREAT BRITAIN CAN LEARN
FROM THE UNITED STATES — THE HIGH QUALITY OF AMERICAN WORK-
MEN — A SUGGESTION TOWARD SOLVING THE LABOR PROBLEM
BY
ALFRED MOSELY, C. M. G.
IT has been my fortune of late, both in
England and in the United States, to
be frequently asked my reasons for
bringing a party of English trade-union
representatives across the water to study
American industries and American labor
conditions. They consist, as these pages will
show, of facts that cannot be blinked and of
hopes which promise fulfilraent.
Years ago in the gold and diamond fields of
South Africa I met, one after another, a little
army of American engineers. Mr. Gardiner
Williams I ran across by chance one afternoon
at the spot that afterward became the Johan-
nesberg gold fields, standing beside his out-
spanned oxen, just ready to make camp. I
met the late Mr. Louis Se^-mour when he came
to the Colony to work for De Beers at $2,000
a year — plucky Louis Seymour, the best
engineer that America ever sent abroad, who
rose by his efforts to a salary of $50,000 a A'ear,
and only a few years ago, after zealous engi-
neering work in the war, died a brave death
at Sand River, defending one of the bridges
against attack by the Boers and in the act
of leading his raen to cover. After him
came Perkins and Jennings and Hammond
and others, all Americans. Beneath the
hands and brains of these men the wealth
of South Africa grew. The gold mines and
the diamond mines, which had never paid
before, began to pay beyond all expectation.
Wherever things were accomplished there
were the Americans. I began to wonder, as
time went on, what manner of country it was
that produced such able, level-headed, efficient
men ; and accordingly five years ago I visited
the United States and traveled throughout
its breadth, daily becoming better aware of
the methods by which the country is making
its marvelous success.
Soon after my return events of world-wide
importance began to shape themselves and
take on unmistakable import. The United
States leaped to the position of the leading
exporting nation of the world; and Britain,
its industries slowly recovering from the
effects of the costly engineers' strike, its whole
internal development checked by the war in
South Africa, showed signs of industrial
crystallization. The United States was, and
is, forging ahead with a rapidity unprece-
dented in the history of nations. Britain
was, and is, advancing far too slowly for its
own economic safety in the rush of twentieth-
century competition. For the United States,
with all its vast resources in the way of food-
stuffs, is no longer an agricultural nation, but
a manufacturing nation also, and in this
respect a competitor of Britain. With a vast
gain in the aggregate production under each
of these heads, the proportion of exported
AMERICANISM FOR HRlTISll TRADE-UNIONS
3019
goods from the United States has changed
thus in thirty years;
Agricultural
Products Manufactures
Others
Percent. Percent.
Per cent.
■ 77 i6>^
6H
■ (>i'A 2gH
7
I879-I88I
1 899- 1 90 1
The export of manufactures alone grew
from an average of ;^4o,ooo,ooo in the years
1 889-1 89 1 to an average of ;^82. 000,000 in
the years 1 899-1 901, an increase of over fifty
per cent, in a decade, while the increase of
the United Kingdom was but nominal.
Meanwhile the population of the United
States increases twice as fast as the popula-
tion of Britain ; and its resources in foodstuffs,
coal, iron, oil, copper and many other impera-
tive necessities of modern industry are vastly
greater.
These last particulars make it clear that the
United States is destined to hold the first
rank among the producing nations of the world.
In the matter of manufactures, on the other
hand, it has not been clear to me that there
has been any divine dispensation except the
law that "God helps those who help them-
selves," granting the United States a special
advantage over the United Kingdom. At the
same time nothing was clearer to me after my
first visit than that, except in ship-building,
the United States at present does possess
an advantage. I have been able to perceive
a better spirit pervading industry, both
among employers and employees, than pre-
vails at home, where employers ascribe the
backwardness of British industry to the
oppressive rules of the trade-unions, and the
unions ascribe it to the blind unprogressive-
ness of employers. The better spirit in the
United States has led to better methods
than ours. Accordingly, recalling what I had
seen of American methods in South Africa
and in the States, and viewing with some
sincere alarm the condition into which
British industry had fallen, I endeavored
to evolve a plan whereby American methods
could be introduced into Britain to the last-
ing good of its economic well-being.
By far the best suggestion that presented
itself was to invite the British trade-unions to
select representatives, one from each, to form
a commission for the purpose of studying
American industries and the condition of
American workmen, in the hope of discovering
the causes of American success. I thoroughly
believe in trade-unions properly managed;
and I believe that, with all their mistakes,
the British trade-unions take a patriotic
interest in British industry. If these repre-
sentatives, so the matter presented itself,
should find American workmen living as well
as British workmen, or better, and yet pro-
ducing a greater amount per capita, I had
confidence they would disseminate among
their associates on their return a spirit of
emulation. If they should find that American
employers show a keener, up-to-date spirit
than English employers — as I am convinced
they do — I had confidence that the agitation
they might arouse would put the blame of
British industrial backwardness where it
should rest — on the shoulders of employers;
and the employers, I hoped, would rouse
themselves to proper efforts. If public
opinion needed stirring up on such matters
as public education — for I believe that the
mainspring of American success is American
public education — I felt that the demand of
these men, representatives of the working
people, would be heeded as perhaps a demand
from any other class would not.
I came to the United States, therefore, to
arrange for the reception of the commissioners
and to seek aid in our enterprise. On return-
ing I set to work to find the largest unions
and to discover the most fitting men to invite.
I then issued invitations. Ambassador
Choate provided me with letters of intro-
duction to Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Schwab, Bishop
Potter, Mr. Morris K. Jesup, Mr. Abram
Hewitt, Mayor Low of New York, and many
other representative Americans. Bishop
Potter brought me into contact with the
Civic Federation and the American Federation
of Labor, and these bodies, as well as many
large employers, oflfered their assistance to
facilitate the inquiries of the commission.
Thus labor and capital, and the Civic
Federation representing the best spirit of
both, extended to the commission a typical
American hospitality.
Meanwhile the commission was forming
at home. Most of the unions at once accepted
the invitation and elected in most cases their
General Secretary as representative. There
was, of course, some misunderstanding, some
evidence of the feeling that has delayed the
progress of Great Britain, expressed in the
thought, "We have nothing to learn from
America." I received many letters of which
the following is a type:
3020
AMERICANISM FOR BRITISH TRADE-UNIONS
Folkestone. best and to give a fair day's work for a fair day's
Dear Sir: Please excuse the liberty I have taken
in writing to you, but speaking as a mechanic I
think it would be a waste of time and money to go
to America for what we can do here as well if we
are given a chance — at least, the writer of this is
open to take on anybody from America or anywhere
else. The reason why the American workmen
succeed is because they have the desire for it. As
far as I am concerned, I should consider it a disgrace
to say I went out there to learn anything; the only
way to do it would be to help them here that have a
desire to get on. There are such workmen here, but
they are simply smothered by shoddy mechanics
who do not want to know while they can get the
same money as those do who try to get on. In
conclusion I beg to say I do not want any help
myself, but mean to fight it out alone because I
have been told it's no iise trying. I am well known
in Folkestone as second to none in my own trade —
or anything else. I have the tools to work with,
because it's not the tools but what is behind them,
the desire to do it — and for so doing I am called a
and a because I will try to go ahead.
I am fighting the patent office single-handed,
including the cj'cle makers who have been boy-
cotting me and other people because we will not
ride a hash-up of what came out in 1842 and a
death-trap. When I can get a few pounds together
I will go to America, having given up all hopes of
doing anything here.
Yours respectfully,
J- E
This writer was unusually incoherent,
but he phrased, with some basis of truth, the
idea that the British workman has Httle to
learn from the American. Yet he phrased it
without knowing whether it were true or not,
and without recalling that just such a trip
might result in removing the "smother of
shoddy mechanics"; and this insular self-
sufficiency colored more than one mind, I
found from my correspondence. As the
unions, however, were glad to send their
representatives to see if an^'thing might be
learned, the commission started, each man
pledged to study conditions carefully and
answer fully on his return questions like the
following :
1. Is the American lad better equipped by early
training and education for his work than the
EngHsh lad?
2. If yes, what changes would you suggest in
the English system of education for the working
classes ?
3. What are the hours of work in your trade in
America, and how do they compare with the hours
in England ?
4. Does the American workman do more or less
in an hour, on the average, than the English work-
man?
5. When skilled workers on piece-work increase
the output per man by their own efficiency, do
American employers cut down wages so as to pre-
vent a man earning more than a certain amount ?
6. Where weekly wages are paid —
(a) Do the men show any anxiety to do their
pay.''
{b) On this system do personal energy and
initiative meet with a due reward ?
7. Are suggestions for improvements made by
the employers, the introduction of labor-saving
appliances and of up-to-date machines welcomed
by the men or the reverse ?
8. Are suggestions for improvements made by
the workmen welcomed and rewarded by the em-
ployers ?
9. (o) Do the workmen attend on a larger
number of machines than in England ?
{b) If yes, does the S3'stem benefit both employer
and workmen, or does either side reap an unfair
advantage from it ?
10. Is the American workman capable of exer-
cising initiative and of working without frequent
and detailed directions ? How does he compare
with the English workman in this respect ?
1 1 . Does the American workman exert himself
at times of special pressure, and at such times do
overwork cheerfully ? How does his overtime
output compare with the output of the normal day
and how does he in these respects compare with the
English workman ?
12. Are the American employers more accessible
to their men than English employers ?
13. Speaking generally, are there greater oppor-
tunities for the working-man to rise in America than
in England ?
14. How far is greater output in American
factories due to
(a) Longer hours of work ?
(6) Greater speed at which the machinery is run ?
15. Are there any points in American practice
which should in your opinion be imitated in English
factories ?
16. (a) Are the American workers better fed
than the English ?
(6) How does the price of food in America com-
pare with that in England ?
17. (a) Are the American workers better clothed
than the English ?
(6) How does the price of clothes in America
compare with that in England?
18. (a) Are the American workers better housed
than the English ?
(6) How does rent in America compare with rent
in England ?
(c) Do more workers, relatively, own the houses
they live in than is the case in England ? If yes. to
what circumstances do you attribute this ?
19. How does the average wage in your trade
in America, expressed in money, compare with the
average wage in England ?
20. How does the value of the American wage
compare with that of the EngHsh, cost of living beitic,
taken into account ?
21. Is it true that the American working-mrn
does a larger amount of work in earh^ manhood thrn
the EngHsh. but that he deteriorates young, ard
that his working yesLVS are shortened ?
22. Is it true that the American workman is
thrown out of work at an early age ?
23. (a) Is it true that the average life of the
American workman is shorter than that of the
EngHsh workman ?
(h) If yes, is this due to overstrain, less healthful
climate, or to some other cause?
AMERICANISM FOR BRITISH TRADE-UNIONS
3021
14. Arc a larger t)r smaller proportion of Ameri-
can working-men dependent on the public purse
than is the case in Fingland ?
25. Do the ehilciren and friends of American
working-men wlio are either past work or incapaci-
tated by ill-health or accident help them to a
greater extent than is the case in England ? If yes,
to what do you attribute the dilTcrence?
26. Do you consider the general conditions of
life of the workman better in America than in
England ? In what respects might American
examples be copied so as to improve the conditions
of life in England ?
The commission has now completed its
tour. It was accompanied throughout the
journey by Mr. Marcus M. Marks, President of
the National Association of Clothing Manu-
facturers. Mr. S. B. Donnelly, formerly
President of the International Typographical
Union, gave welcome service to the commis-
sion; and manufacturers and trade-union
representatives in the various cities we visited
gave us every assistance in securing informa-
tion. The party have now returned to
England, where they will prepare reports on
what they have learned, to be disseminated
in pamphlet form among the members of
their respective unions. No doubt some of
them will also give lectures illustrated by
photographic lantern slides secured by Mr.
E. F. Keller on the trip for this especial
purpose. Whatever good may be accom-
plished, at all events there are possibilities
for good in the propaganda these men will
disseminate, for not one has failed to mark
phases of American activity that might well
be put into practice at home. I cannot here
set forth the concrete discoveries made by
the commission without forestalling their
reports; but traveling with them I have
had several ideas and contrasts driven home
to me with resistless force.
Britain suffers first of all for lack of what I
find to be the crowning glory of American
civilization — a highly developed system of
public education. British children, it is true,
have primary school opoortunities, but only
the few who win scholarships may gain a high
school education free, and this only because
of endowments. Only the few selected from
the high schools for scholarships may have
free university training. In the United
States, on the other hand, there is a school on
every corner; the towns, the cities and the
States take so profound a pride in their
I systems of free public education that no
American boy or girl lacks an education
through the fault of the community. Never
1
I
I
can Britain equal the United States in natural
resources, the first element of this country's
greatness ; but it can establish an educational
system like the one that furnishes the second
element. And it should — for if I were asked
why American employers are "up to date"
and American workmen ethcient, I should
answer, "The United States has excellent
public schools, and its people make use of
them. "
In the United States, furthermore, to make
another point, the man with capital is eager
to invest that capital in productive enter-
prises. There is not the same readiness on
the part of wealthy men in Great Britain to
enter "trade" — even an unwillingness on
occasion to grant for commercial uses patent
natural advantages that may lie, for example,
on the edge of great estates, which, like
fetishes, must be kept intact. An observer
of both nations is struck at once with the
aloofness of a part of capital from industry in
one country and the contrasting cumulative
momentum of practically all capital in the
other country helping to drive industry ahead.
There is a difference, too, in the normal
attitude of employers — this bearing, I sin-
cerely believe, on the restriction of output
and the opposition to machinery with which
the English trade-unions have been frequently
charged.
There should be no restriction of output ; it
leads to the ruin of industry. If the English
unions have pursued the policy they should
drop it — every man should be free to do his
best work and to rise through his own exer-
tions. But it is also true that employees
should receive fair treatment and the full
fruits of their labor. And it needs to be said
that the shortcomings of English industry
have not lain altogether, or even in greatest
measure, at the door of the unions. The
trouble has been that employers have expected
too much work for too little pay. They have
had too little desire themselves to stimulate
the initiative of their workmen. Suggestions
by workmen, looking toward greater economy
or greater effectiveness, such suggestions as
an American workman might bring to his
employer knowing he would be thanked and
rewarded, are not only not welcomed but
repelled. An English workman offering such
suggestions gets off lightly with a reprimand —
he is more likely to be "sacked. " The manu-
facturers, moreover, have not merely kept
3022
AMERICANISM FOR BRITISH TRADE-UNIONS
their men at arms' length, but they have not
kept themselves up to date in scientific
methods of production — in economical factory
organization and in the latest and best
machinery. The employers are most to
blame for English restriction of output.
Had they treated their men on the same
liberal terms as the bulk of American employ-
ers treat theirs, and had they been as keen in
installing new machinery, we should have
heard very little of restriction of output or of
labor troubles generally. Restriction should
go, and the employers should lead in dismiss-
ing it. It is based, where it exists in Eng-
land and where it exists in the United States —
for it does exist in both countries — on the
economic fallacy that there is not work
enough to go round. True, there is not in
congested spots. But in the newer English-
speaking countries. South' Africa. Canada,
the United States, I have studied industrial
conditions with care, and I know that now.
at this moment, the world is cr\-ing for intelli-
gent and willing hands. There is no dearth
of opportunity; there is a dearth of labor —
but the worker should go to the task; never
will the task go to the worker.
Just this lavishness of opportunity here has
helped the United States to its present emi-
nence. There has been unequaled opportunity
and it has been grasped. There is no
doubt that the American workman is infinitely
better clothed, better fed and better educated,
and that he feels independent and self-
respecting to a higher degree than his fellows
across the water. He is more sober. He
does not waste his money in betting. He has
a greater ambition — because of widely diffused
public education — to rise, himself, to raise
his family, and to realize his responsibilities
to the older members of his family if they
happen to be left in want. In no country
have I seen less poverty, crime and drunken-
ness than here or fewer public charity wards,
or so few beggars. Brains and hands are
cheerily working to exploit to best advantage
unparalleled resources, as new avenues are
constantly opening to give new opportunities.
Here, however, as in England, the labor
problem is pressing because such is human
nature — the condition is a thousand times
worse in England than here — that labor will
not always go to the task that awaits far off.
preferring to conserve every possible chance
to perform some task at a more or less tradi-
tional home. I could say with heartfelt
sincerity to the workmen of England what
Horace Greeley once said to the youth of
America, "Go west," for I believe that one
day they must go west — to the United States,
or to Canada, or south to South Africa or
Australia — but so long as too many stay, a
sociological problem must be solved, the
problem of the elevation of the masses.
The chosen method of the workmen is the
trade-union. So be it. The unions, mis-
taken in policy as they sometimes are, have
already raised the condition of working people
as perhaps no other single force has raised it.
It is the business of communities and of
employers, therefore, since the workmen will
have unions, to educate them out of economic
fallacies, to show them that wisdom does not
come from firebrands, and to treat with them ;
for after all it is easier to deal with an
organization than with aggrieved unorganized
workmen. Such action tends toward indus-
trial peace.
It has seemed to me that the ideal solution
of difficulties has been worked out by the Civic
Federation, a body whose effort it is to get
employers and representatives of workmen
to meet in close contact at round-table
conferences and to investigate each other's
conditions and points of view with the hope
of eliminating prejudice and bringing vexed
questions to a satisfactory outcome. That is
the way to settle labor troubles. The com-
mission have agreed with me in this opinion to
the point of signing a memorial asking for the
formation of a Civic Federation in England.
I am confident that as a result of our visit
to the United States one will be formed.
I maybe permitted to add one more thought
in view of the fact that socialism is not
uncommon in America as well as in English
trade-unions — a growing force. I might say.
It is that the English and the American
people have too much common sense ever
to eliminate from industrial life the element
of individual initiative that has made Great
Britain and the United States what they are.
But that workmen and employers shall both
receive full return for their efforts — capital
refraining from trenching on the rights of
labor and labor refraining from trenching
on the rights of capital — I believe that the
following division of the fruits of industry
will one day be made: fair wages for the
workmen; a fair return on capital invested;
WHAT THE BRITISH UNIONISTS SAW
3023
a percentage for depreciation of plant and
for extensions ; old-age pensions for workmen ;
an equal division between capital and labor
of whatever remains in the form of profits. I
do not expect to live to see any such division,
but I ani confident that such a division,
retaining as it would every incentive to the
greatest efforts both by employers and work-
men, is what the industrial world is coming to,
what the ceaseless war between combinations
of capital and combinations of labor will
eventually result in.
WHAT THE BRITISH UNIONISTS SAW
A RECORD OF EXPERIENCES GAINED BY ACCOMPANYING MR.
MOSELY'S BRITISH COMMISSION ON THEIR TOUR— THE TROUBLE
WITH ENGLISH INDUSTRY— HOW THE UNITED STATES IS WORKING
OUT THE LABOR PROBLEM AND ORGANIZING ITS INDUSTRIES
BY
M. G. CUNNIFF
(The fourth of a series of first-hand studies of labor problems
THIS morning, when I asked a member
of Mr. Mosely's British delegation
if he thought American workmen
labor faster than their English fellows, he
drew his watch and said : " Look there. "
Wo were facing a modern office-building,
rising on a corner of Twenty-third Street,
New York, on which a mason was backing
granite facing with fire-brick. In five
minutes by the English delegate's watch the
man had laid one brick.
" I've been watching him, off and on, all
morning," said the Englishman, "and that's
his pace, twelve bricks an hour — and he's
pretty busy at that. He reminds me of a
workman I knew at home who could busy
himself with a single brick all day. I remem-
ber one frosty morning the foreman saw him
drop his trowel to flail himself with his. arms.
Foreman said, 'Hi, why don't you warm up
by working?' 'Hunh,' said he, T'd rawther
g'home frozen t' death than tired.'
This incident has the picturesque delusive-
ness that easily leads to false conclusions
about union labor both in England and here ;
for though neither workman was a type of
anything but individual laziness, sweeping
generalizations are made from such stories
that confuse the labor problem faster than
large facts can clear it up. A superintendent
of construction on a great New York building
I told me one day last summer that the union
bricklayers he employed were speedy and
efficient workmen. Any builder, he said.
I
can get good masons. That is a larger fact
than the existence of an occasional shirk, but,
unfortunately, such facts do not stick well.
As for England — well, the story is quoted
because for years we have heard of the
"ca' canny" tricks of British bricklayers,
exploited by just such tales, and as the man
who told this, jocosely holding the watch on
the Yankee masons, about whose energy he
had heard, was the chosen representative of
the British bricklayers, I knew he made light
of one Englishman's inertia because he could
show that the man was not a type o' all
English workmen. Indeed, he and his asso-
ciates have made clear to me many features
of both English and American industry that
will furnish the thoughtful, as George Meredith
says, with a bone to gnaw.
Through the courtesy of Mr. Alfred Mosely
I accompanied the English commission of
trade-unionists, concerning which Mr. Moselv
writes in this magazine, on their tour of
investigation through American industrial
centres. During the summer I had studied
American labor-unions, about which I have
written in other articles, and I hoped, with
foundation, that living east and west with the
leaders of English unionism I could gain a
fresh point of view of American labor condi-
tions and at the same time learn the union
side of the "ca' canny" tales that come to
us from England. So I set out across the
State of New York to catch the commission,
which already had the start of me.
3024
WHAT THE BRITISH UNIONISTS SAW
Over the New York Central the commission
went to Schenectady to see how locomotives
and electrical apparatus are made; to Niagara
Falls and the great manufactories there,
where I caught them ; thence over the Lake
Shore to Cleveland, where ship-building and
other industries were studied; on to Chicago,
back to Pittsburg via Dayton, to Philadelphia
and Washington, and then to New York,
whence the various delegates scattered to
investigate their special trades in the East.
Manufacturers enabled the English visitors
to visit their plants ; and all day the hotels
where the Englishmen stayed were besieged
with local labor-union representatives eager
to introduce the foreign unionists to American
workmen who would testify as to wages, hours,
speed of work, the use of machinery and
working and living conditions. Foregather-
ing with these men amid scenes of vigor-
ous industrialism was an inspiration in
Americanism, even though many things I
saw I pray will never take root in American
life.
Here is what I mean. From a sociological
point of view American industries are organ-
ized in three ways — all successful. In one
the employers treat with trade-unions and
make collective bargains as to wages and
hours. In another the employers refuse to
treat with unions, but pay good wages, inspire
initiative, and maintain clean, wholesome
factories. In another the employers hire
cheap foreign labor and pay them poorly,
sweating their profits from boys and girls and
women in unwholesome workshops. I visited,
for example, a cigar manufactory where little
girls with flying fingers were toiling so fiercely
at piece-work to make six dollars a week that
they rocked from side to side with a pitiable
rh}i;hm ; and in the cloakroom of the factory
hung a placard which read, " Six cents a week
will be deducted from each pay envelope for
the use of soap and towel and grindstone."
" Some kinds of prosperity, " quoth one of the
Englishmen when I spoke of this, "can be
bought too dear. " This factory is mentioned
because there are plenty of others like it from
which the English visitors could learn nothing.
The other two kinds, on the other hand, were
busily maintaining sound American prosperity
and teaching lessons in every wisely conducted
detail. They emphasized the fact that in the
United States labor and capital are slowly
working out a iiwdtis vivendi with a spirit such
as Mr. Mosely is trying to arouse in England —
a desire for a thorough understanding between
employer and employee. Convinced from
previous inquiries that labor troubles exist
in the United States, where they do exist,
despite the admirable efforts of the Civic
Federation and wise employers and labor
leaders, because there is a less clear mutual
understanding than there should be, I was
struck by the admiration these British union
leaders expressed for the pleasant relations
between American workmen and employers.
I believe, moreover, that we have not yet
learned the true condition of British industry
— the true importance, I mean, of the
employers' shortcomings in Great Britain.
Take, for example, the widely exploited
story of Mr. James C. Stewart's swift building
of the Westinghouse works in England, which
is accompanied always with the statement
that British unions restrict their members to
four or five hundred bricks a day, one-third
as many as an American lays. Mr. H. V.
Taylor, the General Secretary of the British
Bricklayers' Union, maintained to me that
the "American" record of i.oco or 1,500 bricks
a day at the Westinghouse plant near Man-
chester was only on straight foundation work
— a pace no faster than any British mason
would set on that class of work for the wages
paid. As the walls rose higher, he said, and
the work became more difficult the pace
hardly exceeded the regular four or five
hundred. " I know, " he remarked, "because
I watched that w^ork.
"But bricklaying," he went on, "is slower
in England than here. In New York I will
show j-ou why." Later he did by pointing
out walls shooting upward which, he said,
were so slight that the building laws of
England would declare them unsafe. He
pointed to ornamental stone-work.
"That work," he said, "we do in brick,
and no workman living can build such decora-
tive brick-work and lay more than our
union masons — one hundred and fift^^ a day.
Your brick-work, too, is laid in parallel single
walls with mortar in the intervening spaces.
British architects now require that walls shall
be bonded or locked together by the over-
lapping of the bricks on every layer — the
bricks of the back wall with the bricks of the
front — 'grouted up' and 'flushed' are the
terms. "
With illustrations from brick-work that we
WHAT THE BRITISH UNIONISTS SAW
3025
saw he gave these and other technical reasons
to show that American work is faster than
Enghsh merely because it is flimsier. " 'Lock-
ing "every course of brick instead of every fifth
course, as fifteen years ago," said Mr. Taylor,
" has added thirty-three per cent, to the
labor cost of bricklaying, and yet employers,
demanding the added work, ascribe the
increased expense to union restriction. They
should look nearer home. And in so far as
it is true that Mr. Stewart hurried his masons
somewhat by paying more than the union
scale, why, any other employer may hurry
his men, and the Lord bless him, by using
similar means. Employers can't expect an
American pace on five times more complicated
tasks than American masonry calls for, and
at weekly wages of about ten dollars — an
American mason's pay for two days. Not
the ' ca' canny' unions, but the 'ca' canny'
employers are the ones to wake up. "
That was the tale throughout the trip.
"We do not have this machine," an
Englishman would say in one shop. "We
don't employ that method," one would say
in another. " The shops I know are not so
well arranged as this," a third would remark.
And one declared: "It is not so much that
your men work faster as that American
employers give them the best machines and
arrange their work economically; that's why
your output's bigger — your employers are
up to date." Only the ship-builders were
unmoved. "Our yards are better," they
reaffirmed when I said good-by as they left
for England. "In twenty-five years you
won't catch us. You specialize your work;
we specialize our men. And our method's
better. " But in other industries, agreed the
members of the commission, American su-
premacy rests on automatic machinery, on
subdivision of labor, and on the ambitious
spirit aroused in workmen by the democratic
contact between employer and workmen — all
lacking in England.
In the great Carnegie steel works at Home-
stead I walked about with the representative
of the British, ironworkers over iron floors
that scorched my shoe-soles, peering now
through blue glasses into open-hearth furnaces
where molten steel was boiling with the
effervescing liquidity of soda-water, and now
dodging a cherry-red billet swinging meteor-
Ilike through the air in a pair of tongs. Yet in
those thunderous rooms where red-hot plates,
I
full fifty feet long, ran back and forth through
the rolls with a deafening musketry crackle as
a workman sprinkled them with saltpeter, and
then shot snakily out with their ends lip-
lapping serpent-like along the rollers to the
table — in all the successive infernos I missed
the figures of men running here and there.
Why? The men were not there. Three or
four stood about each roll and a dozen or two
were marking the finished plates in a shop
at one side. Yet the plant simply clamored
with activity. Gigantic tongs whirled here
and there, great blocks of red-hot steel flew
magically into place, shot along toward the
rolls, smashed through, flopped over,~smashed
back again with a splatter of sparks, flopped
over, ground through again, and then ambled
off apparently alive up a long course of rollers.
Glowing chunks of steel weighing tons
serenely rolled and slid and flew through
those mighty rooms as if animate. Uncanny
electric cranes glided smoothly overhead.
Trains of incandescent ingots puffed in and
out. What moved it all ? Well, there was a
man sitting quietly at a lever here, another
sitting there, and a few conversing quietly
near the rolls; and as they crooked a finger
now and then the whole pandemonium
dinned its industrial paean and steel products
were created. " No, we don't have machinery
like that, " said my English comp^anion.
"Our men move the stuff about."
I should think so. Who does not have the
idea that men ' ' move the stuff about ' ' ? But
American industry is great because men sit
in chairs moving levers, and massive devils do
mighty tasks at their bidding. Or perhaps
little delicate devils keep crazily grinding or
gouging or spinning — like one at Schenectady
marvelously winding insulator on copper
wire, a delegate told me, with a fascinating
precision one could watch all day — and no
man near it. Or like others I saw in rows
in an instrument factory in Cleveland that
crooned away to themselves in an oily song
and dropped out bolts and screws with the
regularity of clock-ticks. Or strident devils
like a mortising machine in a Chicago furniture
plant with an endless chain of chisels that
ripped out mortises in rapid bites. Or quiet
ones like an augur that bored square holes as
I watched it in a shop on the banks of the
Ohio. Or a colossal thing I saw from a tug
at the mouth of the Cuyahoga inside the
Cleveland breakwater — a thing that seized a
3026
WHAT THE BRITISH UNIONISTS SAW
full-sized coal car and, turning it upside down,
dumped its roaring contents through a chute
to the hold of a steamer as a boy would empty
a hatful of nuts. Farther up the river were
spidery structures that automatically emptied
other steamers — mysteriously working away
with no man in sight.
"We don't have machines like these," I
heard again and again, for we saw a hundred
others: buttonholing machines; a color-
printing machine, which one of the visitors
said could print four colors with one impres-
sion, "while we should need seven" ; a machine
for pressing wood-scraps and veneering the
slab to look like solid wood : I cannot go into
details. It is sufficient to say that our visitors
saw machines they had never seen before.
Progressive men themselves, open-minded
and intelligent— I was sorry to part with
them when they left us — tliey expressed such
ideas in personal conversation that I cannot
but believe the English employers in the
main responsible for the backwardness of
England in the matter of machines. Think
of recent improvements made m printing
presses. I heard of one English employer
who replied when urged to "scrap" an anti-
quated press: "Oh, there's work in it yet.
I got it second-hand about thirty years ago,
and I've run it pretty steadily, but there's
work in it yet."
A shipyard on the Calumet River at South
Chicago was producing lake freighters with
speed and precision by specialized manufac-
ture of standardized parts. Plates were made
by wholesale, punched by wholesale, riveted
by machinery — in brief, simply rushed with
clocklike regularity to their places in a
swiftly growing ship. The machine shop
was so clean and warm and brilliant in the
sunlight pouring through its walls of glass
that it must be a joy to work there. It was
a better shop, I was told by my companions,
than English shops, and the production of the
plant was faster than English production.
But as no lake freighters are built in England,
so that broad comparisons are impossible, the
point I wish to make in regard to the yard is
that the youthful superintendent in charge
did the managing work himself with a total
office force of ten employees, conducting the
plant in competition with other shipyards
in the great lake shipbuilding trust at the
highest standard of efficiency by personal
direction. It is worth emphasis that the
combination secures economy by pitting this
superintendent's executive ability against that
of other superintendents in other trust yards
from Duluth to Buffalo, and making him
responsible for keeping the pace the other
yards set. But a comparative point is worth
attention. I learned that in English indus-
tries of this sort the superintendent does not
work in shirt -sleeves, so to speak, but sur-
rounds himself with a cohort of subordinates.
Orders are passed from one to another with
consec^uent lost motion, and pay-rolls are
burdened with men who do other men's work
for the sake of preserving a managerial
dignity for which the average American
employer cares not a straw. Here, as in the
matter of machinery, I have the word of
Mr. Mosely and the delegates, the United
States is far ahead of England. Again the
employers and not the unions are at fault.
The subdivision of labor at this plant and
many others we saw is typically American.
Our industries are highly organized. There
was a vast imaginative suggestion in seeing
within a week the centre near Pittsburg,
whence the iron and coal of the greatest iron
and coal producing country in the world
converge from a hundred widely separated
districts and then debouch to the world; the
centre where the hogs and cattle of a continent
enter in snorting herds of thousands in a day
and then go out in cans, bottles, boxes and
refrigerator cars, also to the world; the long
lines of freight trains bearing these American
products and wheat and corn from the farm
of the world to seaboard ports for distribution
to the hungr}- peoples of the world. Teeming
behind the railroads and the busy manufac-
turing centres lies a land that is moved by a
mighty fruitfulness — the gift of nature. But
at the centres and along the railroads the
fruits of the earth are transformed to useful-
ness by a process resulting from the brain-
work of men. Subdivision of labor is the
keynote.
At a packing-house in Chicago six girls
about a table divided the simple motions
that go to filling vials with beef extract.
Could subdivision go further? In a freight-
car works in Pittsburg one man drove nails
all day at so much a nail. In shipyards,
machine shops, locomotive works, clothing
factories, tanneries, shoe-shops, men drove
machines from morning till night which did
but one thing. Step by step in every industry
WHAT THE BRITISH UNIONISTS SAW
3027
trom furniture making to building .sk\-
scrapers, materials slid through trained
hands, or more often automatic machines,
that worked some infinitesimal change, and
that only. But the total of results made car-
loads of products with unparalleled rapidit)'.
Would the unions object to such methods
in England ? I have only the earnest words
of their representatives that they would not.
But observe this fact, which struck me with
stunning effect when it dawned on me and 1
thought of the fears so commonly expressed
that American unions were tending to drag
our industry to the British level. The
American labor-iiiiioiis arc today equal in
numbers to the British unions and far more
aggressive. There are nearly two million
union men in Great Britain. Tlie American
unions, both in the Federation and outside,
aggregate about as many. But American
unions demand more than English unions;
they strike more readily; they boycott,
through the use of union labels — which
are unknown in England — with a fierce-
ness that appalled those English delegates
with whom I talked of the matter. The
English unions are hedged by law and by
tradition. As one representative said to me:
''We know just how far w-e can go — both
employers and unions. You — good heavens !
you have no bounds at all." True. These
English labor leaders have struck me as busi-
ness men; their tales of their work have been
tales of executive management, of invest-
ments of union funds — sometimes in the busi-
ness in which the union men are employed —
of conducting cooperative stores, of serving on
conciliation boards. American labor leaders
have struck me as generals in the field;
their talk is of campaigns. Our unions, then,
are stronger, and our industries — well, the
steel works I saw were months behind orders.
Industries everywdiere were producing fever-
ishly. Cleveland was in urgent need of labor
it could not get ; Pittsburg and Chicago were
groaning over the freight-car shortage; the
country was swallowing the immigration
grist and digesting whatever union elements
— even the socialistic froth — rest in its
economic body with a healthy cheerfulness
to make an American glad and to force one
of the Englishmen to say : " Opportunity ! If
I were tw^enty years younger I'd emigrate."
The unions, I believe, are a very small part of
the English disease.
Mr. Mosely says that an English workman
who offers a suggestion toward improving
methods of work is likely to be "sacked."
Concrete examples of this sort of thing were
explained to me on the ground that British
industrial life is so crystalized that a foreman
resents a suggestion as a hint of his incom-
petency likely to result in his discharge; and
discharge would mean seeking for work in a
country where golden op]Jortunities are as
rare as weeks of sunshine. Secondly, it was
asserted — not merely by these British visitors,
but by some of the most illuminating people
I met on the trip, English-Americans who
called on their fellow townsmen to tell tales
of their experiences in the modern Hesperides
— that British employers hold aloof from their
men. One told of getting his first job in this
country. He entered the "master's" office
very timidly. '' Hello," that bluff American
said, "what do you want? A job, eh?
Have a cigar. Well, what can you do?"
and so on. The English lad's breath was
taken away. So these stories ran.
" No, we would not object to American
methods and American machines," said one
of the union leaders. "But the employers
must abandon their aloofness and talk the
matter over with us, for American methods
will mean that some of our men will be sacked.
They must not cut day wages or piece prices
and make a two-dollar-a-day skilled work-
man change over to tending machines at a
dollar a day. But if the machines come in
and the employers treat us fairly, even though
inevitably some men must go, we are ready
for American methods. Our conciliation
boards are ready to discuss the question. If
a Civic Federation is started — and I think
your Civic Federation is a good thing — that
will help. And if employers there will show
the same spirit they show here, there will be
no difficulty. The employers must wake up."
I cannot dwell further on facts I learned
on this trip — from the delegates themselves,
from Mr. Mosely, from the English journal-
ists, from Mr. S. B. Donnelly, and from Mr.
Marcus M. Marks, in addition to what I
saw; but let me quote what one of the
Englishmen said when I asked him how
President Roosevelt impressed him. He said :
"He sums up my impression of your
country. The United States as a social force
is at work evolving a man. The President is
a type of that man."
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT
BOOKS
THE "World's Work sent a letter to
some of its literary friends asking
them what recent books they had
read with the greatest pleasure and profit,
and requesting that their replies be after the
manner of a personal letter. Some of these
replies are as follows:
ELLEN GLASGOW:
I have just turned from my sixth care-
ful reading of "Kim" with the feeling
that I had touched the invisible spirit
of the East — a feeling that nothing else
has ever given me save the Sacred Books
themselves. So vital, indeed, is the scholar-
ship in this book, so flawless the force of words,
that it seems to me to stand for nothing less
than the outward semblance of an eternal
verity. It is because of this peculiar genius
of sympathy — because of the soul that
directs and animates the art — that I would
rather have written "Kim" than am-thing
that Mr. Kipling or anj'bod}^ else has done
for the last ten — or even twenty — years.
I find Mr. Henry James' "The Wings of
the Dove" a wonderful elaboration of a slight
idea — an exquisite word embroidery of an
insignificant pattern — and (to veer rather
abruptly from art to nature) of Mr.
Thompson Seton's animal stories I could
never have enough though they should — as I
devoutly hope they may — go on forever.
Of recent fiction I saw a decided promise in
"The House with the Green Shutters,"
though I hesitate to declare it a distinct
achievement. Mrs. Wliarton's "The Valley
of Decision" seems to me, on the other hand,
to be a noble fulfilment — a work of rare
sincerity and composure, and I confess quite
frankly that I have enjoyed it more than
any novel of the year.
TUDOR JEXKS:
" Anticipations, " by Henry George Wells, is
alive. It is broad in view ; it is the result of
an imagination big enough to take a bird's-
eye view of the world. You feel when read-
ing it that petty things may be forgotten
because big things are so much bigger. I
believe that, whether or not we are traveling
toward the developments W^ells foresees, he
teaches us to ask where we are bound and
if we wish to go there. So many men wear
blinders that few have a »\'ide horizon.
"Anticipations" takes off your blinders.
While you may shy, you will see more than
the road dust.
"The Blazed Trail," by Stewart Edward
White, is also living. It smells of outdoors,
and while telling the life of a lumberman it
never forgets the man in the lumber. White
has no hesitation in following his own blazed
trail, even when it leads him through riot,
fire and bloodshed: but he keeps both head
and heart above his mere incidents, and has
produced a book that is as human as it is
American, and is equally readable in a fashion-
able club or a bark shanty — a book for which
no reader is too brainy or busy.
"An Island Cabin" is another book that
has individuality and power. The author,
Arthur Henry, is a homespun Thoreau —
homespun, because he writes without the
literary pose and doesn't leave out the very
things we like to know. Thoreau makes one
feel his disapproval — he forgets Shakespeare's
wise saying, " Nature is made better by no
mean but nature makes that mean" — and
does not see that a city is as natural as a rose
or a toadstool. The last page of Henry's
book is a recognition of this truth, but the
whole book is an application of it. Then,
too, there are good episodes all through — the
drowning of the wicked kitten, for instance,
is a gem. The whole volume is thoughts
put into writing, not writing trimmed with
thoughts.
Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee" I liked
because it is prose poetry — facts where facts
are wanted, and speculations in their own
place. It makes one think, and treats the
reader with respect. We are sick of being
taught — none of us knows enough to be con-
descending— but we like to be led by one who
knows the way.
Besides these, I'd like to say a word in
admiration of the "Oxford Book of English
Verse." chosen and edited by A. T. Ouiller-
Couch — a delightful companion for a traveling
library or on one's desk at home. Good
poetry is a tonic inexhaustible, and the range
of this selection is from A. D. 1250 to iqoo.
In the India-paper edition it is a marvel of
compression. Personally, I can live without
a constant diet of novels.
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT BOOKS
3029
WILLIAM STEARNS UAVIS:
Of the recent novels I have read the one
leaving the pleasantest after-taste is Mr. Allen
French's "Tlie Colonials." A steady diet of
Revolutionary stories led me to attack it
with hesitation, but the hesitation ended with
the first chapter, and I was sorry when I
finished the last. It had action, literary
charm, a nice balancing of characters and
something more — a deep sincerity underneath
all the sword-play that lifted it far above the
host of swashbuckler romances which try to
conceal their woodenness behind much clatter.
Very different is the satisfaction given by
Miss Norma Lorimer's "By the Waters of
Sicily." There is a little thread of a love
story, not too serious to divert from the
pleasures of a most delightful journey through
the island of Svracuse, Taormina and Palermo.
In Mr. Stephen Phillips' "Ulysses" I think
we have perhaps the high-water mark of all
recent dramatic verse. If superb literar)^
technique alone makes a masterpiece, it is
here, unfortunately, the reader feels "there
is one thing lacking, " and that is soul. It is
hard -to improve upon the "Odyssey," and
Mr. Philhps is not too blameworthy if he
has failed. Of still different mood is Prof.
William James' "Varieties of Religious
Experience." It is an admirable attempt
by one of the most fearless and best accredited
psychologists of the age to show an essentially
scientific justification for religious emotions,
and to tear away the barriers which have been
assumed to exist between faith and reason.
A wide reading of this book w^ould dissipate a
certain phase of "unbelief" more than a
myriad tracts.
C. M. FLANDRAU:
Mrs. Wharton's "The Valley of Decision,"
Mr. Kipling's "Kim" and Mr. Wister's "The
Virginian" are the only recent novels I look
forward with much pleasure to reading again.
For chronological, if for no other reasons.
Mr. Kipling's series of pictures is more living
— less consciously "educational" than that of
Mrs. Wharton. But if Mr. Kipling runs a
dazzling cinematograph, Mrs. Wharton per-
forms charmingly on the stereopticon.
The sentimental grasp Mr. Wister has on
his "Virginian" is almost always beautiful,
and in the really great chapters called " In the
Cotton woods" and "Superstition Trail" it
is extremely moving. Perhaps it is just as
well that the other characters in the book are
either sketchy or frankly conventional. The
fact gives one more leisure in which to adore
the Virginian.
Not the least engaging trait of the humor-
ous, pathetic and altogether refreshing collec-
tion of sketches Miss Edith Wyatt has called
" Every One His Own Way" is its delicate
flattery of the reader's own keenness and
general superiority. One reads them, steeped
in the comfort of lamenting that no one but
oneself is quite clever enough fully to appre-
ciate them.
M. Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Life of the
Bee" is more romantic than romance, more
poetic than poetry. Only a pitying con-
sideration for those who have not discovered
it restrains one from establishing — in the
manner of M. Maeterlinck himself — an apiary
in the drawing-room.
GEORGE ILES:
Why do we read novels? Because they
deal with that theme of undying interest,
human nature. That, after all, is the
apple for which we accept so much paste
in the shape of scenic setting, historical
properties, more or less tedious moralizing.
Commend me to such a book as Prof. William
James' "Talks on Psychology to Teachers,"
which takes up human nature by itself, its
thoughts, emotions, feelings; which serves up
apple without any paste. Professor James is
a man of science, a man of letters and a
thorough man of the world. He addresses
himself to teachers : that is what we all are ; if
not teachers of our own children, then of the
children of other people, oftenest of all the
ignorant teachers of ourselves. Were it only
for its supremely wise and gracious chapters
on " Habit" and " Memory," this book should
be in the hands of every man and woman in
America. We rise from it nourished and
stimulated. Apple pie is good; plain apple,
sound and crisp, is better still.
A great biography is " Huxley's Life and
Letters." Here is a man in w^hom new thought
aroused new powers of expression, a man of
keenest insight, of masterful will, a fighter if
Nature ever made one. And yet brilliant as
his work Undoubtedly is, it has neither the
weight nor originality of Darwin's or Spencer's.
Nothing, indeed, was finer in Huxley's career
than his discipleship to Darwin.
In his "Facts and Comments" Herbert
Spencer
'■ Obeys the voice at eve obeyed at prime."
As in 1842 he inveighed against the encroach-
ments of government upon individual liberty,
he sees to-day only slavery in the rising tide of
imperialism, only rebarbarization in the resur-
gence of the warlike spirit of the hour. And
with chapters that might well be woven into
"First Principles" and the "Biology" we
3030
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT BOOKS
have glimpses of the heart of the man, unre-
vealed before. He mourns the disappearance
of the rustic plank and hand-rail as they make
way for the country bridge of stone or brick.
He regards with a sigh the hedges of clematis,
bryony and wild hop, the roofs of thatch, the
strips of greensward and wild flowers border-
ing the byroads, which are fast vanishing
before "improvements." In a vein well
worthy the author of "Synthetic Philosophy,"
he argues that feeling and not intellect is the
weightier part of the mind: a dictum fully
borne out by these latest pages of this pro-
foundest generalizer of our time, perhaps oi
all time.
THOMAS DIXOX, JR.:
Of books recently published "Kim" con-
firmed my opinion that Kipling is the
great poet of the century. Of course,
"Kim" is not, strictly speaking, a novel,
but it is a great prose poem of epic grandeur.
Its sentences echo through one's soul like the
music of a grand organ touched by a master's
hand. "The Right of Way," with all its
faults of melodramatic and improbable situa-
tions, is still one of the most fascinating
stories I ever read. It is so beautifully told
one is inclined to forgive all faults. "The
Bar Sinister," the story of that bull terrier
in Davis' " Ranson's Folly, " is the best short
story I ever read. Mrs. Wiggs is the most
original and one of the most beautifully clean-
cut character sketches of the year. The
paragraph in which Mrs. Wiggs gives the
obituary of her late lamented husband in
pantomime, imitating a man drinking out of
a bottle, and that without adverse comment,
is the richest piece of humor I've read in many
a day. My household, young and old, fell in
love with " Mrs. Wiggs."
But the book that moved me most pro-
foundly was " Helen Keller's Autobiography. "
I confess that I read every chapter through a
mist of tears, and over some parts cried like
a baby when nobody could see me. That
sentence where she said the feel of the roses
in the Xew England garden was not so soft
and tender as that of those that climbed over
her mother's cottage in Alabama knocked me
clean out ! There's something about her
story that finds the inmost depths of one's
heart. There is infinite pathos in this simple
narrative of a child's soul slowly fighting its
way out of eternal night into light and love
and knowledge. There is absolutely nothing
like it in the literature of the world.
CAROLINE A. MASON:
In G. W. Steevens' "In India" the book
of travel strikes me as having reached high-
vvater mark. Keen observation, trenchant
wit and an extraordinary power of vivid
characterization combined to make Mr.
Steevens the ideal traveler. This seems less
a book about India than a glimpse of India
itself.
In Mrs. Wharton's "Valley of Decision" I
labored under the disadvantage of supposing
myself to be reading a romance pure and
simple. I shall read the book again when I
want an illuminating discussion of eighteenth
century Italy, its philosophy, politics, religion,
morals and manners. As such — and this I
take to be its real scope — the two thick
volumes would be none the worse either for
the occasional brilliant dialogue or for the
intermittent action which link them to the
domain of fiction.
M. A. DE WOLFE HOWE:
I have read the new "Longfellow" by Col. T.
W. Higginson, and the new "Hawthorne" by
Prof. G. E. Woodberry, each in the "American
Men of Letters" series. One would think the
easier of the two to write would be the
"Longfellow." It has, indeed, the peculiar
value which must come from the author's
personal relations with the poet as his teacher
and his friend. Yet it must be admitted that
this volume will make its strongest appeal
to the new reader whose studies have not yet
led him to the excellent longer and shorter
lives of Longfellow previously in existence.
Partly, indeed, because the "Hawthorne" was
the more difficult task, it may evoke a
more general response. In spite of the fact
that Hawthorne's wonderfully autobiographic
"Note-Books" and the abundant biographical
writings of his son, daughter and son-in-law
are within reach of all, there is a natural
curiosity to learn exactly what Hawthorne
means to one of the most searching students
of letters in the generation that has followed
him. Professor Woodberry has put con-
science and thought and a native sympathy
into his undertaking. If the reader, new
or old, puts down the book with a touch
of disappointment that Hawthorne and
his art are not explained quite so wholly
as was Poe, treated in the same series by
the same writer, let him remember that
here Hawthorne is the theme.
3;;;:
AA\OMC
I TttE WORLDS
WORKERS
iS;.-.. ■■.■■■■:■
I
A NERVE CENTRE OF BUSINESS
AGERMAN manufacturer who recently
traveled through tlie United States
for the purpose of studying American indus-
trial methods, announced at the conclusion of
his trip that the most interesting thing he
had found in America was Cupples Station.
It is probable that the German visitor was
right, and that in the handling of wholesale
merchandise there is no institution in the
world so perfectly organized as Cupples
Station in the city of St. Louis. St. Louis is
the great wholesale distributing point between
the Southwest and the rest of the country.
Its manufacturing and trans-shipping business
is very large, and the plan of the city favors
the centralizing of all the railway lines.
Through the Terminal Railway the various
lines bringing freight into the city run over
a single group of tracks that lie in a depression
between two of the hills on which the city
stands.
Grouped about the mouth of the Terminal
Association tunnel is the collection of eighteen
immense brick structures which compose
Cupples Station. Some of the largest whole-
sale concerns and heaviest shippers in the
country are tenants of these buildings. The
advantages they have come from the quick
and economical handling of their goods.
In New York City more than 30,000 trucks are
employed in the movement of goods, and all
m.erchandise must be loaded and unloaded
twice in entering and leaving the city. At
Cupples Station the switches from the various
tracks run directly underneath the buildings
and are connected with the large shipping
rooms and truckways on the upper stories by
a system of high-pressure hydraulic elevators.
A single package of merchandise or a carload
lot can be shipped from the rear of any of
the buildings to any railroad point in the
country with equal facility and without the
expense, delay and possibilities of damage
which exist where cartage is necessary.
Cupples Station occupies an area of more
than thirty acres and contains a floor space
of 1,500,000 square feet. Its thirty tenants
represent an invested capital of above
$25,000,000 and an annual business of more
than $75,000,000. It receives and ships more
than 1,000 tons of merchandise per day, and
does a greater business than any freight
station in the country. The immensity of
the interests represented increases the
efficiency of the work done.
HANDLING GOODS FOR A METROPOLIS
THE system in operation is practically as
follows: During the night cars are
being delivered on the station tracks from
all of the railroads, both east and west of the
river. Coffees, sugars, hardware, and all
sorts of manufactured articles are arriving
from the East; dried fruits, canned goods and
many other products are received from the
far West. At seven o'clock in the morning
the large force of men, constituting the
Cupples Station emplo3'ees, commences to
unload these cars. With the system of trucks
especially designed for the purpose, as many
as fifty or sixty cars have been unloaded
within two hours and the contents have found
their way to positions in various stores.
Practically all of the incoming goods are
received and piled in the respective buildings
before nine o'clock in the morning, instead
of coming at all hours of the day and block-
ading the goods that are being shipped. At
nine o'clock, or even before, large trucks
commence to roll out of the various stores on
the upper or shipping truckways into the great
freight-receiving room, where they are received
and the bills of lading signed. Here the goods
are assorted for station order loading, and they
go out by trains over the various roads during
the day. Each of the roads has a schedule
hour for pulling out its train, and the firms
constituting the Cupples group assort their
orders and get out their goods to conform
to these schedules.
It would be hard to find a busier sight than
that afforded by the constant flow of trucks,
the numerous elevators dropping them to the
lower levels, the coming and going of trains,
and the many activities of the station. Over
4,000 of these trucks, on each of which more
than 5,000 pounds of freight can be loaded,
3032
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
are necessary to handle this daily traffic.
For goods arriving the trucks are pushed
into the cars, loaded, drawn to the elevators
of the various buildings, elevated to the floor
where the goods belong and pulled to the
positions where goods are piled, so that there
is but one handling: and the same thing is
true of the shipping process.
All the details, loading, unloading, arrang-
ing shipments, securing bills of lading and
similar duties involved in the receipt and
shipment of goods are managed by the
station employees, and the cost of this work is
assessed pro rata on the different tenants.
Each occupant of the station receives his
goods at the door of his office, and in making
shipments need only place his packages on
trucks in his storeroom and run them out-
side his door. All the rest is attended to by
the station management.
Cupples Station represents to its tenants
convenience and facility in shipments, econo-
mies in labor, in the operation of elevators
and trucks, economies through the elimina-
tion of the expense of drayage and through
the saving of waste and damage to goods in
handling, and it also represents a saving in
the cost of light, heat and steam, owing to the
location on the premises of an electric-lighting
and steam-heating plant operated by the
company. The whole enterprise represents
the most complete development of a typically
American idea, and as such its operation is
of importance to the industrial world.
Cupples Station was built up and developed
into a successful business enterprise by
Mr. Samuel Cupples and Mr. Robert Brookings.
A few years ago, in pursuit of the educational
gifts which they began to make many years
since, the entire property, involving an
mvestment of millions, was turned over to
Washington University in St. Louis and it is
now operated for the university's benefit.
INDUSTRIES AND TOWNS TO ORDER
LYIXG at the eastern base of the Rockies,
almost in the centre of Colorado, is
"New Pueblo" — "new" in distinction from the
Pueblo of a decade ago. Ten 3'ears have
brought this town such progress and such
prosperity that it is called the Pittsburg of
the West. Its situation has had something
to do with the transformation. To the south
and west are great coal deposits, the nearest
only twenty-five miles away. The Florence
oil field is at about the same distance. The
town is a natural railroad centre. All these
natural advantages have attracted manu-
facturing industries, and with them money
and men. And this is the story of the devel-
opment of most American cities.
In this recently awakened town has devel-
oped the plant of a great iron company. This
main plant is the centre of a large number of
secondary works and factories in Colorado
and out of it, for the company controls rail-
roads, coal mines, iron mines, telegraph lines
— ever^-thing, in fact, that will make the
company's product more simply and easily
handled. But the works at Peublo are the
great nerve centre of the business.
Here in great factories that cover several
hundred acres of ground 5,000 men are at
work daily, besides 1,500 others who are
making improvements and additions to the
equipment. The total product last year
showed an increase of nearly 325,000,000
pounds over that of the year previous. Three
blast furnaces with a capacity of from 200
to 400 tons of pig iron a day are not enough.
Two more large furnaces are being built. To
meet this increase two ten-ton vessels will
replace the present five-ton vessels in the
Bessemer steel converter. The rail mill,
when enlarged to handle the steel this wall
furnish, will turn out 1,000 tons of steel a da)-.
Five new steel rolling-mills are building.
The largest wire mill in the world is going
up alongside of these — a mill that will employ
1,500 people. Another mill for steel plate is
nearly completed. The tin plate mills when
they are ready will give work to 900 men and
women. The new foundry will have a daily
capacity of 100 tons of castings. When all
the enlargements are completed there will be
upward of 12.000 people employed at these
mills. And all is being done rapidly in the
wholesale American manner of getting a
result in the quickest and most capable
way. The improvement will cost approxi-
mately 815,000,000.
Two large storage lakes have been arti-
ficially made south of Pueblo to furnish water
to the plant, and another is being built.
Nearby a large structure that will turn out
5,000 steel wagons is being built by another
company. All these mills and the auxiliary
factories that are settling in Pueblo are at the
very mouth of coal and iron mines. The
raw material then is at their doors; they
convert it into marketable shape and ship
it east and west to the entire world.
So great is the demand for wrought mate-
rial that with all our united industry at work
it is being imported. And so, unhesitatingly,
Americans build up a great new industry
and a new industrial centre to meet the need.
SOLVING A SOCIAL PROBLEM
THIS company has had to meet, also, a dif-
ficult sociological problem, and it has
met the difficulty in an interesting way. The
AMONG rill". WORLD'S WORRIERS
3033
population of its employed forms a cosmo-
politan army of some 75,000. These people,
speaking twenty-seven distinct languages,
house their families in some forty communi-
ties. The children of this varied parentage
fight at school ; even the sick and convalescent
in the hospitals are constantly at war with
one another. Doctor Corwin and his thirty-
five assistants, therefore, have organized all
kinds of evening entertainment. Cooking
schools were established and night schools,
clubs and libraries. In the club-house at
Coalbasin — for they are not experimenting
with Prohibition tl ere — good liquor can be
bought cheaply in small quantities. Pool,
billiards and poker are allowed, and the
stakes played for are limited to twenty-five
cents. Everything is done to give the men
in a decent way the sort of good time they
crave. The result, to quote published reports,
is as follows :
" Under present conditions not i.ily are men
ashamed to get drunk, but it is a matter of ' bad
form,' and even of shame, to drink more than two
or three times in one evening. Ordinarily the
miner takes a drink on coming into the club, plays
a game or two of cards or of pool, sometimes follows
this with a second drink and goes home. .
" Notwithstanding the low prices at which every-
thing is sold, the club is practically self-sustaining,
which is all that is desired, inasmuch as no returns
on the investment are expected. Whatever profits
may accrue are intended for use on improvements,
extensions and auxiliary features."
To teach moderation and decency and a
feeling of social good fellowship, this is not
only a good thing for the men, but as well
for the mills.
RIGHT RELATIONS OF EMPLOYER AND
EMPLOYED
A LARGE and very well known manu-
facturing concenn has carried out for
twenty-five years a systematic plan of making
merry with their employees at Christmas.
Gifts are given to all, umbrellas, gloves,
pocket-books, and many other useful articles.
Long-faithful workers have often received
gold watches instead of the smaller gift. At
first the custom was easy to maintain, but
when the business grew to enormous propor-
tions it became difificult to find any place in the
works large enough for the annual celebration.
Two or three years ago, therefore, a large
auditorium was built with a large stage,
balconies, opera chairs and the complete
equipment of a modern theatre, for this and
other gatherings of the working force.
The idea from the beginning was not to
give presents as a sort of added compensa-
tion, but it was simply the natural obser-
vation of Christmas among co-workers in a
large business. Two years ago a new plan
was put into execution. The employees were
the guests of the firm at a Christmas dinner,
after which, in accordance with a previous
invitation, they brought their children, and
in the case of tlie young men and women,
their younger brothers and sisters or other
young friends, to whom toys were distributed
at the close of the entertainment that had
been planned. Some 7,000 toys were given
away, and last year, at their own suggestion,
the girls in many of the departments provided
small trees upon which were placed their
remembrances for friends in the same depart-
ment.
Good fellowship rather than the charity
or the kindness of a patron ; this has the germ
of the settlement of labor difficulties and the
union of all for the best industrial result.
A TALENT-SAVING STATION
IN the narrow, tempestuou. channel called
Rivington Street, in New I'ork, where
every day and all day the tides of traffiic surge
heavily to and from Second Avenue and the
Bowery, a little band jf young men and
women is conducting what Doctor Felix Adler
has aptly called a " talent -sa\ ing station."
The idea of founding a music school for the
children of the very poor in New York City
originated with Miss Emilie Wagner, who
came from the West in 1894 eager to devote
herself to benevolent work in the slums.
One day she attended service at the Baptist
Mission and, hearing the children sing, her
cultivated ear caught at once the true, musical
note of the untrained young voices of the
little Russian, Polish and Rumanian Jews.
By the autumn of 1894 she had formed a
music class at the mission, teaching in one
room until the limited quarters refused to
accommodate the increasing number of her
pupils, and she was compelled, after a few
months, to remove to a tenement house in the
neighborhood, where there was more space.
From a class instructed by herself, her work
grew to the proportions of a school which
required the service of other teachers and
the administration of a committee. Teachers
were discovered among the best equipped
musicians in the city who readily volunteered
their services gratis; while the committee
consists of persons chosen jointly by the
College and University Settlements, which
organizations are still providing for the
financial life of the school.
THE SCHOOL IN THE SLUMS
NO. 31 Rivington Street is an old-fashioned
dwelling-house of the English-basement
type, and though it was once no doubt a
3034
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
"gentlemanly residence," it has long since
fallen from grace. Inside, however, much has
been done to redeem it. The walls are tinted a
dull green and form a background for several
good prints of classical sub j ects and one or two
well-selected plaster bas-reliefs. The painted
floors and stairways, while bare, are kept
admirably clean — in fact, cleanliness forms a
recognized branch of the school's curriculum.
The child who presents herself at the door on
opening day with unkempt hair, soiled fingers
and slovenly clothing soon learns by sugges-
tion and example the practical as well as
spiritual advantages of clean hands.
There is not an inch of available space in
the whole building which has been wasted,
and during the busy hours of the afternoon
and evening, when the public schools are
"out" and the children at liberty, one may
find classes for voice culture in the back base-
ment or kitchen, a violin lesson progressing
in a curtained-off comer of the cellar, pupils
practising cii piano or "clavier" in the tiniest
of low-ceilingcd closets under the roof, while
on the stair-landings and in dim passageways
instruction on the " strings " is being given by
"practice-teachers" to beginners, in defiance
of the waves of sound which surge upon them
from below, above and all around.
PUPILS BECOMING TEACHERS
THESE practice-teachers, by the way, are
older children who have so far progressed
in their work as to be capable of keeping a
critical eye upon the very little ones who
cannot be trusted to perform their exercises
alone. Later, as they themselves progress,
the practice-teachers are given pupils of their
own whom they instruct under the super-
vision of a head teacher. Here we find a
beginning of normal training as also of the
opportunity the school is most anxious to
provide — of a means of practical support for its
pupils; for out of every four cents paid in to
the school for a fifteen-minute lesson, the
practice-teacher receives three cents, and so
on in inverse ratio, until having advanced
in efficiency she can claim her share of eight
cents for a twelve-and-a-half minute lesson,
when she has reached the limit of rates quoted
by the school. From that time on she is
encouraged to take pupils at home and
gradually she becomes self-supporting and
independent.
THE MAKING OF MUSICIANS
THE instances are steadily increasing
where the parents of these little musi-
cians, inspired by their enthusiasm and seeing
a hope for the future in their training, pluck
up heart of ambition and grace and buy a
piano on the instalment plan. The payment
of five dollars a month comes the easier when
the school sends its overflow to practise on
these instruments, for even four cents for half
an hour's practice sums up, and at the end
of the month the profit from such rental often
amounts to three dollars and a half — a sub-
stantial contribution toward the required five.
Perhaps the purpose and provision of this
little school in the slums are more nearly in
harmony with those of the great German
conservatories than is the case in any other
institution in the country. Elsewhere, pupils
of acknowledged talent, who have already
had ample instruction, are given oppor-
tunities to compete for free scholarships ; but
here the aim is to discover latent talent and,
when it is found, to provide for it generously
and develop it to its most perfect expression.
A NEW EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT
AT Wesleyan University last July was
held the first session of a summer
school in the interest of " home science."
In all parts of the country, and especially
in the central West, instruction in home
economics is being rapidly introduced, not
only in technical schools, but in the public
school, the college and the university. It is
mainly for young women who are to be the
home makers and who need modern science
for the betterment of the home. Of the
branches of science, it happens that research
is now especially active in those pertaining to
food and hygiene. The best organized, most
extensive and most thorough inquiry in the
world regarding food is that carried on by the
Department of Agriculture. It is under the
immediate supervision of Professor W. O.
Atwater of Wesleyan. Some of the most
important work upon the subject of food
preparations is being done at Wesleyan by
Professor H. W. Conn.
At the session of the National Household
Economics' Association in 1901 a group of
teachers especially requested a summer school
at Wesleyan and the trustees of the university
gave assent.
Thirty-seven were actually present as
students. They came from all parts of the
country — from Maine and from California,
and even from England and Japan. The
faculties of a number of technical schools and
colleges, five State universities and one
medical school were represented.
It seems likely that this first session of a
pioneer school for putting the practical,
everyday things on a scientific basis is
only the first step in a great and important
educational movement.
Photos;raplied by Frances Benjamin Johnston
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. MR. \Y. H. MOODY
(Sef -Tht .\'e-,ii Xavy at M'ork" page 30S9)
THE
World's Work
FEBRUARY, 1903
Volume V
Number 4
Zbc fIDarcb of iSvcnte
THE larger minded, who watch the
stronger currents of the world's
activity and have reasons to know
that American life swings into a larger era,
have got good cheer from the start that
the New Year has made. The tide of pros-
perity continues to run full at home, and we
have again appreciably strengthened our
position among the nations by the wise
diplomacv of the Administration touching
the Venezuelan affair.
The largest sums ever paid in dividends
reached the owners of corporate property in
January, and the largest sums ever paid in
wages reached the workers who contributed
to this prosperity. The increase of w^ages
for many kinds of labor, especially of the
great army of railroad men, and the profit-
sharing plan put into operation by the
United States Steel Corporation, indicate
definite advancement in well-being. The
full body of labor is as nearly all em-
ployed as at any time in recent history.
The railroads have had an exceptionally
prosperous time, which continues; the earn-
ings of capital are reinvested in new enter-
prises that make further profits; and, if men
use good judgment, there seems no reason
for gloomy predictions.
Our exports are less than they were
during the preceding phenomenal years, but
this falling off seems hardly to be felt in
our commercial life. Our home markets
continue to be larger. We built 6,000 miles
of railroad in 1902 — more than in any year
since 1888; and most of the great railroad
systems are spending unprecedented sums
in improvements. The Pennsylvania road,
for example, is spending more than fifty
million dollars in New York, Pittsburg,
Washington and other cities. These local
improvements are permanent investments.
And the great Western railroad systems are
improving and extending their public benefits
at a similar pace. The Baltimore & Ohio
railroad, for example, will become a four-
track road from Pittsburg to Chicago; and
more than one hundred million dollars will
soon have been spent by it in recent permanent
improvements. Other great railroad systems
are doing similar great tasks. These facts
and many more like tliem make for the public
good — they are permanent factors in the
upbuilding of the country.
But it is a good time to grasp thoroughly
the fundamental principle that it is the
waste of capital and of labor that brings
danger — the money spent unproductively
and the labor that goes into enterprises
that do not add to the real wealth of the
community. Luxury is waste. Misdirected
work is waste. Idle money or idle brains or
idle muscle are waste. But the whole full
volume of well-directed industry is gain.
It would be a sordid measure of life to
reckon its satisfaction in sheer gain of money,
Cop\Tight, 1903, by Doubleday, Page & Company. All rights reser\"ed.
3038
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
but money means the filling of our schools
and colleges, the building of more houses and
better ones, the advance of sanitation and
convenience, the purchase of more books
(good ones as well as frothy ones), the better
provision for women and children and for old
age — all good things that spread wider a
right enjoyment of life and bring larger
chances for the future.
True, we yet have (and we shall forever
have) the tough old problem of preserving
individual opportunity from the discourage-
ment of great organization and concentration ;
but it is the particular task of our modem
democracy to prevent this. It is, in a sense,
unimportant that the rich get richer. It is,
in fact, often pathetic, for riches won and
not wisely used make abnormal and pitiful
men and w^omen. But it is of the greatest
importance that the number of the well-to-do
shall continue to increase, as it undoubtedly
will. The most important thing of all is
that we shall so build up our social machinery
as to lift those at the very bottom into
efficiency and independence. The time is not
in sight when we can abolish poverty. But
more well-directed agencies are at work than
were ever before at work to prevent its per-
petuation. We are learning that ventilation
and opportunity are the main preventives.
The year has thus begun well for those who
work efficiently and with hope and who do
not lose the great highways of human progress.
As for those wdio work not, or work not
cheerfully, and who wander through undrained
places, there is probably no glad year in the
whole calendar of eternity.
ANOTHER STROKE OF WISE DIPLOMACY
WE owe Mr. Roosevelt and his adminis-
tration thanks for many good acts
of public service, but for none more than for
the skilful steering of the Venezuela trouble
to the Hague Tribunal, as, when this is writ-
ten, it seems he has done.
It was flattering and gratifying that
England, Germany, Italy and Venezuela
wished him to act as arbitrator; and the
American people have the same confidence in
his judgment that these Governments have
shown. Nor is it necessary to assume that
these Governments had a sinister purpose in
asking him to become arbitrator. If the Hague
Tribunal had not been created, such an invita-
tion would have been a natural procedure.
Yet if the President had yielded to their
wishes and undertaken this task, he would
have run the risk of misinterpretation by
some Government at some time ; for there are
two or three simple propositions that Europe
and South America find it difficult to under-
stand. Europe will not believe that we
mean forever to prevent the European
acquisition of more land on this continent ; or
that, if we do so mean, we shall always be
able to maintain this position without assum-
ing responsibility for South American Govem-
rrtents. South America, on the other hand,
finds it difficult to believe that we have a
sincere wish for the welfare and for the
integrity of the States there, unless we
ourselves profit at some time by our quasi-
protection of them; and what is a quasi-
protection worth if in times of emergency it
cannot become real protection ? It is possible
that neither Europe nor South America will
ever thoroughly understand the position of
the United States, or give us credit at all
times for sincerity.
It is better for these reasons that we keep
aloof as far as we can from such a controversy
as this. However carefully the President's
decision of the case might have been expressed,
if he had undertaken it there would have
been the danger that some part of it, a phrase
if nothing more, would have been misunder-
stood by some party to the quarrel.
Moreover, the Hague Tribunal was created
to serve just such a purpose as this. If it be
not used now by England, Germany and
Italy (all signatory Powers to the treaty that
created it), when would it be used by them
and for what purpose? Its usefulness in the
future depends on the willingness of the
nations to submit their differences to it now.
The skilful and respectful way in which the
President sent these great disputants to this
proper court made as good a precedent for
the use of the Hague Tribunal as his becoming
arbitrator would have made a bad precedent
for the United States. Nor was the task
an easy one. It was one of those delicate,
difficult matters of state that required the
most skilful diplomacy — diplomacy in the
new and better and American sense. By his
conservative wisdom Mr. Roosevelt has well
served his own country and the whole world.
The Hague Tribunal has had no case that
has so committed the greater Powers of
Europe to its use as this case will.
Photographed by The Albany Art UnioQ
CHIEF JUDGE ALTON B. PARKER
OF THE NEW YORK COURT OF APPEALS, WHO IS REGARDED AS A POSSIBLE DEMOCRATIC
NOMINEE FOR THE PRESIDENCY
(Ste "The March of Events'^
3040
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
CLEARING THE ATMOSPHERE OF THREE
CONTINENTS
THE sending of the Venezuelan trouble
to the Hague Tribunal saved, or at
least more firmly established, two great —
institutions, shall we call them ? — the Tribunal
itself and the ^Monroe Doctrine.
The Hague Treaty was not taken with the
greatest seriousness by the European Govern-
ments. Arbitration between Governinents —
yes, it is excellent so long as it is a subject of
academic discussion. But to use it as a
method of settling serious difficulties requires
a somewhat different state of mind. The
first Governments to use it were the United
States and Mexico, and now by the skilful
use of the pleasantest international relations
the Administration has sent the most impor-
tant Governments of Europe to this court.
This action will establish the court in the
serious consideration of the whole world.
Few recent international incidents have as
large a significance as this incident is likely to
have. An institution that was first regarded
as a sentimental whim of the most absolute
monarch in Europe seems sure to become,
chiefly through the actions of the United
States, the most hopeful agency of human
progress that mankind has recently devised.
As for the Monroe Doctrine, the Venezuelan
incident did two things. With Mr. Roosevelt
and Mr. Hay at Washington (and strong
personalities count for much even in inter-
national dealings) and with Mr. Cleveland
and Mr. Olney in recent memory, European
opinion is aware now, if it never was before,
of the seriousness with which the doctrine is
regarded by the United States. Public
opinion throughout the country, too, while
it strongly supported our policy of non-
interference with the course that events took,
would have as strongly resented the improper
interference with American traditional rights
— with the seizure of Venezuelan territory.
In other words, the simple proposition that
no European Government shall be allowed to
secure more territory on the American conti-
nent became more firmly fixed in the minds
of European Governments and in American
public opinion than it had before been fixed
in this generation. More than that, the
incident made it clear to South American
Governments that the Monroe Doctrine does
not mean protection of them from their
creditors, nor any assumption of responsibility
for them. The Venezuelan incident was so
managed that it cleared the atmosphere of
three continents.
THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AMERICAN STATES
EVERY South American incident like
this Venezuelan trouble sets the
imagination of far-seeing men at work.
What is to be the future of some of these
South American States ? We cannot judge
by the past and say that they will go on
indefinitely as they have hitherto gone on.
for new forces are at work in the world that
are bound to affect their future.
So long as the United States offers room
and opportunity for the surplus population
of the Old World and chance for the invest-
ment of Old World capital. South America
is not absolutely essential for the relief of
Europe from the political, social and finan-
cial evils of congestion. Australia and South
Africa and Canada have afforded and still
afford room for English expansion; but the
continental countries lack such advantageous
colonies of their own. More than this, the
pressure of international commerce is becom-
ing not only stronger than it ever was before,
but stronger than economists have hitherto
foreseen.
Xow such countries as Argentina, Uruguay.
Brazil and much of Venezuela have every-
thing that Germany and Italy, for examples,
lack — fertile lands, vast opportunites and a
sparse and (as a rule) industrially inefficient
population. The London Spectator remarked
the other week that the possession of any one
of these regions by Germany would enable
the Kaiser to extinguish the German Socialist
party which gives him so much trouble.
This remark implied such an aggressive
foreign policy as the Germans perhaps
have no w4sh to adopt. But the pressure
of the whole organized world toward these
fertile and unused territories is becoming
exceedingly strong.
Xow, if European immigration and trade
conquer them without political complica-
tions, all right. Still South America is our
own natural trading place. We need most
of its products and we need these countries
as buvers of our manufactures. Trade and
immigration will many a time encounter
just such troubles as this difficulty in Venezuela
so long as these countries are ruled by revolu-
tionists. Who, then, is to establish and to
GENERAL FRANCIS V. GREENE
THE NEW POLICE COMMISSIONER OF NEW YORK CITY
Photognr.iphe<l by Gessford. New York
(See 'The March of Events"')
DOCTOR JAMES E. RUSSELL
Photographed by Alman * Company
DEAN OF THE TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY
[Sfd •• The March of Evfnts")
TALK OF A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE 3043
ensure stable government and stable indus-
trial conditions?
The South American States themselves
never for a moment forget that the price we
charged for ensuring stable conditions in
Cuba is the practical management of its inter-
national atfairs; and there was no other
proper and safe way to do that particular
task. Our unwillingness that any European
Government should acquire South American
land has become stronger every year; but
the task will in the future become even more
difficult than it has hitherto been to hold
fast to this determination without danger
that at some time and in some way we
may assume responsibility for some of
these Governments — at least (as in the case
of Cuba) a restriction on their international
activity as a means of avoiding possible
complications.
The long period of Spanish stagnation in
the States of the only available continent
for European relief must end at some time.
Their isolation, which was once their safety
as well as their misfortune, is passed. Trade
will conquer them. Industry will invade
them They must come into the group of
productive and buying peoples. While they
are coming, the interesting question is,
whether they will follow the example of
Mexico or — of Cuba. We cannot per-
mit European Governments to interfere
beyond a certain point. To maintain this
policy shall we be obliged ourselves to
assume responsibilities that we do not care
to assume ?
Such a necessity does not yet seem to con-
front us; and there is no reason to fear that
it will come if we are skilful in avoiding it.
The natural course of events is the develop-
ment of these countries by American enter-
prise and capital and trade. Such a develop-
ment will enable them all the sooner to
pass, as some of them have passed, out of
the era of revolutions and into an era of
stable conditions.
, We have been slow to do our whole
pduty in this matter and slow to take advan-
tage of the great opportunities that await us.
The industrial and commercial development
tof South America is both the foremost large
duty and the greatest opportunity that await
us beyond our own territory. When we do
this, they may all become Mexicos or greater
than Mexico.
EARLY TALK OF A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL
CANDIDATE
THE darker the night the more one has
to feel one's way. It is on this prin-
ciple that the Democratic press and politicians
have fallen to such an early discussion of a
presidential candidate. The nominating con-
vention will not convene till the summer
of next year and a dozen "booms" can burst
meanwhile.
Judge Alton B. Parker, of the New York
Court of Appeals, has lately had the special
favor of the prophets ; and there is this strong
practical point in his favor: For many years
he has been on the Bench; and, while he has
always been a stanch Democrat, he has taken
no part in the factional troubles of the party.
His last active participation in politics was as
Chairman of the Democratic Executive State
Committee in 1885. It is thought that for
this reason he would now be acceptable to all
factions.
Judge Parker, now in his fifty-second year,
has spent most of his mature life as a judge.
He was first appointed to a vacancy on the
Supreme Bench of New York, and in 1886
he was elected (for fourteen years). But in
1889 he was appointed to the Court of Appeals
and was elected as the chief judge in 1897.
The probability of the unexpected in
politics is thus admirably illustrated. Last
year it was believed that Mr. David B. Hill
refused to consent to Judge Parker's nomina-
tion for Governor because he feared that
Judge Parker might be elected and become
too strong a presidential possibility. He
was, therefore, "shelved." But Mr. Coler,
Mr. Hill's Democratic nominee for the
Governorship, was defeated; and now the
very action that "shelved" Judge Parker is
bringing him into prominence. "If he had
been nominated for Governor," many Demo-
crats say, "he would have been elected.
Let us therefore nominate him for the
presidency." The interesting fact about the
game of politics is that every "smart" throw
may be a boomerang.
Impossible as it is to forecast so uncertain
a thing as the action of the next Democratic
National Convention, it is an interesting sign
that the party talk is more and more about so
fresh and wholesome a personality as Judge
Parker, and less and less about the old hacks
and bosses of many inglorious and often-
wrecked preliminary campaigns of the past.
3044
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
THE NEW GERMAN TARIFF LAW
THE passage of the new Gemian tariff
gives the Grovemment a formidable
weapon for attack or defense in its commer-
cial dealings with other countries. The tariff"
agitation was from the first aimed chiefly at
the United States. Our agricultural prod-
ucts, which form our staple exports to
Germany, will all be taxed at rates ranging
from a fifteen to a twenty-five per cent,
increase over the present duties; and more
than one hundred important articles of
American manufacture for w^hich a German
market has been built up are now" subject to
greatly increased duties, some of which are
practically prohibitive.
American cotton textiles, which had begun
seriously to compete with German fabrics,
are heavily taxed, the rate running from
twelve and a half to forty-five per cent., the
average being about twenty-seven per cent.
ad valorem. The duty on com has been raised
from fourteen per cent, to sixty per cent.
Meat products — lard, bacon, hams, etc. —
suffer increased duties, ranging from ten to
forty per cent. These will largely diminish
the market for these American goods. The
real sufferer w^ill be the German working-man.
who has for many years largely subsisted on
American meat. Copper wire and all other fin-
ished copper products and copper fabrics have
a duty devised to prevent their importation.
But American machinery, machine tools,
bicycles, shoes and other leatherwear, office
furniture and cotton goods are likely to suffer
most. On some of these the new^ duties are
as high as seventy per cent. For years there
has been strong complaint by German manu-
facturers of their inability to compete with
the Americans. The new law is expressly
framed to remove this objection. The
German bicycle industry, for example, has
almost been killed by American competition.
Under the provisions of the new law, which
imposes heavy duties not only on finished
American bicycles but also on their parts,
the importation of American bicycles will
probably cease entirely. Under the old
tariff American footgear and leatherwear
was rapidly becoming an important item in
our trade with Germany. Scores of large
American branch shoe stores were found in
the large German cities and they have done
a flourishing business. The provisions for the
new law are such as to hamper but not entirely
to destroy this trade. Many American horses
have been sold in Germany in late years at
good prices. In Berlin alone three big firms \
dealt exclusively in them. But these dealers
are competing with the Prussian Government,
which owns and manages large studs, and with
other German State Governments. The new
tariff law taxes imported horses so high as to
prevent this competition hereafter.
The method whereby the bill was passed
gives a severe blow to German parliamentary
government. The Agrarians carried it in its
final form against the wish of the Government
and against the Liberals and the Radicals.
They shut off debate, and the Government
was obliged to accept the bill as they -J
fashioned it. The result is a victory of the
most retrogressive element in German politics.
MARCONI'S TRIUMPH AND CHEAPER TELE-
GRAPHY
MARCONI'S successful experiment in
sending long despatches by wireless
telegraphy across the Atlantic took nobody
bv surprise. His preceding success in sig-
naling the same distance practically proved
the possibility of sending messages. But our
lack of surprise makes the achievement no
less wonderful. The question now is whether
the new method will so greatly cheapen
telegraphy as to bring a revolution in its use.
After all, we use the telegraph very little,
because the service is too costly. Business
men in towns and cities use it habitually, and
newspapers, of course, depend upon it. But
how small a proportion of the population ever
sends a telegram, and how little is the volume
of telegraphic communication in comparison
with commvmication by mail ! Wires are
costly, and the development of devices for
cheapening the ser^'ice has been hindered by
vested interests. We have yet hardly recov-
ered from our first state of wonder that the
telegraph is a fact. No man can compare
the low tolls in some European countries
with the tolls in the United States without a
certain degree of indignation.
Perhaps, at the best, telegraphic com-
munication by wire will always be too costly
for an\i;hing like universal use. But if the
wireless method should be so developed over-
land as to admit of cheap use, and so that
"stations" should be put up in every town
whereby messages might be sent to the next
town for a few cents, the uses of the telegraph
A PROBLEM THAT GROWS UNDER DISCUSSION
3045
would increase to an extent that we have not
yet dreamed of. The possibility of this seems
remote, but the most sluggish imagination
can foresee a time wlien the present infrequent
use of the telegraph will seem as primitive
as the three-cent postage stamp now seems.
The limitation of telegraphy is the in-
convenience of sending messages to and
from the telegraph office. In this respect the
telephone has a great advantage. There
seems now no method of overcoming this
drawback. But if the Marconi system does
no more than to make transoceanic communi-
cation cheaper, it will do much. Its greatest
service thus far is, of course, its service to
ships. This is a positive addition of great
value to the convenience and safety of man-
kind. And the most interesting question
raised by it is its possible use in war and its
bearing on the problems of coast defense.
GENERAL FRANCIS V. GREENE
GENERAL FRANCIS V. GREENE,
the new Commissioner of Police in
New York City (his predecessor having
resigned after ayear of unsuccessful authority) ,
is a man who brings things to pass. A dis-
tinguished graduate of West Point, a soldier,
an engineer, a man of affairs, a political
manager, an author, yet in the prime of life, at
fifty-two he has undertaken the most difficult
task that he has ever had in hand; for it is
easier to write good books or to organize
and conduct a campaign in the Philippines
than it is to infuse the proper moral quality
into the police force of New York. He has,
in fact, the most important military command
now active in any of the many countries of
the world — a command by which a great
soldier and disciplinarian may make a higher
and enduring reputation. And no man of
General Greene's military training and
experience has before held the place.
The men who make up the force are as good
material as could easily be had. They prefer
to be "straight." If they had been properly
organized and properly disciplined for ten
years they would be as excellent a police
army as there is in the world. The fault has
been with the "system" rather than with
them. But this very fact makes the task of
the new Commissioner the more difficult.
To start afresh and to select and train
10,000 policemen would be an easy undertak-
ing for a man of General Greene's experience.
But he has the harder problem of making the
men of all grades under him, the law-breakers
and the public all understand at once that a
new regime has begun. In comparison with
this the most difficult duties of organization
and command are easy. The quality called for
is moral force of an unusual kind — nerve, as
he himself expressed it. The long-indulged
law-breaking classes, the political organiza-
tions, the lethargic public, are all impedi-
ments in the reorganization.
Upon the results of General Greene's admin-
istration depends the hope for clean govern-
ment in New York, and to a very consider-
able extent the success of good municipal
government in the United States. The prob-
lem turns directly on this pivot — can the
police force be kept from connivance at crime
and vice and from giving "protection" for a
share of the profits? It can be so kept, and
General Greene's energetic manner gives
promise of success. He does things and talks
afterward, if he talk at all; and his plans are
not discussed beforehand in the newspapers.
A PROBLEM THAT GROWS UNDER DISCUSSION
THE increasing difficulties that the
Administration encounters in the
making of Southern appointments empha-
size several large facts.
Since the practical elimination of the
Negroes from local political life their eleva-
tion to federal offices is resented more
emphatically by the whites than it was
before.
The so-called "Lily- White" Republican
movement — to eliminate the Negroes also
from a conspicuous part in the Republican
party and thus to make the party more
acceptable to Southern white men — has
naturally aroused the resentment of the
Negroes, but seems so far to have had little
effect in any other way.
The troubles that the Administration has
met have caused the formulation of two prin-
ciples of action that divide men into two
groups. One is the principle that, since the
Negro is a large part of Southern citizenship,
he should have a somewhat corresponding
share of federal patronage as recognition and
encouragement. The other principle is that
the giving of offices for recognition and
encouragement really means the bestowal of
office as reward for being a respected Negro
rather than as a means of getting the
3046
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
Government's work done in every com-
munity in the most natural and simple
way possible.
Thus the self-consciousness of the Negro,
and the even greater sensitiveness of the white
man either against the Negro or in his behalf,
show that in dealing with this delicate and
explosive subject no theory works. Personal
tact is worth all the philosophy that can be
formulated. In these recent controversies
the Negroes themselves have as a rule either
remained silent or have conducted themselves
with more dignity than the white disputants.
Meantime, the schoolmaster, with his tools
and his books, must, with patience and justice,
do his work for many a year and with several
generations before either the Negro or the
white man ripens into a serene philosophy of
action. The conviction grows stronger that
the right kind of schoolmaster is worth more
than all the controversialists. The matter
gets worse under discussion, and the best
lesson to learn from the difficulties and the
controversies that fill the newspapers, is the
lesson , ever worth remembering, that an ounce
of the right personal conduct is worth a pound
of good theory or a ton of theory that may
not be reducible to just action.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL READJUSTMENT OF
NEW YORK
MR. ALFRED MOSELY, who recently
studied our social and industrial
conditions, has declared that American effi-
ciency is due in a measure to our solving of
transportation problems. Incontestably the
building of new railroads, and the straighten-
ing of existing lines, over wide expanses of
territory, do finally subserve our highest
economic ends, if one give the matter thought ;
and the present concentrated effort to make
New York accessible to the rest of the nation
without inconvenience means an increase of
well-being to tens of thousands.
Arrangements have been made to widen
the approach to the city of the New York
Central railroad, to equip the trains with
electric power, and to make direct connection
at the Grand Central Station with the Subway.
After bitter, but vain, opposition in the
Board of Aldermen, on the pretext of demand-
ing an eight -hour day for construction work-
men, the Pennsylvania Railroad has at last
secured a franchise for a tunnel that will carry
its lines to the heart of the citv, and work has
begun on it. And, in addition to the tunnel
of the Long Island Railroad, now building
to bring its passengers also mto the city,
another tunnel is building, which is designed
at first, at all events, merely to connect lower
Manhattan with Jersey City by trolley cars,
but which, later, may offer ingress for the
Erie railroad and the Lackawanna. These,
with the new rapid transit facilities within
and between the boroughs, will have a pro-
found effect in a hundred ways, but mainly in
the geographical readjustment of New York.
Their effect will be social. An inconsiderable
few of us dwell near our work. The elevated
and surface railwa3'S in New York City carr}'
nearly six hundred million passengers a
year, most of whom travel between home
and business ; and, with the increase in speed
of transit, home and business ma}'' be farther
apart. The home goes countrj^ward, for
there is truth in the maxim that at forty a
man is a fool or a farmer, or both. But
without cheap, speedy transit the desire
for rural life evaporates in dreams ; the
cramped cities smother their dwellers, as
New York is daily choking htmdreds of
thousands of country-born recruits who live
in it. At present a worker must dwell in the
city or suffer a martyrdom of discomfort
and delay to live in the country; and the
suburbs of New York have grown in pre-
scribed directions and far more slowly than
the gro-^^h of the city demands. The busi-
ness space provided in new buildings in
New York last year alcne is estimated to
offer working room for 40,000 new workers,
with no corresponding facilities to permit
them to live outside the growing apartment
pueblos. In five 3-ears, when the Subway,
the New York Central approach and the
tunnels are finished, the greater City of New
York homes will expand at a boimd, not only
into Westchester Cotmty at the north, but
out through Long Island and New Jersey, as
if the rivers no longer existed. The popula-
tion will push a little apart, family from
family, and green spaces will come between.
"Who would live in the city when electric trains
in an underground tube will shoot one,
within half an hour, without delay and with
a single change from subway car to tunnel
train, to a country home? This is the vital
meaning of the new improvements.
Closer connection between Boston and the
West and South will follow the completion of
DEFINITE PROGRESS BY PHILANTHROPY
3047
the Pennsylvania Railroad plans, and a
boom is promised to Boston as a port. Every
locality on the railroads now coming to New
York, from every direction, will be ten or
fifteen minutes nearer to the city; and
the industrial and financial capital of the
nation will be connected more closely at a
cost of more than $10,0000,000 to the
liintcrlaiid it serves.
ARE THE CHURCHES LOSING GROUND?
ANEWS association in New York City
several months ago counted the per-
sons who went to church on several suc-
cessive Sundays of fair weather; and its
example has been followed in many towns and
cities. But these counts have not, as a rule,
been accepted as fairly accurate, either by the
churchmen or by the critics of the churches.
Many small churches, it is said, are overlooked
by the census takers, and visitors are counted
as regular attendants — these and many other
criticisms are made. Nor is the interpreta-
tion of these counts uniform. To some minds
they show a very satisfactory attendance
indeed; while to others, in truth, they show
a progressive decline.
So it always is and so it always will be.
Every effort to measure the condition of the
churches in concrete terms ends in contro-
versy, and few definite facts are made clear.
Yet a few large tendencies are practically
and reasonably certain.
(i) The membership of the Protestant
churches is not keeping pace in its growth
with the growth of the Protestant part of the
population. Doctor H. K. Carroll's annual
summary of church membership (which is
the best-known compilation) puts the gain
at ij^per cent, for 1902, as against more than
2 per cent, in population.
(2) The increase in value of church prop-
erty is, however, greater than the increase of
membership. This is in part accounted for by
the natural rise of real estate values. But the
churches are at least as liberally maintained
as they ever were — perhaps more liberally
maintained than they ever were. Witness
the great Methodist "Twentieth Century"
funds so recently completed.
(3) There has been no such falling-dff of
church membership or of church attendance
as was expected a decade or two ago when
there came so general a change from the
orthodox forms of faith to very much more
liberal creeds. The pew has accepted liberal
opinions very much more rapidly than the
pulpit, but this change of opinion has not
emptied the pews.
(4) What has happened is that many
churchgoers have somewhat changed their
reasons for going to church. Fewer go for
reasons of personal salvation; but more go
from force of habit, for social reasons, and
especially because they wish to be identified
with the church as a great organization for
practical helpfulness. Humanitarianism has
grown more than ecclesiasticism, and the
churches receive the benefit of the greater
helpful impulse.
The Protestant churches, therefore, exert
a very different sort of influence now from
that which they exerted a generation or
two ago; but it is a great influence yet,
and it will remain great as far as men can
foresee. But, whereas they once had the
active cooperation in most parts of the
United States of nearly all the "respectable"
people, they now fall far short of that. There
are many who seldom or never go to church
but who are yet among the conservative and
uplifting members of the community. In
this sense, the churches are doubtless losing,
but the loss is not easily expressed in any
census of attendance.
DEFINITE PROGRESS BY PHILANTHROPY
PHILANTHROPIC gifts made in the
United States show year after year
a steady progression both in their volume
and in the wisdom of their aims. The largest
sums go for the alleviation of suffering or
for work that gives promise of alleviating it.
Hospitals and medical research and the
charities that attend them receive larger sums
than any other general purpose. This is
a sane and well-balanced judgment. The
strongest humane impulse is to relieve suffer-
ing, and the best application of science is to
prevent it. This is sound sociology as well
as good personal conduct. We may look to
a time — far off but surely attainable — when
bodily suffering will practically be unknown
and when most diseases will be prevented ;
and help toward this new era of a sound-
bodied commonwealth is made in large meas-
ure, if not chiefly, by private philanthropy.
The Rockefeller Institute for the investigation
of the causes of disease, the Phipps hospital
for the study and cure of tuberculosis that
3048
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
is offered to Philadelphia, the endowment
of more hospitals for the crippled, to which
Doctor Lorenz's visit gave such an impetus
— these are examples of the fundamental
philanthropy that is giving our age a great
physical advantage over all preceding ages of
mankind. We have traveled farther and
faster along this road, in the gradual ascent
of life, than along any other; and it is a good
sign of the sound sense of the community that
the rich continue to give in greatest volume
to this general purpose.
Next to the relief of suffering comes the
advancement of education. Private bene-
factions to promote the better training of
youth give distinction to the United States
over all other countries. In this great field
of helpfulness there are many divisions — from
the support of universities and the promotion
of research to the beautification of school-
grounds. The donations that are every year
made to further this great aim likewise justify
the accumulation of wealth; for the accumu-
lation of wealth is justified only by its helpful
use. In this wide range of aid to the man,
and to the society of the future, there
has been progressive good judgment. The
mere duplication of colleges, for instance, is
becoming less frequent, and more money goes
to the better equipment of those that already
have foundations.
PRECISION m PATRIOTIC PHILANTHROPY
THE best use of money for education
that can be made under present
conditions has received clear formulation
during the past year; and such excellent
machinery has been created for its use that
we have reached a new degree of precision
in applying it.
Having demonstrated that the public school
is the first necessity of a democracy, we yet
have a very large and important part of our
rural population without adequate public
schools; and many rural communities have
not even developed an appreciation of them.
For obvious reasons there are more such com-
munities in the Southern States than in any
other part of the Union. The first public
duty of the people of the Republic, then, in
helping forward American life, is the develop-
ment of these communities by public schools.
It is on this proposition that the General
Education Board has established itself as a
patriotic organization. Its main aim is to
help rural neighborhoods to build up the best
schools in the world. The aim is not to build
schools for such neighborhoods, but to help
the neighborhoods themselves build them.
This organization of successful men of affairs
and of educational workers has completed its
first year of work. Never did so small a sum
of money produce so large a result. This
Board, by spending less than $1 50,000, in con-
junction with its fellow-board (the Southern
Education Board) and in the most cordial
relations with every other agency of similar
aims, has so aided the fast -rising tide of
Southern opinion as to begin a revolution.
It has organized public sentiment. It has
stimulated it. It has not regarded its work
as a charity. It has regarded it as a patriotic
duty, and it has been so received. It has
cooperated with forces that are already at
work; for the neglected people must at last
build up themselves. This Board has sought
only how it may give well-directed aid to them
that ask for it and that will wisely use it for
giving the next generation an advantage
over the present.
At the ofhce of the Board in New York
there is more information, and more accurate
information, about public education in the
South than can be found an^^where else about
public education in any other wide area. It
has definite machinery, therefore, for directing
every helpful impulse and every helpful
dollar. It receives from one donor a fund
of Sioo.ooo a year for ten years; and it
received during its first year an additional sum
from others. Having demonstrated its value
as an instrument of greater precision than
was ever before used for a great national
patriotic cause, its appeal for support ought
to bring it such sums as no institution
maintained solely by private subscrip-
tions ever received.
It has opened up avenues wherein a million
a year could be used with scientific precision
for the building up of neglected communities
on a foundation of perpetual growth. In the
whole history of patriotic philanthropy there
has never been such accurate work done on
so large a scale ; and (except only the relief of
phvsical suffering) there is no other work of
human helpfulness that is so wisely directed.
We shall by its aid the more quickly gain the
skilled and trained contribution to our indus-
trial, social and political life that must and
will be made by the capable people of our most
ON THE THRESHOLD OF PUHLIC SCHOOL DKVELOrMENT 3049
backward commonwealths. This work is at
the very foundation of the development of
our own population. It is a fundamental
thing in our national life.
THE TEACHING OF HEALTH
IT is odd that the only subject which
everybody admits ought to be taught
to every child in the public schools is the
only subject that has never been taught —
namely, how to keep well. We have dallied
with physiology and hygiene, and we have
liad calisthenics and all sorts of exercises;
but there has been no general or thorough
compulsory instruction in what might be
called Health. The normal functions of the
organs of the body and the simple methods of
keeping them in healthful action is the one
thing that no educated human being is
excusable for not knowing. The prevention
of disease and of disorder ought to be among
the first lessons in every scheme of education.
Yet it is not fair to blame unduly the schools
and the schoolmasters, for most American
children reach maturity without parental
instruction in the most elementary matters
of health. We all wait till something goes
wrong and then we call in the physician;
and it is only just now that the physician
himself has begun to regard it as his duty to
do more than to set the disabled organ to
work again — to prevent a recurrence of
the trouble — that is, preventive medicine;
and preventive medicine is a new thing.
The very name shows that we have come to
it by the wrong route, for prevention of dis-
order makes medicine unnecessary.
This little sermon in common sense is sug-
gested by the work undertaken by the
Teachers' College in New York, which hence-
forth will train teachers to teach Health.
They will not be trained either as physicians
or as athletes or as practitioners of any
"system" of anything, but as capable
teachers of the right care and use of the
human body.
It may not be extravagant to say that this
same movement is of larger possible benefit
than anything that has hitherto been done in
the name of education; for if it should ever
come to pass that every pupil in the public
schools should be brought naturally to a proper
understanding of health and its relations to
every other part of life and conduct, such a
rhance for the advpitu-ement of the human race
would be given as no considerable section
of society has yet ever had. If all easily
preventable physical troubles were prevented,
such an addition would be made to the
energy and to the good sense of the people
as defies description. A merely incidental
item of such social progress would be the
incalculable saving of the money spent on
quackery and of the waste in energy that
quackery causes.
Reformers who are casting about for "new
eras" in human progress may profitably turn
all their energy to the support of this educa-
tional innovation. It is reducible to very
simple statement — every normal human
being if he be taught in childhood and if he
use this knowledge, may lead a healthful life
and (barring accidents) live his normal period
of productive and active existence. Sickness
and all forms of physical inefficiency could be
so nearly banished that the ill would be no
more numerous than the criminal. Then it
would come true, as Huxley said, that we
should look upon most cases of illness as
criminal.
The public school is the best machinery
for bringing such a change, and the first step
is the training of well-balanced teachers who
shall be in earnest but shall not have fads
about "physical culture " — whose gospel shall
be simply the gospel of Health.
ON THE THRESHOLD OF PUBLIC SCHOOL
DEVELOPMENT
A TEACHER with as thorough a training
in pedagogy as the Teachers' College,
for example, requires for graduation, and
with a physician's training in hygiene and
physiology, though not for the same purpose
as a physician, will not long work in the public
schools for the compensation in money and
in position that is now usually given. All the
other rewards of the teacher's life must be
made greater. How admirably this was
recently set forth by Doctor William H.
Maxwell, the Superintendent of Schools in
New York Citv, in an address at the Univer-
sity of Chicago. Emancipated from clerical
influences, and in process of emancipation
from political influences, the teachers now
need to raise the standard of their calling by
raising the standard of admission to their
ranks, and they need security of tenure. He
classified the conditions that the profession
must require in this comprehensive way:
3050
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
(i) Adequate preparation rigorously in-
sisted on. In this the State of New York
has set a good example. The point is that the
public school teachers themselves shall insist
on the exclusion of all but the best-prepared
candidates for places.
(2) Appointment and promotion by some
means that shall stimulate the teacher's
efforts and preserve his self-respect; in other
words, by impartial examinations and pro-
bationary tests of actual working qualities,
and not by "pulls."
(3) Opportunity for self -improvement
and for the development of originality. "I
mean," said Doctor Maxwell, "by the
solidarity of teachers an organization to
accomplish their high purpose under a code
of professional ethics which will meet a stand-
ard of professional honor and professional
duty transcending school board ordinances
and statutory enactments."
(4) Reasonable financial support and
secure tenure of office for the efficient.
In other words, the professions of medicine
and of law and other such professions raised
themselves into respectful consideration and
dignified treatment at the hands of the com-
munity by insisting on as high a standard of
character and of preparation as they could
enforce. In a word, the public school teacher
must make his calling a profession and not a
mere means of livelihood.
In truth, we are just on the threshold of
the development of the public school system.
A CLEARING-HOUSE FOR PRACTICAL
BETTERMENT
THE American Institute of Social Service
in New York makes a scientific study
of the various movements and methods of
social and industrial betterment throughout
the world. It does this work through its
collaborators, like Siegfried and Levasseur
in Paris, Exner in Vienna, Max Richter
and Lewald in Berlin, Luzzatti in Rome,
Wavrinsky in Stockholm, Shimomura in
Japan, and others. Then it turns its knowl-
edge to practical use.
It has "commercial" members — firms em-
ploying large numbers of men and women.
When such men wish to improve the condition
of their employees, a request for information
is sent to the Institute about the expenditure
and the advisability of such an undertaking —
whether the experience of others has been
successful. The bureau of information makes
an individual study of each case, and gives
suggestions. This has been done for some of
the largest firms in the United States, and
upon all sorts of subjects — pensions, sick
benefits, housing, baths and the like.
The Musde Social of Paris, the first great
museum of its kind, was the result of the far-
sighted generosity of the Count Chambrun.
Brussels, Berlin and Moscow have similar
institutions. The Institute in New York
aims to be a social clearing-house in
America where all may go and study
present-day problems in social and indus-
trial betterment.
Some of the older cities in Europe, notably
Amsterdam, Milan and Berlin, have had the
forethought to establish Museums of Security.
The Institute includes in its plans a similar
collection — that is, the various devices and
appliances for safeguarding the lives and
limbs of workmen. Such a museum would
show the operation and the cost of safety
devices of every kind.
This interesting institution, now in the
beginning of its service, has the commenda-
tion and practical help (for its aim is not to
make money, and it will be long before it is
self-sustaining, if it ever becomes so) of some of
the foremost men and women of the Eastern
States; and it ought to make a noteworthy
success in a country at once so humane and
so practical as ours.
THE COLLEGE DRUMMER
THE open appointment by Northwestern
University of a "drummer" whose
business it is to induce students to attend it
is new only in its frankness. By methods
usually delicate and indirect such work has
long been done in behalf of most of our
colleges. But the frank announcement of
the appointment of such a college officer gave
a little shock to the academic world.
There are two possible fields of activity for
such a man. He can "drum up custom"
from the preparatory schools by inducing
youths who will go to college somew^here to
go to his particular college; or he may per-
suade those who do not mean to go to college
at all to change their minds. Both these
forms of activity suggest the question whether
we have more colleges than we need. If
students have to be solicited, does the neces-
sitv of solicitation mean that there are too
HOW LARGE THE WORLD KS
3051
I
many colleges, or does it mean that too small
a proportion of tlie population attends them ?
Too few youths doubtless do go to college,
but this leads to the still harder question:
What proportion of college-trained youth is
the normal proportion in a country like
ours ? According to the latest report of the
Commissioner of Education (1901), there
were in 1900 169,036 students at universities
and colleges.
Of course such a question is not a question
for a statistical answer. On one side it may
be said that a college training, if it be good
for some capable youths, is good for all capable
youths ; and it is hard to say why this is not
true. We have long ago passed that narrow
conception of college training as an experience
that fits men only for the professions. If it
really develop men, it is good for those also
who look to the crafts, to commerce and to
industry for careers. If this view be correct,
all capable youths who can afford it ought to
have college training. If the training be of
the right sort, giving a proper view of demo-
cratic life, this argument is sound; and it is
sound alike for women and for men.
On the other hand, doubt arises chiefly
because all college training is not of the right
sort. Education has traveled a long way
from the old narrow notion of it as a thing
for preachers, but it has not yet gone the
whole way to a perfect, democratic view of
it. We yet talk about the danger of too
large an educated class, such as Germany has.
But the trouble with the superfluous army of
German scholars is that they were mistrained.
They were trained only for work in professions
that are limited, not for productive work.
The time will come in our democracy — it
must come if we are true to democratic ideals
— when every capable youth will receive a
college education — not in the classics nor
even in the pure sciences, but in something
that will give him the benefit of trained
powers and a proper adjustment to life before
he begins his active career. In the mean-
time the colleges have the task of even more
fully adapting themselves to this widening
conception and of persuading an increasing
proportion of the population to take advan-
tage of them. If the " drummer " be the best
means of doing this in any community, he
justifies his avowed activity. It is possible
that a college, by holding on to its merely
formal dignity, may restrict its usefulness.
HOW SMALL THE WORLD IS
AT a dinner in New York tlie celebrated
Viennese surgeon, Doctor Lorenz, told
this story:
" At Los Angeles I met at one dinner two ladies.
One was a Norwegian from Bergen. I told her I
knew a family named Middleton there, and she said
that they were her best friends. Then I told her
that I had operated on a member of that family.
The other lady was from Honolulu. I mentioned a
certain doctor there and asked if she knew him.
' He is my physican,' said she. And I said to her:
' He was my pupil.' "
The interesting thing about this incident
is that such experiences are no longer unusual.
In any company of persons who have gone
about the world somewhat, similar stories
might be told by almost every one of them.
The number of persons who travel, large as it
is, is after all relatively small, and they come
to have more or less common experiences
and more or less common acquaintances ; and
the persons who travel are likely to be the
same who would naturally meet a distin-
guished visitor at dinner.
In fact, very much stranger coincidences
constantly occur. At a chance meeting not
long ago in New York of three men who live
in different parts of the United States, it
was discovered that every one of them had
recently traveled the same out-of-the-way
Southern mountain road and made the
acquaintance in an unfrequented region of
the same persons. In almost any company
similar incidents can be told without repeti-
tion for a whole evening. The traveled world
is very small; and the number of acquaint-
ances that a traveled man may naturally
have is larger than a Roman Emperor could
possibly have enjoyed.
HOW LARGE THE WORLD IS
IN another sense the world is yet very
large and very little known. In Finland
today, a country that has sent us a con-
siderable number of good immigrants, and
that has many claims on the attention of all
civilized mankind, there is a famine so appall-
ing as to pass description. For many months
news of it was practically suppressed by the
Russian censorship. A cold summer ruined
the crops, and floods swept away such food
supplies as matured. These misfortunes
came at a time when the country had lately
been disorganized and demoralized by Russian
tyranny. One estimate has been made that
3052
THE MARCH OF EVENIS
as many as 400,000 persons are suffering
for want of food. The country to whose
humanity they would naturally look is —
Russia; and Russian help in such an emer-
gency is practically no help at all. If Finland
lay within the region of the organized helpful-
ness of western Europe or of the United States,
as the Island of Martinique lies, hardly a
human being would be allowed to die from
starvation. There are, then, two modem
worlds — one consisting of those countries
that are bound together, not by religious
belief (for Finland is a Christian country),
but by rail and wire — by free institutions
and open trade. The other world is made
up of those lands and peoples that modem
organization has not touched; and they are
as far off from us as the "barbarians" were
from the Greeks.
Another instance like Finland is Andijan.
A few weeks ago an earthquake killed
an unknown number of persons (variously
reported from 4,000 to 10,000), and a brief,
belated despatch to the daily papers is all
that the organized part of the world has
heard of this distant Turkestan disaster.
As the time approaches when men may
communicate by electricity around the globe
— possibly without wires — and will trade and
travel in lands whose populations are now
isolated, it is well to remember that the real
forces that bind mankind together are first
of all mechanical. It is to swift and cheap
travel and communication that we owe the
distinguishing qualities of modem life, and
not to creeds or formulae of any kind. And
it is pleasant to reflect that the great quality
of organization which brings the Filipino into
a closer relation with the rest of mankind
than the Finn has ^-et been brought is the
quality that has its freest scope and finds its
strongest impulse in our own country.
A FORCE FOR SOCIAL BETTERMENT
IN its war against the sweat-shop and for
humane and sanitary conditions in
factories where women are employed, the
Consumers' League is making steady progress.
The report of the New York League at its
recent convention showed that its "white
list" of "fair houses" — stores selling only
goods that are made under sanitary condi-
tions and bear the label of the League — have
grown from eight to fifty-two, and that new
activities have been inaugurated.
In a campaign for early closing of depart-
ment stores, the League persuaded three large
firms in New York City to close at five or
half-past five o'clock instead of at six. The
agitation against Sunday opening of dry-
goods stores in tenement districts has not
been wholly successful, because the police will
not enforce the law; but an effort made by the
League in opposition to two obnoxious labor
bills, one of which endeavored to remove
the sixty-hour-a-week limit for women
employees of more than twenty-one 3'ears
of age in factories, helped to defeat the
proposed measures.
The League had previously been instru-
mental in securing the sixty-hour restric-
tion and also the prohibition of the
employment of children tmder fourteen in
mercantile establishments, as well as in
obtaining one seat for ever\- three saleswomen.
One of the continuous activities of the League
is to report to officials violations of these
laws that may be discovered.
The spread of the League idea from this
New York central body is shown by the roll
of forty-nine leagues in eighteen States which
will send representatives to a national conven-
tion in March. Forty maniifactories through-
out the country use the label, eighteen in
Massachusetts, where the rigid factory laws
make the work of the League less difficult
than in other States. Naturally Boston stores
lead in the national "white list." Wellesley,
Vassar and four other colleges have local
leagues, and the spread of the League abroad,
with branches in Holland and Belgium,
suggests the possibility of an international
League. Much of this growi.h took place last
year, for in that time the local leagues
increased from twenty-one to forty-nine.
The League is now likely to undertake the
work of making a " white list " of those who
sell only pure food — a crusade both against
adulteration and against the production of
any manner of food products under undesir-
able sanitarv conditions.
B
BRAZIL AND ITS NEW PRESIDENT
RAZIL is the largest republic in the
world, except our own, and over
this magnificent domain a new President,
Doctor Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves,
has been called to preside. He was regularly
nominated for the office by the conservative,
or, as it is known in Brazil, the "Historical"
A BOOK OF THE GERMAN EMPEROR'S SPEECHES
3053
Republican party; was peacefully elected
and peacefully inaugurated. He assumed
office under encouraging political conditions,
for he is of the same party as his predecessor,
Seiior de Campos Salle, who a year ago
crushed the projected revolt of the old
revolutionist, Admiral de Mello, and that
plotter for the restoration of monarchy and
other plotters against the internal quiet of the
country are now quiescent.
President Alves represents the highest type
of South American statesman. He received
a classical education at the colleges of Brazil,
and served under the Emperor Dom Pedro H.,
as President of his native State, Sao Paulo.
When the republic was proclaimed in 1889 he
went into the legislative assembly and assisted
in framing the Brazilian constitution, which
closely resembles that of the United States.
He is fifty-four years old and has been con-
tinuously in public life since he left the law
college of Sao Paulo in 1870. A notable
feature of his career is that it includes neither
naval nor military service, and that he is not
identified with any of the turbulent factions
of Brazilian politics.
He has surrounded himself with an able
cabinet. The Minister of Finance, Seiior de
Bulhoes, was on the budget committee of the
Senate and is identified with the financial
policy which has maintained Brazilian credit
at a higher standard than any other South
American country enjoys. The Minister of
Foreign Affairs is Baron Rio de Branco, who
was Minister from Brazil to the United States
during Mr. Cleveland's second administration,
when Mr. Cleveland acted as arbitrator in the
boundary dispute between Brazil and the
Argentine Republic and decided in Brazil's
favor. Baron Branco has, therefore, a predi-
lection for the United States, and may be
expected to counteract the anti-American
sentiment among his countrymen, who have
had for some time an ill-founded suspicion
that the United States contemplates en-
croaching upon Brazilian rights.
Problems of peaceful government confront
President Alves which will test his powers.
He was twice Minister of Finance, and his
experience taught him the evils of a paper
currency; but the planter interest, which is
the most powerful in the country, is demand-
ing more State help, even if to furnish it
requires larger issues of paper money. In
his inaugural address the President declared
for an increase in the army and navy, and
these breed generals and admirals, and in
South America consequent revolutionists.
But the most important announcement of the
new President was that he intends to improve
the sanitary condition of Rio de Janeiro. This
capital of 400,000 people is devastated by
yellow fever every year from June to October,
when the whole diplomatic corps and all
others who can do so fly to Pteropolis in the
mountains. To clean Rio so that it would
be as wholesome a place of abode as Havana
has become would be an accomplishment
which would make President Alves 's adminis-
tration a model for imitation by every govern-
ment in South America.
A BOOK OF THE GERMAN EMPEROR'S
SPEECHES
A VOLUME of the Emperor of Germany's
"Speeches" has been published (in
German only, we think), and they are so far
different from the perfunctory deliverances
of most other modem monarchs as to arouse
a more than usual interest. He is the only
living king who could have delivered them
or anything like them. Even if the reader
will not turn to them for literature or for
wisdom, by reading them he cannot fail to
get a clearer idea than he had before of this
remarkable man and to get light at many
points on German politics.
Whether the church or the navy, education
or the press be the subject, the Emperor
speaks with the same positiveness. If we
grant that he is sincere (and there can be little
or no doubt that he is) it may be said of him
that he is surer of his own mind and purpose
than any other man living. The utmost
positiveness of other men would seem doubt
to him. He and the Pope are perhaps the
only two men in Europe who really hold to
the theory of the divine right. Such a fortifi-
cation gives a man a confidence in himself
that is well-nigh inconceivable to the modem
mind. "My course is the right one and I
shall continue to steer it. " " Firm as a rock "
is his belief that God is the ally of his House.
In the same spirit he speaks of "My Church,
of which I am summus episcopus."
Yet not all his speeches are in this tone. As
a student of other lands and of all modem
forces, he speaks at times with reason and
humility. He does not merely deliver royal
dicta. He sometimes explains conclusions
3054
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
that have cost much thinking. Impetuous
his manner always is, but it is not always the
somewhat grotesque manner of an infallible
king. Consider this for instance :
" Since I came to the throne I have thought much;
and under present conditions I have concluded that
it is better that I should be friendly than that I
shotdd make myself feared.
Again :
"With deep anxiety I have been forced to watch
how slowly Germans learn to interest themselves
in the great questions which are moving the world,
and to comprehend their pohtical meaning. Look
round and see how things have changed in the last
few years. Old empires pass and new ones are
arising. . . . Changes that in old days took
centuries to come about are now wrought in a few
months. In this way the task set for our German
Empire and people has immensely enlarged its
scope. . . . Our people must make up their
minds to offer the necessary sacr.fices. Above all,
they must lay aside their habit of seeking the
highest good on sharply defined party hues. They
must set bounds to their old hereditary- fault of con-
sidering ev-erything as an object of unbridled
criticism. "
The first judgment of Wilhelm II. when,
as a youthful monarch, he did bizarre and
said ridiculous things — he was excitable
to the point of insanity — has yielded to a
far different opinion. Xot only by reason of
his hereditary position, but also because of
his own unusual personalit}^ he is the most
important man of continental Europe. His
dogged perseverance in carrying out his
policies — the building up of the German navy,
for instance — shows that he does not lose
sight of his main purpose, however eccentric
he mav seem concerning lesser things. This
volume of speeches is one of the most remark-
able books of our time — because, being what
it is, it bears the date of 1902. The divine
right of a king, uttered and made manifest in
central Europe in a constitutional monarchy
in the twentieth century by a most versatile,
vehement and interesting man — this is a
thing the like of which it is doubtful if the
world ever sees again.
THE GREAT METHODIST TWENTIETH-CENTURY
FUNDS
THE Methodist Church in the Northern
and Western States collected more
than twenty million dollars as its "twentieth-
century fund"; and this is an achievement
that has no parallel, we think, in the whole
history of Protestant Christianity. The fund
was not for the regular maintenance of the
church. It was an addition to the sums
collected every year for its usual financial
conduct.
Nine millions go to pay debts on church
property; more than eight millions go to
educational purposes, and the balance to
various forms of philanthropies and chari-
ties. The subscribers designated the uses
to which their money was to be put. The
Methodist Church South collected a similar
fund of more than a million dollars.
Such a financial achievement tells a
stor}^ of prosperous membership and of
an extraordinary organization, and of
most excellent business management by
the Reverend Doctor Mills, who had the
direction of the collection of the fund in
the northern Church; but it tells much
more than this. It shows that the chtirch
is a vital part of the community, that it
is a vigorous institution, that it has a
strong place in the loyalty and the affection
of its people. And the disposition made of
the fund is significant. One of the first
thoughts of the givers was of education — and
not of theological education nor of the train-
ing of any particular class of men or women —
but of the support of the colleges that were
planted by the church in its pioneer days
and have been maintained ever since for
training that has now generally ceased to have
any strong sectarian bias. This is a broad
view for the people of any religious sect to
take. The other great purpose that the fund
was given for reveals the economic soundness
of this large mass of well-to-do, everyday,
upright people: they wished to extinguish
the debts on their church property.
The money of the sect has as a rule not
been spent in buildings. It has succeeded,
as well as any large and prosperous sect can,
in holding on to the simple methods of work
and worship, and in using its income in
activity rather than in property.
The i\Iethodist Church has suffered a
liberalization of its faith during the lifetime
of this generation, though it has suffered
perhaps a less violent change than others.
But the strong hold that it got on the masses
of the sturdy folk of the country in its earlier
days has not been loosened. It continues to
be a primary force in their lives. The vitality
of a religious faith is not easily measured in
financial terms; but such an extraordinary
financial achievement as this tells a story that
cannot be misinterpreted.
THE UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORA-
TIONS PROFIT-SHARING PLAN
A COMPREHENSIVE AND FAR-REACHING SCHEME,
DEVISED BY MR. GEORGE \V. PERKINS, TO PRO-
MOTE COOPERATION IN A GREAT INDUSTRY
BY
ARTHUR GOODRICH
MR. CARNEGIE once said "Capital,
business ability and manual labor
are the legs of a three-legged stool.
If one leg weakens, down goes the stool."
The Carnegie Company had only two labor
breakdowns, because "Mr. Carnegie," as
somebody has said, " sat on top of his stool."
With the formation of the great United States
Steel Corporation came an increased neces-
sity for making firm the larger structure.
The result was the publication on New Year's
Day of the company's profit-sharing plan.
Let us glance at the supports on which the
company rests. Its property includes mines
from which is taken nearly one-half of the
total production of iron ore in the United
States; the greatest American fleet and the
sixth in size in the world, and 1,500 miles
of railroad to carry the ore to the furnaces;
90,000 acres of coalfields nearby for fuel
to help turn out 9,000,000 tons of pig iron a
year; and great steel mills from which come
yearly more than 9,000,000 tons of steel,
1,000,000 tons of rods, 100,000,000 feet of
tubes and more than 12,000,000 kegs of nails
and most of the woven wire and tin plate in
America. Its total capital amounts to nearly
one and one-half billion dollars.
In its organization each subsidiary com-
pany manages itself; it has its own president,
its officers and directors. The central gov-
ernment is vested in the president, with a
cabinet composed of three vice-presidents
and two president's assistants, one looking
after production, another after material,
another after markets, and so on. Com-
mittees of superintendents counsel for the
best result in subsidiary companies. The
whole organization has followed the demo-
cratic idea as far as has generally been
considered possible in industry.
The employees of the Steel Corporation
number more than 168,000 men, greater than
the combined forces of Meade and Lee at
Gettysburg. Among the great army of work-
men is organized the Amalgamated Asso-
ciation which caused the so-called steel strike
a year ago, doomed to failure because of a
bad cause and poor leadership.
It has been felt by many men who have
watched the progress of the Steel Corpora-
tion, and especially in the light of the recent
strike, that again the third leg of the stool
would prove its weakness. Not long ago a
well-known steel man said that he doubted the
continual strength of " Steel" stocks because
of the lack of loyalty among the men. Trouble
with even the portion of the steel-workers
who are unionized means lessened earnings ;
more than that, it means a break in the
remarkable series of varied industries which
the corporation has planned — a break that is
most likely to come at the very time when
the demands for steel in the country are so
great that, with the mills running at their
capacity, the steel concerns of the country
would be unable to meet the need. The prob-
lem, therefore, was to strengthen the doubtful
third leg. The intelligent workmen — and
there is a large portion of skilled workers in
the company's force — consider their own
good first of all. It is sheer business. The
unions are formed frankly to get as much as
possible from the employer for the laboring
man. The problem which the company
faced was the old one of making it a better
financial investment for the men to work for
the company than to work against it.
Profit-sharing plans have been tried by the
railroads and by many individual factories,
and in no case that I know of have they proved
an undeniable success. Confessed failure has
3056 THE STEEL CORPORATION'S PROFIT-SHARING PLAN
been the usual result. The general feeling
about them among employers has been all the
way from that of a large manufacturer who
said: " No workmen want to share risks and
responsibilities. They won't invest in your
stock. They'll take any profit you'll give
them and strike for more the day after.
You've got to fight it out with them," to
Mr. Lewis Nixon, President of the United
States Shipbuilding Company, who said
recently: "I believe that some system of
profit-sharing will eventually settle all labor
troubles." But if wise executives of railroads
and individual mills have been unable to
devise plans which will interest and bind to
them in cooperative organization the com-
paratively few grades of workers they employ,
the task of constructing a successful organiza-
tion of this sort in the enormous coalition of
thousandfold activities and industries which
make up the Steel Corporation seems an
impossible undertaking.
Start, if you will, with the miles upon miles
of iron mines flanking Lake Superior, where
miners cut the raw iron out of the earth;
follow the ore on board the hundred and
twenty ships across the lake to the Ohio
wharves; see it shipped on railroads to the
inferno of ftimaces, and watch the thousands
of men who stir the great crucible ; go beyond
to the coalfields which furnish the fuel, to the
limestone quarries and kilns, to the ship-
yards on the lake shore, and then farther on to
the multitude of rolling-mills, tin-plate mills,
nail mills, wire mills, where men guide the
clashing force of mammoth machines, roll,
bend and form the metal at their will into the
hundreds of shapes for the world's markets,
where great sky-scrapers and ocean liners
and mighty bridges are built piece by piece.
You will not have seen all, but when you
realize that every workman you have seen in
your course — men of many nations and of
nearly every trade known in world industry,
is a part to be reckoned with in this Titanic
organization of activity, something of the
bigness of the problem of forming this
inchoate mass into a permanent and loyal
force will grip you.
More than a year and a half ago, George
W. Perkins, a man of forty, who had started
life as an errand boy and who had advanced
by steady stages until he was a vice-president
of one of the great life insurance companies,
became one of Mr. J. P. Morgan's partners.
He had sold insurance from house to house ; he
had managed small and large branch offices;
and he had controlled and reorganized and
prodded the entire agent force of the great
company, and later he had become famous in
Europe as well as in America by the masterful
way in which he had twisted foreign red tape
and bent the wull of European governments
to his wish and to his company's profits. He
had, in the days when he was injecting his
own spontaneous vigor into thousands of life
insurance agents, planned and put into prac-
tice a profit-sharing plan of a sort. He is a
constructive thinker, as all men must be who
achieve what he has achieved. He was
made chairman of the Steel Corporation's
finance committee.
The tremendous task was his of organizing
into a permanent loyal force 168,000 men,
whose native tongues are as many as those
once about the tower of Babel, whose trades
are as diverse as industry itself, who are suspi-
cious of any plan an employer may propose, an
army taught by outsiders and by some prece-
dents of poor generalship to doubt its officers.
His imagination caught immediately the
stretch and sweep of his opportvmity. Success
would mean far more than creating a solid irre-
sistible front for the great Steel Corporation.
Success might be the beginning of a new
industrial era in which cooperation might
take the place of dissension, organized con-
struction the place of organized destruction ;
an era in which the American industrial
armies might move forward shoulder to
shoulder into the markets of the world.
Smaller plans of this kind had been failures,
but that had nothing to do with him. His
own career had been punctuated with small
failures, but they had only made clear the
large meaning of his successes. He went at
his undertaking with enthusiasm and confi-
dence. Plan after plan was proposed, only
to reveal some fatal flaw. At last, after a
year, a remarkably simple proposition was
made that was approved by all of the many
men with whom he consulted in the various
centres of the Steel Corporation's activities.
It is now in the hands of the 168,000 men for
whom it was made. Here is a concrete
statement of the plan:
Every workman employed by the Steel
Corporation can buy a limited number of .
shares of the corporation's stock at a price that |
is now approximately the market price — the j
• i
THE STEEL CO RPOR ATI O N ' S PROFIT-SHARING PLAN 3057
least well-paul ciuployet's having the jjiecc-
dence botli in the receiving of stock and in tlie
proportionate number of shares they can buy.
They can i)ay for the stock out of their salaries
at any time within tlircc years, in the mean-
time receiving a seven per cent, dividend on
the total amount to be invested and paying five
per cent, interest on the deferred payments.
If the employee discontinue his payments
before the stock \)ecomes his, he can get back
the money l^e has paid in and he may keep
the difference between the dividend on the
whole and the interest on the unpaid part.
If he keeps the stock after he has paid for it
and remains an employee of the company for
five years, he receives another payment, as
an additional dividend, of $5.00 a year for
each share. If during the five years he leaves
the company, this additional bonus is paid
into a fund which is divided among the
employee stockholders who have remained
with the company. A man who is seriously
disabled, or the estate of a man who dies
while in the service, receives the bonus for the
years during which he worked.
Worked out in approximate figures, this is
the hmit of what is offered to men earning
different grades of salaries. An average sum
in each grade is
taken.
Man earning
Investment
Result in five years
S20,000
$1,000.00
$1,780.00
15,000
1.15500
2,055.00
7.500
742.50
1,282.50
4.000
413-50
713-50
1.500
247-50
427-50
500
82.50
142.50
To the income will be added the share of
the fund mentioned above. This concludes
the first part of the plan.
By the second part, a percentage of the
total earnings of the company will be divided
among all those men who hold responsible
positions — and the individual cases to whom
this applies will be decided by the company —
the percentage increasing with increased
earnings. Using average figures again, this
table will show the magnitude of this offer.
Amount divided
$ 850,000
1,140,000
1,500,000
1,840,000
2,350,000
2,700,000
3,262,500
3,875,000
if earnings amount to
$ 85.000,000
95,000,000
105,000,000
I 15,000,000
125,000,000
135,000,000
145,000,000
155,000,000
Half of the amount will be distributed in
cash quarterly, a quarter distributed in pre-
ferred stock at the end ot the year, and a
(juarter to be distributed among the men who
stay consecutively five years in the service of
the company, those who are disabled, or to
their estates if they die in the service. The
men who leave the company before the end
of five years draw dividends on the stock as
long as they remain, but the quarter of their
profits in stock and the further dividends
will be divided among the men who remain at
the end of five years.
The plan in all its parts is not for a single
year. If it is successful it is to be a perma-
nent part of the company's organization.
Granting its success, what are the results?
On the face of it the plan is frankly a busi-
ness proposition. It is not "generous," as it
has been called, at least not in intent. It is
a remarkable stroke of constructive thinking,
bearing, not paternalism, but, instead, a
promise of a democracy in which each citizen
may earn his vote.
Mr. Perkins developed the plan because
he believes the tendency of modern business,
as of modern governments, is toward
well-ordered democratic government. He
believes that the corporation can be made
strongest and most irresistible in this way.
To the Steel Corporation the success of
the plan means a knitting together of
the diverse activities into a more efficient
industrial machine. It means more loyal,
more enthusiastic and more permanent help
from the ofificers and the men in responsible
positions in the subsidiary companies; it
means greater interest and better work from
the mass of workers because they will feel
that they are helping themselves by doing
their work well.
These results obtained, and the increase
of production and the reduction of expense
that follow can scarcely be estimated.
Labor difficulties should be reduced greatly.
And more than all, public confidence in the
company's intentions and in its earning
power will be increased, and the company's
stocks and securities will necessarily grow
in value.
Exactly as the company, in proposing the
plan, frankly stated that it did so for its own
good, the employee is asking "What is there
in this scheme for me ? " The plan opens with
an investment. That raises a doubt. But
every thrifty worker, from the man in the
yards getting $1 .50 a day to the president of a
3058 THE STEEL CORPORATION'S PROFIT-SHARING PLAN
subsidiary company — and it woiild be a pessi-
mist indeed who did not believe that a large
percentage of these men are intentionally
thrifty — knows that to be able to lay money
by where it will bring him interest of from
twelve to twenty per cent., and where, fur-
ther, he can get at it in case of need at any
time, is an unusual opportunity. To the
men holding responsible positions there is
not only the new incentive of working for a
concern in which they are part owners, but,
as well, the promise that if they are able to
increase the company's earnings they will
share the profits they earn. And their
added endeavor not only increases the value of
their stock but also the value of the stock
which the miners of Lake Superior and the
freight brakemen on the railroad and the
bookkeeper have bought. To the thou-
sands upon thousands of men who have
no responsibility except their daily task
is opened the safest way of saving money —
saving it before they receive it, an invest-
ment of their savings where they receive four
or five times as much interest as they can get
elsewhere, and a sense of ownership of a small
part of the great concern they serve — a feeling
that develops a man's dignity and responsi-
bility as few things do; and beyond all this,
an increased reason, from the part of the plan
that divides profits among men who hold
responsible positions, why they should grow
into these responsible positions themselves.
And just as the men in responsible positions
by their more effective work increase the
value of the day laborer's investment, so the
greater efficiency on the part of the day
laborer increases the value of the superinten-
dent's investment and the profit he will
thus be enabled to share.
There is still another party to be considered
in this plan — the Amalgamated Association
of Steel Workers, headed by Mr. Shaffer.
One labor leader has already announced that
the plan is aimed at the union. He is
undoubtedly right in so far as the union
means labor disputes and the tying-up of part
of the corporation's mills. But general public
support which unions have received in their
belligerent attitude toward capital has come
only when the demands have been for justice
and fair treatment. Can the unions expect
support for such an attitude in the face of so
manifestly fair an invitation to the workers
to make the company's interests their inter-
ests? Putting the question back to the
individual worker — and it is to him that the
labor leader must look for orders — it resolves
itself merely into whether the company offers
him a better bargain than he can get through
periodical strikes. The union to get better
conditions for the worker: in that the work-
man and the general public have a personal
and genuine interest; the union as a fetish,
counseling antagonism at whatever cost,
influences neither public opinion nor the intel-
ligent workman. More than this, by the very
terms of Mr. Perkins's plan, a man who sub-
scribes for stock and, before payment is com-
pleted, leaves the company's employ, loses
nothing. In fact, he gains the difference
between the dividend on the stock and the
interest on the amount he has not paid in.
It will be interesting to learn how much stock
is subscribed for by the men earning from
$500 to §2,000 a year. Mr. Perkins said to
me in regard to this side of the plan's results:
"We are not offering an}i;hing to the
union or against it. The plan is for our
own employees as individuals. It is, I think,
fair from every point of view. It binds
no one."
It is too early to gage the success or failure
of the plan. During the first two days after
it was published 600 men in two Pittsburg
mills subscribed to it. Already there are
applications for all the 25,000 shares offered,
among which was Mr. Schwab's for his sixty
shares. Real success will depend, however,
on how many of the rank and file who make
up so great a proportion of the 168,000
employees invest in the steel stock.
It may take years to realize the highest
success at which the plan is aimed, but if it
is attained then Mr. Perkins and his asso-
ciates will have created a precedent which is
as significant as the formation of great
corporations or powerful labor-unions. Yet
it is, it seems, the natural development of
industry in a republic. With the coming of
great corporations, admitting their occasional
abuses, began the lessening of the old auto-
cratic government of industry. With the
rise of labor organization came the demand of
the mass of the workers for more just, more
satisfactory conditions. With plans like this
of Mr. Perkins and his associates is promised
the beginning of a mighty democracy of
industry in which every thrifty workman of
whatever grade is a citizen.
RETURNING FROM MORNING SHORE DRILL
Going nbnard llie Kentucky
Copyright, 1900, by Enrique Mulier
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
HOW THE TYPICAL SHIPS ARE MANNED, EQUIPPED AND ARMED— THE LIFE
OF THE MODERN AMERICAN SAILOR— THE COMPLETE ORGANIZATION ON
BOARD SHIP AND IN THE FLEET— PERFECTING THE SUBMARINE BOAT
BY
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ALBERT CLEAVES, U. S. N.
(In command of the U.S.S. Mayflower, Admiral Dewey's flagship in the recent na\'al manoeuvers.)
THE primarv purpose of the Navy is to
defend from the aggressions of any
foreign enemy our 13,000 miles of
coast line and the more than twenty centres
of population adjacent to it; to protect in
time of war our commerce on the high seas,
and in peace times to carry the flag as an
expression of good will into the ports of other
nations, and to care for the interests of the
United States in every part of the world. To
do this Congress has built a fleet composed of
all sorts of craft but in which each craft has
a certain definite purpose and duty. The
battle-ship is to fight and not to run, to give
and receive punishment ; the cruiser must not
only fight other cruisers and capture and
destroy swift merchantmen, but she must
have speed sufficient, if need be, to run away
from a more powerful adversary ; the txltimate
object of the torpedo boat is to destroy both
battle-ship and cruiser; and of the torpedo-
boat destroyer to wipe out the torpedo boats ;
and finally, the mischievous little submarine
boat has, its advocates maintain, a destruc-
tiveness that will revolutionize naval warfare.
In less than twenty years Congress has
A RAPID-FIRE GUN
3o6o
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
Copyright. 1899, by Enrique Muiler
THE SCHOOL SHIP ST. MARY'S COMING INTO PORT
built a fleet that has Hfted this country from
below the horizon of South American navies
to the fourth in rank of great sea powers —
England, France and Russia alone standing
ahead of us. As the work of creation is still
in progress, we may hope to hold our place,
but Germany's navy is being rapidly en-
larged. In 1898 the United States Navy had
grown from a motley collection of worthless
marine curiosities which swelled the navy
list in 1882, to an efficient but small fighting
force composed of four first-class battle-ships,
two armored cruisers, sixteen cruisers,
fifteen gunboats, six double-turreted monitors,
one ram, one dynamite cruiser, one despatch
boat, one transport steamer and fi-ve torpedo
boats. In addition to these were 123 colliers,
yachts and other auxiliaries purchased for
service during the war with Spain. In
November, 1902, the fleet had been increased
by five battle-ships, nine cruisers, fiftv-
nine gunboats, twenty-two torpedo boats
and one submarine boat, representing an
annual increase in five years of 54,000 tons.
According to the last report of Rear Admiral
Bowles, the Chief Naval Constructor, when
the vessels already authorized are completed
we shall have a total of 286 vessels of all
classes fit for service, and this will include
nineteen first-class battle-ships and nine
armored cruisers. In 1882 the enlisted force
of the navy was 8,024 a-ii^d the total number of
officers 1,817. In 1898 the enlisted force had
been more than trebled. When the men
provided by the last Congress are enlisted,
the total force of men and boys will be 28,000,
while the number of sea-going officers of all
grades is 1,795.
The marked discrepancy in the expansion
of the number of officers emphasizes what has
recently been aptly termed the navy's greatest
need. That involves a long discussion; but
it is an interesting and significant fact that
t »»-- -V -■?- il. -
THE HOLLOW SQUARE IN RIOT DRILL
A naval brigade ashore
THE NEW NAVY A I WORK
3061
LANDING DRILL DURING A SLMMLK CRUISE
on November 15, 1902, the percentage of line
officers on shore duty was only 18.6.
An English writer has recently described
a battle-ship as the last word that mechanical
genius, naval construction and cash payment
can say in aggressiveness. From fighting-top
to double bottom, from ram to sternpost,
she is the most complicated machine the mind
of man ever conceived. There is scarcely a
trade or an art that is not represented in her
building. She is a house that must be lighted,
ventilated, drained, and, last but not least,
painted; and it is an astonishing fact that to
paint a battle-ship requires 150 tons of paint.
She is a fort that must carry guns of heaviest
calibers for fighting other battle-ships; guns
of medium size for piercing the comparatively
thin protection of armored cruisers ; scores of
rapid-firers for protecting herself against tor-
pedo boats, and even a battery of small Colts
for picking oflf sharpshooters and exposed men.
Above all, she is also a ship to be taken to sea,
to make passages from port to port and long
ocean voyages. Moreover, she is a hostelry
in which there are 700 men who must be
clothed, fed and housed, and for whose use
there is provided an ice plant having a capacity
of three tons of ice per day and evaporators
that daily produce 16,000 gallons of fresh
water; there is also a bakery and an enormous
kitchen for cooking. Besides the ponderous
main engines of more than 16,000 horse-power,
there are nearly one hundred auxiliary engines
and about the same number of electric
motors. The boilers, with their 46,000 square
feet of heating surface, must not be forgotten,
nor the coal bunkers, which, in the Oregon,
for instance, have a capacity sufficient to
steam that vessel a distance of 5,500 miles
without recoaling.
The main offensive power of the ship lies
in her heavy guns. The Louisiana class, the
latest type of battle-ship, two of which were
authorized by Congress last session, will be
able to deliver from her twelve-inch guns
every ninety seconds or less a total weight of
metal amounting to 3,400 pounds, moving
Copyright. rique Muller
U. S. TRAINING SHIP MONONGr^a j^^A
3062
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
INSTRUCTION IN SWORD DRILL
Copyright,
jller
at the enormous velocity of 2,800 feet per
second, with a total muzzle energy of 184,984
foot-tons. The battery of the Louisiana
comprises four twelve-inch guns each weighing
fifty-two tons, eight eight -inch and twelve
seven-inch, besides a secondary battery of
twenty guns. The heavy guns are mounted
in pairs in turrets weighing 500 tons each,
which revolve as smoothly as a swivel chair.
The shot, weighing 850 pounds, and the
powder, which weighs half as much again, are
brought to the breech of the gun from the
magazines forty feet below, and are loaded
as easily as a boy loads his air rifle.
Around the ship on the outside is bolted the
armor belt — nine feet three inches in width,
varying in thickness from eleven inches amid-
ships to four inches at the ends — to protect
the precious engines. More than this, at
each end of the engine and boiler space there
is a solid steel wall a half-foot thick; and over
all the engines, extending from bow to stem,
is a curved nickel-steel roof, two and one-half
inches thick at the sides, called the protective
THE CALL FOR BREAKFAST
On board the Buffalo
Copyright, 1898, by Enrique Muller
THE TRAINING SHIP HARTFORD LEAVING PORT
Cop> ri^
3064
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
Photographed by E. F. Keller
OUR NEWEST BATTLE-SHIP— THE MAISE
CopjTight. 1898. by Enrique Mulier
BATTLE-SHIP IOWA GOING INTO DRY DOCK
deck, which is situated near the water-line able steel box upon which the upper works
and covers the magazines, dynamo room and are constructed.
steering engine. In other words, the under- The most interesting of all the numerous
water portion of a battle-ship is an invulner- divisions of a battle-ship is the conning-tower.
THE MAIXE AS SHE LOOKED WHEN COMPLETED
In dry dock at the Cnimps
Photographed by E. F. Keller
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3o66
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
I
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TORPEDO BOATS AT FULL SPEED
The IVitislow and tlie Porter
vuj'^ rij;ijl, i^r~^. L'^ i^iiliq-jc J»i
a steel cylinder whose walls are nine inches average-sized man to stand erect, and large
thick. Situated above and just abaft the enough to accommodate three or four persons
forward turret, it is high enough inside for an without crowding. It contains the battle
OFF FOR CUBA
The Texm leaving the Navy Yard at the outbreak of the war
Cop>Tight, i89«, by Enrique Mullcr
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
3067
Copyright, 1900, by Enrique Muller
THE TORPEDO BOAT MORRIS
steering wheel and means of communicating
to all parts of the ship and battery. If the
captain wishes to fire the guns at a certain
range, he presses a button and the desired
range shows up at every gun. Similarly the
kind of powder and projectiles and the bearing
of the enemy are indicated. The engine-
room, the torpedo rooms and the steering
engine-room are all connected with the
conning-tower through a central station
situated down below the water-line.
After construction comes equipment, and
the quantity and quality of the stores that
are supplied are stupendous. As soon as a
vessel is commissioned, the stores which for
months have been preparing are passed down
in streams from the storehouses in the navy
yard, and every imaginable article from a
dust-pan or shaving-ltrush to a seven-ton
anchor or a searchlight, may be found in the
allowance tables.
The interior communications of a large
ship consist of voice tubes, telephones, range
indicators, engine-room telegraphs, call-bells,
automatic fire alarms — the whole forming a
Copyright, 1898, by Enrique Muller
MEMORIALS OF THE CIVIL WAR
Shot-marks on the Nnhant
RECEIVING SHIP NIPSIC AT BREMERTON,
PUGET SOUND
LITTLE BUTTERCUP
A bumboat woman on board an American war-ship
complete system by which all parts of the
ship are connected. As to exterior com-
munications, wireless telegraphy apparatus
will probably soon be added to every ship's
outfit. Communication by means of carrier
pigeons and balloons has been abandoned.
Such is the house which was built for Jack.
Over the vast establishment rules the
captain in supreme and isolated authority.
All his accomplishments must be those of the
seamen, for he directs the movements of the
ship in all evolutions, and his decision upon all
3070
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
IN CAMP
professional points is final. His responsibilit}'
at all times is grave and exacting. In time of
war it will strain the stoutest nerves : in the
hour of battle it is nothing short of appalling,
when he stands alone in his conning-tower,
having control of all the tremendous forces
lying latent in his ship only to be released at
the proper moment by a touch of his hand.
He is the guiding spirit of an enormous
projective of 15,000 tons that rushes through
the water at a speed, it may be, of fifteen
knots, and he knows that the slightest
mistake of his head or heart may mean a
national disaster.
But besides being the naval and military
chief of the establishment, he is a lawver — a
kind of justice of the peace, as it were, who
holds court every morning, investigates
reports of misdemeanors, and assigns punish-
ment to the guilty. The delinquents are
brought to the "mast" — the quarterdeck —
with their accusers. Both sides are heard
and swift judgment usually follows. In this
capacity it will be noted that the captain is
court, judge and jury. Not infrequently he
acts as clergyman, and as such is the bishop
of his diocese, acknowledging no ecclesiastical
superior, reading the service on Sundays,
officiating at the burial of his dead, and in the
old days occasionally marrying lovers.
He always messes alone. His generous
quarters are entirely separate from those of
STRIKING TENTS AT CAMP HIGGINSON, NANTUCKET
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
3071
the other officers, and at tlie door of his cabin
stands a marine sentry day and nij^dit, and
none may enter without first being formally
announced. When he comes on deck to
leave the shi[) in imiform, or when he comes on
board, he is escorted to the side by the execu-
Next in rank to the captain — "the (Jid
Man," as he is irreverently called — is the first
lieutenant or executive officer, usually a
lieutenant commander and the next in line of
succession to the cabin. His shoulders must
indeed be broad and his temper serene as
THE INDIANA IN THE ICE
Copyright, 1898, t>y Hnrique Mulier
tive officer and officer of the deck, the guard Italian sunshine. To him, as the captain's
is paraded, four boys attend at the gangway, representative, everything is first referred,
the bugler sounds the silence, and every one and he must listen to the complaints and
on deck stands at attention as the boatswain requests of 600 or 700 men, while at the same
pipes him cheerily over the side. time he organizes and drills the ship's company
3072
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
SAILOR:> wl IliL .V^.
/i^ ijUiLLIXG
Copyright, J902. by Enrique Muller
and cares for the ship, inside and outside. As
a rule he is a "ship-keeper," going ashore but
httle and giving all his attention to the duties
which never cease. He is president of the
wardroom mess and presides at all functions
in the wardroom, where all the senior officers
mess together. The midshipmen, staff offi-
cers and clerks have a separate mess in the
junior officers' quarters ("gunroom," as it
is called in the English navy), and the warrant
officers, which include boatswains, gunners.
carpenters and machinists, have still another
mess.
The wardroom is the scene of many enjoy-
able entertainments, for in spite of the hard
and fatiguing drills of a day's work, dinner —
usually at 6:30 or 7 — is the feature of the
twenty-four hours. Then, for the time
being, care and worry are forgotten. On
Saturday nights comes the time-honored
toast of "Sweethearts and Wives." The
president of the mess raps on the table, and
A rS'PICAL CAPTAIN'S CABIN
Captain Reeder on the Hart/ord
CopyrigliC, 1902. by Enrique MuHer
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
3073
A SUUAl) I'ROM LHK KEARSARGE AIMING A FIELD PIECE
C"i">vri^lit, iQoi', \'\ I_nri'|ii'; M'il-^r
when all are silent he asks: "Gentlemen, are them, '" and the toast is drunk standing. In
your glasses charged ? " and then, " I give you the Dutch service there is a favorite wardroom
the toast, 'Sweethearts and Wives, God bless song that commemorates the deeds of their
Copyright. 1902, by Enrique Muller
A GROUP OF BLUEJACKETS ON THE BROOKLYN WITH THEIR MASCOTS
2
V
X
<
W^'-' *
T 1 1 K N !•: W N A \ \' A T \V C) R K
3075
READY FOR THE FANCY DRESS LALL
great naval hero, Pete Heine. Pete Heine,
it seems, was a very small man who, as every
one knows, rose to great fame. When the
song is started, usually after dinner, the
officers get down on the deck, with their heads
barely above the table, in imitation of Pete's
diminutive stature, and begin in a low voice
the first verse. Then as the song proceeds
they gradually rise, making louder each time
the refrain, "Pete Heine, Pete Heine, der
kleine Pete Heine," until finally there is an
uproarious chorus, with every one standing
on his chair.
The other officers of the wardroom are
the watch officers, surgeon, paymaster and
marine officers. The officers' quarters are
comfortably but by no means luxuriously
furnished. As a rule, they are sufficiently
commodious, well lighted and ventilated.
A fine library is supplied by the Government.
I
A SATURDAY HALF-HOLIDAY IN THE NAVY
An afternoon dance on a recei\'ing-ship for apprentices at New-port
5076
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
USING THE NEW RANGE-FINDER
The Government also furnishes the cookery,
glassware and table linen, but does not, as is
generally supposed, pay the mess bill. In
most if not all foreign services, commanding
officers are allowed a certain amount of
■'table money" for official entertaining, an
English admiral's allowance being, I believe,
S6,ooo; but in the United States Xavy all
such expenses must come out of the usually
Copyright, 1898, by Hnrique MuUer
A MORNING SHAVE ON THE TEXAS
r ^:.t, 1898, by Enrique M^iit
THE OLD RAM ALABAMA
lean purses of the officers. And in some ports
it is a very considerable item.
Forward of the mast, as it is termed, lives
the "man behind the gun." The enlisted
force of the navy — nearly 25.000 men — con-
tains many foreigners, but their number is
rapidly diminishing under new systems of
recruiting which require all the men now
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
3077
enlisted to be either citizens of the United
States or to liave declared their intentions
to become such. According to Secretary
Moody's report, eight x-iiiiu' per cent, of tlic
enlisted force are now citizens and seventy-
six per cent, are native born. We shall soon
have an American navy of Americans. A
few years ago the majority of our bluejackets
were Scandinavians and of other European
stock, and it was something more than a
mere joke when a lieutenant once hailed the
deck of one of our men-of-war with " If
there is any man in the starboard gangway
who can s])eak English, lay aft." Indeed, the
number of foreigners on our ships was so
notorious that when the war with Spain was
threatened not a few Continental papers
prophesied with glee unholy that at the first
crack of a gun our foreigners would jumj) the
shii)s and our navy would be left hoj)elcssly
short-handed. The prophecy, of course,
like many others, failed entirely, for the aliens
who bore arms for us and with us were truly
loyal.
In the organization of the enlisted force
the men are classified under four different
SUNDAY MORNING UN THE ALABAMA
Copyright, 1902, by Enrique MuUci
3078
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
heads: seamen, artificers, specials and mess-
men; and these again are divided into two
groups which separate the petty officers from
the men of inferior rating, and each of these
groups is subdivided into three classes. At
tX~s head of the organization are the chief
petty officers: master-at-arms, who is chief of
police, so to speak, and is popularly known
Chief petty officers wear visored caps,
double-breasted sack coats with brass buttons,
and white shirts. The last is a change that
comes a little awkward at first to those whose
thumbs are rough and tarred. The device
that denotes their rating is embroidered on
the sleeve, which is further ornamented by
red chevrons, one for each enlistment. These
THr, dAi ll.t-:^H^^ .^EARSARGE
Copj-right, 190=, by Enrique MuIIer
among the men as "Jimmy Legs," boat-
swains' mates, gun captains, quartermasters,
machinists, electricians, commissary stewards,
bandmasters, etc. Their pay per month
varies from S70 for chief machinist to $30 for
a gun captain. The chief electrician receives
$60 per month and the bandmaster S52.
men have all won their linen collars by hard
and faithful service on deck or in the engine
room — except such specials as the yeomen,
stewards and musicians, for whom no previous
sea training is necessary — and as a rule they
have nearly as man}' privileges as officers.
They are allowed a separate and independent
I
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
3079
mess, and in large ships are provided with
staterooms. They are a fine body of men,
and form a connecting link between the
commissioned officers and enlisted men, with
the latter of whom they are constantly
associated. The third-class petty officers
wear the ordinary sailor uniform and their
pay ranges from $30 to $60 per month. Then
come the bluejackets — that is to say, the sea-
men, ordinary seamen, landsmen and the fire-
room force, and also the messmen, the latter
including the officers' and ship's cooks, bakers,
stewards and mess attendants. The pay of
a seaman is $24 per month, a fireman $35,
and a mess attendant of the first class $22.
In addition to these men there are also
marines — the sea-soldiers — whose presence
on board ship is deprecated by some, but
whose services can ill be dispensed with.
They live and mess together in a part of the
ship assigned to them, and do duty as sen-
tries. Marines have always been included
in the ship's force, and it may be remarked
that their corps antedates both the army
and the navy. Now when these people are
assigned to a ship they are divided into two
\^^atches, starboard and port, and these again
into divisions. Each man has a number, a
station at fire quarters, at battle quarters and
in boats; and in order that there may be no
excuse for a man's not knowing where he
belongs, "station" bills are posted under
glass covers, where the recruit or veteran
may constantly refresh his memory. So
much for the ship's company.
At five o'clock or earlier, according to
season, all hands are turned out. The ship's
cook, who has been called much earlier, has
started the galley fires and prepared the
coffee. Ten minutes are allowed for lashing
up hammocks and stowing them, and twenty
more for coffee and a smoke. Then comes
"turn to," and the day's work begins before
the sun has reached across the skyline. The
first thing is to scrub down the decks and
clean ship. Except when the weather is too
cold, every one is required to do this in bare
feet. There are few things Jack loves better
than playing in water ; and the splashing and
the holystoning go merrily on for an hour
or so, alternated with scrubbing clothes, per-
haps, or hammocks; then the clotheslines are
triced up, the decks are washed down and
dried, the rigging is hauled taut, and the ship
is tidied up for "colors" at eight o'clock.
In the old dayo the raising and lowering of
the flag was not regarded with the form and
ceremony that today mark it on all shii)s,
whether tug or battle-ship. At five minutes
before eight the bugler sounds the " first
call," and the quartermasters at once take
their station by the flag and jack. At ^ne
minute to eight the orderly at the cabin door
reports to the officer of the deck "Eight
o'clock, sir"; the time is then reported by him
to the captain, who replies " Make it so" ; and
then the bell is struck, the bugle "sounds off,"
every man stands at attention on deck fore
and aft and salutes as the flag touches the
truck, while the band on the quarterdeck
plays the national air. So ends the morning
watch as the crew are piped to breakfast.
The new navy ration, for which Jack is
allowed thirty cents per day in addition to
his pay, is as follows:
One pound and a quarter of salt or smoked meat,
with three ounces of dried or six ounces of canned
fruit, and three gills of beans or pease, or twelve
ounces of flour; or one pound of preserved meat,
with three ounces of dried or six ounces of canned
fruit and twelve ounces of rice or eight ounces of
canned vegetables, or four ounces of desiccated
vegetables; together with one pound of biscuit, two
ounces of butter, four ounces of sugar, two ounces
of coffee or cocoa, or one half-ounce of tea and one
ounce of condensed milk or evaporated cream; and
a weekly allowance of one half-pound of macaroni,
four ounces of cheese, four ounces of tomatoes, one
half-pint of vinegar, one half-pint of pickles, one
half-pint of molasses, four ounces of salt, one
quarter-ounce of pepper, and one half-ounce of
dry mustard.
From breakfast until sunset, with the
exception of one hour in the middle of the day
for dinner, the greater part of the time is
spent in drill. At nine o'clock the crew fall
in at the guns; and after a rigid inspection of
their uniforms and their general appearance
the drills begin. These consist principally
of exercise with the great guns; but much
attention is also given to pistols, broad-
swords and infantry. The turret-gun drills
are especially interesting. The accurate point-
ing of a twelve-inch gun under cover is
an art attained only by long and faithful
practice, and as the chief object of the gun is
to hit, and the chief object of the ship is to
carry the gun, it is obvious why the maxim
of the navv today is " Drill, drill, ton jours
drill."
Since 181 2 our sailors have had a tremen-
dous reputation as marksmen. The gunnery
which destroyed the Gucrricre, Java and
3o8o
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
Hornet astonished the world, and it is a
happy fact that the reputation acquired
then has been maintained by succeeding gen-
erations of bluejacket gun-captains, notwith-
standing the mortifying fact that at Santiago
only four per cent, of the shots got home.
The result of that action pleased the nation,
however.
And our gun-captains ought to be skilled,
if an almost unlimited amount of ammunition
for target practice means anything at all.
The money value of ammunition so expended
by a battle-ship is startling. "Within a
period of twelve months," reports Admiral
O'Neil, "three battle-ships of the North
Atlantic Squadron alone have expended
$250,000 worth of ammunition." And he
adds: 'Ttis quite evident that some tangible
results ought to be apparent from so large an
expenditure for training purposes, for even
the richest nation must count the loss of
the maintenance for its naval establishment,
and the country has a right to demand
reasonable returns in the shape of increased
efficiency for its outlay."
Once a month, usually on the first Sunday,
all hands are called on the quarterdeck and
the executive officer reads the "Articles of
War," after wdiich the paymaster's clerk calls
the roll, and as each man's name is called
he takes off his cap and passes in front of the
captain and all the officers, who are assembled
aft in full-dress uniform.
But the sailor's life is not altogether one
of hard work, and on the whole he has a very
good time. Dancing, gymnastics, fencing,
boxing and boat-racing fill his leisure hours.
His natural fondness for pets is proverbial,
and there are few ships without a mascot, be
it a goat, dog or Dennis the pig, which serves
to lighten the hours of the dull watches at
sea. Many stories are told of the prowess of
ship's pets, at night on the forecastle, when
the hammocks are down and the pipes lighted.
One man spins a yam of a cat that was bom
in an old boiler, cruised 50,000 miles in one
ship, established a great reputation as a
fighter in all parts of the world, and finally
ended his adventurous career on the coral
reefs of Samoa. Another tells of a monkey
without ears or tail, with which he sailed in
the China seas, whose fondness for liquid
paint produced periodical attacks of blind-
ness. Then there is a story of a dissipated
dog who never lost an opportunity to get
drunk, and who always recognized the bugle
call for the gig and invariably ran to the
gangway when it sounded, to go ashore in
state with the captain. But the best of all
is the one of the pet bear who chased a voung
officer up the mizzen rigging. Fortunate
indeed is the animal that falls into the
hands of a sailor.
"The sailor-man has his vagaries," once
said the present Bishop of Shanghai over the
coffin of a sailor who had taken his own life,
"but he is the tenderest -hearted creature
into w^hich God ever breathed the breath of
life."
As a devotee of Terpsichore Jack is at his
best at the annual ball which the ships of the
North Atlantic Squadron are wont to give
in New -York while refitting for the winter
cruise. A hall is hired on shore and elabo-
rately decorated; ornately engraved invita-
tions are prepared, and everything arranged
for an entertainment absolutely regardless
of expense. When a sailor-man invites his
friends to be his guests only the best of every-
thing will suffice. The ball is invariably
opened by a grand march, and the captain
and his "lady" are always invited to lead.
No dancing or privateering is allowed until
this function, which is impressive and digni-
fied, is over; but the moment it is finished the
fun begins, and there are few sights more
attractive and inspiriting than one of these
sailors' entertainments.
The crew are encouraged in athletics ; ships
are supplied with a fine gymnasium outfit,
including swords and foils, and many of the
men become expert in the scientific art of
self-defense. Besides these direct means for
physical development, there are football and
baseball teams, and many a good game is
played in the intervals of shore leave.
Of course the natural sport of a sailor is
boating, and in a pull-away race our men are
difficult to beat. Many years ago, in the
harbor of Rio de Janeiro, an international
boat race was arranged in which seven nations
were represented. Our ships, the Hartford
and Essex, entered three boats, and each won
the first prize of its own race. The trophies
were brought on board by a committee headed
by Saldanha de Gama, afterward greatly dis-
tinguished in the revolution of '93.
Theatricals, songs and stories are specialties
of the gun-deck that must not be forgotten.
As an actor. Jack shines best on the minstrel
THE NEW NAVY AT WORK
3081
and vaudeville stage; if he is not always a
humorous actor, he is at least a sincere one.
As for the sailors' songs, the real thing is no
more like the popular idea of a forecastle
chantey than a hornpipe is like the two-step.
"Strewing Flowers Over Darling Mother's
Grave," and similar airs of a pathetic, almost
doleful nature, are most in favor. Dibdin's
ballads are unknown, and the stirring old
battle-songs of 18 12, such as "The Guerriere
and the Constitution," which used to be so
much in vogue, have long since passed away
with the clew-garnets and studdingsails, in
spite of the efforts of Admiral Luce.
A true son of the sea is a natural born
raconteur. Of them there was, once, a jolly,
jolly mariner whose sails have long since been
furled in the Port of Missing Ships, but whose
memory will ever be a landmark in the service
career of those who sailed with him. A
veteran of the Mexican War, he had entered
the navy in 1842, and, according to his own
account, he was a boy on the Somers at the
time of the mutiny. His story of the hanging
of Midshipman Spencer was doubtless not so
accurate as that of the Honorable Thomas
Benton, but it certainly was more pictur-
esque. He was also the stroke oar of Com-
modore Tatnall's barge when that famous old
salt pulled through the fire of the Taku forts
and told the English Commodore Hope that
blood was thicker than water. His adven-
tures in the Civil War were legion, and if he is
to be believed, there was no great event of the
navy in which he had not borne a prominent
part. The men called him "Dick Deadeye."
He always kept one eye tightly shut, except
when, in emphasizing some unusually remark-
able statement , he would flash it for an instant
upon his startled listeners. He wore his hair
long and brushed down over the fragment
of an ear which had been mutilated (he
declared) by a saber cut at Fort Fisher.
A story of the men of the navy would not be
complete without a reference at least to the
work of their patron saint, Miss Helen Gould,
who has done much to elevate the moral
tone and standard of the service. Her most
remarkable work is the handsome club edifice
erected in Brooklyn under the auspices of
the Young Men's Christian Association. It
is more than a home to hundreds of our
men, who without it would be practically
without object or interest when ashore on
liberty. There are other similar clubs.
It is not the province of this story to tell of
naval administration or the organization of
the navy department. Let it suffice that the
Bureau of Navigation, at thehead of which is
Rear Admiral Henry C. Taylor, is, under the
direction of the Secretary of the Navy,
charged with the distribution of the fleet and
the assignment and development of the navy's
personnel. Under the control of this bureau
is the General Board, sometimes called the
Board of Strategy, over which Admiral Dewey
presides. Associated with him are the Chief
of Bureau of Navigation, the President of
the War College, the Chief Intelligence Officer,
and a number of other naval officers specially
selected for the duty. The General Board,
which is like the general stafT of foreign
governments, is as yet an experiment.
There is a singular class of marine war craft
that must not be ignored. The idea of sub-
marine boats is almost as old as the ships of
Tarshish. The French may be considered
the exponents of submarine warfare, as the
Germans are of the torpedo. Recently
American genius has added to our fleet eight
boats of this type bearing the suggestive
names of Adder, Grampus, Holland (from the
inventor), Moccasin, Pike, Plunger, Porpoise
and Shark. They are all about sixty feet in
length and about twelve feet in diameter,
with a maximum displacement of 122.55 tons.
They have gasoline engines of 160 horse-power,
except the Holland, which has one of only forty-
five, and their speed under water is rated at
eight knots. They carry one torpedo tube and
five torpedoes, and the crew is composed of
five men. In time of war their moral effect can
scarcely be overrated, but their actual worth
remains to be proved. They are supposed to
be capable of remaining under w^ater eight
hours — a much longer time, probably, than
would ever be required in actual service — and
on trial trips they have accomplished some
very remarkable results; but the submarine
boat is yet in its tentative stage, and it is prob-
able that exhaustive trials will be accorded
those we have before more are authorized.
The new navy is a thing of wonderfully
careful organization and mechanical equip-
ment. The day of the swashbuckler and
tyrant have departed, and the conditions are
now unknown which led Doctor Johnson to
remark that he could no more account for
people fond of being sailors than he could
for other strange perversities of imagination.
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE PRO-
FESSIONS—THE LAW
HOW THE WORK OF THE LAWYER HAS CHANGED WITH MODERN
CONDITIONS— HIS ATTITUDE TO BUSINESS AND TO SOCIETY— HIS
INCOME— THE OUTLOOK OF THE PROFESSION AS IT IS TODAY
BY
HARRY D. NIMS
IN the early days of the country the
lawyers had their "shops" on the
lower floor of their houses, their
families living on the floor above. This may
explain the w'ide culture of the profession of
that time.
James Kent (afterward Chancellor) studied
Greek and Latin two hours every day, kept
informed on the decisions of the French courts
and made extensive researches into the laws
of ancient Rome while actively practising
law. Modem lawyers are found in great city
buildings devoted wholly to business and pro-
fessional purposes, and the time which their
predecessors spent on Greek and Latin they
use to reach their homes, which are often
twenty miles away in the suburbs.
The student of fifty years ago, " reading law
in an office," usually read "Coke" and
'■ Blackstone," and became familiar with
" Frankalmoigne, " " Burgage, " " Borough
English," "Villenage," "Estates Tail," and
all the ancient tenures of land. In many
States the student of today, having mastered
a few pages of the "Revised Statutes," faces
with equanimity the part of barless examina-
tions dealing with real property.
The modern real estate lawyers are not
human beings educated in law, each w-ith
two hands, two eyes, one brain and an office
boy; but they are corporations, each with
half a thousand hands, as many eyes, hun-
dreds of trained brains, and office boys like
the sands of the seashore, innumerable. In
the office of these lawyer-corporations, which
are generally spoken of as title companies,
there are usually to be found complete copies
of all public records, relating to titles to the
land in the section in which the company' is
located. The magnitude of the task of
making these copies is shown by the fact that
one county alone sometimes possesses as
many as 8,000 ponderous volumes of hand-
written records, besides the court papers of
every suit over a title that has been tried
in the county. This mass of information
is the stock in trade of the title company.
In its hands these records have been indexed
and cross-indexed, until they are all available
at the shortest notice.
There are still real property law}''ers; and
a visit to one of their offices gives some idea of
the business the lawyer formerly obtained.
In them will be found documents compiled in
work incident to verifying a title for some
client. Each abstract gives a connected
history of all the various vicissitudes through
which the title to some plot of land has passed.
These abstracts were often extra-illustrated
by maps, copies of court papers and surveys,
and represented the final results of days and
weeks of labor on the part of the men who
drew them up. The making of such an
abstract was usually necessary whenever a
purchase of land was made.
The attomej' who w^as given a "title to
search" took his papers under his arm and
went to the office of the register of the county.
Here he traced the title back, deed by deed,
to its first ow^ner. All the proceedings taken
in any suit regarding it were inspected. The
lawyer satisfied him.self that there w^as no
legal error to be found in the history of the
title, drew- up an abstract and then advised
his client that it was "good." All this work
was of no value for any future investigation
unless this same attorney was retained.
It is very evident, then, that most of the
real estate business, in every locality where a
title company exists, goes not to the lawyers
as formerly, but to the title company. Then
there is the insurance of titles. Before the
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE PROFESSIONS
3083
days of the title company the buyer of real
estate had no safeguard against flaws of title
beyond the confidence he reposed in his
lawyer. The title company, however, not
only searches the title, but offers to insure its
validity — in other words, to reimburse the
purchaser for any damage he may suffer from
tiaws in a title which the company has advised
him is clear.
One of the results of the title company has
been the almost total disappearance, in the
cities, of the conveyancer, who was one of the
most picturesque figures of the profession.
He was not a man of large affairs, literally
speaking. His life consisted of metes and
bounds, rods and perches, feet and inches,
stone monuments and party walls, commas
and semicolons. To become absolutely exact
was his greatest ambition. The systems and
methods that surrounded such a man 'were
awe-inspiring. Every tool and paper in his
office had its place and was kept there by his
constant vigilance. His life seemed a per-
petual challenge to error. The conveyancers
went through a hard struggle before they
would use the modern simple methods of
transferring property and adopt type-
written legal instruments. To convince them
that a deed that merely "grants" the land
sold is as good as one that "gives, grants,
releases, remises, quit-claims, sets over, bar-
gains, sells, conveys and enfeoffs" was out of
the question.
Another poacher on the hunting preserves
of the lawyer is the trust company. In
former times a considerable share of the
lawyer's income came from fees for the draw-
ing of wills, or from commissions received a*s
guardian of the interests of children and
persons incompetent to manage their affairs,
or as administrator of an estate. The man
who wishes to make a will now can go to a
trust company and find a lawyer to serve him
who makes legal questions connected with
wills his especial study. The trust company
demands no fee. Its only stipulation is that
it be appointed executor or co-executor of the
will or trustee of the trusts created by it. It
finds its profit later in collecting and paying
out the moneys of the estate.
The trust companies, when properly con-
ducted, command the confidence of the public,
and rightfully so. But, from the lawyer's
■point of view, they more and more absorb
the siirrogate practice of the profession; and
the litigations arising from tiie affairs of
estates of deceased persons come more and
more into their hands. A like change, as far
as the lawyer is concerned, has been brought
about in the matter of railroad reorganiza-
tions, for, by drawing into its employ counsel
skilled in such matters, the trust company,
as trustee for corporate securities, has been
able to do much of the legal work of these
reorganizations.
The poverty of briefless barristers is as
proverbial as that of the church mouse. It
would not be an unnatural mistake to con-
sider a barrister with only one client hardly
better off than one with none But the
modern "one-client lawyer" is usually a
prosperous individual. Said a man well
known in the business world some years ago
to a friend: "I want a young lawyer to put
down at a desk beside mine. I'll familiarize
him with my affairs and then I want him to
keep me out of trouble." The counterpart
of this lawyer, whose duty it is to act as his
own client's ounce of prevention, may be
found in the office of many large concerns.
He is often connected with trust companies,
banks, banking houses, railroad and other
transportation companies and large wholesale
mercantile houses. When a merchant found
himself in a tangle, it was once the custom
for him to go to his lawyer for advice. The
results were a written "opinion" and a fee.
The business man today obtains a law^^er who
shall work for him alone. Again the field
of the general practitioner is narrowed.
The commercial world has found a new
sphere of usefulness for the lawyer in what is
sometimes called negotiation. The men who
do this sort of work seldom go to court. The
special value of their services is to get results
without litigation. The occasion for calling
on them may arise in this way: A concern
gets into trouble; perhaps it cannot cope with
an unscrupulous competitor or it is unable to
obtain new capital to operate its business.
When such difficulties arise such a lawyer
is called in, not because he is a lawyer, but
rather because he is thoroughly trained in
business as well as in law. By reason of his
tact and ability he brings the competitors
together and they adjust their differences
amicably; or, perhaps, they are persuaded
to combine their interests into one concern.
If additional capital be necessary, such a man,
by assuring investors of the solidity of the
3084
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE PROFESSIONS
enterprise, obtains the necessary funds and
prevents disaster. The work of these men
has been decidedly constructive. By their
efforts it has often happened that reorganiza-
tions have done much to make companies in
which the pubHc invests sound and successful.
The growth of consolidation has had
marked effect upon the law. Here are ten
large concerns manufacturing some article
of commerce. Each of them has its own
counsel on whom it is constantly calling for
advice. A merging of these concerns occurs,
and the attorney of those in the deal who
wielded the greatest influence becomes the
counsel of the new corporation. The other
nine look for new clients.
The demands upon a law office which has
as clients several of these corporations are
multitudinous. Bad accounts to be sued on,
suits of employees for personal injury, legal
steps involved in absorbing smaller com-
panies, work incidental to the preservation
of the corporate existence of the company,
and all the legal questions arising from a great
industrial enterprise, call for a man3^-sided
law office. This means an office having men
trained for legal work of widely different
character. In these great offices one some-
times finds as many as eight partners and
from four to twenty-five other lawyers,
besides stenographers and bookkeepers. One
of these attorneys is the managing clerk.
His work touches practically every matter in
the office, and yet he does not interview the
clients, write the brief, try the case in court
or argue the appeal. He steers the case
through labyrinths of calendar rules that
encompass the courts in a city and finally
brings it up for trial. He has at his tongue's
end the status of every case in the ofiice and
keeps in his "register " a record of every move
made in each. Finally, if he be in a State
which has codified its rules of court procedure,
he must become a commentary on that code.
A well-known law professor has incidentally
termed the study of the New York Code a
prostitution of man's intellect.
Another functionary of the big office is the
"brief man." " Blackstone ! " exclaimed a
cynical lawyer not long since, "I could hire
him, were he alive today, for twelve dollars a
week." If this estimate of the great Com-
mentator's ability be correct, and could the
bargain be struck, Sir William would enter
this gentleman's office as a "brief man."
Great cases are by no means won in court
entirely by the oratory of the advocate. It
often happens that some quiet man, working
in a recess of the library, strikes the telling
blow and wins the case.
Owing to the demand for the influence
that the name of a well-known law firm
carries with it, it is impossible for the men
in the firm to write personally all the
briefs and opinions that go out of the office.
Much of this work is done by subordinates,
and by them submitted to some man in the
firm, who signs it as his own.
Under such a system the opportunities for
the subordinate to become known are limited.
Those who are at the head of such an office
often lose sight of the old-time idea that each
lawyer, be he clerk or partner, is a man like
themselves, whose dearest possession is his
good name and whose greatest ambition is
to build up for himself a reputation for skill
and learning in his profession. Many modem
newspapers and periodicals have found that
it pays to allow their men to sign their work ;
but city lawyers as a rule are by no means as
generous to their clerks as these newspapers
are to their employees. Many lawyers who
have built up a reputation for learning and
good generalship have founded it, in part, on
briefs which they have signed and argued as
all their own, when in reality the learning and
ingenuity both of brief and argument were
not theirs, but the result of the labor and
study of some subordinate whose ability they
knew well. An occasional "big office" is
well known for its prompt recognition of the
merits of its juniors, and takes care to give
them every possible chance to get ahead. The
"big office," with its specialized work — one
man giving all his attention to surrogate or
probate practice, another to trials, another
to briefs, another to pleadings — is not, of
course, a new invention. But the number
of such offices has largely increased recently.
Fifty years ago young men obtained a law
education by reading for a few years in a law
office. Study in a law school now takes the
place of this novitiate, and the average man
who enters a city office does so only after
being admitted to the bar. Once connected
with a large firm, the chances are he stays for
a number of years in its employ ; while the man
of a half-century ago would have been very
likely, on being admitted to practice, to have
started for himself. The very existence of
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE 1M<0 1'ESSIONS
3085
these h\g offices makes a young man feel he
must know a httle of what goes on in them
before he looks at the world from the window
of his office. Once in such a place, however,
many 'men lose heart, i)ref erring to accept
the certainty of a salary to the chances of
success in facing the world alone. Others
stay only long enough to learn how these
offices do their business and then plunge out
independently. In any event, the big office
has tended both to lessen the number of men
who begin practice on their own account
and to cause those who do start for themselves
to take that step at a later time in their life
than formerly. It has made the average
lawyer less independent than he once was.
Many a skilled attorney now spends his life
as thoroughly tied down to some other man's
law office as does a clerk to the counting-
room of a merchant. Lawyers who work as
clerks are many, but lawyers who make good
livings from their own practice are not pro-
portionately as plentiful as they once were;
and it is believed that more than ever before
men drift from law into other walks of life.
The work that thousands of lawyers do
in the face of these conditions is varied.
Three police court lawyers, all known to be
experts in Mosaic jurisprudence, were not long
since discussing this very question. One
stated that he had found a knowledge of the
late decisions of the courts a sure road to
success. The second was equally certain
that the study of the statutes never failed to
bring legal eminence. Both opinions were
flouted by the third, who laid down the maxim
"Mine friends, tricks makes the lawyer."
It was not many years ago that most law-
yers in city and country alike undertook
criminal and civil cases without distinction.
While it is a fact that there has long existed
in most large cities a criminal bar — by which
is here meant men who devote themselves
almost exclusively to criminal law work — it
is also true that the more prominent metro-
politan lawyers do not make any attempt to
get criminal cases; many of them absolutely
refuse them. Thirty and forty years ago
most lawyers had some criminal practice —
at least, they took such criminal cases as
came to them unsought — and most of them
owed part of their reputation to successful
criminal work. Today it is a conservative
statement to say that the criminal bar, in
some cities, cannot claim even its propor-
tionate share of the best talent of the jjro-
fession. This is not as it should be. Human
life and human liberty are of more importance
to the community than stocks, bonds or divi-
dends, and the prevention of unjust convic-
tions is of greater moment to the public than
that each victim of a trolley accident should
be recompensed for his mental anguish.
Many causes have combined to bring about
these conditions. In criminal as in civil
courts the day of oratory is over. No time
can now be given to a lawyer to wax eloquent
in the defense of Murphy, who hit Hogan in
the eye and robbed him in a street brawl. A
criminal trial once offered opportunity to
oratorical counsel to remind the jury of the
heroes of ancient Rome and Greece, to recite
tragic poetry and to recall the glories of the
heritage of the American people. In the
courts of large cities there exists a strong
presumption that judges and jurors are suffi-
ciently familiar with both ancient and
modern history to warrant counsel in sticking
closely to facts. Accordingly, the facts come
out in quick order, and Murphy is back in
prison before ye barrister of olden time w^ould
have completed his opening address.
Nine tenths of the defendants in the New
York criminal courts have no money to pay
a lawyer's fee. The result is that these nine
tenths are tried by counsel who are assigned
by the court when the prisoner is called
for trial. Hence these lawyers (numbering
about two hundred in all the courts of the
county), who frequent these courts for the
express purpose of getting these assignment
cases, try ninety per cent, of the criminal
cases of the county. The remainder of the
defendants — the paying ten per cent. — is
largely made up of gamblers, pool-room
owners, keepers of all sorts of dives, or, in
short, prisoners arrested for vice — as dis-
tinguished from crime. The defense of such
clients has little to attract the average
lawyer who possesses a good civil practice.
The necessity, also, of rushing cases through
the courts has done much to change the
popular idea of what is necessary to consti-
tute a criminal trial.
The casual observer of the city criminal
court at work is at once struck with the fact
that the methods employed seem often to be
against the prisoner and in favor of the prose-
cutor, even the furniture of the room being
oftentimes so arranged as to aid the prose-
3086
THE RAPID GROWTH OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
cutor. The old common law evolved a
maxim that a prisoner was prestimed to be
innocent until proved guilty; but that seems
to have been somewhat abandoned.
In large cities a law}'er no longer acquires
social position merely because he is a la"wyer,
as was once the case. Society has found
other standards, and the great increase of
wealth has made its possession a widely
recognized badge of social eligibility. No
doubt in that world where once the doctor,
the parson and the squire held sway they
are not now missed. These professions do
not now claim to include in their ranks a
large majority of the educated and cultivated
men; for such men are now found in nearly
all walks of life. Xor perhaps can the law
claim as many educated men in proportion
to its numbers as formerly.
Said a loyal citizen of a western town:
"X-burg hasn't any time for culture now.
But if she could get at it, how she would make
it htrni." The law\-er who is ambitious to
stand high in his profession has little time for
extended social duties or literarv research.
He cannot yet afford to forget the admonition
of the old-time judge, that he who would be
a true lawyer must "live like a hermit and
work like a horse." Time was when no extra
effort was needed to enable him to rank
among the few cultured men of his locality.
To achieve the distinction of possessing
especial cu tivation nowadays means mental
work far beyond that involved in the routine
of professional life. Every attorney claims
to be a professional man; but let men who
are lawyers be asked what they do for a
livelihood, and half the answers will be: "I'm
in the law business." To a considerable
degree the old ideas that have surrounded
it as one of the learned professions are pass-
ing away. Go into one of the lower courts
of a city and see the men who represent
the bar there. Among the many character-
istics that are ascribed to an ideal old-school
lawyer, none are more strikingly absent than
those which indicate culture and learning.
These men are in the "law business." More
and more the educated business man makes
the successful practitioner of law.
THE RAPID GROWTH OF PUBLIC
LIBRARIES
HOW GREAT CENTRAL LIBRARIES ACT AS NEWS CENTRES FOR BRANCH
LIBRARIES, TRAVELING LIBRARIES, HOME DELIVERIES, CLASS ROOM
LIBRARIES AND OTHER SMALLER DIVISIONS— THE PROBLEMS OF
THE LIBRARIAN— THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF LIBRARY EXTENSION
BY
HELEN F. HAINES
THE free public library represents today
one of the most interesting social
forces at work in American life. As
yet it is largely a potential force, but it is
working toward the development of a national
institution as distinctive and influential
as our common school system.
Ten years have seen the beginning and the
progress of this development, as twent^'-six
years span the history of organized library
effort and fifty years cover practically the
lifetime of the free library maintained by
public taxation. The last five j-ears, indeed,
count for most of all in their remarkable
record of endowments and gifts — so largely
the result of Mr. Carnegie's "investments"
in library futures — which are giving to
libraries the housing and equipment that will
best strengthen and extend their work. In
1 90 1 gifts to libraries reached a value of
nearly $20,000,000, 812,000,000 were given
for the first half of 1902, while still more
significant in its bearing on the future
is the fact that with each year an increas-
ing number of towns and cities accept the
maintenance of a public library as a proper
municipal charge.
Formerly the people who cared for books
were supposed to seek the library, and others
need not know of its existence. Today the
THE RAl'Il) GROWTH OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
3087
public library is working to reach the people.
There are many and ever-widening channels
through which the library is ^reaching out
into sections of the community hitherto
untouched by its influence. Mohammed has
gone to the mountain. Through branches and
delivery stations it is making the resources of
the library accessible in widely separated dis-
tricts; through traveling libraries it is reaching
small groups in varied fields — in factories
in social settlements, in fire-engine and
police stations, in trolley car bams; through
class room libraries it is reaching the great
mass of public school teachers and pupils ;
through home libraries it is reaching children
that it could not influence through the
schools, while back of all these channels
stands the central library, with its special
departments for reference, for circulation, for
children, that again reach out each in a
special field.
So far the public library has not gone
beyond bringing its books to group centres
In only a few cases has it carried the book
directly to the individual. A system of
"home delivery" has been adopted in one 01
two cities, notably Springfield and Somerville,
Massachusetts, but it has been regarded else-
where as an experiment of doubtful expedi-
ency. According to this plan, library mes-
sengers are employed who make weekly calls
upon persons desiring the home-delivery
service, receiving books that are to be
returned and delivering books previously
ordered. A small fee — at Springfield, one
dollar for twelve weeks' service — is paid by
the borrower, which is generally only suflficient
to defray the cost of the messenger service.
At Springfield, besides making delivery of
books ordered from the library, the messen-
gers carry with them a collection of some
twenty-five volumes from which borrowers
may select a book if they desire. The
principle of this service is the same as that
upon which the commercial agency of the
Booklovers' Library — which is practically an
Americanized Mudie system of "home de-
livery"— has been developed. The service
rendered is obviously a luxury rather than
an essential; the demand supplied is in
truth mainly for entertainment or novelty;
and the public library, as a State-supported
educational agency, must be handicapped —
and properly — in any effort to contest this
field with a commercial competitor.
In the larger cities public library organiza-
tion now follows a somewhat uniform system.
There is a main building, where the admin-
istration is centred, which is the general
source of book supply and where study and
research work are especially fostered. In
this central building may be found a depart-
ment for blind readers with its unwieldly
volumes in raised print, a draughting-room for
persons desiring to work on patent specifica-
tions or technical designing, a photographic
dark-room for the reduction of manuscripts
or plans, study rooms in which teachers may
have books reserved for the use of their pupils
or club members may work up subjects for
debate, besides the ordinary departments
and the various executive ofhces.
The interpretation of the public library's
functions that these varied departments im-
ply is so recent that not many libraries
yet possess all these features, but they find
representation in the plans of most of the
new buildings. The great central build-
ing of the New York Public Library, now
being built, provides for these departments
and many others; the fine building of the
Providence Public Library is also an ex-
cellent example of the varied equipment of
the modern library.
Next in the scheme of organization come
the branch libraries, placed in widely sepa-
rated sections of the city, each independent in
its field, but dependent upon the central
library for supplies and under its supervision.
It has been estimated that three-quarters of
a mile is the average limit of distance that
most persons will go to read or borrow books ;
libraries have not yet been dotted at three -
quarters-of-a-mile intervals throughout our
cities, but the branch library has become one
of the most important elements in the public
library system. The Boston Public Library
has ten branches; the Philadelphia Free
Library has eight; the New York Public
Library, thirteen; the Carnegie Library of
Pittsburg, five ; in Brooklyn there are eighteen
branches, as yet without a central library.
In New York, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Cincinnati
and Detroit the gifts of Mr. Carnegie will
provide within the next few years branch
library buildings that should be models of
convenience and equipment. Branch library
plans, however, are still in the making, and
the accepted type has not yet fully developed.
But its characteristics are fairly indicated
3o88
THE RAPID GROWTH OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
in recent examples. It houses a permanent
collection of not more than 35,000 volumes,
most of which are freely accessible to the
public on "open shelves " ; it provides for refer-
ence and reading-room use, for circulation and
for children, with one or two study rooms or
alcoves; generally there is an assembly room
or auditorium seating from 300 to 500 persons.
The arrangement is the simplest possible,
glass partitions making supervision possible
for the least number of attendants. As
a rule, all pvu-chasing, cataloging and classi-
fying of books is done at the central build-
ing, so that little space for the machinery
of administration is reqmred at the branch.
Each branch is the centre of its own neigh-
borhood circle, as the main library is the
centre of the whole system; it is intended
to become a meeting place for lectures, for
clubs, and the natural resort of children and
teachers for help in school work. This is
the theory of the branch library; so far it is
mainly in the formative stage. In every city
conditions and practice vary, but the next
few years will see so great a development
on the practical side that more imiformity in
methods must naturally follow.
Subsidiarj^ to the branches are the agencies
which reach still smaller groups of readers —
delivery stations, traveling libraries, class
room and home libraries. Delivery stations,
as the name implies, are simply places where
daily, semiweekly or weekly the library
receives books returned and delivers books
requested. The St. Louis Public Library
has forty-eight such stations, the Chicago
Public Library has nearly seventy, the Boston
Public Library, twenty-one. In some cases
a small "deposit collection" is also main-
tained, from which books may be selected,
and often a delivery station has been the
nucleus of a branch. Most of the stations,
however, are located in small shops — drug
stores being generally chosen — the library
usually paying a small amount for the attend-
ance necessary.
The traveling libraries cover a wide field.
These are collections from twenty-five to fifty
volumes, often specialized on given subjects,
which are sent to institutions, societies and
other places where they may be kept for a
given period and exchanged. The New York
Public Library last year had traveling
libraries in circulation at district telegraph
stations for the use of messenger boys ; at the
city hospitals on Blackwell's Island, at seven-
teen public schools, twenty-one public school
playgrounds, six public vacation schools,
thirty fire-engine houses, nine Sunda}' schools,
at college settlements, industrial schools,
small clubs and missions. In Boston, besides
the school collections, thirty-three fire-engine
houses and eight city institutions are supplied
with traveling libraries. The Philadelphia
Free Library has more than a hundred such
libraries, the Buffalo Public Library has
eighty-four, and St. Louis and Pittsburg are
other cities where the distribution of books
has been largely extended through this
agency; while the Cincinnati Public Library
sends its traveling libraries beyond city
limits to all parts of the country.
Class room libraries are supplied by the
public library for school use, sometimes for
home circulation among the children as well
as for use in school hours. The collections
range in size from twenty-five voltunes to one
hundred or more, and are chosen with a view
to their relation to the school work as well
as to the tastes and ages of the children
generally. They may be exchanged after a
given time; but sometimes they are intended
for permanent use. In Pittsburg forty-five
schools are supplied with books in this way,
and more than sixty thousand volumes are
circulated during the year from the school-
room collections. In Buffalo books are sent
to thirty-three schools, and besides the class
room libraries in the grammar schools a daily
exchange and delivery service is maintained
for the high schools, the total yearly circula-
tion of books through the schools alone reach-
ing more than two hundred and fifty thousand
volumes. In St. Lotiis the schools are sup-
plied on the traveling library plan, boxes of
books for supplementary reading being sent
out for use in class, each box containing thirtv
copies of the same book for lower grades and
twenty-five copies for upper grades. Indeed,
the traveling librar\" principle prevails so
largely in all these extension agencies that it
is difficult to make clear lines of distinction.
Home libraries represent a different sort of
work, more personal in its aspect. It is part
of the effort to reach those most remote from
the library's influence and to make books a
factor in what is practically city missionary
work. The ■ home library seldom exceeds
twenty-five volumes, made up largely of fairy
tales and children's classics. These collec-
THE RAPID GROWTH OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
3089
tions are kept — on the traveling library plan
of excliange after a given period — in homes in
the tenements or congested sections of the
city, where they are used by the children of
the neighborhood and often form the nucleus
of little reading clubs. They are generally
in charge of "library visitors" — often young
women interested in such work who give their
service out of interest or sympathy — who
meet the children on certain days to read
aloud and talk over the books read. The
Carnegie Library of Pittsburg has probably
the most effective system of home libraries
maintained by any public library. It includes
thirty home library groups and eleven library
clubs, reaching seven hundred children, and
is under the direction of a supervise^* whose
entire time is given to the work. The year's
circulation of these books is about five
thousand, but these figures indicate less than
two-thirds of the actual use of the books, as a
book frequently makes the entire circuit of a
neighborhood before being returned to the
librarv. One book was read in this way by
ten different families. Often when no library
visitor is available the boy or girl in whose
home the library is placed undertakes its
entire charge, and generally with a weighty
sense of responsibility. The libraries are
frequently named by the children using them,
and the names are amusing evidence of
patriotism, literary aspirations or the proud
leadership of some member of the circle.
Among the twenty-seven home libraries
maintained last year by the New York Public
Library were the Columbus, the Washington,
the Nathan Hale, the Roosevelt, the Celia
Baxter and the Alcott, not to mention the
Abraham Polsky, the Gertie Walthers, and
like personal titles.
It is evident that the public library is
developing on lines that, to a degree, are
paralleling those of the public school system.
What is foreshadowed for the larger cities is a
public library system based upon a central
foundation, with subsidiary centres in each
district section of the city, and with a chain of
allied agencies reaching out from the library
into the homes of the people. And it will
need and will get parallel support. In Boston
the city appropriates $300,000 yearly for
library purposes, and in New York City
the public library system, when in full
operation, will entail an expenditure of not
less than $1,000,000 a year.
This development is not limited to the large
cities. There are now twenty-two States which
maintain special commissions or departments
for the improvement or development of public
libraries — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont,
Washington, Wisconsin. In New York this
work is carried on extensively by the Public
Libraries' Division of the University of the
State of New York. In the other States the
State library commission is a special board,
generally of from five to eight members, with
a yearly appropriation ranging from S500 to
Si 0,000 — although in one or two States no
appropriation has yet been granted, and the
commission's work has been made possible
only through money given by interested
persons. In Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota,
Indiana and Nebraska the commissions
have had especially strong influence upon
recent library development.
Traveling libraries are sent out to clubs,
granges and small villages throughout the
State, officers of the commission visit towns
where libraries have been or are to be
started, and the commission office is a
centre for advice and information on
library buildings, administration and main-
tenance. In most of these States the
commissions conduct short summer sessions
of instruction on library management for
the librarians o the State. To a degree,
also, they have joined forces, and publish
in cooperation a bulletin devoted to library
news and practical advice, 'ists of books
recommended for purchase by small libraries,
and a handbook of library methods and sug-
gestions. Their influence and activity have
grown to a remarkable degree within the past
four years, and they represent another step
in the formal organization of public library
effort. Again, this advance is to be observed
in the growth in number and activity of State
associations of librarians — now existing in
twenty-two States — and in the very recent
development of librarians' institutes, con-
ducted by the State associations, and modeled
upon the familiar teachers' institutes, with the
purpose of improving the standard of service
in the libraries of little towns and villages.
Add to these various agencies the individual
work and influence of the smallest public
3090
THE RAPID GROWTH OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
libraries, most of which are coming into closer
relations with their communities through
some of the means previously mentioned, and
it will be seen how many and how varied are
the points at which the public library now
comes into contact with the life of the people.
There are many definite results of this
library growth. One of them is the effect of
the public library upon current literature.
Through the library a good book is raised
practically to the rank of a "standard" with
certainty and promptness. There is an
increasing tendency on the part of librarians
to limit their most widely circulated collec-
tions to books that count for something in
literature, and to supply a great many copies
of such books. Thus, at the Boston Public
Library it is recommended that five hundred
copies at a time be purchased of the Lang
fairy books, which are alwaj-s in great demand
by the children. There is a less pleasing side
to this in the tmdoubted promotion through
public libraries of superficial books, careless
compilations and superfluous popular "series."
It is taken as a safe rule by publishers that
'libraries will buy them" if they deal with
nature, with useful arts, with pemmican
biography or histon,', or with anj'thing practi-
cal; and libraries do buy them, in quantities
sufficient to justify the publishers' confidence.
Another point is the effect of the free access
to books now generally granted to the public
in small libraries. Even in the large libraries
a selection of from two thousand to ten thou-
sand volumes is made freely accessible on open
shelves for readers to browse over and select
from, and in many branch libraries and small
pub'ic libraries the entire collection is thus
accessible. The popularity of this system
and its broadening effect upon the reader
have so far outweighed the administrative
disadvantage of theft and displacement of
books ; but one result of its general acceptance
must be to set up harmlessness rather than
merit as a test in book selection, and so to
weaken the library. The librarian whose
books are selected for the indiscriminate
examination and choice of all sorts and con-
ditions of men and w^omen of all ages has
brough' home to him the question of a book's
moral influence. The question of fiction is
a vexing one. The great demand of readers
is for fiction — story books for the children,
novels for their elders; but it is yet to be
determined how large a proportion of the
public funds the public library is justified in
expending for these books. Much of the
great literature of the world is fiction, but
does recognition of Scott and Thackeraj' and
Balzac and the rest warrant the public
library in supplying a score of copies of the
last much-advertised novel? There is a
growing body of opinion in the negative, and
in seems inevitable that with the develop-
ment of the public librar}' as an agency of
public education there must be a change of
policy regarding the supply of current fiction
— a supply that even when pushed to the
limit of extravagance can never correspond
with the demand of all who want to read the
last new novel.
The influence of the public library upon
the reading habit, upon the use of books,
cannot yet be fairly judged. Fifteen years
from now we shall have a basis of observa-
tion, for it must be remembered that this
development of book distribution through
public libraries has not yet lasted for one
generation. When the children who within
the last six years have been brought in touch
with books through the public library shall
have gained maturity we can better estimate
what the library is doing for the State, just as
we are only now beginning to measure the
effect of cheap and abundant newspapers
upon the popular mind. Cheap newspapers,
cheap magazines, the immense production of
cheap printed matter, these have probably
so far had more effect than the public library
in bringing about the enormous increase in
superficial reading and the thirst for speedy
and comprehensive systems of self-culture.
What we call the reading habit is, to a very
large degree, a sort of mental indulgence,
disassociated from thinking, involving neither
effort nor definite result. Yet the use of
books, even superficially, leaves a sediment of
enlarged interest and quickened sensibilities.
It is significant that almost always in review-
ing statistics of library use for a period of years
there is evident a constant improvemicnt in
the quality of the circulation, and a still more
definite gro-wth in the use of books for
reference use. Here is the best test of the
public library's usefulness. It is as it secures
the reading of better books, rather than ot
more books, as it becomes a means to sounder
thought and saner judgment, that it will
become one of the strongest elements in the
social development of the future.
AN ERA OF THRIFT IN THE MIDDLE
WEST
MODERN BUSINESS METHODS APPLIED TO FARMING AND CATTLE
RAISING— THE FARMER NO LONGER AT THE MERCY OF THE MIDDLE
MAN — GRAIN TRANSP'ORMED INTO CATTLE — MECHANICAL APPLI-
ANCES TO FACILITATE HANDLING THE CROPS— THE NEW FARMER
BY
CHARLES MOREAU HARGER
ONE day, late in the recent autumn,
a half-dozen farmers, coming fifteen
miles, drove into a prairie village
with heavy loads of com. They went to the
principal elevator and asked the price.
"Thirty cents a bushel today."
"We will go to the buyer at the other end
of the town," said the spokesman.
"It will do you no good," was the reply,
" as all the buyers pay the same price here. "
"Very well, we will go home and send our
corn to market on foot."
They drove back fifteen miles and unloaded
the corn into their own granaries, to be
shipped later in the form of fat cattle.
Such an incident would have been impossi-
ble ten years ago, when the average farmer
was compelled to take what was offered for
his crop. But two things have worked a
transformation in the grain-growing portion
of the West: the farmers have become con-
servative with prosperity, and the railroads
have widened the markets.
Five years of good crops in the West have
not only paid debts but have also made the
farmer capable of employing business methods.
A few years ago a settler visited town only
once a fortnight or once a month. He took
home with him the county papers, the few
magazines that he received from the East,
and large bundles of groceries and dry-goods.
With rural delivery and rural telephones all
that is past.
One morning the telephone in my of!ice
rang, and answering, I recognized the voice of
a farmer friend living a dozen miles from a
railroad.
" I see in the Kansas City morning papers,"
he began, "that there is trouble in Venezuela.
Is there anything later.?"
" How did you know what was in the morn-
ing papers?"
"Oh, we get them from the carrier every
day."
It was not noon, yet he had been in touch
with the world's news up to three o'clock that
morning, and this two hundred miles west
of the Missouri River.
Under these conditions the Western farmer
has developed an independence in the move-
ment of crops disconcerting to the market
manipulators.
Only a few years ago the farmer hauled his
wheat directly from the threshing machine to
the railroad, loaded it into cars and hurriedly
drew his money for it. The chances were
that he did not really get any money, for the
wheat was mortgaged and the creditor took
the proceeds. With his corn it was the same.
Dozens of loads might be seen waiting at any
prairie station, taking their turns in heaping
the dealers' yellow pile. That is seldom seen
in these days. Even the wheat is rushed to
market only in the remoter sections and in
years of mammoth crops. The millers of the
West, out in the wheat belt, are frequently
hard put to it to secure enough grain for their
mills. Elevators are at times empty, and
farmers exhibit a strange reluctance to dispose
of their produce.
One of the first things the farmers of the
West did, after they had harvested one or two
good crops, was to build commodious barns —
great red structures, after the fashion of the
old Pennsylvania bams, with generous
haymows and low eaves. They are the
symbol of the new generation and the new
methods in Western farming. They take
the place of the pole-and-sod sheds that,
formerlv used as bams, now shelter the
I
509>2
AN ERA OF THRIFT IN THE MIDDLE WEST
implements from the storms of the prairie
winter. But more than all, in their bearing
on markets and crop movements they have
huge bins for wheat and com, and their hold-
ings have an unexpected influence on the
markets of the nation. It was to such bams
as these that the farmers who refused to sell
their grain went when they returned home.
They could await the events of the market,
their own masters, subject to no dealer's will.
A striking and present example of the
modem attitude of the farmer has been seen
in the financial history of the West during
the closing six months of 1902. The wheat
crop, while not a record-breaker, was a full
average of the past two decades; the com
crop was large. Yet the Western farmer,
instead of filling the banks with money from
his crops, has drawn on his deposits, increased
his loans, bought cattle, and rested in the
calm security of abundant assets to make
possible the profit on his produce. The West
has been drawing on the East for money ;
Western banks have reached the limit of their
loan fund; the expansion of the business
operations among the Western farmers has
been disconcerting to those who wished a
speedy settlement.
The West is sending its grain to market
"on foot." It has learned that the secret
of profit is in approaching as nearly as pos-
sible the manufactured product. Sometimes
it is not possible. Such a season was 190 1-2.
The com crop of the West was ruined by the
drought of summer and cattle-feeding was
abandoned. The ranch owners, having no
market, were at the mercy of the packers.
The farmer and stock-feeder were idle, and
awaited the harvest of another crop of maize.
This came in the fall of 1902. At once there
was a rush to fill the yards. Estimates place
the following figures on the number of cattle
and sheep handled in the feed-lots of the
leading corn-producing States:
Cattle Sheep
Kansas 700,000 500,000
Nebraska 400,000 700,000
Missouri 800,000 200,000
Colorado 100,000 1 50,000
Iowa 750,000 200,000
Oklahoma 100,000 75,000
These figures are approximate: no one can
give exact statistics on an industry so varied
and so scattered. The amount of money
invested in this quantity of stock is enormous.
The cattle, for instance, weigh about one
thousand pounds when they go into the yards,
and are bought for about four cents a pound,
or forty dollars each. The sheep sell to
feeders for at least two dollars a head. With
these millions of dollars invested in live-stock,
the farmers require other millions' worth of
grain and "roughness," or fodder, to make
good their returns.
Time was when there was but one path for
Western grain: eastward to the seaboard.
Through the St. Paul, Omaha and Kansas
City gateways passed the golden harvest.
At the height of the season it was impossible
to find cars for the grain, and wheat was piled
by the tens of thousands of bushels on the
open plain or was sheltered by circus tents.
That day has passed except in remote
sections and under unusual conditions. Grain
goes to Europe from the prairies of the West
through three principal channels: over the
rails and through the Atlantic seaboard, to
the same destination by way of the Lakes, to
the Gulf of Mexico by Southern railways.
The latter, though of recent origin, has grown
rapidly in importance. New ports are being
opened, new lines of railroad built, and the
bond of interest between the North and South
of the Western States grows closer each
season through the interchange of commodi-
ties. The diffusion of crops grows more easy
and rapid, and the congestion of grain in
transit will soon be unknown. A return of
the old-time methods would derange in a
week the carrying trade of the nation, and
grain dealers would be in confusion.
In addition to greater resources and larger
plans, the Western farmer has learned some
of the little economies of this age. For
instance, early settlers hauled their wheat to
the side of box cars on the sidings or to one-
story warehouses. They were then involved
in the slow and wearisome task of shoveling
their loads, perhaps to an elevated bin. The
grain cars had a capacity of only 20,000
pounds, and a truck and a grain-box were used
in filling them, a few bushels at a time being
wheeled along a platform to the track.
Today the farmer drives upon a weighing
platform; the rear boards of the wagon-box
are loosened, while the weight is recorded and
a sample is taken out for testing; the whole
wagon tips; the red-brown flood descends,
and in the time you have taken to read this
paragraph the farmer and his team are ready
to start for home.
TROLLKV LINES IN A RAILROAD SYSTEM 3093
Twenty-five years ago the transcontinental The wheat fails now — sometimes; the corn
trains were halted in the Smoky Hill Valley withers occasionally; the fruit does not
of central Kansas that the passengers might always give abundance; but no one sells out
admire the vast wheat fields. Thousands of or goes back "East" on those accounts,
acres, reaching to the far horizon, surprised The farmers of the valley sell a dozen articles
and charmed the travelers. It was a realiza- where they once sold one. That is the secret
tion of their dreams of agricultural splendor, of the West's prosperity. The same con-
But a year later the wheat failed, and the dition exists throughout the prairie States,
settlers, having no other resource, increased It tends to stability and contentment. Added,
their mortgages or went "back East to the as it is, to the effort to utilize as much raw
wife's folks. " material as possible on the farm, and to avoid.
Today, in that same valley, on the spot when able, selling products directly to the
where the trains halted, one may stand and dealer without having in some way raised them
see not only wheat fields (now smaller and one step in the scale of value, thus receiving
better tilled), but alfalfa, corn land, orchards, double pay for the labor, it means marked
soy-beans, millet, kafir corn, and pasture — advancement in the management of the
not to mention sleek herds of milch cows Western farmer's possessions. It means
whose product goes each morning to the simply that the vast territory somewhat
yellow creamery in the distance, there to be vaguely described as "the Middle West" has
minted into thirty-cent butter for the dis- passed from pioneering and settlerhood into
tant but quickly reached New York market, the soberer but happier stage of thrift.
TROLLEY LINES IN A RAILROAD
SYSTEM
HOW THE TRUNK LINES ARE ABSORBING ELECTRIC TRAFFIC— A
GREAT STREET RAILWAY SYSTEM, ABSORBED AND EXTENDED BY THE
BOSTON & MAINE RAILROAD, CONDUCTED ON RAILROAD PRINCIPLES
BY
SYLVESTER BAXTER
r ■ iHE railroads are absorbing trolley traffic; and here and there the new rivals
lines. In the recent remarkable carry local freight. Now the railroads appear
1
development of electric traction to be getting their second wind. If they are
first came the stage of local consolidation, not winning back old trafific, they are getting
in which all city street railways came under new traffic in its place. The enormous sum-
single managements. Then came rural expan- * mer excursion business developed by the
sion. Large sections of the country have been trolley lines in New England helps the steam
covered by networks of street railways — in lines by inducing pleasure trips to distant
places consolidated into great independent points, w^hence the tourists, after several
systems. Next railroads, here and there, hours in the electrics, return by train. The
began to utilize electric traction, both trolley trolley lines are thus becoming auxiliaries to
and "third-rail," on branches with heavy the trunk lines, operated in unison with them
traffic. In all these early stages there has and evidently destined to absorption,
been a sharp antagonism between the rail- A step recently taken by one of the great
roads and the new street railways. Profitable systems of the country, the Boston & Maine
suburban traffic has been wrested from the Railroad Company, is the first decided move-
railroads, and in certain instances the rail- ment toward such unification. This company,
roads have practically been driven from the after absorbing more than half the railroad
field. They have lost rural interstation mileage of New England, concluded to acquire
3094
TROLLEY LINES IN A RAILROAD SYSTEM
street railway traffic. On account of favorable
legislation they began in New Hampshire.
A law enacted in 1895 permitted existing rail-
roads to bioild electric street railway branches
and extensions. At the same time street
railways were given the right of eminent
domain in securing private rights of way,
allowing short cuts across lots. Under these
provisions the Boston & Maine undertook,
about two years ago, the construction and
operation of the important new system in and
about Portsmouth, and extending thence
southward to Rye and Hampton beaches.
The lessons learned from this experience
have just been applied in the creation of a
new electric division, which boldly parallels
the company's trunk line between Concord
and Manchester in New Hampshire, using
water power from the Merrimac River. It
is unlike all other street railways in the bodily
adoption of steam railway practice. It bears
the same relation to the entire system of the
compan}' that any other branch or division
does, although at the same time it is a street
railway in every essential.
One serious objection to travel by the
ordinary electric line has come from the dis-
comfort caused by bumping along over the
rough roadbed. This is one of the prob-
lems solved by the entrance of a steam rail-
way into the field. The expense of roadbed
construction as substantial as that of a steam
line has been regarded as prohibitory. But
for the whole of the seventeen miles be-
tween Concord and Manchester the line was
ballasted as thoroughly as the best of steam
railways. The highway was excavated to a
depth of two and three feet and fresh clean
gravel was put down in place of the inferior
road material. The expense was kept down
by the use of a construction train, regularly
equipped with dump cars, workmen's cars
and steam shovels. Some of the grades were
ten per cent. As these were too heavy
for an ordinary locomotive, a geared loco-
motive, such as is used in mountain work in
the Andes, was employed. The use of this
train on the streets was made possible by the
permission of the local authorities. This
reduced the cost of the work two-thirds.
Under the right of eminent domain about
one-third of the line was built outside of the
highway over private land — about two miles
near Manchester and three miles near Concord.
The street railwav lines of Concord have
been made practically a portion of this new
electric system. The law, to be sure, does
not yet allow steam railway companies to
acquire and operate existing street railway
lines — a step that logically follows and which
naturally will next be taken in New Hamp-
shire and other States. In this instance,
however, the difficulty has been met by secur-
ing control of the Concord Street Railway
Company through personal purchases in the
names of certain officials of the Boston
& Maine. The lu-ban railway lines, while
remaining legally separate under a distinct
corporation, are operated in harmony with
the Concord & Manchester electric division,
with the same officials at the head of both.
The passenger over this line is struck by
the remarkably smooth running of the car.
The jar and bumping are no greater than on
a thoroughly constructed steam line. The
ties, laid in firm ballast, are thoroughly
tamped into place, with the rails spiked hard
thereto ; and improved tie-plates are used at
the joints. Much continued future expense
in power and from wear and tear has been
averted by cuts and fills as heavy as on the
average steam railway and by blasting away
ledges. In various places the entire highway
has thus been changed, greatly to the benefit
of ordinary traffic. With heed to the engineer-
ing axiom that curves in railroading are a
source of waste, the highway was relocated
in various places under cooperation with the
local authorities. In one place a tangent, or
perfectl}' straight piece of track, 6,000 feet
long was thus secured.
To prevent racking of cars and to permit
greater speed, the outer rail on curves
is elevated, as on steam railways. Near
Concord, where the line departs from the
highway for a mile or more, the Hookset
branch of the trunk line is paralleled, and it
is seen how the electric construction bears
comparison with the steam railway. To
avoid a new bridge, the electric line crosses
the Merrimac near Garvin's Falls by the
regular railroad bridge. Danger of accidents
through a common use^of the same track by
both electric cars and steam trains is avoided
by the use of an interlocking signal system
with derailing switches. Another feature in
bridges is at a crossing of the steam tracks in
Concord. Here the highway bridge, being
deficient both in width and strength, has been
paralleled by a bridge for the trolley line.
TROLLEY LINES IN A RAILROAD SWSIKM
CLIMBING A STKEP GRADE AT FULL SPEED ON A STONE-BALLASTED PRIVATE RIGHT OF WAV
In street-railway management it is a com-
mon practice to wait until a given length
of track is in really bad condition and then
reconstruct it. Here, however, three gangs
of section men are at work throughout the
year keeping the road-bed and track up to
the standard just as on steam lines.
Devices for preventing the slipping of the
trolley by all possible strengthening of the
supports and by increasing the flexibility of
the trolley wire at points of exceptional ten-
sion have been provided. A telephone circuit
covers the entire line, with telephones at every
siding and at all important points. The cars,
built from plans of the company's master car-
builder, are de.:igned upon steam railway
lines — heavier than in usual street-railway
practice for the sake of greater stability,
smoother running and higher speed. The
use of "trailers" in street-railway work — cars
without motors drawn by motor cars, as a
railway train is drawn by a locomotive —
very common in the early stages of electric
railway development, is now seldom resorted
to, for the difficulty of making quick stops
makes the practice dangerous ; but on this line
the system of running cars in trains when
traffic is heavy is made possible by employing
the multiple system of control used on the
electric elevated lines in Chicago and New
York and the elevated and subway lines in
Boston. By this system the motor and air
brakes of each car are controlled by a single
motorman at the head of the train, just as
the engineer on the locomotive controls his
train, with the difference that, with independ-
ent motive power existing on every car
there is an extraordinary promptness in start-
ing, stopping and attaining maximum speed.
This is a new departure for street-railway
work, vasth' increasing efficiency.
In the operation of the system punctuality
was difficult to introduce. Employees were
not easy to impress with the importance of
running the cars on time. But the people
along the line are now said to regulate their
watches and clocks by the running of the cars.
Various steam-railway rules are bodily
adopted. An official watch inspector regu-
lates the watches of standard make carried by
conductors and niotormen. There is a com-
plete system of train despatching by telephone.
If a car chances to be delayed more than two
minutes at a siding, the conductor is required
to call for instructions from the despatcher.
Motorman and conductor are held jointly
responsible, as in the case of engineer and
conductor on steam lines. Therefore the con-
ductor has to repeat his instructions to the
motorman before leaving the telephone post
so that in case of doubt the despatcher may
be consulted immediatelv bv him also.
3096
TROLLEY LINES IN A RAILROAD SYSTEM
THL FIRST FOUR-CAR TRULi^hV TRAIN
Instead of the " peg-and-hole " method of
despatching in use on some street railways,
the system adopted here, that of "plotting,"
is the same as on steam lines. Paper ruled
in squares is used. Light lines form squares
within those formed by heavy lines. The
heavy vertical lines represent the hours and
their larger fractions; the heavy horizontal
lines the sidings. The progress of a car from
Manchester to Concord, both in time and dis-
tance, is represented by a line in an upward
SETTING THE SWITCHES AND SEMAPHORES FROM
THE SIGNAL TOWER
slope from the bottom to the right. The car
starting from Manchester to Concord is
depicted in its progress by a similar plotting,
beginning on the same vertical line, and run-
ning in a downward slope. The crossing of
the two courses denotes the exact place and
time where the cars meet. The plotting for
the whole day gives, in a lattice-like series of
lines, the history of the day's car movement,
with lie time and place of every crossing.
The - lit of this is the adoption of regular
"car-runs" corresponding to the regular
trains of a steam line. This in turn has
solved the problem of handling extra cars —
the cause of some of the most disastrous
trolley line accidents both East and West in
the past year. Where the motorman is
expected to tell the other motorman met at
a siding about other cars that are coming, the
fallibility of the human memory is likely to
lead to serious consequences.
The device of target-signals on the cars by
day and colored lanterns by night corre-
sponds to the flags and lights carried by a ,
locomotive and serves the same purposes.
A green target or light tells that the section
behind is clear, and red indicates that another
car is following. The absence of any signals
means danger. Extra cars are thus run as
sections of a given regular car-run. A car
that chances to be delayed loses its regular
run and becomes a section of the following
run. So there are never any cars "running
wild," as in ordinary practice.
TROLLEY LINES IN A RAILROAD SYSTEM
3097
A TYPICAL CAR LEAVING CONCORD
All this has made possible a system of time-
tables that gives the exact time when each
car leaves every important point. The wait-
ing passenger knows just when to expect his
car, just as if waiting at a station for a rail-
way train. This is a vast improvement over
the ordinary puzzling street-railway time-
table which is appreciated by travelers.
Another exceptional feature is the fully
equipped general passenger agency in charge
of the company's assistant passenger agent at
Concord. For fares on the railway, coupons
that correspond to railroad tickets are used.
For instance, in case of a trip involving the
payment of four five-cent fares, trolley line
practice calls for the collection of four nickels
at four successive intervals, often to the
annoyance and confusion of the passenger.
Here the whole amount is collected at once,
and coupons to represent each interval are
given and kept in sight as in case of a con-
A NEW BRIDGE, SHOWING HEAVY RAILROAD
EQUIPMENT
ductor's check on the steam cars — one coupon
being taken up at each fare-limit. Much
trouble for passenger, conductor and company
is thus very agreeably avoided.
In the general passenger agency special
attention is given to the development of
business, just as with steam railways. Track
is kept of all important public gatherings,
the meetings of all sorts of organizations, local
and general, church festivals and the like,
and for these occasions extra car service is
offered. Traffic is built up in every way.
On the day of President Roosevelt's visit to
Concord — a citv of about 20,000 inhabitants
I
THE TROLLEY LINE CLEARED FOR A STEAM TRAIN
3098
TROLLEY LINES IN A RAILROAD SYSTEM
A CLEAR RUN THROUGH THE COUXTRV
— 25,000 fares were rung in, but no blockades
occurred and not a car was late.
Great pains are taken to select good men
and encourage faithful and permanent service.
Instead of punishment by suspension, as is
customary with the average street railway, the
men are dealt with in the ways prevailing
on all other parts of the Boston & Maine
system. The practice of "record marking"
is that in use on steam railroads generally.
A record is kept of every man, and infractions
of rules are denoted bj^ graded marks. If a
inan falls below a certain rating he loses his
place. But a man has the right to inspect his
own record at any time, and may claim a hear-
ing on any marking. The mark is removed
and the record cleared if the circumstances
are satisfactorily explained. The annual
examination for the men takes the record
duly into consideration. This examination
covers not onh^ the conduct of employees
under the rules, but a determination of physi-
cal condition, including a test for color-
blindness, and is extremely thorough.
This important experiment is significant of
progress in various ways: superior efficiency
in public service; advantage to the railway
company b}^ an enlargement of its scope
through the addition of an important field of
operations; advantage to municipalities by
improved conditions of the highways; and
advantage to employees through subjection
to superior methods of discipline, organiza-
tion and systematized promotion.
THE TRACK IN GOOD CONDITION IN THE SUBURBS OF CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
PRESIDENT LUCIUS TUTTLE
OF THE BOSTON AND MAINE RAILROAD
CLEARING A PLOT FOR PLANTING
Hacking away the underbrush with machetes
GROWING CUBAN TOBACCO IN THE
UNITED STATES
SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS IX PRODUCING CUBAN LEAF IN TEXAS
AND OHIO— THE METHODS EMPLOYED IN CUBA — A WHOLE
FAMILY AVORKING DAY AND NIGHT ON A SMALL PLOT OF
GROUND— CAN WE COMPETE WITH CUBA IN THE INDUSTRY?
BY
MARRION WILCOX
SEED PLOT IN THE
VUELTA ABA JO
MEANWHILE,"
said Don
Domingo,
who had taken us over
one of his plantations
and through one of his
factories that morning,
"meanwhile, for our
solace, here are some of
the best cigars in the
world."
As the ordinary cigars
are somewhat longer
than a finger, so those
he laid on the table
were somewhat shorter
than a forearm; they
were black as coals. In
an hour or two the fire would creep that
portentous distance with the help of but
a little puffing; and in their smoke, for
all its pungency, there was the fugitive
odor of roses. We had watched him
as he chose, one by one, these formidable
things among hundreds that his workmen
reckoned perfect products of their skill,
rejecting the others on account of some slight
imperfections that his trained sense detected.
"Infinite care," said he, "is required to
cultivate this leaf, and artistic delicacy of
treatment and handling at every stage of
production. It will not be easy to find labor
equal to ours for this particular industry in
any other country. " '
We liad been talking as we lunched together
less than a year ago — half a dozen men — at a
GROWING CUBAN TOliACCO IN 1 1 1 1-: INl'lKD STATES ^loi
PULLING THE SEEDLINGS FOR TRANSPLANTING
table placed in the garden of "The Delights, "
bordering on the Vuelta Abajo.
"Besides," Don Domingo continued, "our
peculiar Cuban soil and climate are indis-
pensable for the growth of the finest tobacco.
When the Secretary of Agriculture in
Washington consulted me about his plans
for growing tobacco equal to the Cuban leaf
in the States, I said to him: 'We Cubans can-
not raise fine tobacco except in certain
restricted areas. The products of other
parts of the island remain hopelessly inferior.
Even in adjoining fields nature produces
different qualities. How, then, should you
in America, where soil and climate are totally
dififerent from ours, expect to approximate
the Vuelta Abajo leaf?' It is a question of
climate and soil. "
"Soil merely," it was objected; "or, if a
warm and moist atmosphere is also neces-
sary, that can be produced artificially, as in
the successful experiments with shade-grown
Sumatra tobacco in the Connecticut Valley."
" But the soil of Pinar del Rio province is
" * ^Y^ '•> ' /
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'~'~'>'^ -
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tv
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VS '4ito'^
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tf
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4
<
-^
r
',» '
PLANTING THE SEEDLINGS
" For work in the field antiquated >vooden plows are still used "
3I02 GROWING CUBAN TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES
SEARCHING FOR TOBACCO WORMS
Each leaf must be examined frequently
■unique," said Don Domingo. "Until the
Department of Agriculture at Washington
finds a Vuelta Abajo in the United States it
can make no headway."
Now the report of Secretary Wilson, pub-
lished on December 4, 1902, contains this
businesslike statement :
" A conference has been held in Washington
recently by the tobacco experts of the Department
to consider the general situation and to advise as to
the methods to be pursued during next season,
especially in Ohio and Texas. Arrangements have
been made for experimentation during the coming
crop season, with good prospects of producing fine
filler tobacco in these two States. Leaf lias been
grown tliat cannot be distinguished from the imported
Cuban when properly fermented."
PREPARING THE TOBACCO FOR SELECTION
" The neglect of growers to sort the leaves adds to the peiplexity "
GROWING CUBAN TOJiACCO IN TlIK UNITED STATES
3'03
MAKING "CARROTS"
Putting up the tobacco for baling
The Department of Agriculture, in other
words, has already found soil in two widely
separated States that is suitable for the pro-
duction of good Cuban tobacco. Has it,
then, discovered a new Vuelta Abajo ?
This much, at any rate, is clear: recog-
nizing in tobacco grown in Texas exceptional
qualities contained only in occasional leaves,
to which the main crop was decidedly
inferior, the Bureau of Soils sent repre-
sentatives to eastern Texas, who, after
this year's work, rejjort that they have
located the soil-type and have found the
desired leaf under conditions which indicate
that large quantities can be produced of
uniformly high grade. Only a small amount
of leaf which could be fermented has been
grown this year, but samples have been sub-
mitted to dealers and brokers in New York
and Philadelphia, and these authorities now
admit that the leaf is a Cuban leaf with the
characteristic aroma.
Most of the land that will produce the leaf is
still in forest. The Department will send two
BALING THK "CARROTS" FOR SHIPMENT
Each bale, costing for production between $50 and $62, will yield 3,000 cigars
3I04 GROWING CUBAN TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES
" STRIPPING " TOBACCO
Separating it into individual leaves
parties to Texas at once to survey the area,
and will enlarge the party of experts in order
to grow fifteen or twenty acres of tobacco.
The Department will then have all necessary
information in regard to methods of growing,
curing, fermenting and packing — details very
essential to the commercial success of the
industry wherever instituted.
The Department representatives were em-
ployed last year at Willis, Texas; at present
they are at Woodville and Nacogdoches in
the same State, and they have made favor-
able reports of observations as far south as
Liberty. The area thus roughly defined is
larger than all the fine tobacco-growing
districts in Cuba combined.
And now, if the new industry is developed,
what can be learned from Cuban methods
and Cuban mistakes?
In Cuba a clearing on some sunny hill-
side is used for a seed-plot to secure a natural
hotbed for the seedlings ; but the growers err
by taking seeds from inferior third-growi;h
plants, which, unsuitable for cigars, have been
allowed to ripen their seeds. The result is a
gradual degeneration, with such diminution
of individual plants that their aromatic
brown leaves, when they reach the hands of
the escojadorcs, have sometimes seemed des-
tined to share the fate of their dwarfed
yellow Turkish cousins. To check this degen-
eration, strong fertilizers have occasionally
been used in such large quantities that the
leaves, while regaining their lost size, lost
WETTING THE TOBACCO TO MAKE IT READY FOR CIGARS
GROWING CUBAN TObACCO IN THE UNITED STATES 3105
'IN THE LARGE ROOM WHERE MEN AND BOYS ARE SEATED AT TABLES MAKING CIGARS"
their fine qualities also. Scientific selection of
the seeds would certainly improve the crops.
For work in the fields antiquated wooden
plows are still used. Indeed, it is related
that during the war Cuban refugees essayed
tobacco cultivation in Florida, only to dis-
cover that they were outclassed by the
American farmers. Their failure they ascribed
to the malign influence of the modern steel
plows and to the American mule. "Give us
back our 6Mrro5 and Cuban plows ! . . . "
The fact is that the Cubans of today have not
studied their own methods. Unreasoning,
they carry on what their fathers have taught
them. The cost of production might be con-
siderably reduced by modern devices.
The precious tobacco land is cultivated in
small farms — an arrangement that seems
necessary to those who employ only primitive
methods of destroying insect life. Don
Domingo would tell us that a native family
cannot take care of more than a small field.
Moreover, the labor of the entire family is
required, for work goes on day and night.
Every leaf must be examined frequently and
kept from the tobacco caterpillar. The wife
and children must aid the adult male laborer,
taking turns throughout the twenty-four
hours. And at the end of a season of such
days the family's aggregate earnings, repre-
sented in the value the crop has in excess of
rent, may be $500. "Certainly on a large
scale there might be great economies; but
on a large scale, to exercise the care our
laborers take — it is impossible!" Secretary
Wilson's comment on the small tobacco
farms in Cuba, apropos of the raising of
Cuban tobacco in Texas was: "Americans
PUTTING THE BANDS ON CIGARS
3io6 GROWING CUBAN TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES
will not sit up all night to pick caterpillars
off tobacco leaves. They will spray them by
machinery."
The neglect of the Cuban growers to sort
the leaves adds to the difficulty in the
process of manufacture. Again, in the large
room where one or two hundred men and
boys sat at tables making cigars, until quite
recently the windows were always closed.
The old idea was that fresh air would
carry away part of the flavor and scent of the
tobacco; a draught, too, might scatter the
light leaves laid in order on the long working-
tables. The government of intervention, how-
year 1900. for example, Cuba sent to us only
40,000,000 cigars, while the United States
produced 5,800,000,000. Yet we know very
well — now, when two years have passed —
that quality wins, as usual.
The Department of Agriculture at Wash-
ington wishes to learn by experiment whether
it can aid our planters and manufacturers
to secure quality as well as quantity.
The experiment just begun does not divert
to new uses lands that are already productive ;
on the contrary, it is to be made in a region
that has not yet been cleared of forest trees.
The probable increase in the value of the
b
h'
t^r^i
^--
m
■
1
ITPICAL SMALL CUBAN FARMS
One family cultivates each plot
ever, ordered a year ago that such windows
should be opened at the top, and conditions
now are better. If the experiments in Texas
and Ohio are to be successful, the Cuban
errors must be avoided; and we should
remember, also, while noticing certain imper-
fections in Cul)an methods, that the island's
distinctive industry is on the whole well
conducted, and so firmly established that
competition will at first be difficult.
Preeminence in the production of fine
cigars has hitherto seemed to be the monopolv
of the Cubans beyond all dispute. In the
lands in eastern Texas may, therefore, be
regarded as an unforeseen addition to the
national wealth. For it is customary to say
that Vuelta Abajo lands are not for sale at
any price. In the best districts, such as
San Luis, province of Pinar del Rio and
San Juan y Martinez, one cahalleria (equal
to thirty-three and one-third acres) of land
prepared for planting rents for S800 a year.
In districts which, though uncommonly
fertile, produce less approved grades, the
rental of one caballeria varies between $400
and S500 a year.
HERBERT* SPKNCER, 1S84
HERBERT SPENCER, ABOUT 1S65
PhotogrAphed by Barrnuds
Photographed by John Watkins
HERBERT SPENCER
BY
GEORGE ILES
DERBY, in the heart of England, is
today a stirring town of loo.ooo
inhabitants, thanks to the Midland
Railway, which has its headquarters there.
In 1820 the population was scarcely one-
fifth as much as now, for all that Derby dates
back to the Roman occupation and lies on
the highway from London to the north.
There dwelt in Derby in 1820 a schoolmaster
of ability and notable independence of char-
acter, William George Spencer, whose father
before him had been a teacher. His own
powers of eliciting the thought of his pupils
find a remarkable record in his "Inventional
Geometry," a little book widely in favor
among English and American teachers to this
day. Mr. Spencer also devised a system of
lucid shorthand which is deemed meritorious
by judges familiar with systems of world-
wide acceptance.
To this man, who retained comeliness and
vigor to his old age. a single child was born.
Herbert, who came into the world on April 27,
1820. His education proceeded slowly and
on unconventional lines, first at the hands of
his father, and afterward under the direction
of his uncle. Rev. Thomas Spencer, Curate of
Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath. At seven-
teen Herbert took up railway engineering, a
profession which he followed for eight or nine
years, until the crash in railway enterprises
forced him out of work. He had, at twentv-
two, written for the Xon-conjormist a series
of articles on the proper sphere of govern-
ment. This opened to him a career as a
writer, and in London for four years, begin-
ning with 1848, he was a sub-editor of the
Economist. In 1850 Thornton Hunt, a son of
Leigh Hunt, and George Henry Lewes estab-
lished the Leader, a weekly journal, to which
Spencer contributed. Another contributor,
recalling those far-ofif days, thus describes him :
" He had a ruddy complexion and gave one the
impression of being a young country gentleman of
3io8
HERBERT SPENCER
I tographed by G. A. Fawkes
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HERBERT SPENCER WAS BORN
27 Exeter Street, Derby
the Sporting farmer class. When discussion arose
his manner was earnest, and he argued as a man
who had carefully thought out his convictions.
Despite his vigorous look, he had even then misgiv-
ings about his health. On Friday nights, just before
the publication of the Leader, we had at the office
eleven o'clock teas. George Eliot, who at that time
lived at Chapman's, the bookseller's, near by in
the Strand, was sometimes with us. Spencer, like
herself, occasionally read final proofs. At these
informal parties we usually had Thornton Hunt,
William James Linton, the engraver, and Lewes,
who was first presented to George Eliot by Spencer."
In 1850 appeared the first of Spencer's
books, "Social Statics," which contained in
embryo much of the poHtical philosophy of
his subsequent writings. His second work,
the "Principles of Psychology," was pub-
lished in 1855. In 1852 he began the series
of essays w^hich many critics regard as his
best work. The third of them was an argu-
ment for the development hypothesis, of
striking power and originality. Still more
remarkable was the article on "Progress: Its
Law and Cause," which appeared in the
Westminster Review in 1857, maintaining for
the first time as it does that evolution is a uni-
versal process. This conviction had struck so
deeply into Spencer's mind as to prove the
turning point in his career. When, in 1858, he
planned his Sjmthetic Philosoph}^ it was with
evolution as its keynote. In that Philosophy
he duly incorporated the Psychology of 1855.
In 1896, after thirty-six years' labor, the
author came to the end of his task, and
a noble monument it is of original and
constructive thought, of a purpose coura-
geously carried to success despite poverty,
ill health and the prolonged withholding
of public recognition.
From an authoritative source some account
of the author and his methods is here for the !
first time published.
When the portraits of Herbert Spencer are]
compared with those of his father and mother,
it is easv to see that the mold and structure j
Copyright by Ernest H. Mills. London
THE PARADE, BRIGHTON, IMMEDIATELY IN FRONT OF HERBERT SPENCER'S HOUSE
HERBERT SPENCER
HE ELEADS WITHOUT GLASSES AT EIGHTY-ONE
Copyrighted by Ernest H. Mills, London
3IIO
HERBERT SPENCER
of his face were from his father, coming out
with new strength in the son. From his
mother were derived the long upper hp and
the distinctive expression of the features.
For her he had a strong affection ; his grief at
her death was profound. During her last
long illness Spencer devised for her a bed
which moved in any direction at a touch. In
other ways he has shown inventive talent.
When a young man he constructed a veloci-
meter to indicate the speed of locomotives.
Long before Francis Galton produced com-
posite photographs, Spencer suggested the
idea and pointed out its value. In early life
he was a capital draughtsman and attained
some facility as a painter in water-colors.
He had as a young man a strong bass voice
of good timbre, and used to sing in part
music until ill health forbade the exertion.
When he began the composition of "" First
Principles" in i860 he adopted the practice
of dictating to an amanuensis. He was
spending the summer by the shore of a
Scottish loch. His habit was to dictate for a
quarter of an hour, tlien row for an equal
period with the object of so stimulating the cir-
culation of the blood as to carry him through
another fifteen minutes' dictation, and so on
throughout the forenoon. Xeither then nor
afterward did he work in the afternoon.
Ten years later, at times when his health fell
to a low ebb, he would go to a racket court in
the north of London, play with the man in
charge, and dictate in the intervals of the
game. One of the most abstruse portions of
his Psychology, the argument for Transfigured
Realism, was composed under these un-
promising circumstances. His usual pro-
gramme as he wrote the volumes of the
"Synthetic Philosophy'" was to leave his
liouse soon after nine in the morning and
direct his steps to Kensington Gardens.
There he walked until nearly ten o'clock, his
head slightly bent, his pace somewhat rapid,
his mind evidently in meditation. Yet he
was never too absorbed to greet a passing
acquaintance with a winning smile. Regularh'
at ten o'clock he appeared in his workroom
HERBERT SPENCER AT EIGHTY-ONE
At home, sitting overlooking the sea
Copj-righted by Ernest H. Mills, London
HERBERT SPENCER
3111
in Leinster Place, a retreat known to hardly
any one, and sacred against intrusion. He first
dictated his correspondence, often rebelling
at its onerous demands. Then he turned to
his systematic work, soon rising to the full
tide of dictation; usually he went on without
a break till close on one o'clock, when he
hurried away to luncheon. If his health was
out of order, he would stop abruptly at any
moment and leave the house, saying that his
head felt quesr. When fairly well he would
smoke half a cigar, finding that it promoted
the flow of thought. His light-blue eyes, as
he reflected, had the thinker's far-away look.
The dictation was continuous ; there were no
interruptions and only brief pauses. The
panorama of thought unwound itself slowly
and apparently without an effort. He seldom,
in resuming his task, needed to be reminded
of the last word spoken, and he never changed
his calm, sitting position in front of the grate.
Never did he patch, reconstruct or begin
again. The matter seemed to have long been
familiar to him, and only to be taking its final
shape before his eyes. Now and then a
brilliant thought would flash suddenly upon
him. Thus the felicitous antithesis in his
"Sociology" of the religion of amity and the
religion of enmity was a surprise to himself,
and so was his declaration that his works are
not only caviat to the many but caviar to
the few. He rarely used notes. At the
end of a week or two's dictation he would
begin revising his pages. His sole objects
were greater conciseness and precision of
language. There was much substitution of
short phrases for long ones, but there were no
wholesale excisions and few additions. His
works might have been printed from his
dictated manuscripts and shown no other
defects than redundancies. Considering the
difficulty of his subjects, the solidity of the
matter and his finish of style and treatment,
his rate of composition was not slow. On
good mornings he would produce 1,000 words.
This was reduced by the time occupied in
revision, the arrangement of materials and
relapses into ill health to a daily average for
the year of 330 words. In 1879, when he was
recovering from a serious illness, sitting under
the trees of Kensington Gardens, he dictated
his autobiography to an amanuensis.
Spencer has never been much of a reader:
he was wont to say that if he were to read as
[■much as other people he would know as little
as they. He has never bought many books,
nor borrowed from circulating libraries or
other sources, and yet he has managed to
accumulate enormous stores of knowledge.
He read but little in the forenoon, and he
dared not read at all in the evening through
dread of insomnia, but for all that he seemed
to miss nothing in print that bore on his work.
Almost all his reading must have taken place
at odd moments, just after breakfast, after
luncheon, and in the afternoons regularly
passed at the Atheneum Club. A little time
went a long way with him : five minutes over
an article, half an hour over a book, availed
him as much as half an hour or half a day to
another man. Much was communicated to
him by friends of eminence in science, who
took pride in placing their information at his
service. Among these were Huxley, Tyndall
and Hooker. Huxley read and revised the
manuscripts of "First Principles " and "The
Principles of Biology. " Early in life Spencer
mastered the art of putting questions, and his
unswerving devotion to a single task kept his
mind ever focused, so that every new fact or
suggestion at once found its place in his
thought. His memory is strong for facts and
principles and weak for words ; he could never
quote correctly poetry of any length. He
has the faculty of divination which Augustin
Thierry admired in Walter Scott. The blank
forms of knowledge were ever in his mind,
ready to be filled up by long-considered inquiry.
He knew well how to make his assistants render
him the utmost aid in gathering data, so as to
spare himself for the organizing work he alone
could do. He would ask an assistant whether
such-and-such a series of facts was to be
found in history, with the events of which
he had hardly any acquaintance. The man
might be an indifferent researcher and not at
once discover the facts required ; but he always
discovered them eventually. Spencer has a
keen eye for a hint that an ordinary thinker
would not notice. In his "Sociology" he
sets forth his ghost theory of the origin of
religion — the theory that a ghostly double was
suggested to primitive man by his dreams
and swoons, by apoplexy, catalepsy and
ecstasy, and that thence have proceeded
beliefs in spirits, in another life, and in deities.
The suggestion of all this came to Spencer in
Robert Southey's "History of Brazil." In
the first volume of that work, page 237, the
author says of the Tupis of Brazil : " Tupa is
3II2
HERBERT SPENCER
their word for Father, for the Supreme Being,
for thunder; it passed by an easy process
from the first of these meanings to the last,
and the barbarous vanity of some tribes
compounded from it a name for themselves.
In these words their whole theolog\' is at once
comprised and explained. They addressed
no prayers to this xmiversal parent ; he was
neither the object of hope nor of fear. Their
diabolism was rooted deeper : dreams, shadows,
the nightmare and delirium had generated
superstitions which a set of knaves systema-
tized and strengthened." A theory of ani-
mism, which has much in common with the
ghost theory of Spencer, is elaborated in
Edward B.' Tylor's "Primitive Culture."
Both authors worked independently and in
ignorance of each other's results until the
publication of Spencer's "Sociology.'." A
singular adumbration of the theory of Spencer
w-as set forth by Thomas Hobbes as long
ago as 1 651, in the forty-fifth chapter
of his " Leviathan," in which he treats of
Demonology.
Spencer's knowledge of literature is not
extensive. He is familiar with Shakespeare
and Scott. He has a hearty admiration for
' ' Tristram Shandy, ' ' and dislikes the coarseness
of Fielding; he regards the "Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table " as a gem. He liked William
Black's short stories as they were read to him
during a convalescence, and relished the sharp
skits of Grenville Murray's memoirs. All that
he has taught in his " Ethics " he has exempli-
fied in his life. His business engagements,
under whatever stress of ill health or early
penury, were always strictly fulfilled. For
more than forty years he has been, in a
manner, his own printer, engraver, book-
binder and publisher. Everybody who has
dealt with him in these various interests
testifies that he is a just and generous man.
As in business relations, so also in those of
society. While on the committee of the
Atheneum Club he constantly fought for the
admission of men of science and of letters
who had made their mark as against official
personages of more notoriety. At the London
Library he showed equal courage in with-
standing, and successfully, the dictation of
a peer eminent for little else than his rank.
Naturally of a robust build, he preserved
his bodih^ vigor till past sixty: it was in 1884
that he became unable to take his accustomed
long walks. In that year he began to drive
to the Atheneum Club in the afternoons,
instead of walking across the parks as
formerly. His cerebral strength had given
way many years before. In 1855 he
resided at Pentonville, absorbed in writing
his "Psychology-." He had then few acquaint-
ances, had joined no club, and was left much
to himself. He could not shake off the
obsession of his subject ; his thoughts haunted
him by night as well as by da}'. Ever since
he has been a sufferer from insomnia, and for
eighteen months after the completion of his
book he could do nothing. Then, in his
impatience, he one day resumed work, to
discover, as George Sand and others in like
case had done, that his strength gradually
came back to him. He slowly regained vigor
enough to accomplish a large amount of toil,
but never with perfect security: it was always
touch and go with him. At such times he
threw up his work and hurried away to his
native Derby, or to Brighton or Tunbridge
Wells. There he went about killing time as
best he could, feeling thoroughly bored and
miserable. In three or four weeks he would
return, apparently restored, and without an
effort take up his work at the point where he
had dropped it; in a moment the bow of
Ulysses was bent as easily as ever. As time
went on these relapses grew less frequent,
and at the end of fifteen years' work on the
"Synthetic Philosophy" he found himself,
in 1875, in much better health than when he
began. In 1897 he underwent a serious
collapse, followed two 3''ears later by a
marvelous restoration, attributed to the use
of meat cooked in a particular way. This
rejuvenescence disposes him to believe that
nervous troubles may be assuaged with
advancing years.
When Spencer visited America in 1882 his
address to his friends at Delmonico's was a
chapter from his gospel of relaxation and
rest. This was drawn from personal experi-
ence. In early life he was told by his physician
that his health would never improve while he
worked so hard and lived alone in lodgings.
From the sixties onward he resided in a
boarding-house at 37 Queen's Gardens, one
of the best neighborhoods of Bayswater.
His recreations now became varied and of
inestimable benefit. When lawn tennis was
revived he took it up eagerly; he was always
ready to join a picnic or an excursion, when
he was as active and sportful as the youngest.
HERBERT SPENCER
3"3
He often went to the theatres and the opera,
visually in company with friends. He set much
store by his annual outing in Perthshire or
Argyleshirc, where he fished for salmon with
the tlioroughncss which went into everything
that he did. His flics were always of his own
design. Indoors, when in London, to get
through the long, dull evenings when he had
no engagement, he played whist at first and
then billiards, at which his game was steady
rather than brilliant. He often dined out,
less from choice than for distraction from
toil. As a capital talker he was much in
request. An audacious lady once sought
him for a dance; he told her that he did
not dance nor did he care to be a wallflower.
Never has philosopher had more warm
friends than Spencer. To the Derby friends
of his youth he was attached to the last. One
of them, Mr. Edwin Lott, a banker, who died
some years ago, was his companion during
his American tour in 1882. In London his
first associates and friends were Doctor John
Chapman, the editor and publisher; Marian
Evans, whom he persuaded to become a
novelist; and her husband, George Henry
Lewes. Afterward came the friendships with
Huxley and Tyndall. With Huxley the
feeling was chiefly a matter of mutual intel-
lectual respect ; in the late fifties the two had
long walks together, vigorously debating the
new phases of the development theory.
With Tyndall the connection was more
emotional and less intellectual than with
Huxley, although Spencer's uncompromising
Radicalism often collided with the Irishman's
Orange-tinted Conservatism. To all his
friends Spencer was loyal to the bone. When
Sir Joseph Hooker fell out w^ith the Minister
of Works in the Gladstone administration of
1868-74, he organized the scientific resistance
which left the great botanist in possession of
the field. In America Spencer had many
devoted friends. First and chief of these was
Doctor Edward L. Youmans, his most
enthusiastic and helpful disciple. When
he projected the " International Scientific
Series," he induced Spencer to write for it
the "Study of Sociology," suggesting how
the subject might be treated. That volume
remains the most readable of Spencer's many
books, and one of the most instructive. John
Fiske, who later oa based his "Cosmic
Philosophy" on Spencer's system, gave his
master firm and unfaltering support.
One of the earliest honors paid the philos-
opher was also the most picturesque. About
1870 the late Sir Julius Haast, the explorer,
l)cstowcd Spencer's name on a grand range of
mountains which buttress the western coast of
New Zealand. The next distinction was one
which when offered to Emerson was by him
considered the choicest of his life. In 1872,
or thereabouts, a committee of students of
St. Andrews, the oldest university in Scotland,
proposed to elect Spencer as their Lord Rector.
One of the leading professors, Thomas Spencer
Baynes, believed that had he consented to
stand he would have been elected. But
Spencer dreaded the ordeal of delivering the
customary address and declined the nomina-
tion. The senatus of the university then
proffered him the degree of LL.D. He
replied that had such a distinction been
offered him when he was young and struggling
for recognition it might have aided him; now
that he had made his mark and gained a hear-
ing he no longer needed it. The university
showed that it took the rebuke to heart ; some
of its own rising members soon afterward
received degrees. Many years later the
University of Cambridge offered him an LL.D.
It was declined. When Sir Joseph Hooker
was president of the Royal Society he wished
to honor his presidency by having Spencer
elected a fellow, but he would not agree. The
X Club long nominated the presidents of the
British Association for the Advancement of
Science, and proposed to appoint him presi-
dent, but he shrank from the excitement.
When, in 1878, he visited the Exhibition in
Paris, he was publicly entertained by a com-
pany of professors and deputies, responding
in an interesting speech. One of his latest
•tributes came from far-away Australia. His
friends there, in 1900, sent him congratula-
tions on his eightieth birthday; he responded
in terms which lack nothing of his w^onted
power of terse, vigorous expression.
About ten years ago Spencer removed
to Brighton. His present house is 5 Percival
Terrace, facing the sea in a charming situation.
He takes carriage drives in good weather, but
his failing health permits him to see few
visitors and then only for short periods. Yet
when friends converse with him they are
surprised and astonished as well as pleased
at his vigor and alertness of mind. A presen
tation bust of himself occupies a place of
honor in his house. It is a speaking likeness.
I
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM GERMAN
BUSINESS METHODS
STRANGE CONTRASTS BETWEEN OLD BUSINESS CUSTOMS AND
NEW— FEATURES OF COMPANY FORMATION AND MANAGEMENT
— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS IN BUSINESS —GERMAN TRUSTS
BY
LOUIS J. MAGEE
WHEN an American visits the offices
of a great banking or industrial
corporation in Germany he finds
frugality, hard work, great energy and dis-
cipline side by side with wastefulness, disorder,
lack of interest and bureaucratic red tape.
He sees hard-headed, practical men, well-
informed, international and shrewd, dealing
often in much empty formality, narrowness
and childish self-conceit. He sees, along with
modem time-saving methods, an accumula-
tion of useless, antiquated detail.
The visitor receives almost invariably a
courteous reception. The more important
members of the staff usually have separate,
comfortably furnished offices, especially in
banks. The separate room system is carried
out even for clerks and calculators. The
German makes a point of devoting himself
entirely to the visitor he receives. I know
of an official who has an electric knob under
his desk which he presses with his foot when
he thinks that he has given all the time
that might be expected to a tedious visitor.
The office boy, in whose room this special
bell rings, appears and announces a board
meeting, and the visitor takes his leave. A
number of daily papers in various languages
are kept on file in the waiting-room for the
convenience of visitors. This question of
languages enters largely in Europe into the
daily routine. The Germans are good, prac-
tical linguists, and all the more important
clerks as well as the managers speak French
and English.
The office opens usually at 8:30 or 9 o'clock
and closes at about 6:30, with a pause of two
hours from i to 3 o'clock. Many business
men dine with their families at about 2 o'clock
and sleep afterward. A new start is taken
late in the day, and much hard work is done
even up to 7 or 8 o'clock. Some bank
officials work from 10 to 5 and later, with
only a short pause for luncheon. In London
and Paris the evening mails close early, and
late letters are subject to a fine; but the post
leaves Berlin and other large cities in Germany
between 9:30 and midnight, thus tempting
one to save a day by writing late letters.
The pause in the middle of the day, during
which outdoor sport is, of course, impossible,
is opposed, especially by the younger element.
Some of the business men ride in the parks
early in the morning, but office-workers as a
rule have no opportunity for outdoor exercise.
In some firms where there are a number
of managing directors and important heads
of departments it is customary to meet in
conference and discuss the contents of the
mail at a fixed hour every morning. Some
concerns register all incoming letters, with
number, name and place of sender, date and
short note of contents, so that the letter may
be easily traced if it goes astray or remains
unanswered. Elaborate systems have been
worked out for the purpose of controlling the
promptness with which letters are acted upon
and replied to. Several systems of modem
letter files are in tise, but the German, espe-
cially in technical offices, has great preference
for the old-fashioned method of clamping or
pasting a letter which has been settled into a
pasteboard cover or folder, with a copy of the
reply. Letters ready to be signed are placed
in books made of colored blotting-paper, the
leaves having two or three holes punched
through the book. One sees through the
holes whether there are more letters to sign.
Card catalogues are gradually coming into
use, but it is difficult to interest clerks in their
applications.
In the management of a company there are
usually several "directors" or managers
(England "Managing Directors"), one per-
GERMAN BUSINESS METHODS
3"5
haps who has the bookkeeping departments,
another who looks after the factory affairs,
and a third who is chiefly interested in
tlie details of general finance operations,
where more or less intricate negotiation is
necessary. No matter how these directors
may divide the work among themselves, they
are as a body responsible for the management
of the company. In some companies, espe-
cially where the diversity of interests requires
a larger number of responsible directors, one
of them is appointed as the so-called "general
director. " The general director is empowered
to sign for the company — alone. Otherwise it
is customary for any two directors to sign
together. One of these signatures is the
indication of the correctness of the letter,
contract or check, the first signature being
furnished by the director who is best informed
on the matter. It is not usual to appoint a
president, vice-president, secretary or treas-
urer, and no such titles or names of persons
ever appear on letter-heads. Every one may,
at an expense of twelve cents, obtain from
the Commercial Registrar's office of the
district or city a list of names of those who
are for the moment entitled to sign for the
company.
In Germany the president of the company,
although not so called, is reall}' the chairman
of the board of supervisors (AufsicJitsrath).
He is consulted by the directors on all very
important matters, and holds meetings of the
board as often as he sees fit or as often as the
managers of the company desire to bring up
matters before the board. The manager of a
company is forbidden by law to have a seat
on the board, but he must attend board meet-
ings. The members of the board receive for
their work each year, after the annual meeting,
a sum which is made up on the basis of a
percentage of the profits {tantieme) after a
four per cent, dividend has been declared. If
more than four per cent, is not possible, the
members of the board get nothing. A
member of the board of a company that
has declared an eight to ten per cent,
dividend receives, for instance, from $1,500
to $6,000 a year as his share.
The board's work must be that of calm
judgment and fair criticism. The balance-
sheet and business of a concern must be pub-
lished, so that the smallest stockholders,
receiving the printed report some time before
tlie day of the general meeting, are able to
I
criticize at will. It is not an unusual thing
to see the chairman of the board of a very
powerful company answering Uie questions
of a shareholder who has perhaps only three
hundred dollars invested, and who has come
to the annual meeting with the express
intention of making trouble. The books are
revised annually by an official auditor. In
the rating of assets all securities must be
noted at their last quotation on the ex-
change at the end of the business year; or
if they are not quoted on the exchange, then
the last price at which they are known to have
been sold. But no matter how high the
quotation may have been, it is not per-
mitted to rate them higher than the purchase
price. Of course, if the quotation is lower
than that at which they were purchased.
tliat must be booked. This wise clause in
the law for stock companies may prove in
some years very unpleasant for companies
which have large portfolios of securities. A
company which has earned very well on its
products may shcvw a net loss for the year
if it happens to have many "securities'"
which have been in disfavor witth the public.
Three kinds^ of companies are customary:
The limited liability company, the partner-
ship company with shares, and the ordinary
share company.
The first is the form used for small under-
takings: it has the advantage of limited
liability and the privacy of personal ov/ner-
ship; no shares are issued.
The second is a form applied in the case
where the individuals who have started a
business, or certain large owners, retain a
preferred interest and personal responsibility.
There are 6,900 share companies registered,
and it is estimated that in these at least one-
twentieth of the nation's wealth is invested.
The more noticeable features of the share
company are:
The share must have a nominal value of at
least 1,000 marks ($240). It is indivisible.
The shares must represent fully paid cash
capital or other good assets. If a part of the
capital consists of other than cash, such as
plant, patents, etc., this part is fixed by the
contract of formation, and is subject to the
severe examination and approval of the
Commercial Court before the company is
registered. Every effort is made in the law
to create valuable assets equal to the face
value, and to prevent " watering. " Managing
3ii6
GERMAN BUSINESS METHODS
directors have to "exercise the carefulness
of an orderly business man. " If they neglect
their duties as outlined in the law they are
liable for damages. The board of supervisors
has not the direct responsibility for the
business of a company, but has the obligation
to " watch over the management of the busi-
ness in all branches and to inform itself to
this end regarding the progress of affairs."
Its members are also responsible against fine
and imprisonment and loss of their private
fortunes for intentionally hurting the interests
of the company or neglecting to do that which
"the carefulness of an orderly business man"
would dictate.
The deplorable failtires of the last two years
in Cassel, Leipzig and Berlin revealed, it is
true, despite the laws, a very rotten state of
affairs in several banks and large companies.
Deliberate criminal practice and swindling
can hardly be provided against by any stock
law. The members of the boards of these
companies, as well as the directors, were
held responsible, and their property seized in
some cases. Imprisonment was also imposed.
Since these failures many proposals have
been made looking toward their greater
efficiency.
It is remarkable that a country made up
of so many different kingdoms, duchies,
principalities and free cities, all with their
own traditions, should possess a common law
good for the whole empire in commercial
matters, marriage and divorce, the relation
of the laborer to the employer, and most other
affairs which come close to us in our daily life,
and ought to be regulated as uniformly as
possible throughout any great country. The
Germans consider it rather ridiculous that
the various States of our Union have such
widely different laws; and that the inhabitants
of a State find it so easy to evade their own
laws by forming their companies in neighbor-
ing States. It seems strange, from the German
point of view, for Americans to demand
a strict control of the trusts "while they are
perfectly contented with inadequate corpora-
tion laws under which unscrupulous promoters
can hoodwink the public. Our public, they
think, rebel only at the thought of being
subjected to monopoly prices.
Concentrations of capital or combinations
of interests appear in Germany under the
names of "Cartells," "Syndicates" and
"Price Conventions." Such associations
have existed and worked quietly for many
years. There are about three hundred car-
tells of various forms, two hundred and twenty
of them being among manufacturing concerns
and the others among selling firms.
The "cartell" (specifically named) pro-
vides for a centralized booking of the orders
and a partial regulation of production; but
it leaves the sale in the hands of the individual
members. The " Syndikat" (syndicate) goes
further, putting the sale in one hand for
domestic or even foreign trade and prescribing
the production according to the market. The
Coal Syndicate of Westphalia, for instance,
has been keeping up the prices for several
years. Its present rate of production is
about twenty-five per cent, below normal
output. An official investigation of cartells
has just been decided upon, and a writer who
is very well acquainted with their working
says: "The German cartells can face such
an examination coolly and calmly, and I do
not know of any that ought to fear publicity.
I only fail to see on what legitimate giounds
trade associations of a fully private nature
can be forced to make their business public."
On the other hand, Professor Schmoller, of
Berlin University, says that: "Everything
should be done to force them to the fullest
publicity which they now shun. In the super-
vision of the cartells (trusts) a representative
of the communit}^ at large must be given a
voice and the right of veto in case of abuses.
Sooner or later it will also be necessarv- to
accord the laborer a similar representation."
The recent convention of German jurists
adjourned all discussion of the trust question
on the ground that trusts could not be made
the subject of special control until they
became a public danger, and that all super-
vision must be resorted to with great caution,
as it will threaten the individual liberty of
the business man and throttle his initiative.
Certain fundamental conditions which favor
trusts in America are lacking in Germany.
Vast accumulations of capital in a few
hands do not exist. The banks take much
greater risks than their American counter-
parts, but even they lack the incentive of
large promoters' profits. As the institution
of watered stock is not permissible, the chief
source of large profit for promoters and finan-
ciers lies in the purchase of large blocks of
new stock and its distribution among the
public; but however profitable the difference
GERMAN BUSINESS METHODS
3i'7
may be to the banker, the company itself is
never an absolute loser on such transactions,
and is often the gainer. All such profits
must go to the reserve fund.
To quote an interesting example: the Auer
Company (Welsbach Gas Burner), whose
shares have been as high as i,ooo per cent, on
the Berlin Exchange, purchased recently the
Osmium electric lamp of Doctor Auer. The
latter took over new shares at no. At the
same time the bank group bought his shares of
him at 260 — finally the bankers allowed the
shareholders to subscribe for these new shares
at 308. The inventor made a million marks,
the bankers had their profit and the company
increased its reserve fund by a few thousands.
Contracts must be stamped, officials of the
Government occasionally appearing at offices
to look them through. An ordinary contract
of purchase for $100,000 requires a stamp in
Prussia of about $330 (one-third per cent.).
An ordinary contract for the service of
employees is stamped with thirty -seven cents.
The German business man has also to take
the. income tax seriously into account, both
for his company and for himself. The earnings'
of a corporation bear an income tax twice —
once at the expense of the company, again as
a part of the income of the individual stock-
holder. The total income tax is divided into
a State and a municipal tax. In Berlin, for
instance, one pays the Prussian State tax
and then one hundred per cent, of that to the
city. In some towns of Prussia the needs of
the community are less than this one hundred
per cent., and in other towns, especially in the
great industrial centres of the Rhineland and
Westphalia, the percentage runs as high as
from two hundred to three htmdred per cent.
The individual counts his salary and other
fixed forms of income at its whole amount,
whereas his income from sources that vary
from year to year must be given in the form
of an average for the last three years. This
is especially necessary with lawyers, physi-
cians and others receiving fees for professional
work. The total income is taxed according
to a sliding scale, beginning with six marks
State tax on an income of 900 marks per
year, and increasing gradually until, with the
income of 100,000 marks, the maximum of
four per cent, is reached. A Berlin company
with $10,000,000 capital, paying $1,000,000
in dividends and tantiemes, would pay a State
tax of $26,000 and a city tax of $40,000.
The postal telegraph and telephone arrange-
ments are excellent and are all operated by the
Government. There are 32,299 post-offices
in the empire and 15,200 telephone centrals.
The ordinary telegram costs for ten words
twelve and one-half cents over any distance
in Germany. Any post-office receives tele-
grams for any part of the world. One may
send urgent messages for three times the
ordinary price, these taking precedence over
all other work. In Berlin there are about
one hundred and twenty-five post-offices, most
of which take telegrams and have pneumatic
tube communication with the chief tele-
graphic office. The Imperial Post made a
profit of about $5,000,000 last year.
It was easier to generalize after three
months than now, after a residence of thir-
teen years in Germany. Facts accumulate
to embarrass the observer. If I were forced,
however, to say what I consider to be the
three features which most hinder business in
Germany, I should say, first, enviousness ;
lack of open criticism. Personal considera-
tions too often take the thought away from
work. Secondly, experience does not count
for enough. Theory is believed in with too
little regard for past error. Thirdly, lack
of independence in methods of thought and in
character; bureaucratic routine; lack of origi-
nality and initiative in finding new methods
to meet new needs, and in recognizing these
new needs, dependence upon orders from
above; lack of fertility in finding quick
methods.
I should think, on the other hand, that the
Germans possess preeminently the following
traits :
First, thoroughness — the mastery of facts
in the preparation of a basis for action;
elaborate study precedes decision in most
financial and technical work; high standard
of education.
Secondly, unquestioning obedience to the
existing laws — willingness to follow rules; a
subordination of personal will to the estab-
lished method. This is the good side of thei^
lack of independence.
Thirdly, honesty throughout business life
is the general rule. Compai'atively little
business depends upon the use of questionable
methods.
In technical progress as well as in general
business methods the Germans are keen for
progress. All branches of business have their
3ii8
THE WORK OF A JAPANESE CRAFTSMAN
trade journals, which are eagerly watched,
and scores of clever observers are traveling
about the world learning much from their
neighbors. Only thirty hours after the
American astronomer, Perrine, had informed
the world-central astronomical office of the
discovery of a new comet, a French astrono-
mer telegraphed his news of the same celestial
visitor. This faint light of only the ninth
magnitude found searching eyes on both sides
of the Atlantic. How much more must the
great worlds of business and industry on either
side of the ocean be waiting for new hints of
progress.
An American professor, after visiting a large
technological institute in Germany, told me
that the school and its equipment was ahead
of an\i;hing at home. When this compli-
ment was repeated afterward to a prominent
instructor in the institute, he replied : " Why,
that is exactly what I said of your technical
schools after my trip to America, and that is
the only way I could get the money to make
ours what it is today."
That Germany's technical army is march-
ing forward in good form is a generally
accepted fact. The American terror is before
their eyes, but they have elements of strength
which may keep them up against all com-
petitors in certain lines.
See the Kaiser Wilhelm bridge at Solingen ;
the ship-building yards at Stettin, Hamburg,
Danzig, and the vessels they have produced;
the rolling-mills and steel works of the Rhine;
the great electrical factories of Berlin,
Nuremberg; the Mauser Rifle Works and
Loewe Tool Works; the Dusseldorf Exhibi-
tion; the " Schwebebahn " — that elevated
road whose cars hang over the streets of
Elberfeld; the electrical cranes of Hamburg
harbor; the Kaiser dock in Bremerhaven — on
every hand evidences of good engineering,
ingenuity, energy' and capital combined with
courage. Yes, Germany has become an
industrial nation. There are thousands of
highly intelligent, excessively energetic men
who appreciate the present needs and are
anxious to push on to greater achievements.
They tmderstand export; they know the
world's markets; they adapt themselves to
the requirements of foreign customers, but
they are handicapped b}^ opposing elements
at home. The landed aristocracy cannot
comprehend, as their emperor docs, that the
country's salvation lies in its industries and
its foreign trade. They, in their short-
sightedness, oppose every measure which
would encourage financial enterprises and
give new life to the great industrial body now
lying dormant.
THE WORK OF A JAPANESE CRAFTSMAN
A LITTLE WORKSHOP IN KYOTO PRODUCING MARVELOUS CLOISSONNfi
WARE— YEARS SOMETIMES SPENT ON A VASE— METHODS OF DECORA-
TING THE WARE— THE STORY OF THE MASTER CRAFTSMAN, NAMIKAWA
BY
HERBERT G. PONTING
Illustrated with photographs taken by the author
WHAT one loves best one can do
best," says a Japanese proverb,
and at Kyoto you see it made a
fact. Among the crowded streets, behind
the wooden doors and paper windows of the
little tile-roofed houses are created wondrous
examples of wondrous arts. Year after year
the craftsmen toil patiently, wanting little,
living simply, content with the beauty grow-
ing beneath their hands, their craft life as
well as occupation. And nowhere in Japan
is this life, so different from the modem fac-
tory industrialism of other countries, better
exemplified than at the little workshop of
Namikawa, who fashions in Kyoto the finest
cloissonne ware in the world.
When my 'rikisha man had dropped me
beneath a sign that read " Y. Namikawa, Man-
ufacturer of Fine Cloissonn^ Ware," a young
Japanese conducted me past a pretty glimpse
THE WORK OF A JAPANESE CRAFTSMAN
3119
of garden into a typically Japanese room.
Here I met Namikawa San, a man ol" gentle,
passive appearance and quiet, courtly manner,
who invited me by gesture to partake of the
tea his wife had brewed a6 I entered, and then
went about selecting from a cabinet near by
sundry little boxes, about a dozen of which
he laid before me on a graceful Chinese table
of blackwood.
Opening one, he produced a bundle done up
in yellow cloth and cotton wool. Unwrap-
ing it with tender care, he disclosed a piece
marine and deej) purjjle, one and all decorated
with designs of delicate beauty; and each little
gem was mounted on its own tiny stand of
carved blackwood or stained cherry, as dainty
in its way as the piece itself. Seeing my
a])preciation, he produced other and larger,
and hnally, the very best and most expensive
examples of his skill, for nowhere in Japan is
it the custom to display the finest works at
first ; and only if real and genuine interest be
shown will the most cherished works be
brought to light. These he at last brought
THE BEAUTIFUL HOME OF NAMIKAWA
of cloissonne so exquisite in design and color-
ing that the best I had hitherto seen seemed
crude in comparison. In turn he opened the
other boxes and from each was unearthed a
masterpiece.
There were tiny vases of a beautiful ground-
work of yellow like Crown Derby. Others in
their coloring and design almost suggested
Royal Worcester but that they were essen-
tially Japanese. There were urns and caskets
of which the prevailing tints were delicate
cornflower and peacock blues; there were
groundworks of red and olive green, ultra-
out, each finished with a lens-like polish, on
which one might search in vain for either
speck or flaw.
Each, if exhibited in the large establish-
ments of any American city, would command
more than its weight in gold. As they stood
on the table they ranged in price from S25
to as much as $750, a large piece of the
latter value being sixteen inches high and
decorated with a matchless design of purple
and white drooping wistarias. In such a house,
and with so handsome a table for a setting,
each piece assumed a far greater beauty and
i
3I20
THE WORK OF A JAPANESE CRAFTSMAN
THE MASTER-CRAFTSMAN, Y. NAMIKAWA, OF KYOTO
charm than it could ever do in an}- collector's
cabinet, and it seemed almost a sacrilege to
remove even one of the little works of such
exquisite perfection from the love and care
of its creator.
While I was examining each vase and
casket and urn in turn, Mr. Xamikawa sHd
open one of the ini-ter doors to admit more
light, and as I involuntarily glanced up the
beaut}- of the scene which met mv gaze through
that open door held me dumb with admira-
tion. Outside was a narrow veranda,
fronted with glass; and beyond, condensed
into a small space, was the very essence of all
that is beautiful in a Japanese garden. The
veranda overhung a little lake with rustic
bridges and miniature islands clad with
dwarf pine trees, of that ancient rugged kind
which one sees only in Japan, stretching out
their gnarled, twisted limbs, just over the
surface of the water, toward others reaching
out from the opposite shore. As my host
walked out upon the porch, the whole surface
of that peaceful pond became as if a fierce
squall had struck it. for from every corner
was a rush of huge carp, black, spotted and
gold, literally to their master's very feet.
He scattered a handful of mochi to them,
upon which there followed such a frantic
struggle and noisy gobbling and sucking, as
their snouts came to the surface, that I stood
amazed. So tame were they that I could
reach down and feed them from my hand.
A little tortoise standing under the shelter
FASHIONING CLOISSUNNE WARE
One of Namikawa's assistants in the cleanly workshop
X
< o
< ~
3122
THE WORK OF A JAPANESE CRAFTSMAN
WITHIN THE WORKSHOP
"What one loves best one can do best"
of a dwarf tree on an island in front
gazed steadily into my face. I looked long
at it, and finally asked: "Why doesn't it
move?" Namikawa smiled, and his inter-
preted reply was: "It is bronze."
After exhibiting his entire stock, which
consisted of but a few dozen pieces, for wares
of this order cannot be made w^holesale,
Namikawa invited me to inspect the work-
shop where these beautiful things received
their being. Conducting me out into the
garden around the miniature lake, the path
led to another building open to the light on
two sides and furnished with running white
curtains to soften and diffuse, if necessary,
the strong light of the sun. This was the
workshop. I had not expected to see a large
factory, for in Japan they are few, and many
of the greatest masterpieces have been
created in a little humble home, where a lone
individual toiled ceaselessly and lovinglv
week after w^eek, month after month, and, in
some cases, for years on a single piece; in turn
making the copper vase, conceiving and
tracing the design, wiring, enameling, firing,
enameling again, and still again and again,
and finally polishing for many long weeks,
until the beloved thing stood complete, a
master's work of art. I was not surprised,
therefore, to find Xamikawa's entire staff in
Oiie room. Formerly I had seen a great
factory, in Yokohama, where the artisans
worked on dirty wooden floors designing and
enameling beautiful things. Figures, naked
save for a loincloth, scrubbed and ground and
polished huge urns, in some cases as big as
themselves, the floor puddled wath water
and gritty wath sand and pumice stone. • In
other places, by the side of large kilns, gleam.-
ing a dull red in the half light, stood and
w^atched old and experienced men, the sweat
dropping from their nearly nude bodies.
But here were no such scenes. Instead I
saw a spotless room tw-enty-five feet long and
half as wide, the floor covered w'ith padded
mats, on which, bending over tiny tables.
IHE EXQUISITE FINISHED PKuDLCT
THE WORK OF A JAPANESE CRAFTSMAN
3123
were eight artists, so intent on their occupa-
tion that our intrusion caused but an instant's
glance. Close to them were four other
figures grinding and polishing; these com-
prised Namikawa's entire staff.
At one table a new piece was receiving its
design — not from a copy, but fresh from the
artist's brain, traced upon its surface. At
others little particles of gold or silver wire
were being bent to exactly the shape of the
etched design, and cemented firmly over it,
piece by piece, until the design was com-
pletely worked over in gold or silver wire upon
a silver or copper vase. At other tables the
enamels, mixed as required, were being
puslied into these little cells, some no
greater in diameter than the prick of a pin,
in the exact representation of the colors
of nature. They are not at first filled to the
top, but only part of the way, and when the
entire design is filled all over to the same
depth it is ready for the first firing. More
enamel is then filled in and it is fired again,
and still enameled and fired again and again
until the surface is reached, the last filling
requiring a greater degree of skill than the
preceding ones. After filling and firing for
the final time the vase is rough and uneven.
It must now be ground with pumice stone
and water for many days or weeks to reduce
the uneven surface to the same thickness in
every part. This is all done by hand, and
calls for great skill, for if it were ground
thinner in one place than another the work
would be ruined. The grinding is accom-
plished so slowly that the impression of an
hour's work is scarcely perceptible. As the
surface day by day becomes finer, pumice of
softer and smoother face is chosen, until the
final pieces used are like silk to the touch.
And now it is quite finished, save for the
final polishing w4th oxide of iron or rouge.
At last it emerges from the artist's hands with
the exquisite and flawless polish of a lens.
Namikawa then makes his final inspection,
though every day of its steady gro\\i;h has
been closely watched by him; and if pro-
nounced perfect the piece is wrapped in
cotton wool and yellow cloth and consigned
to a place in the cabinet in his house.
. The firing room, like the workshop, was
spotlessly clean and neat. In the centre was
the little kiln, and by its side a tank of w^ater
in the ground, and at the end a pile of stacked-
up fuel. Here the pieces are fired, Namikawa
himself attending to the work, for upon
it depends the success or failure of the pre-
ceding labor. Some colors are much more
difficult to work successfully than others, the
various shades of yellow calling for the
utmost degree of skill in firing, which even
then is often unavailing. He showed me a
beautiful thing — the design of a maple tree in
the glorious tints of autumn, on a yellow
ground — which had taken several months
of toil and careful skill to prepare for the final
firing and polishing. As tlie pumice ground
the surface down and the details became
clearer day by day, unsightly marks began
to appear on the surface, showing that it had
been unable to stand the final test, and it had
emerged from the kiln marred and ruined
beyond all hope.
Namikawa is a man of grave appearance,
quiet speech and gentle manner. He would
appear more in keeping in a Buddhist
temple than anywhere else in Japan.
Formerly an attendant at the Court in
Kyoto, and always having a deep love of art,
he betook himself nearly thirty years ago
to the manufacture of cloissonne ware.
Throwing his whole heart and soul into the
study of the work, he became in time a finished
artist. When the productions of hi^ earlier
days are shown and compared with the
works which now leave his shop, it is seen
how great was the gulf which he has bridged.
Each member of his staff, beginning as his
pupil, has absorbed his master's ideas from
his earliest acquaintance with the art; and
although Namikawa now does no work him-
self except the firing, he closely supervises
every piece each day during its entire execu-
tion, and instantly detecting if there be any
cause for his displeasure, sharply rebukes the
transgressor for his want of care. I had an
opportunity of seeing this one day. A
minute detail on a vase did not please him.
his face became hard and stem, and instantly
his manner changed to that of an unbending
man who knows exactly and instantly what
he wants and whose will must be obeyed.
Each artist is permitted to come and go as
he will, and work when he pleases, for
Namikawa is keenly alive to the fact that a
man can do more and far better work if
laboring only when the mental inspiration
and desire for labor are upon him.
THE PREVENTION OF PHYSICAL
BREAKDOWN
AN EXPLANATION OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE FOR THE
LAYMAN— LOP OFF OUTLYING AFFAIRS, LEAVE A MARGIN
OF STRENGTH, AVOID A RUT, CULTIVATE A HEALTHFUL
HOBBY, TAKE VACATIONS, SLEEP, AVOID EXCESS IN
TOBACCO AND DRINK, AND A BREAKDOWN IS NOT
NECESSARY EVEN TO THE MOST STRENUOUS MAN
BY
FLOYD M. CRANDALL, M.D.
Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, etc.
RESPONSIBILITY and high tension of of life than is necessary. The delirious style
life cannot be escaped by him who of doing business is partially habit, but in
lives intensely and aids in carrying some cases is done for effect. Men often keep
on the business of the world. Much, however, themselves in a nervous state and do more
may be done in many cases to reduce these rushing about than tfiere is any necessity for.
burdens as age advances. Upon the first They keep themselves keyed up to such a
indication of failing powers, either mental or pitch that they use up as much vital force in
physical, the burden, as far as it is possible, doing routine work and unimportant details
should be lightened. One of the first means as in negotiating great transactions. Like
of attaining this end is by cutting off the more the yellow journals which print enormous
distant and least manageable portions of the headlines for the most trivial matters, and
business. As far as possible the business work themselves into an excitement over
should be brought within sight and reach. It commonplace events, they give undue im-
is the outlying portions which are beyond portance to details and do everything at
personal supervision that cause the most high pressure. These high -pressure methods
worry. Cut them off and make the business engender laxness in self-control. All this
more compact and manageable. Do not keep impairs the judgment and renders men
too many irons in the fire. The watching of capable of making mistakes and incapable of
each additional one demands additional con- doing good work. It is a tremendous drain
centration and adds to the mental tension, upon the vital power. Many a man helps
Work one or two fields well and obtain all to bring on a breakdown by living a life of
they will yield, rather than half a dozen super- unnecessary tension and using up his vital
ficially. It will be far easier; you will live power through failure to control himself,
longer and accumulate as much in the end. It is unwise for a man to asstune so much
"The one prudence of life is concentration; business that he will be obliged to labor up
the one evil is dissipation. " Many a man has to the full extent of his powers. There should
dissipated his vital and mental powers by be some allowance made for emergencies,
attempting to spread them over too much when the business will suddenly be increased,
surface. Study your own capabilities; be Anxiet}' and worry are more exhausting to
honest with yourself. If you are convinced the physical powers than actual labor. They
that you have large business capabilities, do cause rapid anemia and loss of flesh. When
not over-restrict them ; but do not make worry is added to responsibility and exhaust-
radical changes nor undertake entirely new ing labor, the breaking-down point is brought
kinds of business after middle life. You many times nearer. It is a common experi-
may not fail, but success will be purchased ence of the physician to see business men go
at too great an expenditure of vital and on without apparent difl&culty until a period
neryous force to make it advisable. of panic and financial depression comes, and
. Many Americans maintain a higher tension then break down at the time it is most impor-
THE PREVENTION OF PHYSICAL BREAKDOWN
3125
tant for them to be on duty with clear heads.
It is an insane captain who loads his craft to
the water-line because he is lying in a quiet
harbor. It requires no nautical skill to
foretell the result when a storm comes on.
But that is the risk that thousands of business
and professional men are unnecessarily taking
today. They are allowing no margin for
bad weather. The millenium is not here,
and the age of panics and business depres-
sions is not past.
A word may be said regarding certain
classes of toilers who cannot change the con-
ditions under which they are obliged to labor.
They fill the subordinate positions in the
ereat financial and business institutions.
They are fixed in a vise, and must perform
the duties appertaining to their positions or
resign. The duties in many instances cannot
be divided or materially lightened, but there
are other cases in which the life of the sub-
ordinates might be made easier. The long
struggle which has preceded the rise to posi-
tions of influence and power has the unfortu-
nate effect upon men of some temperaments to
harden and render the temper harsh. They
are inclined to say that as they were obliged
to struggle in their time, let the younger men
now take the same experience. This is cer-
tainly not universal. But the experience of
the medical practitioner leads him to think
that there is a growing tendency to work to
their uttermost the subordinate officials of
financial and mercantile institutions, who
'carry heavy responsibilities and often handle
large sums of money, and when they fail to
keep up to the standard drop them and take
younger men, to put them in turn through
the same ordeal. The heads of these institu-
tions have often come to their positions
through great struggles. They should remem-
ber, however, that their success has been
partly due to native talent; that all men,
even by the same labor, could not attain
a like success.
Moreover, while opportunities are greater
today than they have ever been before, and
the rewards of success a.r£ larger, the wear and
tear in attaining them have greatly increased
in the last thirty years. Though there are
more places, there are more applicants, and the
struggle is more intense. Men will do more
work in the same time if they are not held
under too high tension. Overseverity defeats
its own objects. Prolonged labor without
sufficient rest impairs the value of the laborer.
The constant fear that any decrease of effec-
tiveness will be followed by loss of position
"gets on the nerves " and renders an employee
less efficient. The best work cannot be done
with overwrought nerves and under unremit-
ting high tension.
Specialism is not confined to the professions.
It is seen in all branches of business and
among day laborers. The old-time merchant,
whose ships returned laden with all the
products of Europe and the East, is sup-
planted by the importer who buys a single
class of goods. Even the department store
is an apparent rather than a real exception to
the rule. It is an aggregation of different
branches of business, each under the super-
vision of trained specialists. Specialism has
come to be a characteristic of modern life.
But where specialism goes there goes the
tendency to fall into a rut, and a rut is a very
bad thing to fall into. " When a fellow begins
to find out de rut he's in, " remarks that young
philosopher, Chimmie Fadden, "it's up to
him for him to climb out. If he don't get a
move on him then, the first ting he knows de
rut is so deep he can't climb out, nohow; and
dat queers his nerve." It would be difficult
to compress more truth into so little space.
The only advice that could be added is a
warning against getting into a rut in the first
place. It is easier to keep out than to get out.
The young man, when he chooses his life
work, whether it be a profession, business or
trade, puts his whole mind and strength into
it if he be the right kind of young man. The
more determined he is to succeed, the more
intensely does he apply himself to his work.
He associates with others doing the same work.
Their ideas become his ideas; their ways his
ways. He finds so much to learn that he is
inclined to eliminate from his reading and his
thoughts all other interests. "The lyf so
short, the craft so long to leme, " he restricts
himself more and more. He loses interest
in other matters. Work becomes a second
nature, and he is uncomfortable when he is
not at work. As he grows older he restricts
his work, perhaps, to a limited portion of the
business or profession to which he belongs.
He is apt to magnify the importance of his own
special w^ork and to minimize that of others.
His field of vision becomes narrower; he
settles into certain fixed beliefs and adopts
certain methods of doing things. His life
3126
THE PREVENTION OF PHYSICAL BREAKDOWN
degenerates into a routine and before he
knows it he is in a rut. He loses his interest
in outside matters and is unhappy if he tries to
take a vacation. He becomes irritable and is
only contented when in the harness. As time
goes on he does not do his work with the vigor
and energy of old, but dawdles and becomes
fussy and wastes time over details. He feels
that there is but one way of doing things, and
that is his way. Therefore, he will not leave
work to subordinates which they could do as
well as he. When a man detects these various
symptoms in himself, he may be assured that
he is in a rut. There is then one thing to be
done — to make a vigorous effort of the will
and get out of it. If he cannot take a vaca-
tion without being restless and unhappy, then
a vacation is what he needs. He should force
himself to rest. If he has lost his taste for
fiction, then he should read a few good stories
each year and spend some time upon light
literature. If he has given up amusements,
he should begin going occasionally to a few
good, wholesome places of amusement. He
should visit his friends and renew the old
acquaintances he has dropped. In a little
time these things, at first irksome, will
become pleasures, and he will be taken away
from his cares and his business worries.
Gradually he will find that he is getting out
of the rut and is doing his work not only
easier but better.
One of the serious features of life in a rut is
the fact that judgment is impaired. Allowing
the mind always to dwell upon one subject
and keeping the attention always fixed in one
direction destroys the power to draw correct
conclusions and lead to the adoption of dis-
torted and peculiar ideas. The sense of pro-
portion is lost. "They who always labor can
have no true judgment," says Burke. Those
who get deeply fixed in a rut almost always
become more or less "queer" as they grow
older. This impairment of the judgment and
one-sided way of looking at things lead to the
adoption of hobbies and weird and extreme
doctrines. This is one of the reasons for the
prevalence of isms and queer theories. Many
of those who adopt them, even though suc-
cessful in business or professional life, have
lived so long in limited or restricted channels
that their judgment in matters outside
becomes impaired. Their views are narrow
and restricted and their lives run along a
single channel. If by chance they make an
excursion outside of it, their knowledge of the
country is so limited that they are apt to get
lost , and either become mired in some bog of
superstition or are taken in by some com-
munity of fanatics.
The wise man keeps out of ruts. To be
certain, however, that he will accomplish this
he must begin early in life. He must not
begin his life work by restricting himself
absolutely to a single channel. This does not
mean that he should scatter his forces and
attempt everything, or should not become a
specialist. But the more strictly he special-
izes, the more carefully should he see to it that
he does not become narrow and bigoted.
The young man should early begin the habit
of reading a newspaper. It should be a real
newspaper, and not a yellow journal which
will cause his mental and moral standards to
degenerate. He will thus get a general educa-
tion that he can obtain from no other source.
But he cannot get all the education he requires,
even of public affairs, from the newspapers.
Let him not make this error. Their news
is necessarily fragmentary. He should read
regularly one or two good monthly magazines
of the class devoted to the discussion of
questions of public interest. He should read a
Httle good fiction as well as history and* general
literature. While he should* persistently seek
the acquaintance of the best men of his own
craft, who are usually the broadest minded, he
should also seek friends outside of it. They
will help him to see that there are other
important crafts in the world besides his own.
All this will broaden his views and help to
keep him out of a rut.
If he finds he is becoming a specialist (the
term is used in its broad sense to include any
man who restricts his business to narrow
limits), he should adopt further measures,
even to the taking up of a fad. "Fads con-
stitute a mental antitoxin to the poison gen-
erated by cerebral overactivity," says Pyle.
This has been a measure adopted by many
intense workers. WiUiam H. Vanderbilt
believed that his life was prolonged by the
daily driving of his horses, which- he took up
as a means of diverting his mind from the
cares of business rather than for pure pleasure.
His eldest son died a comparatively young
man, largely as the result, it was believed, of
too close application to business. Chauncey
M. Depew has repeatedly said that public
speaking is for him a method of recreation.
THE PREVENTION OF PHYSICAL BREAKDOWN
3127
Literature has been adopted by Roosevelt,
Gladstone, Disraeli, and many others. Lord
Salisbury is a scientist of large attainments
and has done much work in his laboratory,
which is one of the best in England. He
adopted this means of escape from the crush-
ing cares which rest upon the virtual head of
a great empire. 'The present Prime Minister
takes refuge in literature and golf. Some
men adopt hunting, fishing, golf and similar
sports. Others choose photography, micro-
scopy, or become collectors of this or that, or
make themselves experts upon some branch
of art. Others with a musical talent be-
come proficient in some branch of that
art. The point is simply this: that it is
wise for a person to take up some subject
for which he has special liking or aptitude,
with which he may divert his mind from the
anxieties and worries of his daily work. It is
not a theoretical proposition, but an emi--
nently practical one, which has been utilized
for years and is utilized today more than ever
before. Elaborate fads like literature, music
and art are not necessary. A prominent and
very successful New York lawyer has a fad
for baseball. He is a frequent attendant at
the League games, where he enters into the
spirit of the sport and obtains complete
relaxation from professional cares. During
other portions of the year he escapes from
them in public speaking, which native talent
and experience enable him to look upon as a
relaxation. Some one, at least, of these or
other simple and inexpensive means of
diversion are within the reach of every one.
A well-known New York physician used to
say that he could do a year's work in eleven
months, but could not do it in twelve. The
annual vacation is one of the most efificient
defensive weapons against breakdown for
those who live the intense modern life. If it
be a sedentary one, the necessity of the
vacation is the greater. It is greater still if it
be like that of the busy doctor which knows
neither evenings nor nights, Sundays nor
holidays, but is an unremitting grind, month
after month. The vacation is one of the
most potent aids in helping to keep out of the
rut into which the daily routine of life tends
to force one. One or two days a week during
the summer do not afford sufficient rest for
the hard-working business man. They are
very beneficial, but do not permit him really to
step from beneath his burdens and feel that
he is free from care. I appreciate fully that
it is very difficult for many men and abso-
lutely impossible for others to escape from
their responsibilities for more than a day or
two at a time. It could often be done, how-
ever, if its importance were appreciated.
Many a man has learned a lesson from an
illness. After years of closest application to
business he has been forced by disease to
remain away from business, and has been
surprised and a little annoyed to find that
affairs moved on pretty well without him. It
is the duty of every man to attempt to arrange
his affairs so that he may leave them to others
if it is necessary. Accident or illness may
come to any man without a warning, and
they are rendered far more serious by worry
over business. If he prepares for such
emergencies in the be.st way he can, he will
find it easier to arrange for a vacation. If he
decides upon it in a half-hearted way, to be
taken if convenient, he will probably not find
it possible. If the time is set for it with the
full expectation of going away when the time
comes, affairs are much more likely to arrange
themselves favorably. The way to take a
vacation is to set the time and take it when
the time comes. There is some locality north
or south favorable for a vacation at every
season of the year. If it cannot be taken in
the summer, it may, perhaps, be arranged for
at some other season.
After fifty the importance of the annual
vacation becomes greater each year. A
man should rid himself of the idea that a
vacation is a simple matter of pleasure or a
mild form of dissipation. He should regard
it as a duty to himself and to his family, and
should plan for it as a necessary hygienic
measure. Even though he goes into the
country each night, he should, if it is possible,
stay entirely from his business for two weeks
at least, and longer if he can. As there are
many men of many minds, so there are as
many ways of spending a vacation as there
are individuals. The one rule* should be to
live a life different from that of the rest of the
year, taking the precaution not to overdo
the strength. The man of sedentary habits,
unaccustomed to vigorous and protracted
exercise, may destroy much of the good of
his vacation by entering at once upon moun-
tain climbing, extended tramps, prolonged
bathing or excessive exercise. Some people
seem to be possessed of the demon of unrest
3128
THE PREVENTION OF PHYSICAL BREAKDOWN
when they get into the country, and act as
though they expect to atone for the sins of
their months of sluggishness by a few weeks
of overexercise. As a rule, exercise during
vacation is overdone rather than underdone.
The summer hotel, the cottage or the camp
may not be as comfortable as the home. But
if people stay at home they will stay also in the
rut. The most valuable result of a vacation is
to get busy men and women out of their ruts,
to take them away from themselves and
their everyday cares and remove them
from their usual routine of life. If it is
rationally spent, it is worth all that it
costs in money and trouble.
"If men would but observe the golden
Mean in all their Passions, Appetites, and
Desires; and if in their Gratifications they
followed the uncorrupt Dictates of Nature, and
neither spurred her on beyond her Cravings,
nor violently restrained her in her innocent
Bias, they would enjoy a greater Measure of
Health than they do, live with less Pain, and
die with less Horror. " These words of George
Cheyne are full of wisdom, and their observ-
ance would correct much erroneous living.
One of the most common causes of break-
down is faulty diet. One point alone may
be referred to here, namely, the luncheon of
many business men. Go into a downtown
restaurant in New York near noon, be it cheap,
middle-class, or high-grade, and take note of
the stuif that composes the lunch of many of
the men, presumably sane. It often tends to
shake one's respect for human nature. It
demonstrates what some men are capable of
when away from the protecting care of their
wives. Some of these men we know will
seek sympathy at home because of the cares
of business life when the real trouble with
them is downtown-lunch dyspepsia.
Irregular hours and too little sleep are other
factors in causing early breakdown. Sleep
is an absolute requisite of nature. Different
temperaments require different amounts of
sleep, but there are very few who can keep
healthy and well on less than eight hours.
Continuous curtailing of the sleep, even if it
be slight, is more serious than the occasional
loss of many hours. It renders the mind
heavy and sluggish, and few other things will
so diminish the power to do good work. In
time even a small daily loss will tell upon the
health. If to this is added frequent heavy
losses of sleep, with eating and drinking late
at night, by a man who carries heavy business
or professional burdens, we have all the con-
ditions for disaster soon after middle life.
The irregular life of the society man or man-
about-town cannot be combined with that
of the strenuous business man with impunity.
The subject of tobacco is necessarily
included in this chapter. Like all elements
which have an effect upon the nerves, it differs
widely in its action upon different individuals
and no sweeping statements can be made.
Upon most constitutions its action is deleteri-
ous. ■ It is always injurious before the period
of complete development and cannot be used
before the age of twenty-five without harm.
Doctor Seaver, Director of the Physical
Laboratory at Yale, tabulated the record of
the students entering that university during
nine years, when all the young men were
examined and measured. The smokers
averaged fifteen months older than the non-
smokers. They were also shorter in stature.
Nicotine interferes with gro-n^h, and its effect
in that regard is very measurable. At Yale
during the four-years' course the non-users of
tobacco, although taller when they enter, gain
24 per cent, more in height and 26.7 per cent.
more in girth of chest than do the habitual
users. Doctor Hitchcock of Amherst College
found even greater differences. The differ-
ence in the lung capacity is very striking in
the two classes and has been noticed by all
observers. It shows the effect of tobacco on
the respiration, nicotine being a potent
depressor. As regards the effect of nicotine
on the mental processes, it is more difficult to
interpret the meaning of statistics. Out of
the highest scholarship men at Yale only
five per cent, use tobacco, while of the men
who do not get appointments, sixty per cent,
use it. It is not necessary to interpret this
as meaning that mental decrepitude follows
the use of tobacco by young men, for there are
other factors to be considered ; but it is cer-
tainly not conducive to the best work.
Nicotine is the most active element in
tobacco. Its immediate effect is to lower the
circulation, quicken the respiration and excite
the muscular system ; its final effect is to cause
general relaxation. In "tobacco heart" the
heart's action becomes irregular and irritable
and the walls are hypertrophied or thickened.
There is no cure without stopping the tobacco.
The tendency to increase the amount of
tobacco is almost irresistible. It is a safe and
AN EXAMPLE OF DELICATE WORKMANSHIP
3129
a wise rule for the user occasionally to take
honest account of the amount used and reduce
it one-half. If tobacco could be banished
entirely, there would be fewer irritable and
nervous men in the community. We may
once more quote our old friend George Cheyne:
" Smoking tobacco may be useful to
flegmatic Constitutions, but to dry and
lean Habits it is pernicious. Snuff is just
good for nothing at all. "
With the possible exception of bad diet
and methods of eating, alcoholic drinking is
the most fruitful cause of human breakdown.
The physical questions are so interwoven with
the moral that it is a very difficult subject
upon which to write from the standpoint of
physical effects alone. The dangers of excess
and habit and the sad results w^en they be-
come master are universally recognized. Their
power to cause suffering and ruin need not
here be entered upon. One point only will be
considered — the physical effects of so-called
moderate drinking. This commonly used
term is indefinite, for what is moderation for
one may be excess for another. We may say
in its stead ' ' the daily or frequent use of con-
siderable amounts of alcoholic drink, but not
sufficient to cause symptoms and perhaps
never intoxication." In speaking of those
men who thus drink and think it does them
no harm. Doctor Osier, whose opinion is
respected by medical men on two continents,
speaks as follows: "During the fifth decade,
just as business and political success is
assured, Bacchus hands in heavy bills for
payment in the form of serious diseases of
the arteries or of the liver and kidneys, or
there is a general breakdown." This is a
statement of a physiological truth in very
plain and unmistakable language. While a
few constitutions seem to tolerate much more
than the average, the fact remains that
alcohol is an insidious, treacherous and
dangerous element. Its use in considerable
daily quantities is always productive of
serious and considerable harm.
Again, it may be said that breakdown
is by no means a necessary result of our intense
modern life. There is more to provoke it
than there has ever been before, but at the
same time we have more means at our hand
to prevent it if we will utijize them.
AN EXAMPLE OF EXACT AND DELICATE
WORKMANSHIP
A DESCRIPTION OF AN AMERICAN WATCH FACTORY WHERE
10,000,000 WATCHES, EACH HAVING ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY
PARTS, HAVE BEEN PASSED THROUGH FOUR THOUSAND OPERATIONS
BY
PHILIP PRESCOTT FROST
BEFORE the year 1-800 our grandfathers
bought all their timepieces in Europe
at high prices. The English clock-
maker went into the open market and bought
of one man a centre- wheel cast from brass, of
another a few suitable screws, of another a
crown-wheel adapted to his purpose, and so
on through the list of necessary parts. Then
he went home and assembled his chaotic
collection of plates, screws, wheels and pivots
into a clock or a watch, filing away a little
here and a little there to make one man's
handiwork agree with another's, until the
lachme was done at last. No two clocks
or watches were likely to be duplicates, and
a part once broken had to be replaced by
the best substitute at hand.
In 1800, Eli Terry, of Plymouth Hollow,
Connecticut, began to make clocks; his towns-
man, Seth Thomas, followed, and by 1850 the
business had spread over Connecticut and into
Massachusetts. These men built their first
clocks of wood, but wood soon gave way to
brass. The Yankee, however, refusing to
cast his wheels laboriously, one by one in a
mold, punched them rapidly out of sheet
brass, inserted cheap iron- wire pivots, assem-
bled the parts before they had time to cool.
3130
AN EXAMPLE OF DELICATE WORKMANSHIP
and there it was — a clock all complete, built
under one roof and costing two or three
dollars. Soon America stopped importing
clocks and began to export them in enor-
mous quantities to almost every part and
corner of the world.
But from 1825 to 1858, as shown by the
Treasury Department returns, watches to
the value of $45,820,000 came into this
country from England, Switzerland, France
and Germany. The methods which succeeded
so well in clockmaking were, until 1850, con-
sidered too crude for application to the
infinitely more delicate task of constructing
a high-grade watch. Aaron L. Dennison,
a Boston watch repairer who had strug-
gled with the diversity of ailments afflict-
ing foreign constructions, went one day
through the armory at Springfield, where
machine tools turned out weapons on the
interchangeable system, and he returned
with a new idea. Watches covrid be made in
the same way, he thought. He interested a
few capitalists in his scheme and in 1850 a
factory was begun in Roxbury. Massachusetts.
That was the beginning.
American makers from the first discarded
the "fusee," a contrivance by which the pull
of the mainspring was kept constant from
the time it was wound until it had run down.
By this they reduced the size and weight of
the watch and removed parts very likely
to break.
The first impression a great watch factory
makes is one of absolute cleanliness. "\^^de
lawns with a park across the street are a
reminder that dust is fatal to the delicate
machinery used in watchmaking. Parks
and lawns are a decidedly good business
investment. Nor are there heaps of waste
visible, the small bulk being so easily handled
that it never accumulates. It might easily
be mistaken for some school building, save
that it is too well lighted. No school ever
had so many acres of glass as are contained in
these four thousand large windows, for the
brick skeleton of the building serves merely
to introduce a glass surface.
" Labor troubles ? " says the genial superin-
tendent of one great factory. " No, we never
had any labor troubles and we don't mean to
have any. We pay what we can afford and
try to be fair with our people. Of course we
have to reduce wages sometimes, but they
know we do it because we have to, and thev
take it cheerfully. They know we'll raise
them again when we can."
The men outside tell the same ston,\ The
State law makes fifty-eight hours a week's
work. The company accepts one less hour,
allowing the employees to decide when they
will take the extra time. This year they
voted to have all Saturday afternoon through
the summer, and no difference was made in
the pay.
On entering the works, one may pass wnth
a glance the boiler-room, the engine-room
furnishing power to the factor}^ by shaft,
pneumatic and electric transmission, and the
machine-shop, where one hundred and seventy
men are employed building and repairing the
machinery used directly in the manufacture
of watches.. Then we come to the first room
of the punch department. Here ribbons of
brass run into machines which reduce them
rapidly to little wheels and "pillar plates."
In four long lines down the high, well-lighted
room, set close together, are the punches.
The young women who operate them adjust
bits of metal quickly on their machines, puil a
lever and the punch descends with a ton's
weight, rises, and a delicate watch-hand is
crushed into being. It requires eight opera-
tions to complete the tiny pointer. These are
\''ery intelligent machines: before venturing
to descend, each carefully brushes the attend-
ant's hand out of harm's way.
In the plate-room the frame is built.
Here stand massive machines like modem
dragons, each with six " heads " served by
arms and hands of steel. The first hand
takes a disk of brass and presents it to head
number one. Head number one turns it
about much as a squirrel would a nut, drives
a tiny drill into it here, turns it around and
samples it there, tilts it up and worries it a
moment in another place, and finally turns
it over to be presented by another hand to
head number two. This head turns and
twists it about, gouging out here and bor-
ing there. So it goes down the line until
after seven minutes the last hand takes
the new pillar-plate and places it in a
tube with the others. One hundred and
thirty-three operations have been performed,
both sides of the plate having been recessed
and drilled. The holes and depressions are
exact to the thousandth part of an inch.
And this wonderful machine replaces more
than a hundred skilled workmen.
AN EXAMPLE OF DELICATE WORKMANSHIP
3131
Every watch must have its number on
each of several different pieces, and when
from twenty-five to twenty-seven hundred
watches are made every day — more than four
a minute — this numbering is no Hght task.
Number 11,000,000 has been passed, and
that means a watch from this factory for
some member of ahiiost every family in the
United States.
Down both sides of one room are long
benches occupied by machines, with only a
few leisurely attendants. A dish containing
what looks like corn meal stands nearby.
Under the microscope every grain is a screw,
threaded and slotted, and a machine is chew-
ing them out at the rate of nine thousand
a day. Slightly larger and silver-like are the
little pinions. A machine slowly devours
iron wire, busily handling meanwhile some
little speck of a thing, and out of it comes
another pinion with the little gears cut on it,
all just alike. After these are hardened they
are inspected by a workman at the rate of
four thousand a day. Only perfect ones are
satisfactory.
Of the thirty-one hundred and fifty
employees in this factory, about seventeen
hundred are women. The wages for men
vary from $1.50 to $5.50 a day and the
women get from $1.00 to $2.25 a day. A
foreman thus explains the seeming injustice:
"You see, the young ladies here make the
most faithful automatic machinery attendants
that we can get. As long as it is only a matter
of keeping up the supply of material and
reporting on the machines they are all right,
but, " glancing apprehensively over his shoul-
der to make sure none of these subordinates
are within hearing, "when any difificulty
comes up requiring mechanical skill, very few
have it. They lack judgment."
In the balance department we find some of
the most exact and, from the watchmaker's
point of view, most wonderful automatic
machinery in the factory. Visitors find it
hard to realize, however, what "seventy-two
operations" and "eight hundred and fifty
balance-wheels a day" mean. But this
balance-wheel itself is wonderful — a pendulum
in disguise. The bimetallic rim of the wheel
regulates the 'watch for changes of tempera-
ture. Every time the balance-wheel of your
watch swings it receives a little push from
the spring and allows the last wheel of the
"train" to move up one tooth. If the watch
is to keep correct time, the balance must
release the train at the rate of exactly five
beats a second, three hundred a minute,
eighteen thousand an hour; and few good,
well-regulated watches will lose or gain a full
beat in one hour.
The hairsprings are said to be the most
expensive manufactured article, weight for
weight, in the world. Nine thousand weigh
a pound. A fine steel wire is passed between
rollers, from which it comes in a microscopic
ribbon of uniform width and thickness. This
is cut into lengths of twelve or thirteen inches,
wound in the form of a spiral and hardened
by a secret process. Polishing follows, and
the little gray coils are then heated on a
griddle until they turn blue.
Within a few years a new difficulty and a
serious one has presented itself to watch-
makers. The powerful magnetism of electric
machinery has great influence upon the
steel parts of the watch, and when these
become magnetized all good timekeeping is
impossible. No man can keep his watch
entirely out of danger, but it was only by a
long course of experiments that horologists dis-
covered an alloy resembling steel in all except
its magnetism. To the outsider this is not so
impressive a change, perhaps, as the adoption
of stem for key-winding twenty years ago,
but it is vastly more important in this age
of electricity.
The remainder of the day's work on a
watch (each movement turned out by the
factory represents about twelve hours of
human effort) is hand labor or work with
simple machine tools.
The hundreds of bench-workers sit all day
with a microscope focused on their work and
manipulate the tiny parts brought to them.
The average of intelligence and good breed-
ing here could hardly be matched in any fac-
tory. Most of the three thousand and more
employees have a high school education and
there are college graduates among them. The
officers of the company, the foremen of the
different departments and some of the more
skilled workmen are of middle age or past —
"grown gray in the service, like me," as the
superintendent says ruefully — but the mass
of the workers are young people.
Each end of every pinion in a watch must
turn in a jewel to reduce the friction and
keep the bearing from wearing out, and be-
cause of its rapid movement the balance-staflf
3132
AN EXAMPLE OF DELICATE WORKMANSHIP
is given two extra jewels and harder ones.
In the escape-room a visitor sees garnets and
Montana sapphires worked into form for
roller-pins, and in -the jewel-making room
garnets, rubies, sapphires and diamonds in the
rough are turned and worked to the proper
form, polished in a manner which gives per-
fect smoothness to the bearing surfaces, and
placed in their brass or gold settings. These
are made fast in the watch by screws. Swiss
jewels are used to some extent on account
of the cheapness of Swiss labor.
The dial makers furnish the last portion of
the movement. Enamel powder is sifted on
a copper plate and then it is taken away to
be " fired. " One brief moment in the intense
heat of the furnace and a perspiring workman
draws out the incandescent disk to cool
down through red heat into a smooth white
watch dial. The numerals are photographed,
printed or hand painted upon it and the dial
is fired again.
The olhce safe holds interesting "plunder"
— watches all the way from the dollar w^atch
to quaint old timepieces thick and heavy and
wrought with loving skill from the richest of
materials. Here is a watch that once ticked
cheerfully in the fob-pocket of the Duke of
Wellington, so tradition says; and here is
another so old that the maker never thought
of furnishing more than one hand to mark the
hours. Among the others, aristocratic and
plebeian, is a burned and disfigured WTeck that
came through the great Chicago fire.
"But what is that meal sack?" is asked.
The great, hulking, well-filled canvas sack
seems out of place — until you learn that it is
filled W'ith jewels in the rough, precious stones
by the handful, the quart and the peck.
The chief of the regulating department is
putting the last perfecting touch on a watch
destined to tick from the throne of Siam.
In the office, and on every bench in the
regulating-rooms, are little sounders. Every
other second they tick in unison, except at
the fifty-eighth, and then every one knows
that the next begins a new minute. Each
watch, now in an ice-box, now in a hot-box,
and in every one of five different positions, is
regulated to keep exactly with the little
sounder. When a watch can meet those
requirements it is a good, reliable movement.
But what authority has the ticker? Our
chief regulator takes us down into the lowest
parts of the building, and after manifold
opening of doors we stand in a vault where
year in and year out forever neither tempera-
ture nor atmospheric pressure are to change,
where chemicals seize upon all moisture, and
there between two massive piers, free from all
vibration, a pendulum swings on and on,
driven by delicately adjusted clockwork. An
ingenious system of wiring enables this clock
to make and break an electric circuit at every
swing without destructive arcing at the
contacts, and so its ticking is heard in
the instruments up where temperature and
barometric pressure vary. But that is not
the end. Below is a little room in which two
clocks bolted to opposite sides of a brick pier
quietly keep watch over each other and their
less secluded neighbor. So delicately are their
pendulums hung that they would run twenty
hours w^ithout the impulse of the gravity
escapement by which they are driven. The
least flake of aluminum in addition to the
heavy brass and mercury weight of one would
cause it to lose step with its neighbor. These
piers do not rest on bedrock lest faint earth
tremors reach the mechanism they carry, but
on a cushioning bed of sand.
But what authority have these clocks ?
Up above where the sun shines is an observa-
tory with a telescope, and on favorable nights
the astronomer watches for old friends
among the stars. These stars know what
time it is, and they tell the astronomer, who
presses a little key and tells a recording
instrument downstairs.
Here, then, after some four thousand
operations, we have our little machine of
steel, brass, nickel, precious stones, so per-
fect in every one of its hundred and fifty
parts that whatever its temperature or
its position it will run steadily on, eighteen
thousand beats an hour for hours and days
and months and years before its tiny
needle-point bearings wear out or break.
The little balance-wheel revolves as many
times a minute as the drive-wheel of the
twenty-hour limited at full speed; but let it
fall short only one beat in every full thousand
required of it and the daily loss amounts to
nearly a minute and a half. Watches have
been built which were only one swift little
fifth of a second beat in error after twenty-
four hours — four hundred and thirty-two
thousand swings of the balance — and these
watches were turned out by machinery at a
cost of only a few dollars.
'THE PIT— A STORY OF CHICAGO"
THE LAST AND BEST NOVEL OF THE LATE FRANK NORRIS
BY
OWEN WISTER
Two liearts, that should beat as one,
estranged by prosperity , and by adver-
sity united in the happy and solemn
end: this, stated in its simplest terms, is the
theme of "The Pit" — a theme as old as the
hills, and all the better for being so. Ingenu-
ity, surprises, novel twists of plot, these also
belong to legitimate art ; but it is never upon
them that the soundest art relies ; great artists
always concern themselves with the usual, not
with the unexpected; with the familiar rather
than with the exceptional; and are recognized
by their simplicity, not by their complexity.
Mr. Norris has chosen a situation that belongs
to all time, and has given it a treatment which
belongs entirely to himself. This is what we
ask of the strong writer, and it is only the
strong writer who can do it.
A man of action, shrewd, self-made, and
successful in affairs, to whom speculation has
so far been no more than a distrusted and
occasional pastime, meets and marries the
first woman who has seriously interested him.
He outstrips his competitors with ease; he
conquers her with no very great difficulty.
She is not sure how much she loves him, and
her own words, "Do you suppose you can
say ' no ' to that man ? " summarize the quality
of his wooing, which is but little presented on
the scene. That both are large enough natures
for a fine and understanding union is shown
by one simple and beautiful page after
they . have come out from church after
being married.
But a friend has recently drawn him into
certain transactions in wheat so profitable
that his latent relish for such excitement is
awakened. This starts the crack in their
happiness.
I
" If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me ? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing:?"
Her heart, like every natural woman's, had
asked this of her husband, and the answer
is — his deepening preoccupation in his wheat
gambling ventures, his increasing absences
from her. He was rich already when he
married her, rich beyond need of greater
wealth; but the lust of the chase is on him,
and hence he gives her more and more the
luxurious things she does not want and less
and less the only thing she craves — the home-
talk and blessing. Sometimes her appeals
for his companionship (she makes but few,
being proud) bring him to her for awhile,
filled with desire to make amends ; but his
brief resolves evaporate like mist in the hot
glare of speculation. Repeated triumphs
lead him on, flatter his vanity, stimulate his
sense of power and his thirst for more power.
Each new campaign is on a scale more huge ;
to see his enemies out -generated, to graze
ruin and make half a million instead, all this
gives him sensations so poignant and delicious
that he grows to require it like some hypo-
dermic injection. Deprived of it, his powers
sink flaccid and unelastic. Especially after
one victory, when he comes home declaring it
shall be his last — that he is done with this
debauch of nerves — is the abstinence shown
to be a strain greater than his endurance can
any longer sustain. He fidgets in idleness;
tries books, driving, the theatre, his country
place, all quite in vain. These things cannot
hide him from his ennui, do not bite sharp
enough to stimulate him. He goes back
to the wheat pit, and this is the beginning
of the end.
Presently the markets of the world are
throbbing with his vast operations. The
fortune that still attends him makes the
annihilation of those who stand in his way;
he himself becomes the storm centre, while
through his brain sweep the vertiginous cur-
rents of trade and strategy which he has set
going and could not stop if he would.
To such demands mortal strength is unequal.
His judgment grows bloodshot, his human
feelings grow bloodshot, his sleep deserts
him, and his appetite; and whenever he is not
I
3134
"THE PIT— A STORY OF CHICAGO"
in action, night or day, the words "wheat,
wheat, wheat" sing perpetually in his head;
so that he goes flying forward through the
weeks with the dread of illness coming behind
him and the beckoning illusion of his omnipo-
tence in front. These pages are so powerful
that they drag the reader in their sweep even
as the wheat drags the hero, even as Dickens
and Zola and Tolstoi drag one with an
interest and a suspense that are like a joy-
ful riot of pain.
And the man's lonely wife meanwhile ?
She sits deserted in her uptown magnificence,
sharing in her husband's life no longer, know-
ing nothing of his thoughts, his doings, his
hopes or his fears, not even seeing his face
any more, but keeping company with empty,
expensive furniture. He has ceased to come
home at all, but makes his visits to her by
telephone, sleeping in a hotel room as close
to the Board of Trade as he can get. So for
her also a pit opens — a pit of desperation, that
she struggles back from. The end is happy.
Stripped of accessories, such is the story;
nor do accessories seem to count for much in
looking back upon this book. It belongs to
a group of financial novels certain of which
are familiar to most of us — "Mammon and
Company," for instance, and "The Market
Place" and Mr. Hope's new story. Very
different from each other, all in their way
take up the same thread of modem specula-
tion and thus furnish a proper measure by
which to gage "The Pit."
I think Frank Norris has outstripped them
all. I do not think any one of them compares
with him in emotional interest or in grasp
of the subject. His study of the quite
special technicalities presented seems far more
thorough than any of theirs, even Harold
Frederic's, whose book has strength. Mr.
Frederic's pirate financier is a success;
Mr. Benson's is a failure, though he tried hard;
Mr. Hope does not try at all, but plays more
on the surface; and it is the speculating
woman who is the object of his brilliant
attention.
When it comes to the accessories, to drawing-
room small talk, to a certain light sureness of
touch in presenting men and women of the
world, we have nobody, except Edith Whar-
ton, who can do it right. Hope and Benson
do it very right. Harold Frederic is clumsy
at it, and Frank Xorris is behind Harold
Frederic. From this inadequacy in acces-
sories may be excepted one comedy scene
where a 3-oung girl and grown man discuss
love, literature and themselves. It is very
pleasant.
Concerning the art of "The Pit" certain
other reserves are to be made ; but if they are
all made they will leave still untouched the
great main stor}-, strong, passionate, vivid —
livid, I had almost written — with interest.
The author's firm hand and long reach
stretch into tragic depths of the human
soul far beyond the compass of the other
financial novels I have named.
You have noticed, have you not, how many
novels we read, how few we remember ? They
are little pleasure-bridges by which we cross
a mental gap and go on, and that's all.
This is one sort of novel, and a good sort, too.
Have you noticed how, even though we
may think of these stories during the hour
that we read them, we never think of their
authors for a minute ? Their existence doss
not occur to us.
But there is another, a rarer kind of novel,
the kind written by what we call a master. The
sure s^^mptom of such a novel is not so much
that you remember it, but that you think of
its author. You feel the force, the personality,
the attitude toward life, that lie behind the
printed words ; the story is but a medium
through which you have met somebody.
Frank Norris is somebody. In his first novel,
the sea story, this was evident at once. In
"McTeague" his strength had grown; in
"The Pit" he has risen on stepping-stones
to higher things. Such a raw device as (for
example) the recurrent descriptive phrase
is no longer employed; and his last word to
us shows him on the road to have become a
master.
There is a marble group called " Death
Arresting the Hand of the Young Sculptor."
When I think of this group I think of Frank
Norris and lament the great loss to our
national literature that his death has brought.
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT
BOOKS
THE World's Work sent a letter to
some of its literary friends asking
them what recent books they had
road with the greatest pleasure and profit,
and requesting that their replies be after the
manner of a personal letter. Some of these
replies are as follows:
ADELE MARIE SHAW:
A man who can read Barry Pain's
"The One Before" without laughter is a
troglodyte. Phrases born of its cheerful
context come rippling into a depressed
atmosphere and smiles — inopportune smiles —
widen outward fron\ an inward bliss. There
isn't even the pathos of the Goose Girl's
"invaleeds" to edge its unshaded mirth.
"Myra of the Pines" laughs, but the
laughter has its moods, like the pines them-
selves. Of course the artist that can make
you laugh can make you cry. It is the
tragedian that is oftenest limited. Long ago
I found, in a newspaper, stanzas on the death
of Stevenson, and pasted them into the copy
of "Memories and Portraits" that in the
affluent future, of dreams, is to be bound in
soft leather. These lines:
" And the tears and the prayers of a planet
That start
From the heart
Reach over the distance and span it
From us to the land where thou art,"
came as naturally from the author of " Myra "
as " My little body is aweary of the whole
push." The Knickerbocker youth of the
whimsical combinations and the note of a
universal grief are part of the same scale if
the audience knows how to listen.
In "innocent mer-ri-ment " is a whole
gospel of regeneration, and few there be who
can create it. So true a picture as "The
Battleground" would be sure to have it,
finely distributed like "minor constituents"
in the atmosphere. Beside the vulgar com-
monplace of the Dorothy Vemons the real
gentlefolk of this real time show as might a
Rembrandt beside a colored "supplement."
There are two heroines, sisters, and neither
plots against the other; two heroes, cousins,
and no villainy to make that pleasing com-
plexity productive of suspense. It is just
life, as it happened, like Uffington- Valentine's
"October."
Hornung's last book is life, too. " In the
Shadow of the Rope" is not an Arabian
Nights; it is not "Raffles," but it "takes
hold." We give more interest to the half
repellant man-who-would-be-Nemesis than
to Harland's lovers who cannot gaze upon
the one beloved without a fervent "What
sex !" Clear-eyed, honest, tormented Rachel
keeps, even in the criminal court, a vital
cleanness like highland air. The least char-
acter is definite. We get the story without
waste or struggle. And though " Mr. Caine
and Miss Corelli better please the massy
mind," little by little the circle of those
who prefer the body of an idea mated to
its soul grows wider.
It will widen faster if our boys and girls can
be set to reading the right things. In
"Golden Numbers" Kate Douglas Wiggin
and her sister have given them a beautiful
anthology, real poetry, by poets; and there
are always nature tales bv people who know,
like "The Kindred of the Wild" and the
books with Dugmore's pictures.
Now and then a book grapples us into a
nearness where we can take no thought for
form. "The Octopus" does that. For a
host of people there is a pang in the death of
Frank Norris. The force of the man and of
his genius showed so increasingly in his work.
He was never meaningless. He roused you
either to combat or to acclaim. You might
rage at the realism of " McTeague, " but if you
began the book you read it, and you felt its
arraignment. "See these people," it seemed
to say, "knowing nothing beyond the animal,
the material. There are thousands like
them, product of our schools, of our civiliza-
tion. Why, if we are all we say we are, have
they no glimmer of perception an inch above
the ground?"
If Frank Norris had lived his genius would
have mounted steadily toward the knowledge
he has gained in the swift moment of our loss ;
and there might have been added to his
optimism another note — the hint of an im-
mortality superearthly, the persistence of the
individual no less than of the type.
It is hard to see how any American can
afTord to leave "The Octopus" unread. I
am waiting with eagerness for "The Pit."
3136
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT BOOKS
CHARLES H. CAFFIN:
Apart from books special to my work
I am more given to the renewal of old
friendships than to the seeking of new
acquaintances. But among the latest books
that mean something to me is Maxim
Gorky's " Foma Gordyeef. " Its rough-
hewn realism, for all the ugliness of its
sordid picture, suggests such a grip upon facts
and represents them in such fit proportion to
their local background as to savor of universal
truth and to act as a fine tonic upon one's con-
science and imagination. Then for a sweeter
( ?) appeal to the latter quality I can read and
reread Maurice Hewlett's "Little Novels of
Italy" and his "Richard Yea and Nay."
But the former seems more free of the con-
sciousness and suggestion of invention; and
as a throwing back of the imagination and a
revitalizing of the old matter, with its outward
appearance and environment and its spiritual
inwardness, such a creation as " The Madonna
of the Pear Tree" is completely engaging.
I place it in a little niche of my affection
alongside Pater's "Imaginary Portraits."
And further, there is "Kim" — but my
admiration for it I do not choose to try to
analyze. I yield to the extraordinary glamor
of its crowded and changing spectacle and
prefer to lose myself in its phantasmagoric
maze.
GAILLARD HUNT:
I have read Benjamin Kidd's great book
on "Western Civilization" and I accept
it without wholly discarding those authors
against whom Mr. Kidd breaks his lance.
There is a lofty optimism about the book; it
develops an inspiring theory of the advance-
ment of the world, and the style is one of
sustained eloquence and strength.
We are Americans before we are critics,
and whenever a book comes to us painting
truly a picture of American life we know
inttiitively that it is good, and do not need an
expert to appraise its exact value for us.
Owen Wister's story, "The Virginian," is one
of the best books of the day, because it is a
true account of a part of Western life rich in
primitive virtues and in the qualities that
count for much when put into the sum which
makes up the manliness of America.
There are some chapters in Clara Morris's
"Life on the Stage" — notably the one in
which she describes her first appearance
before a New York audience — which are
extraordinary in their vivid intensity. Her
book confirms the theory that the man or
woman who has won and deserved success in
a calling requiring the exercise of thought and
imagination has alwa^-s an instructive story
to tell and can always tell it interestingly.
GEORGE H. ELLWANGER:
I know of no writer of recent fiction who
exhibits to an equal extent the qualities
possessed by Maurice Hewlett — originality of
treatment, mastery of expression, stirring, pic-
turesque incident and rich and colorful phrase,
beginning with " The Forest Lovers " and con-
cluding with the "New Canterbury Tales."
I have also found Bernard Capes a dra-
matic craftsman who invariably exerts a
subtle charm. An eerie restless breeze, as of
an Autumn wind before the fall of the leaf,
plays through his chapters, while the setting
of his scenes and certain other characteristics
not infrequently recall the author of "The
Mayor of Casterbridge." He is perhaps at
his best in "Love Like a Gipsy," in the
haunted "Mill of Silence," and especially
when he flashes the gorgeous ruby in "The
Lake of Wine."
Yet the novelist has yet to appear who
can be compared as an exponent of romance
and realism to Thomas Hard}'. What short
stories recently published — with due respect
to the genius of Bret Harte and the airy
fancy of "The Turquoise Cup" and "The
Desert" of Mr. Arthur Cosslett Smith — may
vie with "Wessex Tales."
Among "nature books" one intuitively
turns to Burroughs for the most graceful
picture of the bird on the bough ; to William
Robinson in his newly revised " English
Flower Garden " for a consummate presenta-
tion of the charm of floriculture; while the
recent American volume, "Nature's Garden,"
may be cited as a delightfully instructive
monograph of the wild flower and the mission
of its insect visitors.
Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer has discoursed
most entertainingly on trees, Mrs. Alice
Morse Earle on the love and history of "Old-
Time Gardens," and a month or two since
Dr. Charles Sprague Sargent, the eminent
American botanist, completed his magnificent
and exhaustive "Silva of North America."
Closely following Thompson Seton, who is
his own excellent illustrator, the wild animal
and its haunts have been graphically por-
trayed by Charles G. D. Roberts, seconded
by the spirited illustrations of Charles
Livingston Bull in "The Kindred of the
Wild."
And if one is weary it is pleasant to sink
into one's easy-chair and bask in the placid
atmosphere and quiet humor of "My New
Curate," so artfully diffused by the genius of
the Rev. P. A. Sheehan, P. P.
VIEWS OF READERS ON RECENT HOOKS
3«37
LIONEL STRACHEY:
Are you a Philistine? If you are, shun
the "Melomaniacs," keep away from the
"Valley of Decision," turn your back upon
the "Column." But if you are thirsty for
literature which is without deference to
gallery-god ideals of life and art, then
you may pass agreeable hours in the com-
pany of these novels. Compare them with
one another one cannot, but a few of their
common merits it is easy to state. Mr.
Huneker writes of musicians and pseudo-
musicians, Mrs. Wharton of eighteenth-
century Italians, and Mr. Marriott of Attic
souls in British bodies, each with an erudite
knowledge of the subject. The three authors
are quite free from cant. They are brave and
broad. They speak with mature opinion in
language sententiously pointed. Their style
is in either case personal property. The
writers richly possess and as richly diffuse
gifts of eminent culture. All of them take
a critical view of the dealings of both Provi-
dence and man. And, oh Philistine ! of
no one of the three books can it be said that
it is "pure and sweet," that it is "breezy and
wholesome," that it "can be read without
effort," or that it is "a stirring tale of the
American Revolution."
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER:
Booker T.Washington's "Up From Slavery"
is the most remarkable book yet produced
by a Negro, not only because it gives the
life-story of the most remarkable of Negroes,
but also because it contains the gospel
of the regeneration of a race. Mr. Wash-
ington's personal vicissitudes, from abject
poverty and slavery to his present com-
manding position, would suffice to insure
to his autobiography a permanent place
among biographical writings; but the fact
that his book demonstrates that Negroes have
been and always must be lifted by the same
means by which all other races have been
lifted from barbarism, makes it immensely
significant. For thirty years politicians have
tried to persuade us that the Negro Question
is political. Mr. Washington proves con-
clusively that it is educational, economic,
moral, social in the largest sense.
"The Life and Letters of John Richard
Green" possesses in certain measure a like
twofold interest. First, it introduces us
to a cnarming personality. No one who
makes Green's acquaintance here can fail
to be grateful for it : he is so alert, and sympa-
thetic, and sincere in mind, so buoyant, play-
ful and loving in heart, and he achieves
modestly and quietly, against long bodily dis-
tress, work of such rare excellence. And then
his letters are a running comment on the
methods and aims of historical writers, and
show him to be sounder than the other men
of his group — Freeman the pugnacious and
narrow; Stubbs the dry; Creighton the dull
and heavy. They rather looked down on
him as an amateur, but his letters reveal
patience in scholarship equal to theirs, and
a regard for the claims of narrative which
has made him — what not one of them ever
was — a historian whom all the world reads
with pleasure.
Read Mr. Owen Wister's "The Virginian"
for the story first ; then think it over and read
it again as a real contribution, the first in
many years made by an American to the
art of fiction. See in the Virginian himself
a personage worthy to rank with Cooper's
Old Leatherstocking, human through and
through, the only large representative creation
an American novelist has blessed us with
since Hawthorne. The book is a literary
landmark.
MARY ROGERS MILLER:
I have lately bought three books to give
away, but have ended by keeping them
myself: "Cross Country with Horse and
Hound," "The Misdemeanors of Nancy,"
and " Emmy Lou — Her Book and Her Heart."
Their principal characters are certainly thor-
oughbreds.
I have never hunted the fox, and must con-
fess that I have always thought it poor busi-
ness even for the idle rich. I never believed
that they really enjoyed cross-country riding.
My sympathies were with the fox. I find
that I have been buried under a mountain of
prejudice which Mr. Peer's charming book has
rolled from my shoulders. His view of sport
and of athletics in general is the broadest,
sanest and cleanest I ever encountered.
The book acquaints the reader with a true
sportsman and gentleman.
Some folks think Nancy a conscienceless
flirt. Nancy and I will not admit this.
Neither do I agree with the author that Nancy
is a disreputable (though adorable) person.
What can you expect of the daughter of a
New Hampshire lawyer and a Kentucky
belle ? I see in her all the instincts of the true
sportsman. She plays for the sake of the
game itself and not for the killing.
To imitate Nancy or to be dull in her com-
pany would be equally impossible.
"Emmy Lou" goes straight to the heart.
She is so deliciously — and normally — dull.
She is also very dear and very sweet.
Every teacher in the land ought to read
3138
VIEWS OF READERS OX RECENT BOOKS
" Emmy Lou" and then take an inventor}^ of
herself. There are more good lectures on
school-teaching in this book than I ever found
in a treatise on pedagogy. Emmy Lou is
real. She is American. She is human. You
could hardly love her better if she were
your own.
DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY:
Of recent books I have read, I must give the
first place to Hon. George S. Boutwell's "Sixty
Years in Public Affairs." Stories from their
own lips of men who were active in our national
councils in the days before Abraham Lincoln's
presidency are rare enough nowadays; and
when written by such a delightful narrator as
Mr. Boutwell they are doubly worth reading.
These memoirs are furthermore the record
of a statesman.
In Mr. Howells' "The Kentons" is the
story of an Ohio family leaving their com-
fortable home first for a visit to Xew York,
then for a longer period of diversion abroad,
simply to cure the eldest daughter of her
tender interest in a brazen-faced cad, who
really gave the girl the best sort of affection
he knew how to give, a mixture of patronizing
admiration and prurient attraction. There
is not a dramatic incident in the story; the
heroine is a moping, plain girl who has little
to say, and the scene is for the most part laid
on board an ocean steamer during a mon-
otonous voyage. Given such data, we should
like to see anybody except the inimitable
Mr. Howells produce with them a story to
surpass all the elaborate melodrama of the
court and the wilderness. Mr. Hamlin
Garland, it seems to me, comes nearest to
doing it. Mr. Howells writes about real men
and women in real circumstances. His
incomparable gifts of insight into the springs
of action, of mastery of colloquial English,
and of a humor refined to the utmost
delicacy of suggestion, redeem ever}i;hing
that he writes from the least taint of trivi-
ality or commonplaceness.
Finally, I would mention Count Tolstoi's
religious and social tracts, entitled "What is
Religion?" There is in them an unmistak-
able suggestion of retrospection and sum-
mary. A quality of seership adds solemnity.
Tolstoi has worked long and faithfully, and I
for one must think ver\" wisely, to solve the
most important question of religion, namely:
"What do I really believe and why do I believe
it?
MARY E. WILKIXS-FREEMAX:
Maximilian Foster's "In the Forest" is
totally different from any other book descrip-
tive of animal life which I have ever read.
It may not be that the mystery of that
animal creation which runs parallel with ours,
and concerning which we possibly know as
little in reality as we do about the life on the
planets, is in truth dispelled by these masterly
sketches, but we are able to persuade our-
selves with a considerable show of reason
that a bright light is shed upon some of its
dumb secrecy.
At all events, the stories are convincing.
They are credible to one's reason. There
seems little doubt that that great Caribou
who slew his great sire and deposed
him from his forest throne, and who in
turn yielded up his own sovereignty to his
son, lived, and lives. It seems inevitable that
they should. It is the everlasting story of
the triiimph of youth and strength, and
splendid selfishness, for the final good of the
mass, among animals as well as men. There
are many other stories comprised in this col-
lection which delight me. I have not read,
for many a day, a book, taken altogether,
which so struck me as a new note.
Speaking about books, I have just finished
Mr. Stoker's "The Mystery- of the Sea."
Criticism aside — all books can be criticized —
it is a renewal of one's childish delight in a
story to read such a genuine one. It is a stor}'
which is a stor\', and moves along with a
rattling pace, and holds one's interest from
first to last.
Then there is another book, "The
Furniture of Our Forefathers," which in-
terests me intensely from its pages of pure
suggestion. On looking at these pictures of
the ancient seats, chests of drawers, tables,
etc., which furnished the homes of our ances-
tors, I see stories hovering in the air. These
things which gave comfort, rest and pleasure
to those who have gone before, these pieces of
carved wood which went to make the old
homes of the nation, are to me like ke}-notes
to the people themselves and their Hves.
EVERETT T. TOMLIXSOX:
Hapgood's "Washington" seems to me a
movement toward the newer and true con-
ception of history. "Up from Slavery" is
unique. It is national in its scope as well as
individual, and if the phrase is not unduly
overv\-orked it might be termed "epoch-
making. "
Brierley's "Studies of the Soul," by its
freshness and suggest iveness, has given me
a new insight into the possibilities of life.
Dean Briggs' " School, College and Character,"
free from pedagogical cant, has been inspiring
by its clearness, saneness and genuine insight
into educational values.
AAVOMC
TAE WORLD'S
WORKERS
AN AMERICAN IN RUSSIA
RUSSIA has been something of an undis-
covered country to American progress.
It is beyond the Hnes of our present industrial
invasion of Europe. Yet one American
whom we know has been doing things there
much as thousands of men are doing them
at home. Mr. Enoch Emory, of Massa-
chusetts, went into the far Amur province
about thirty-five years ago. Since that time,
through his enterprise, it has become the
best developed of the Siberian colonies. He
started to develop one of the most unpromis-
ing regions that could have been found.
Aside from the natural difificulties of the
problem, there was that of a lack of sufficient
population. When he first went there it
took six months and often more to com-
municate with the outside world. It can
be done now in less than a day. Through his
American energy and foresight in teaching
the people and in bringing in the latest and
best machinery and tools of all kinds, and
through the help of the Government, which
brought in colonists from European Russia,
he has succeeded in making this province on
the northern border of Manchuria one of
the richest under the Russian flag.
He introduced plows and from them has
taught the people the use of our reapers
and binders, and has of late successfully
brought in our most modern harvesters.
He has introduced mining and industrial
machinery in large quantities ; he has created
a fleet that plies the Amur; he has founded
warehouses and large stores that supply
everything that any one could possibly
want; he has started electric light plants
and has introduced the telephone. He has
established his trading stations all through
the provinces, covering a territory of thou-
sands of miles with them. In fact, he has
made this region to grow and become impor-
tant to a degree that is even more astounding
to its inhabitants than it is to us. His
trade is with all the world north and south.
He has at one time or another dismantled
and sold throughout Siberia forty-two
ships, some of them coming from San
Francisco. The population of this district
has been more than doubled through his
instrumentality, and by the introduction of
labor-saving machinery he has multiplied
its output and its resources an innumerable
number of times. The Government, having
been always favorable to America, has been
favorable to him personally, throwing no
obstacles in his way, helping when it could —
seeing that he was working for what were
their most immediate interests.
AMERICAN OPPORTUNITIES IN RUSSIA
RUSSIA and Siberia are the richest two
countries in the world as far as
mineral and agricultural resources go," said
Mr. Emory the other day. "The great field
has hitherto been only slightly developed.
The Germans have control of the greater part
of the commerce, internal and foreign, but
they sell as a rule only the cheaper grades
of merchandise. The French and Belgians
have put in a large amount of capital, but
mostly in a speculative way ; while the English
have started a very few iron and steel factories,
and are somewhat heavily interested in the
development of the oil trade. The Americans
have as yet done very little here. The
Germans have exploited most of the American
goods which have come to Russia.
"The two lands — the Russian level country
and our great Mississippi basin — are the two
nearest alike in the world in general climatic
conditions and in the character of the soil.
If we go to their mountains and look at their
iron and coal deposits and see how near
together they are and of how easy a mining
character, we find conditions that are only
to be equaled in our eastern Pennsylvania
district. The Russians are primarily an agri-
cultural people. Their methods are the very
crudest. The ground is broken with a bent
stick shod with a piece of tin which only
makes a little scratch on the surface, and the
crops are gathered with the old-fashioned sickle
and cradle abandoned a generation ago in this
country. Labor-saving machinery is rarely
to be found. The live-stock and dairy
interests are just starting, yet we find that
3I40
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
Russia supplies fifteen per cent, of the world's
meat, and that in the last five years she has
built up a trade in butter with England
alone that amounts to more than $17,000,000
a year. She has good facilities for trans-
portation and communication. All the enor-
mous trade of Russia is only a new groT\i;h,
and it is very small compared with that
which is certain to come. The industrial
condition, it must be remembered, is even
more backward than the agricultural one.
"Russia is as certainly a land of promise
as our own agricultural and mining regions
were thirty years ago. The few attempts which
have been made have, indeed, been failures.
But it is not because of any fault in the
conditions, but rather because of the incom-
petence of those who undertook the job. As
a rule, they were men who had never had any
experience in directing large enterprises at
home or abroad, or who, so far from wanting
to make a success of their ventures, were
in them only to sell out.
"But to the American who is accustomed
to our conditions, and who has a thorough
knowledge of farming or of some manufacture,
there can be no reason why he cannot succeed
enormously in these large, undeveloped fields.
"It has been said and repeated that this
Russian peasant people are ignorant and
conservative. To a great extent it is so.
They are ignorant, but they are quick to
learn. They are conservative because they
only know the old methods, and also because
their simplicity has been taken advantage
of by unscrupulous German traders, until
they do not now trust any people who want
to sell unknown goods. And here again is
another reason why the Americans should
get into this great country: the American
name on a piece of machinery is a kind of
sterling mark, so that anything that is not
too complicated will sell merely on its merits
as an American machine. We are in great
danger of losing this good name, however,
because the Germans and other traders are
in the habit of selling veiy inferior goods by
representing them to be American. And the
only way that this can be stopped is by our
trading directly with Russia. Almost all of
the things that we sell to Russia pass through
Hamburg and Bremen and are handled by
German houses, only a little of this business
being in English hands. An additional and
scarcely less important result of this rehan-
dling on the Continent is that it involves the
taking out of several more profits. The goods
then become so expensive to the Russians that
they can afford to buy them only in small
quantities. But if a man goes to these people
and wins their confidence and has the patience
to show them, and not try to blackguard
them into buying, they will buy and buy
liberally."
A LABOR-UNION TURNED CAPITALIST
ABOUT a year and a half ago some
fifty polishers and platers in a plant
in Rochester, New York, organized a labor-
union and made demands for higher wages.
They were refused and quit work, when the
manager of the works made this rather
astonishing proposition :
"You won't work for me !" he said. "Work
for yourselves. Start a polishing and plating
plant of yotir own. If you'll do it as cheaply
and as well as any one else you can have my
work."
The union met and decided to follow his
suggestion. With the aid of a lawA-er they
drew up articles of agreement. The company
was capitalized at $3,400, divided into thirty
shares. After a year and a half the concern
is doing a thriving business.
This last year has been very prosperous.
Much of the time the men have worked
thirteen hours a day. The men are paid by
the piece, and receive, besides, their share of
the profits of the business. So profitable
has the concern been that the men have been
required to pay only a small part of their
original subscription. There are now only
twenty-one shareholders and each owns one
and two-thirds shares.
When differences arose in the shop they were
referred to a shop committee. Each share-
holder considered himself a capitalist and
therefore did not spare himself. They sug-
gested improvements and economies. The
president acted as bookkeeper to save expense,
and all stood shoulder to shoulder for the
result.
Perhaps there is a suggestion in this suc-
cessful experiment for a way out of labor
difficulties. But it will be noticed that
piece-work, which many unions condemn, was
instituted, and the men worked thirteen
hours while their neighbors fight for eight.
A LESSON IN FACTORY METHOD
A FACTORY expert who has been for
more than a year examining the works
of an old and well-known New England
concern and suggesting changes and improve-
ments, made this remark the other day:
"They were always interested in all the
suggestions I made which would lessen the
cost of supplies, but when I submitted a long
list of new machines that in my opinion
were needed the president's face grew long.
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
3141
"Don't you think," he said finally, "that
we can get along in many cases with the
machinery we already have ? Such an expen-
diture as this will hurt the year's dividend,
and we can realize very little on the old
machines if we try to sell them."
"Well, no," I said. "If you merely wanted
to get along you didn't need me. And that
isn't the American way. The reason we
win is because we're willing to take big risks
to do it."
"I guess you're right," he answered; "but
that's a long list."
"He'll do it after awhile," went on the
expert, "but there's quite a bit of old England
in New England method."
THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT FOR
SUCCESS
IT'S often the little, unheard-of things
that are making the great reductions
in manufacturing costs," said a patent
lawyer recently. "Only this morning a
manufacturer, a workman and I settled the
matter of two little wheels that the workman
had invented for an automatic machine he
had worked over in the employer's shop.
No one will ever hear of it, but the little con-
trivance will save the manufacturer between
forty and fifty thousand dollars a year, and
the working-man won't have to mind the
machine, either."
MAKING NAVAL CONSTRUCTORS IN AMERICA
THERE is a new proof of our growing
efficiency in technical education, and
one of national interest. Our naval cadets,
who w^ere to become members of the naval
construction corps, were trained until recently
at Greenwich in England. They are now
being sent to Boston. The English school
was closed to Annapolis graduates, but there
were famous schools on the Continent ready
to teach the cadets. A special course in the
theory of war-ship building, however — from
torpedo boats and gunboats to monitors and
battle-ships — was established at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technolog^^ last year.
It is to serve as a complement to the four
years at Annapolis, and it is without doubt
entirely a success.
The Bureau of Construction and Repairs
recently applied to Congress to increase the
number of constructors from forty to fifty,
and a bill was passed authorizing the appoint-
ment of two additional men in 1902 and four
in 1903. These new constructors were needed
to meet the increase in the number of the
navy's ships. Whether a ship is being built
in private shipyards, or in a navy yard, a
constructor is responsible to his superiors for
the quality of every pound of material and the
method of every hammer stroke and of the
placing of every rivet.
The new course at Boston will be three
years in length. It will teach the young
midshipman everything he needs to know
about designing and building a war-ship; and
as soon as he is ready he is set to work
designing a ship of his own to meet certain
defined requirements. Once a week he
goes to the Boston Navy Yard and either
works as a mechanic or studies administrative
details in the head constructor's office. He
visits, also, the Fore River Yards, where the
Virginia class battle-ships. New Jersey and
7?/zo(f^ /5/a;fc/, are being built. In 1901 three
graduates of Annapolis were assigned to the
Boston naval station to take the course.
Last year four others entered the school.
The 1 90 1 men have all been appointed to the
naval construction corps, and last year's men
will follow in order; and unless an emergency
arises each Annapolis graduate who enters
will have three years of post-graduate work
before he becomes a regular officer in the
navy. And he will have taken his entire
course in American schools.
THE MACHINERY OF MODERN FARMING
THE modern farmer, like the mechanic,
is becoming merely the director of
machines. At the barn and granary he
is relieved of the tiresome task of shoveling
the grain, elevators run by horse-power taking
the loads swiftly to the top of the highest
structure. Corn-cribs as well as wheat-bins
are thus filled. Modem cribs made of wire
and steel netting serve as com depositories
at the least possible cost. Indeed, there is a
perplexing problem for the farmer who buys
grain of his neighbor and has not the most
improved machinery for handling it. The
seller insists on a cent more a bushel for his
grain if he must unload by the old-fashioned
way, rather than at a "dump," as in an
elevator or mill.
The introduction of the corn-harvester
and the shredder has done much to revolu-
tionize the handling of the com crop. It was
but a few years ago when the only method
used for com was to husk the ears from the
stalk in the field, leaving the stalks to wither
through the winter, at most furnishing a
precarious rough feed for the cattle. It was
shown by the experiment stations that not
more than fifty per cent, of the value of the
crop was utilized. Other ways of gathering
have been introduced. A harvester gathers
the com in great bundles and, binding it.
3142
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
places it in suitable shape for carr^^ng to
lauge shocks. The field is thus left bare and
ready for sowing to wheat. The shredder is
a machine through which this com is run.
The corn is threshed as thoroughly as wheat,
but, more than that, the stalks are chewed
up into a hay-like material, called "stover,"
which is eaten by cattle and horses as easily
as is hay. The com is thus utilized to more
than ninety-five per cent, of its worth, and
the farmer is able with the same exertion to
fatten nearly twice as much stock. Railway
cars, filled from grain spouts at the country
elevator in a brief time, are emptied by means
of steam scoops run by compressed air or
flexible shafts. These are worked inside the
car, taking out almost the last bushfel of
grain with remarkable rapidity.
From the standing wheat, through the
operations of the self-binder in the field, the
self-feeder and self-measurer and loader at
the threshing time, and the mechanical
devices for handling the full loads at either
end on the railway transit, only in the trans-
ference from scattered bundles to the sepa-
rator is direct human effort needed. This
of itself, in its saving of time and strength,
brings consumer and producer closer and lifts
the farmer to a more self-respecting position.
ELEVATING AND STRAIGHTENING RAILROADS
WHILE New York City is burying its
tracks a number of the larger
Atlantic coast cities are engaged in elevating
theirs. This series of public works along
our eastern highway from north to south is
full of significance. It marks the last stage
in the evolution of our once crude frontier
railroad to the permanent form of the English
right of way. Grade crossings are eliminated,
curves straightened, and wood or iron trestles
and bridges are replaced with masonry or
with steel as rigid as stonework. Lifted
twenty feet above the street level on massive
walls based on bed-rock, our heavy modern
express train may make its sixty or eighty
miles an hour just as safely through city
streets as in the open country. Time is saved,
and danger to life and property is removed.
If some railway company were to reproduce
the great pyramid, 756 feet square on the
ground and towering 481 feet into the air,
of solid masonry, and should raise it out
of the heart of one of our large cities, it would
occasion remark. When an equal mass of
stone and earth is being handled in a track-
elevation scheme no notice is taken of it,
even though it be set down upon extremely
valuable land. So the one-time wonders
of the world are quietly surpassed.
More wonderful than the mere quantity of
material handled is the way in which the
engineers carry on their work without inter-
rupting or delaying for an hour the tremen-
dous volume of traffic passing over the right of
way. Express trains, locals, local expresses
and freights follow one upon another over
temporary tracks until other tracks are ready
at a new level, and the throwing of a switch
turns the tide of commerce into the new
channel. Great railwa}^ stations are rebuilt
to suit the new track level without incon-
veniencing the crowds which use them.
The track-elevation work now in progress
within city limits on the direct line between
Boston and Washington will cost not less
than $50,000,000, and will probably amount
to much more. An exact estimate is impossible
at the present stage of the work. The
D., L. & W. R. R. is spending about $6,000,000
within fifteen miles of New York which
would not be included in that estimate,
but which forms a part of the great track-
elevation scheme now being worked out.
The city governments contribute a part
of the expense, Newark, N. J., paying
$900,000, orless than ten per cent, of the actual
cost of the work, to the three railroads ele-
vating their tracks through that city. The
New York, New Haven & Hartford are build-
ing great granite piers through Bridgeport,
Connecticut. And these examples are only
a few out of a large number.
MEASURING THE TEMPERATURE OF FURNACES
IX connection with man}^ big enterprises
— notably the manufacture of steel — it is
frequently desirable to know the temperature
of a molten fluid in a furnace. At tempera-
tures easily attainable in the modern electric
furnace no kind of fire-brick at present manu-
factured will hold together. The electric
furnace easily fuses substances set down in
the old chemical dictionaries as "infusible. "
Carl Barus, an American physicist, of Brown
University, has helped to develop a scientific
principle commercially applicable to the
measurement of high temperatures.
The method devised is this : Two wires of
different metals — i. e., platinum and an alloy
of platinum — are joined at one end. This
junction is placed in the body whose heat is
to be determined. Between the other pair
of ends, at any distance, is placed a galvano-
meter. Owing to the difference between the
temperature of the first pair of ends and that
of the second pair an electric current is set up ;
and the deflection of the galvanomieter needle
serves to indicate the amount of the difference
in temperature.
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
3143
The French have devised an optical pyro-
meter. They observe through a telescoiH^
with a ])risni how, in the case of a body lumin-
ous with heat, new spectrum-rays are added
with every rise in temperature, from the dull
cherry-red of a low tem])erature to the daz-
zling white betokening a high degree of heat.
By such ingenious devices tlie necessity of
plunging a fragile thermometric instrument
into highly heatetl bodies is obviated ; and the
measurement of high temperatures inaccessible
by means of ordinary thermometric methods
becomes practicable.
A NEW LIFE-BOAT
COLLAPSIBLE life-boats have been in-
vented and improved until the new
boat for the navy, which was recently tested
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, seems to come
near to filling all the requirements. First
of all, it can be extended or collapsed in the
water or out; it is practically impossible to
capsize or sink it, and it carries provisions
and has protection for its passengers. Cork
and kapok give the boat its buoyancy, and
the entire framework is covered with canvas
for protection.
The fact that it can be opened in the water
gives it a great advantage in the event of
an accident in which a ship sinks rapidly,
for the frame can be thrown overboard like
a raft. If the ship sinks too quickly the
lashings can be cut and the life-boat floats,
ready to pick up people struggling in the
water. The present life-boats are often
crushed in the launching. This new boat
can be handled easily and will stand all
sorts of rough usage. Broken frame or torn
canvas make no difference in its bouyancy.
The new boat, as it showed in its tests, can
be extended or opened into boat shape in ten
seconds. A ship meeting another in dis-
tress in a rough sea can, instead of "laying
by" for calmer weather, have the life-boat
hauled over as a raft and unfolded when there.
The life-boat can carry sixty-eight people
from a wreck to the shore without a possi-
bility of swamping or sinking. Boats of the
same size are not ordinarily allowed to carry
more than fifty people. A life-boat that will
not capsize, which cannot be sunk, and
which can take whichever shape, raft or
boat, is best for the conditions, seems to be a
great advance over the boats now in use.
ONE EFFECT OF HIGH WAGES IN AMERICA
SOME industries in California which have
failed are evidence that high wage rates,
even with our tariff wall, prevent home supply
in the face of competing imports.
Efforts to produce tea, silk, opium and
])crfumery are among these features. The
local climate fosters the most satisfact(^ry
growth yf these plants. They were intro-
duced years ago with every promise of
success. There was a famous tea planta-
tion in California forty years ago that is
famous among tourists for the thrift of the
bushes, for tea-making stopped as soon as the
first picking showed that the men employed
could only earn for the employer about a fifth
as much as their wages cost him. Wages
have been lowered since then, but never
low enough to enable a Californian to produce
tea for the market price. It avails nothing
industrially for California that the tea plant
will grow luxuriantly anywhere in the valleys
or foothills ; the plant is an ornament and
nothing more.
It is much the same with the cotton plant
in California. In the interior valley the plant
grows finely and the staple is exceptional in
length, strength and fineness, but though
occasional efforts have been made to gather
it, failure has always come through lack of
hands for picking. Even the -effort to colonize
blacks from the South failed because the
people found other opportunities for more
profitable labor. The very crop they were
brought to gather went unpicked. Before it
could ripen every black man was gone
and employed elsewhere.
Silk-growing has been persistently pushed
in California, enjoying at one time a State
bounty for cocoons. So long as the State
paid seventy-five cents a pound for them
some were produced, but when the bounty
lapsed production ceased. Silk could not be
profitably produced with hired labor, but it
was hoped that it might prove an acceptable
fireside industry. Women and children could
make money too easily in other ways. The
large plantations of mulberries find their
present functions in shade and firewood.
The opium poppy grows splendidly, but
there is no labor to score the capsules and
scrape the exuding gum. Hundreds have
tried to prepare it and all have failed.
Perfumery farming, planning to market the
subtle essence of rose, violet, lavender, tube-
rose, etc., has been a standing possibility
for outdoor occupation in California, but
has yielded nothing because of high wage
rates. Even the vast quantities of orange
blossoms which are produced in excess of all
requirements of fruiting trees cannot be
profitably gathered for the perfumers' pro-
cesses. Perhaps a time will come when low
wages along with low cost of necessaries will
make us able to conipete with the foreigner.
3144
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
THE BUSINESS OF SAVING TREES
PORTABLE outfits for threshing, saw-
ing, grinding, hay-bahng, etc., have
long been owned by the operators and
moved from farm to farm, performing expert
services at contract rates for those whose skill
or means did not warrant them in purchasing
appliances and doing the work for themselves.
Li California this service has been extended
to the destruction of injurious insects on fruit
trees, and operators have found it profitable
to secure the best machinery and materials,
and the highest expert knowledge as well.
The highest mark in professional insect-
fighting is found in the use of hydrocyanic
(prussic) acid gas. The fumes are deadly,
and the tree must be enclosed in a gas-tight
receptacle during its application. Roughly
speaking, the method is to drop a tent over
the tree to generate the gas in a dish of
chemicals under the tent, and to allow the
tree to remain in its gas bath for some time.
While one tree is medicated others are being
tented, and work proceeds uninterruptedly.
This operation takes place at night . Sunlight
or heat makes the gas destructive to foliage
as well as insect. To work economically a
number of men and tents are required. There
is need, therefore, of organization and capital
and a business head to the undertaking. In
Southern California there are probably about
thirty professional outfits. A single gang
consists of four or five men. Tents cost about
$25 each, and each gang of men can use
from forty to fifty of them. About $1,500
would then be the cost of an average outfit,
including teams and wagons.
Firms of "fumigators, " as they are called,
may operate a number of "gangs" and out-
fits, and one Los Angeles firm has as much as
$10,000 invested in its business. The cost of
treatment depends upon the size of the trees,
and contracts are made with growers at
agreed rates — an average cost being about
twenty-five cents a tree. Sometimes growers
furnish the materials and contract for the
application, and there is reason to think that
the insect receives the hardest strokes when
this method is employed. Some counties
have purchased outfits for local use, and some
growers operate their own, but professional
"gassing" is the rule. There is also an
application of the same business methods to
the operation of outfits for spraying orchards.
No doubt, to the development of such business
methods is due much of the very successful
work against insects for which California is
well known. A struggle against an army even
of insects must be organized and carried on
with thoroughness to gain permanent success.
COLLEGE ENGINEERS AT WORK
TWO young men not long ago went
West from an Eastern college. Box-
ing, lacrosse and football had hardened their
muscle, and an engineering education had
so sanely developed their minds that they
buried their diplomas in trunks and met the
West unaffectedly, with their coats oflf and
their sleeves rolled up. They went to work
in a copper smelter.
One became furnace-man's helper and, as
he said, "didn't do much at first but extin-
guish John when his clothes caught fire from
the red-hot spatters." But the second night —
for he w^as working on the "graveyard" shift —
the furnace-man defected, and the college bov.
with his friend as helper, ran the furnace
himself from his book knowledge. They
watched the valves, kept the water-jacket of
the slag-spout tepid, dodged the explosions
of the molten metal, and at last prepared at
midnight to tap the furnace and draw the
slag from the settler, wdiile the manager and
the smelter-men stood about to see how the
"tenderfeet" ran their "first tap." There
was cheering when the operation succeeded.
But the young men felt they had not yet been
Westernized by initiation.
"Watch for something spectacular," said
one to the other, "and when it comes,
tackle it hard."
The next week he was down in the mine
repairing a pump when a workman dropped
a wrench into seven feet of cold, dirty, copper-
impregnated water at the bottom of the
shaft — the second wrench to be lost that
day.
"Fish it out," said he.
They stared dumfounded. The "sump,"
or pool of water, lay at the foot of a slippery
ladder; and no one in the gang could swim.
Chuckling, he undressed, while the miners
gasped at his temerity, and creeping down
the slimy rungs, he plopped oflf into the sump,
dived, secured a wrench, came up for breath,
dived again for the other, and came dripping
up the ladder, to find himself an extremely
popular youth.
The other was still a tenderfoot until one
night the slag-spout of his furnace blocked
and the furnace began to "freeze" — a costly
accident, for a frozen charge of copper must
be chipped away with sledge and cold-chisel.
One had already frozen, and men had sledged
away for five perspiring hours to clear it,
the two young men among them. Afterward
they had talked of the meaning of "work."
One described minutely. He said: "Your
legs don't yield. You sledge away till your
grip on the handle begins to weaken; your
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
3145
arms start dyiny;; your back loses power;
your stomach yields, and, last, your head.
Finally you can't lift the sledge. You lean
on a post and pant; for worlds you couldn't
clasp your lingers around the hammer handle.
Then you begin to 'come' again; and you
go through it all once more. People who
haven't tried it don't know how workmen
feel when they work." Accordingly, when
the slag sluice blocked and another round
of sledging promised, the young man pon-
dered to find a way out.
"What can be done?" said the superin-
tendent, who had hurried up with a trail of
workmen.
"Give me a pickax," said the college boy.
"Don't yer try it, sonny," said a workman.
But he took the pickax and a sledge,
went down alone underground beneath the
fifty-ton settler full of molten matte, and
began hammering at the viscous obstruction.
The superintendent held a stream ol water
from a hose upon him while he worked, but
some of the spattering metal burned through
his clothes, and his shoe-soles were slowly
crisping. At last the slag, giving way, went
rushing down the flume in a smother of
steam and sulphur fumes, and the boy stag-
gered out. His shoe-soles were burned away
and his clothes were riddled with holes.
The men cheered as he started home to
change his garments. He was naturally
happy, for he, too, was no longer a tenderfoot.
One of the two said afterward: "All these
Westerners want is something theatrical."
The other, blowing a puff of smoke, respcmded :
"Yes, it's grandstand play." But each feat
was a little more : it was showing an aptitude
promptly equal to the occasion.
CONTRASTS IN NATIONAL INGENUITY
IN going over the Valdez Pass, by all odds
the longest, most difificult and most
dangerous path into the interior across the
Alaskan mountains, the early pioneers of 1898
and 1899 had some diflficult problems to
solve in primitive engineering. The Pass
is thirty miles long, and twenty-two miles of
this are up hill. The rise is in a succession of
"benches" — steep snow-clad trails from five
hundred to five thousand feet long and
inclined at an angle in many cases steeper
than forty-five degrees.
The longest of these benches, called the
"summit," presented the most difficult task.
Men had not only to take themselves up this
incline, but to drag also from one to two tons
of food and utensils with them.
It forms a curious study in racial thought
and ability to recall the various methods by
which this task was accomplished. The
patient, dog-like, lower-class Swede took his
fifty or seventy-five pounds on his back and
toilfully climbed to the top, deposited his
burden, and returned again and again for
another load. The Norwegian, more saving
of his strength, carried his pack perhaps a
fourth of the distance and made a cache.
By making many short trips he gained
frequent rests and accomplished more in the
long run than the harder-working Swede.
The German, man of one idea, stuck to the
sled that had brought him over the easier
reaches of the Pass, and, carrying a bare forty
pounds, painfully and slowly drew the load
to the top, and then coasted down for more.
Some Frenchmen, who were fortunate enough
to possess a horse, drove hirri up with light
loads until driven off the trail for spoiling it,
and some Japanese tried pitching fifty-pound
bags from hand to hand, but soon wore
themselves out. They then imitated the
American plan, which was as follows:
A strong stake was driven eight or ten feet
into the snow a thousand feet up the incline,
and braced with an additional stake and
ropes. To the large stake was attached a
block through which ran a thousand feet of
rope. On each end of this rope was attached
a sled. The sled at the foot of the incline
was then loaded with from seven hundred to
a thousand pounds of goods, held in place by
the drag rope, which passed over the load
from the rear and under the front bar of the
sled.
Four men picked up the upper sled and
thrusting short, tough sticks through it,
grasped them under arms and literally "fell
down" the hill, their weight drawing up the
loaded sled, guided by its gang of four men.
Arrived at the bottom, the empty sled was
loaded, while the top sled was unpacked.
The operation was then repeated, the men
who had just worked getting a rest walking
up. In this way, in one instance, fourteen
tons of goods climbed the four thousand feet
in two nights' work of ten hours. American
ingenuity had seen that the necessary return
trips should be made useful in some way,
and that if gravity could be made to assist
in the pulling, the precious strength of the
men, so necessary for success later on, would
be made to last longer and go further.
GETTING RESULTS AT ANY COST
AFIRE completely destroyed recently the
plant of a manufacturing company of
New England which manufactured emery
and corundum wheels, used in every machine
shop and in nine out of ten of all manufac-
I
3146
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
turing operations. The factory possessed a
large stock-room in the basement where sixty
thousand wheels were kept, stored in racks.
These wheels ranged in size from the tiny
jeweler's wheel, half an inch in diameter and
thin as a wafer, to the giant tool grinders
four feet across and a foot thick.
Emery wheels are made by several different
processes for different purposes, of emery of
all degrees of fineness and into wheels of all
degrees of hardness. The wheels are stored
by size in racks, and arranged in these racks
according to the number of emery and grade.
When the factory burned down the stock-
room was a mass of ruins and the wheels were
buried beneath the debris of the burning
building, but not much injured.
The company advertised that it would
resume operations at a certain date, when the
new building, on another piece of ground,
w^as expected to be completed. As it hap-
pened, a blizzard so tied up the railroads that
the expected material failed to appear, with
the result that while the building was fin-
ished, the date of opening business found
the stock-room still unstocked.
The fire and water had pretty well obliter-
ated the paint marks on the wheels which
designated their grade and the number of the
emery, and as it was vitally necessary to know
these it was decided that they should be put
into the new room, marked and graded in
as short a time as possible. One traveling
man happened to be in at that time, and he
and the superintendent, the only other avail-
able man, set to work to grade some forty
thousand wheels. Grading an emery wheel is
accomplished by laying it down on some hard
surface and attacking it with a blunt tool,
called a "digger." The "feel" of the slight
give to the tool tells the skilled workman
which of the fourteen degrees of hardness the
wheel is. By looking at it the size of the
grain is judged. These two men grading, two
laborers for lifting and a boy for marking,
graded and marked and put away the wheels
in fifty-six hours, working without rest.
]\Iore men were not put on the job because
grading is an art which few in the factory
knew. The graders had to handle most of the
wheels themselves, and each wore out three
pairs of heavy buckskin gloves in the process.
The smaller wheels were attacked first, and
graded and marked at the rate of from fifteen
to twenty a man per minute. The large ones
required more time, as they had to be wheeled
to the proper position, carefully lowered on
the side and then accurately judged. The
very large wheels, made by a chemical pro-
cess, are much harder to judge than those
made b}" burning an emery composition in a
kiln, and these took more time.
In fifty-six hours the job was done, and the
next day a waiting pile of more than four
hundred orders were filled from the stock
which two days previously had been abso-
lutely useless because they were unmarked
and unarranged.
ANOTHER NEW FORM OF FUEL
IN Germany, France and Belgium the manu-
facture for fuel of briquettes — made of
coal dust, lignite or peat mixed with a
cohesive substance, such as pitch which is
combustible, and formed into bricks under
high pressure — has been an important indus-
try for twenty years ; and the small circular
or cubical blocks are being very generally
used in cooking-stoves and grates and even
for power fuel. In America the industry
has never been thoroughly developed, prob-
ably because coal has been cheap and plentiful.
The recent coal strike, however, hurried the
commercial production of briquettes in the
United States to a great degree.
The material from which the American
briquette is manufactured is culm — the fine
coal which surrounds ever\' breaker in
mountainous heaps. This culm is valueless,
for it is so fine that it packs tightly together
and will not bum. To make it available in
the form of bricks it is necessary to combine
it with a "binder," as it is technically called —
a liquid substance made by a secret process
from oil and various distilled products of
coal. The culm is first washed, then mixed
with the binder and then subjected to
great pressure.
These briquettes may be made in any size,
according to the form of furnace in which
they are to be used. They are ignited exactly
as coal is ignited, and bum with a strong
flame and with remarkable heat -giving power.
Two attractive features of this fuel are that
it gives off almost no smoke and bums with
very little waste. The only residue is a fine
ash without clinkers or cinders. It is claimed
that careful experiments demonstrate that
they possess greater heat-giving power, weight
for wxight, than the best anthracite and from
three to four times that of dry wood or peat.
The chief recommendation of the briquette,
however, is expected to be its greater relative
economy. It is said that the cost of manu-
facture, including the raw material, is not
over one dollar per ton, and that the product
can be marketed profitably at a saving of
from two to three dollars per ton over coal at
the lowest normal prices. It is, among other
things, a valuable new use of waste material.
MR. JOHN S. SARGENT
THE MOST EMINENT OF THE WORLDS PORTRAIT PAINTERS
(.See "The March of Events'")
THE
WORLi:>SWORK
MARCH, 1903
Volume V
Number 5
Zbe fIDarcb of lEvents
THE historic event of the month is the
making of the treaty with Colombia
which ends the long preparation for
the Panama Canal. When this paragraph is
written, the treaty awaits only the ratification
of the Senate, which now seems certain. The
canal, therefore, is definitely in sight; for it
must be begun within two years and be fin-
ished within twelve.
After more than a half-century of agitation ;
after long opposition from many quarters, in
particular by some of the transcontinental
railroads; after efforts made by private cor-
porations; after the scandal of the French
Panama company; after the abrogation of
the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty with England,
which stood in the way; after surveys, dis-
cussions of routes and endless debates; and
after the silent opposition of some European,
and the jealousy of some South- American,
governments — at last the United States will
construct and control an interoceanic highway
for the incalculable and perpetual advantage
of the commercial world.
It will be recalled that the act of Congress
at the last session gave the President authority
to conclude prescribed arrangements for a
canal by the Panama route; or if this failed,
to conclude arrangements for the Nicaragua
route. The French canal company and all
its property and rights will be bought with
clear titles for $40,000,000; and now a satis-
factory treaty with Colombia is concluded.
The Panama route, therefore, is selected.
By this treaty we are to pay Colombia
$10,000,000 for an exclusive franchise for one
hundred years (renewable forever at our
option) , and after nine years an annual rental
of $250,000. We agree to the neutrality of
the canal (as we had previously agreed with
Great Britain) ; and although Colombia retains
general sovereignty over the zone of the canal,
we have the right to protect life and property
there if she fail to do so. The agreement is
satisfactory to our government in all its
details, for it is fair and reasonable.
We shall, then, soon begin work on the
canal, as already authorized by Congress; and
we have been fortunate in securing the route
that most engineers think best. By a total
expenditure of more than $200,000,000 we
shall, within a few years, have made it pos-
sible to sail, as Columbus set out to do, almost
due west from Spain and reach Asia. A
great new way will be opened between east
and west that will radically change the com-
mercial geography of the world for a large
part of its inhabitants. Such an event has
not happened many times in human history.
SECRETARY HAY'S CONTINUED TRIUMPHS
AGAIN Secretary Hay has won the thanks
of the nation — this time by this
agreement with Colombia about the canal.
It was he, it will be recalled, who concluded
with Great Britain a new treaty that got rid
of the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty which so
long stood in the way of any isthmian canal.
ft
Copyright. 1903, by Doubleday, Pag-e & Company. All rights reserved.
3150
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
Again, in his work looking toward a satisfac-
tory settlement of the long controversy with
England about the Alaskan boundary, he has
opened a way of hope for the end of that old
trouble. From his dealings about the inva-
sion and occupation of China to his remon-
strance against the expulsion of Jews from
Rumania, Secretary Hay has continued to
earn the eulogy of Harvard University as the
foremost living diplomatist. Even^ year,
under his direction, it becomes plainer to the
world that American diplomacy means fair
dealing; and this is a great national gain.
Every student of public events whose
memory goes back no more than a dozen years
will thankfully bear witness to the change that
has taken place in our foreign relations. We
were then under suspicion when we were not
in contempt. Our dealings even with Great
Britain were difficult. We were always
wrangling over inconsequential international
affairs, and we never seemed to reach clear
conclusions. The most tiresome and appar-
ently the most ineffective part of our national
administrations used to be the Department
of State.
Many influences have contributed to the
happy change. We have asserted ourselves;
we have grown richer; we have made a com-
mercial "invasion" of other lands; we have
built a navy ; and we have cut a bigger figure
in the world in several ways. But, after all,
it is men that mold events ; and wherever an}-
notable thing is done you will find a note-
worthy man. The just, frank and persistent
personalit}'' of Secretary Hay has been felt
and respected in every capital in the world;
and he has won a place in our history and
among the greatest international statesmen.
He has given new character to diplomacy.
GOVERNOR TAFT AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE
SUCCESSFUL PUBLIC SERVANT
AND, since it is pleasant to write in
praise of good men, what an example
Governor Taft has set for patriotic youth for
all time to come 1 A good student of the law
and a successful judge, he had as the ambition
of his life a seat on the Supreme Bench of the
United States. He was in the direct line for
such a promotion if vacancies should occur,
when he was appointed chairman of the
present Philippine Commission. But from
a sense of public duty he accepted the
uncommonly difficult task of leading the
PhiHppine peoples out of the chaos of
war and ignorance to orderly government.
When he accepted this post the diffi-
culties were greater than beset any other
public task that we had in hand. It was
not clear what could be done. It was
not even quite clear what we wished to do.
Congress had enacted no Philippine legisla-
tion. The whole problem was yet a military
one; and public opinion in the United States
was divided. We were making our way
through a fog. But Judge Taft, with his
capable co-commissioners, took the task in
hand and began the work of constructing an
orderly government — of making a civiliza-
tion where civilization had never been.
What they have done is a great piece of con-
structive work, and the first piece of such work
that has been done by a democratic govern-
ment with an Asiatic population. For this
reason its far-reaching value cannot yet be
estimated. It is too soon to say that it is
the beginning of a new era in the history of
the Orient ; but it is not extravagant to say
that it may turn out to be so.
When Governor Taft came home ill last year,
he again consulted, not his personal comfort or
safety, but only public duty, when he returned S
to his post. A few weeks ago the President
offered him the appointment to the vacancy
on the Supreme Bench caused by the retire-
ment of Justice Shiras; and his old ambition
was at last within reach. But the whole
people of the Philippines, as nearly as they
can be represented by residents in Manila —
English, Spanish, Tagalog — made a great
demonstration to show their wish for him to
remain; and 6,000 Filipinos "of all political
and religious parties," begged him to stay.
He declined the appointment and remains
Governor of the Philippines.
Judge Taft is yet young enough reasonably
to expect other opportunities to become a
Justice of the Supreme Court; but — without
holding lightly the great dignity and worth
of the Court — it may be said that his present
post, since he has given it meaning and power,
is as honorable and as important as any place
in the public service. To build up at last a
self-governing people out of the Philippine
tribes is constructive statesmanship of the
highest kind. It is worth remembering that
this great opportunity came to him simply
because he took up cheerfully the public task
that was assigned to him and did it with all
Photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston
MR. WILLIAM R. DAY
RECENTLY APPOINTED JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT TO SUCCEED JUSTICE SHIRAS, RETIRED
^ {Sfe ''The March of Events**)
\
Copjiig-nt, 1902. by C. M. Gilbert
MISS KELLER, THE DEAF AND BLIND AUTHOR, READING HER TEACHER'S LIPS
Miss Helen Keller Miss Sullivan Mr. Joseph Jefferson
(Sec "Tht March 0/ Er'tuls"}
THE AMERICAN FEELING TOWARD GERMANY
3'53
his niiglit and with tlie highest patriotic aims.
He found tliis great opportunity for an historic
career sini])lv bv following public dutv.
THE MATTER WITH SOUTH CAROLINA
TILLMAN, tlie ex- Lieutenant (iovernor
of South Carolina, who a year ago
won unenviable notoriety by his gross dis-
courtesy to President Roosevelt, had been
roundly abused at home by Mr. Gonzales,
the editor of the Columbia State, which is the
principal daily paper at the ca])ital. A few
days before Mr. Tillman's term of office
expired he walked from the state house down
one of the principal streets of the town and,
when he met Gonzales, fatally shot him in
cold blood. Tillman, who had two revolvers,
was put in jail. There is a general feeling of
shame and indignation; a subscription has
been started to erect a monument to the dead
editor; but the prevailing opinion is that the
murderer will not be hanged.
The calm people of South Carolina are
entitled to the sympathy of the country for
the unwelcome notoriety that the State again
suffers. It has not been many years since
Mr. Dawson, the editor of the Xcivs and
Courier, in Charleston, was murdered; and
his murderer went unpunished. The bully
has brought disgrace on the State from the
time when Brooks, a South Carolina member
of Congress, struck Sumner on the head with
a cane in Washington, and he continues to
disgrace the Commonwealth.
Now, there are many good men in South
Carolina — men whose standards of civilization
and of personal conduct are the same as those
of good men elsewhere. The State is not a
frontier community. It is one of the Original
Thirteen. It has long been the home of a
cultivated society. Why is it, then, that the
bully has survived — that men take the law in
their own hands, and that murderers are not
punished there ?
The argument in detail would lead far and
would reach over a long stretch of history.
But the general fact that explains the State's
degradation is that human life is held, and
has by a large part of the population always
been held, cheap ; and it is held cheap because
all men are not considered to have the
same rights and privileges. An individual
assumes that he and not the organized com-
munity is dominant; and the organized com-
munity has not asserted itself strongly
enough against such an individual assump-
tion. In jjlain English, the democratic
theory of society is not in favor. It is not
accepted in the daily life oi the people of
South Carolina. Such a community is as far
off from modern American ideals as a com-
munity that existed a ccmtury ago.
The remedy is in education. Education
means the free right training of every
child in the Commonwealth; but it means
a great deal more than this. It means
the assertion of the community against the
lawless individual — the community's author-
ity against individual authority. The State
must tax; it must educate; it must ]junish.
It must give every individual the same privi-
leges, the same duties — put them on a level.
An aristocracy in a democracy means a
group of a few privileged persons ; outside this
group, the bully; behind the bully an ignorant
populace that will elect the bully to office,
will hold him in honor and will acquit him of
crime. There is yet something structurally
wrong in South Carolina, and the many good
people of the State have the sympathy of the
country in their efTorts to reform their social
structure. They can do it only by building up
all the ignorant and neglected classes. Then
a Tillman could not be a hero, he could not
be elected Lieutenant Governor, he would not
be even tolerated, not to sav admired and
acquitted. No State can rise higher than its
average man, no matter how high the personal
conduct or how gracious the civilization of
some of its individuals.
THE AMERICAN FEELING TOWARD GERMANY
GERMANY has not made a happy
impression on the world b}" her
conduct in the Venezuelan trouble. The
popular feeling in England against the
English-German alliance ran high, and it was
regarded by the best opinion as a most grave
and dangerous error of the Government.
Again Mr. Kipling struck the note of national
feeling in "The Rowers," his spirited verses
against the compact. The Prime Minister
of England felt obliged to declare that the
alliance was "a mere casual cooperation for
a specific purpose in a limited time."
Opinion in the United States has been
singularly tolerant, and the Administration
has been patient and careful to an admirable
degree. But the undercurrent of American
feeling has been one of suspicion.
Photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston
BARON VON STERNBERG
THE NEW CERMAN ENVOY TO THE UNITED STATES
(See "The March of Events")
BARON VON STERNBURG, THE GERMAN ENVOY
3'55
The suspicious attitude of the German
admiral toward Admiral Dewey at Manila is
recalled. German conduct at Samoa, too,
is remembered. The recent storming of the
forts in the bay of Maracaibo during the
Venezuelan blockade (in spite of the explana-
tion offered by the German Government) had
the appearance of unnecessary hostile activity.
The anti-American feeling also that found
expression in Germany during our war with
Spain is remembered. And there is no need
of a reminder of the German dissatisfaction
at that time with the close relations between
England and the United States.
Now all these events and incidents are
probably the results of the German tempera-
ment and of the ignorance of the German
official classes of our institutions and methods
— the outcroppings of militarism. Rude
manners are natural results of a military
bureaucracy. Germany is "cocky" — to a
degree theatrical. Witness the dress-parade
and the pomp and the triumphal manners of
the German Commander-in-Chief of the Allied
Armies in China — in a war that, after the
Commander arrived, was opera-bouffe when
it was not the wanton murder of help-
less Chinese. Military Germany reflects and
exaggerates the war-lordly manners of the
Emperor. Wherever his soldiers march or
his navy sails there is boasting, if not violence.
This military spirit cannot ever quite fall
in with the American spirit. It was easy to
see during Prince Henry's visit how ill the
German of official life understood the Ameri-
can character. In spite of the genuine cour-
tesy that was shown on each side, there was an
obvious difference in the point of view. The
American people were less impressed than the
Germans thought. There was no lack of
frankness. Certainly there was no intention
to deceive. But the greetings of crowds,
private hospitality, official and personal
heartiness — all these are a mere pleasant show,
and they mean next to nothing in American
politics, domestic or foreign. The character
of the American people shows itself in other
ways; and a Prince's visit and welcome cannot
mean the same thing in a democracy as they
often mean in monarchical countries.
The present suspicion, therefore, may
spring wholly from German military manners
and a lack of knowledge of the American
character. For Germany has time and
again declared, probably in good faith, that
she has no colonial plan that looks toward
the acquisition of territory in South America.
Her policy is to build up her own industries,
to strengthen herself at home, to hold herself
strong between Russia and France.
Yet while the good faith of the Kaiser's
Government toward the United States and its
friendly feeling need not be doubted, we can-
not forget that there is a strong push of the
German people outward. They need markets.
There is a strong economic pressure for more
room; and economic pressure has many a time
proved itself more powerful than kings and
parliaments, to say nothing of mere diplo-
matic declarations.
While, then, it would be inaccurate to call
the present feeling in the United States by
any milder name than suspicion, and although
Germany's bad naval manners and her lordly
ways in dealing with a weak nation recall
bad manners on previous occasions, a suspi-
cion of unfriendly intentions may be unjust.
Let us hope so, and forget the whole incident.
But Germany must remember that these ways
are not pretty ways, and the Monroe Doctrine
stands. *
BARON VON STERNBURG, THE GERMAN ENVOY
THE coming of the new German Envoy,
Baron Speck von Sternburg, for the
immediate purpose of representing Germany
at Washington during the Venezuelan trouble,
is taken as evidence of good- will to us ; for he
has had unusual opportunities to understand
American character and institutions. He
was born of an English mother and he spent a
part of his childhood in England. His father,
although a man of aristocratic lineage, took
part in the revolutionary uprisings in Germany
in 1848-49 and found it prudent for a time to
expatriate himself.
The son (the present Envoy to the United
States) had a military education, won military
honors in the Franco-Prussian war, and was
decorated with the iron cross on the battlefield
of Sedan. Having left the army, he pursued
political and economic studies, and at twenty-
eight years of age entered the German diplo-
matic service. All his experience as a diplo-
mat has been in English-speaking countries;
and, while he was attached to the German
embassy at Washington about six years ago,
he married an American lady. He was the
Kaiser's special commissioner to Samoa,
wdiere he had a difficulty to settle with
3156
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
representatives of the American and English
governments. He is regarded as the German
diplomatist who knows, perhaps, better than
any other, the thought and temperament of
English-speaking nations, with an especial
knowledge of the United States. If he
should be promoted to the rank of Ambassa-
dor to the United States — to succeed Baron
von Holleben, who yet holds the post,
although he is absent from the country — his
promotion would be interpreted as evidence
of the German desire to understand and to
be understood by the American people.
"TO INTERFERE WITHOUT INTERFERING"
HE further the Venezuelan trouble
T
has gone the plainer it has become
that South America is right at our doors.
Even a little while ago these countries seemed
somewhat far away. They were removed
from our special concern except at long inter-
vals and because of our trade with them.
Now they press much closer.
While the conferences at Washington about
Venezuela w^ere going on, our Government
was asked by nearly, all the Central American
governments to afford some sort of protection
in case of grave domestic disturbances which
they feared. The tendenc}^ will become
stronger for these weaker governments to look
to us for protection when they have trouble;
and, but for very careful diplomatic work, the
European governments would assume that
our Government must in some way and under
some conditions or at some time be to some
extent responsible for them.
It is a delicate task always to maintain our
historic relation to the South and Central
American countries and yet not indirectly
at least to help their credit or standing, and
thereby to seem to assume obligations that
we have no thought of assuming. When
they get into trouble with European credi-
tors, w^e have to set bounds to the actions
of these creditors. We make it more
difficult for them to collect their debts;
but we cannot help them to collect them;
and the debtor countries must not be
allowed to strengthen their credit by our
concern for their territor}\ Theoretically,
our position may, under certain conditions,
seem an impossible one; and it will require
even greater diplomatic care in the future
than it has required in the past to " interfere
without interfering" — for this is a defini-
tion that was once given of the Monroe
Doctrine.
CHANGED OPINIONS ON THE RACE QUESTION
THE most noteworthy fact shown by
the discussion of race-politics in the
South that has for some time been going on
is the change of opinion in the North and
the change of expression in the South during,
say, the last ten years.
In the North the dominant feeling now is
that the problem is the South's ow^n problem,
and that the South must work it out. There
is no disposition in the North to repeat the
missionary and reconstruction experiments
of the early da^^s of freedom. There would
have been a very general approval of a restric-
tion of the suffrage to prevent ignorant
domination — if ignorant white men and
ignorant Negroes had alike been excluded.
There cannot be found in any influential
quarter a wish to force "Negro domination"
on the South.
But dominant Northern opinion yet holds
firmly to the doctrine that no political dis-
crimination should be made against the
Negro simply because of his color or race;
that (deprived of the ballot as he may rightly
be — along with ignorant white men — so long
as he is ignorant and in arrears for taxes)
he shall have the door open to him for all
the privileges of citizenship when he is
worthy; and that when he proves per-
sonally fit he shall not be excluded simply
because he is a Negro.
This is believed to be a fair, if blunt, state-
ment of the present dominant opinion in the
Northern and Western States. But in most of
these States the interest in the subject is less
than it was when the South was a burning
question in national politics. If the South
will only manage the matter without doing
violence to the Constitution and without
denying the Negro a chance to rise. Northern
and Western opinion will not again greatly
concern itself about it.
In the South, too, there has been a decided
change of temper. President Roosevelt has
appointed fewer Negroes to office in the
Southern States than President McKinley or
President Harrison appointed, not to speak
of preceding Republican Presidents ; and there
are fewer Negroes holding public offices in
the South now than there were when Mr.
Roosevelt became President. Those that he
LARGER FORCES THAN RACE POLITICS
3'57
las appointed are acknowledged, too, to be
)f a higher level of personal worth than most
)receding appointees were. Yet there has been
I louder outcry against him in the Southern
Jtates for his attitude to the Negro than
,here was against any of his predecessors for
nore than twenty years. What Southern
)pinion accepted from President McKinley
ind President Harrison, and acquiesced in, it
•esents from President Roosevelt. He gets
lo credit for appointing better Negroes and
ewer of them than his predecessors appointed,
Dut only blame for appointing them at all.
This change in Southern political temper
las followed the recent campaigns in many
states to restrict Negro suffrage. These
;ampaigns emphasized the subject. Every
)ther political topic was put aside. The
Dopular cry was "white man's rule," which,
,n the minds of many white men, came
;o mean that no Negro shall ever hold any
office. The agitation to prevent "Negro
domination " seems to have produced a deter-
mination to deny the Negro any part in
politics. He may vote when his vote cannot
;hange an election. But he may not hope
for political "recognition" nor for office —
2ven the humblest. This feeling is expressed
sometimes thus bluntly, sometimes more
gently; but it is the present feeling at
least of most of the political spokesmen
of the South.
There is, therefore, yet a difference be-
tween opinion in the two sections; and the
pivot of the difference is — whether the
Negro shall be excluded from politics be-
cause of his race.
On one side the Fifteenth Amendment
stands as apart of the fundamental law, which
forbids discrimination in suffrage on account
of race. On the other side stand the suffrage-
restricting amendments to several Southern
State constitutions. If they dealt alike with
white and black men, there would be no
doubt about their constitutionality in spirit
or in letter. But they do not^deal alike with
white and black men; and, if they mean what
the present Southern opinion signifies, they
are meant to exclude Negroes only. They
are in intent and in effect violations of the
Fifteenth Amendment, whether they are ever
ileclared to be violations or not.
I Here, then, is the conflict between Southern
ind Northern political opinion and purpose —
i conflict that is real.
LARGER FORCES THAN RACE POLITICS
ARGUINO from sucli a bald statement
of the conflict of opinion about Negro
suffrage, a man who did not know the subject
historically and who did not know the people
in the South might conclude that there is
grave danger ahead. Grave enough the
problem is — there is no doubt of that. But
it is less a constitutional argument or struggle >
than it is a practical ]iroV)lem which is
working itself toward solution by the forces
of every-day life.
The South is prosperous. There is a grow-
ing liberality of opinion — on all other sub-
jects at least. The industrial relation between
the races is becoming constantly closer.
Except where there is a political controversy,
a man might go through the whole South
and never find any evidence of race hostility.
The Negroes are acquiring property. The
industrious and well-trained among them are
acquiring also a steadily increasing influence
in their communities. The State support
of Negro education is everywhere more liberal
than it ever was before. The best white
men and the best black men are everywhere
working together for the building up of the
country and of the people.
In spite of the dominant political feeling
as it expresses itself in party and sectional
controversy, politics is not the whole of life
even in the South. It is, in fact, a small
section of it. Industry is a much larger
section. Education is a larger section. The
natural kindliness of both races and their
dependence on each other are more impor-
tant facts than Federal offices. The outlook,
therefore, is not dark. There is, on the con-
trary, every reason for hope of a steadily
growing cooperation of white and black.
There are many influential Southern white
men of the best type who do not assent to the
exclusion of the whole race from the suffrage ;
and such an absolute exclusion will not take
place. It is by the work of wise men of
both races, done mainly in silence, that
continuous progress is made, and not by
political agitation.
Until the Negro was practically disfran-
chised there had been a complete political
deadlock, each race always voting solidly
against the other. There was no political
virtue in that. The experiment is now to be
tried of encouraging a division of opinion, and
of building up parties that shall not be parties
I
3158
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
by race. Time will be required to test the
experiment. But in the meantime, politics
seems likely to continue to be, as it has
hitherto been, the least fruitful of Southern
industries. The work of constructive states-
manship is done there in other ways.
HOW RACE POLITICS NARROWS THE HORIZON
OF cotirse, the blacks who can read and
have paid their taxes are not formally
disfranchised, and there is no reason to
fear that they ever will be. As matters now
stand, then, the doors of political privilege
are open to them. But we are at the begin-
ning of a new experiment in race politics, for
the hope is that the white vote in the South
may be divided between two parties, and the
Xegro vote also will cease to be solid.
This is the result to be hoped for; for it is
this solid Negro vote and the consequent solid
white vote that have shut the South out from
the broad currents of national life. A man
in a Northern or a Western State may hold an
opinion about the Negro in politics, but he
does not concern himself greatly about it.
There are other subjects that he cares more
about. This is remote from him. Not so in
the South. A man who lives in South
Carolina, or in Mississippi, whatever his
opinions are, finds himself less a part of the
great country and of the stimulating time in
which he lives than a corresponding man in
Ohio or New York or Michigan. He dwells
in a shadow, apart, somewhat detached, do
what he may. The Negro problem over-
v.'-helms him. Go wherever you will in the
South and most of the talk that 3'ou will hear
will be about it. Patriotic youth (and
Southern youth abound in patriotism) hear it
almost to the exclusion of other public sub-
jects. They read about it in their newspapers.
They grow up under its shadow, and they
fail to get the wider vision that makes
American life today more stimulating than
life in any country has hitherto been. This
is the pity of it.
Now there are as thoughtful and as earnest
men in the South as in any other part of the
Union; and the whole country has as great
need of their contribution to its character and
thought as it has of the contribution of
similar men in other States. But the whole
country now loses it, just as these more or
less isolated men lose the stimulus of a
strong national feeling.
These paragraphs do not rise to the dignity
of suggesting remedies. They merely chron-
icle conditions. But the remedy for the con-
flict of opinion, for the solidity of race-parties,
for the lack of a wide enough national spirit,
is the training of all the children to useful
work and to clear thinking and the opening
of the door of equal opportunity to every one.
The next generation will then be wiser than
we are, and the}^ may find that many prob-
lems that disturb us have solved themselves.
THE NEGRO HIMSELF
MEANWHILE, in most of this dis-
cussion of the race problem little
is said of the Negro's own point of view. He
is the chief figure of it all. He is at once the
innocent cause of it and he must be one of
the chief factors in its solution.
There has not been time enough nor work
enough nor money enough nor opportunity
for great masses of Negroes to be built up to
responsible citizenship, but the leaders of the
race — the real leaders — show a stead\ growth
in thrift, in responsibilit}- and in good citizen-
ship. A study of the result of the work done
at an}^ of the great schools where they are
properly trained will give the most despon-
dent man good hope. In fact, the records of
the best men and women who have gone out
from Hampton and Tuskegee and other such
training places makes one of the most remark-
able chapters in human progress. The Negro
conferences that are held at Tuskegee show
year after year growth of character and of
economic efficiency among large masses of
them; and the reports of the Negro Business
Men's League and other such bodies tell of
remarkable progress.
Useful and responsible black men — as far
as their opinions have been expressed — have
as a rule not opposed a restriction of the
suffrage. They have objected only to an
unfair discrimination against the Negro.
They would assent freely to any restriction
if it applied alike to white men and to black.
They want the door open to the personally
worthy and fit — without regard to race.
The Negro's children, too, will be wiser than
he is; and, after all, this whole problem is
not one that we who are now living shall see
the end of. If we pass it to the next genera-
tion in a better shape than we found it —
that is all we can hope to do. And no man
who knows Southern life can for a moment
THE CllARACTKR C) I- OUR ARMY
3159
doubt that it is now in very much better shape
than it was twenty years ago. So mueh
l)etter is it that the aspects it now presents
are not permanently discouraging to those
who know wliat has been done.
But one thing is fortunate and certain and
necessary — the door (in industry or in
poHtics) is not shut and must not be shut on
the worthy individual, be he black or white.
That would be a denial of American
institutions.
THE APOSTOLIC SENATOR FROM UTAH
THE United States Senator-elect from
Utah, Mr. Reed Smoot, is an apostle
of the Mormon Church. He is not a polyga-
mist. He is an energetic, honorable and
successful man of affairs — merchant, miner,
manufacturer and banker. But the word
"apostle" strikes harshly on Gentile ears.
The New Testament title is somewhat
misleading. The twelve apostles of the
Church of Latter Day Saints are not a partic-
ularly ecclesiastical body. They are rather
the Board of Directors of the church's many
secular activities; for the Mormon Church is,
hrst, a very successful business organization,
and, second, a religious body. Some of the
apostles give their whole time to the church.
Others, like Mr. Smoot, serve it chiefly in an
advisory way. His temperament, his tram-
ing and his appearance suggest ecclesiasticism
no more than the temperament, the training
and the appearance of the Wall Street broker.
But the apostolic office, as might be expected,
seems to have an effect even on a practical
man's vocabulary. Mr. Smoot said when he
was elected Senator:
" I hold that the Constitution of the United States
is divinely inspired; that under the folds of the
starry flag freedom reigns supreme; and that my
first duty is to my country, whose laws and institu-
tions I love, honor and respect."
Of course the serious question raised by his
election to the Senate is what, in secular
language, may be called the bosshood of the
church. Before he could accept any office
he was obliged to get the consent of the
quorum of the twelve apostles ; for the
church does control politics as well as
industry in Utah.
This is objectionable. But it differs in no
essential wa\^ from the bosshood of party
"apostles" in many States. It violates no
statute. It gives no sufficient reason for
excluding Mr. Smoot from the Senate or even
for talking about excluding him. He is
simply another boss-made Senator; and his
bosses happen to be apostles whose speech is
somewhat more Biblical than political. But
the difference is unessential.
THE CHARACTER OF OUR ARMY
BETWEEN the agitation carried on by
the peace societies and the demand
for Congressional appropriations for new
battle-ships, every American citizen at some
time asks himself what the nation's duty is
in self-defense. Warned of the danger, on
one side, of a military spirit, and on the other
side of the peril of insufficient preparation —
where lies the truth of the matter ? What is
the sensible course for our Government to
pursue ? Does readiness for war make for
peace, or does it tempt to quarrel?
Let a man read all the peace literature that
he can find, and then let him read Secretary
Root's speech at Canton, Ohio, delivered at
the celebration of Mr. McKinley's birthday
on January 27th, and he will find it hard
to resist the Secretary's logic; he will be
sure to feel a pride in the record of the army.
Secretary Root read despatches, that had
not before been made public, from two thou-
sand Chinamen in Peking when it was held by
foreign troops, praying that the little Ameri-
can army be kept there till all the allied forces
should be withdrawn; because American
authority fed the starving, and brought better
sanitary conditions than the city had ever
known, and prevented the people from "being
harmed, robbed and badly treated, and,"
the despatch said, "we can continue our
business with content."
A despatch bearing similar testimony was
sent by President Palma of Cuba when he was
inaugurated, and another by the leading
native ofihcials at Manila about the retention
of Judge Taft as Governor.
Mr. Root declared that
"The establishment of those governments in far
distant China and the islands of the East, making
for peace and justice and ordered liberty by the
American army, is a greater achievement than the
winning of any stricken field, a just cause for pride
by every American citizen, and a just title to confi-
dence, respect and gratitude by every officer and
soldier of the army of the United States."
His spirited defense of the character of the
men and officers of the army is convincing.
The army does not make itself a political
agent; it does not become the personal fol-
3i6o
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
lowing of any leader; in no way does it
endanger our liberty.
" The officers of the army conform in their
character and conduct to the purpose for which
the army is maintained and the character of the
people from whom they come. I wish to say to
you, not in the language of rhetoric, but as a
sober statement of what I have found by
careful observation, that they are free to a
degree which I never dreamed of until I com-
menced to know them, from the vices and the
greater defects which have prevailed in most armies
of the world during all history. They are a tem-
perate set of men. They are freer from the vices of
drinking to excess than most any other class I know
of in this country. They are free from the vice of
gambling. No such thing as dueling, which dis-
graces and deforms many militarj' services, main-
tains in our army. The man who is dissipated is
out of favor, and the public sentiment of the officers
of the army is opposed to dissipation and excess,
and it is an offense which is punished in our army by
court-martial if a man does not pav his honest
debts."
THE BEST PEACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION IN
OUR HISTORY
SINCE we pretend to have an army and
must have one, it would be inexcusa-
ble not to have an efficient organization ; and
now for the first time in peace, in our whole
history, w^e have such a one. Whatever
befall us, we are not likely again to suffer
the horrors of the little war with Spain. The
enemy did us little damage; but disease,
incompetent leadership, lack of preparation
and lack of transportation cost thousands of
brave lives. This was murder.
The bill for a general staff, for which the
War Department has long worked, will now
become a law, and under this the army organi-
zation can be made very much better. The
instruction both of officers and of men is
better than ever before. And Congress has
passed a law for the organization of the
militia — a measure of a kind that has been
insisted on almost continuously since AVash-
ington proposed militia legislation in his first
message to Congress.
The new law makes the militia a potential
part of the army — really and not merely in
theory. The strength of the militia of the
several States is nearly 110,000 men and
nearly 9,000 officers; and there are more
than 10,000,000 men in the country available
for military duty.
To regard ourselves as possible soldiers
does not foster a spirit of combativeness, but
it does give us respect for our army, and it
keeps us alive to the need of proper organiza-
tion. It was the neglect and indifference of
public opinion that caused the shameful loss"
of most of the men who died during the cam-
paign against Spain. The cost of our well-
organized peace army of less than 60,000 men
is not one dollar per capita, and it is a tax of
less than one-tenth of one per cent, on the
property of the people.
The three greatest forces that make for
peace, as the world now is and as we play a
part in it, are — the Hague Tribunal; a mihtary
organization that shall make a United States
army quickly available, to be formed about
the little army that we maintain in well-
drilled efficiency — in other words, prepared-
ness; and most of all a manly and robust
determination not to fight but to make other
people afraid to fight us. Then we shall have
neither a dangerous military spirit nor a
flabby sentimentality.
A HERO WORTHY OF REMEMBRANCE
DOCTOR BRISTOW tells in this maga-
zine the heroic story of the work
done in Cuba by the members of the United
States Commission which discovered the
method of transmitting yellow fever. The
disease can be carried from a patient to a
well person only by mosquitoes. Personal
contact and clothing do not transmit it.
This is one of the most important discoveries
of recent times, and it was made by men who
freely gave their own lives to the investigation.
They permitted themselves to be bitten by
infected mosquitoes, and they died that the
truth might be discovered.
The head of this Commission was Major
Walter Reed, who recently died, leaving his
family ill provided for. It is due to him as
much as to any one man that we shall never
have another scourge of yellow fever. When
this paragraph is written a bill is pending in
Congress to grant a pension to his family — a
poor debt of gratitude at most ; for here was a
man of heroic temper.
THE PRACTICAL END OF PROHIBITION
THE abandonment of prohibition in
Vermont at the recent special election
and the substitution for it of a s^^stem of local
option and high license has more than a local
interest. It is interpreted as the practical
end of prohibition everywhere.
In Maine and Vermont it has had a longer
trial than anywhere else, for the Maine law
has now been in effect for fifty years. It is.
THE WELL-PAID AND WELL-TREATED WORKMAN
3161
in fact, a part of the constitution of the State.
Most of the other States that tried tlie pro-
hibitory system have either abandoned it or
their experience has been for a shorter time.
But in these rural New England States two
generations have grown up under prohibition.
Few men now living there clearly recall any
other state of society.
The judgment of scientific students of the
subject has for some time been very clear that
prohibition is a failure — that it does not
prohibit, but that it does bring unexpected
evils with it. Now that the people have
abandoned it in Vermont — although the
majority was only about a thousand votes
out of sixty thousand — it is abandoned for
good. It is a sort of declaration that the
prohibition experiment has been sufficiently
tried and that it failed. And it is not likely
to be tried in any State where it does not
now exist.
High license is them ethod now most
approved for regulating the traffic. But
local option laws are in force in a good many
States, and there are many small communities
where prohibition has been successfully
carried out. Cambridge, Massachusetts, is
such a community, and it has been successful
there because Cambridge is adjacent to the
city of Boston. The dispensary system, which
was first tried in Athens, Georgia, and is now
in force in South Carolina and in some parts
of some of the adjacent States, works well.
Local option, high license and the dispensary
are likely to be the approved methods of
dealing with the subject in the future.
THE PAY OF PUBLIC SERVANTS
BY the new law increasing the salaries
of the Federal judges, the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court will receive
$13,000 a year, the Associate Justices $12,500,
the Circuit Judges $7,000, and the District
Judges $6,000. In the large commercial
centres, where these sums are very small
incomes for men of ability, there has been
criticism of Congress for not setting them
higher when the subject had once been taken
up. In comparison with the sums paid to
corresponding judges in almost all other
countries and even in some of our States,
these are niggardly salaries, and they are
niggardly in comparison with the incomes of
most lawyers of distinction who practise in
the Supreme Court. Nearly all our public
salaries are low. Scandalously inadequate
arc our ambassadors' and ministers' salaries.
But any discussion of i)ublic salaries raises
a question that has two sides. If places of
great dignity yield liigh pay, they may be
sought for the salaries; if they yield low
salaries, too many of them may be filled by
men chiefly because they are rich. The
theory is that the salary should enable a poor
man to accept the place, but not tempt him
to seek it. This theory would be sound but
for one reason : it does not permit a poor man
who dies in the public service to make pro-
vision for his family.
We have reached a degree of well-being
where almost all competent men, except col-
lege professors and public servants, may
accumulate a small fortune by middle life,
and the Government — especially the National
Government — ought to be much more liberal
in paying its high servants. There have been
many pathetic instances in the family life of
great men who served our country for
less pay than many a book-agent earns. The
dignity of the government demands a new
and more liberal policy.
THE WELL-PAID AND WELL-TREATED
WORKMAN
IN the London Times in recent months
there has appeared as clear and ac-
curate an explanation of American industrial
success as has ever been made. The
emphasis is laid on the right facts. Consider
these statements, for example:
The Times correspondent found that an
American manufacturer of shoes knew exactly
what every process cost. He knew the cost
per shoe of driving tacks and of inserting
eyelets. He knew the cost per hour of every
machine. He knew the cost of every piece of
material — of the thread that goes into every
shoe. With this exact knowledge he knew
precisely what quantity of work every
machine and every workman must turn out
every hour to yield him a profit; and he knew,
of course, what wages every workman really
earned. By a simple calculation from all
this exact knowledge it was demonstrated
both that the American workman received
more pay than a corresponding English
workman, and that the shoe cost the
American manufacturer less than the corre-
sponding shoe cost an English manufacturer.
The other fact upon which emphasis is laid
3i62
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
is what may be called the democracy of
American industry — ' ' In America employer
and workman seem to be closer together
than they are in England."
These characteristics of American industry
have many a time been pointed out in this
magazine and elsewhere; but they are so
fundamental that we cannot ourselves be
reminded of them too often. They are the
two most important facts that the foreign
study of our working ways have properly
emphasized. They both come to this at last
— that democratic treatment and a chance
to earn as much as possible raake men more
productive. This is the secret of the advan-
tage that American methods have. And
every industry may have it in proportion to
the wisdom of its managers.
CAUSES OF BUSINESS FAILURES
BRADSTREET'S commercial agency keeps
a record of business failures in the
United States, classified by causes, and
the percentage of failures that is set down
under each cause is approximately the same
year after year. Lack of capital last year
brought most of them — almost one in three;
incompetence, one in five; "specific condi-
tions," about one in six; fraud, one in ten.
It is noteworthy that only about one failure
in a hundred was reported as due to extrava-
gance, and about the same number to specu-
lation. Unwise credits and the failure of
others caused each about one failure in thirty.
Competition is assigned as the cause of only
one failure in every twenty-seven.
These reports, so far as they may be relied
on to show true causes, speak well for the
industry, the avoidance of speculation and
the general honesty of men in commercial life.
The}' indicate their daring (or folly), too, by
showing how large a proportion of failures is
due to insufficient capital. Men dare fate bv
undertaking enterprises beyond their means
and credit. Even this folly shows a good
tendency — the tendency of men to go into
business for themselves; but in the modem
organization of business, capital becomes
increasingly necessary.
Yet men do every year begin with very
small capital what turn out to be very great
enterprises ; for the man is the main factor in
success, after all — almost the only factor
worth counting. And it is also true that it
is easier now than it ever was before for
men who show successful qualities to get
capital. But the ease with which it may be
got varies according to a man's place of resi-
dence, and especially according to the wide-
ness of his acquaintance.
There can be no exact science of success;
but the hint that this table of wrecks gives is
that a man of character and good judgment,
who by his native endowment will avoid the
perils that beset incompetence, needs to make
very sure of enough capital, and then that
competition need not frighten him.
THE PREVENTION OF RAILROAD COLLISIONS
ALMOST at the same hour on the same
day a few weeks ago there were
deadly collisions on the Southern Pacific
Railroad near Vails in Arizona, and on the
Central Railroad of New Jersey, near Plain-
field, both clearly caused by carelessness.
The New Jersey engineer passed a signal
without seeing it because the steam obscured
it. If the engine was defective there was
fault also in using it. The telegraph operator
in Arizona failed to deliver to the engineer
one of the orders that he had received for him.
Investigation of every disaster like these
shows carelessness by somebody. The thou-
sands of orders for running trains that are
accurately transmitted and delivered every
da\' and the hundreds of thousands of signal?
that are every day seen and heeded prove that
the systems and the service of the railroads
are good — to a certain point. Beyond that
point, it has sometimes been argued, there is
a margin of danger that can never be removed.
But such a conclusion is not scientific. By
the duplication of men who work at danger-
points the margin of danger can be greatly
lessened if not wholly removed.
Since a frightful ferryboat disaster years
ago at New York, which was caused by the
sudden illness or the death of the pilot, the
ferry companies have been required to keep
two men in every pilot house. The principle of
the duplication of men or of the repeating of
orders at danger-points is evidently still
further applicable to the railroad service.
In 1 90 1, 8,455 persons were killed and more
than 53,000 were hurt by railroad accidents
in the United States; and of these 453 were
killed and 3,732 were hurt by collisions.
Collisions at least are preventable, whether
accidents due to the carelessness of indi-
vidual men be or not.
A CRUSADK AGAINST TUHKRCULOSIS
3 '^^3
A device is now on trial in Germany, which
has been successful in the experiments thus
far made, that is expected to give warning
of danger ahead of a locomotive and to pre-
vent collisions. From a third rail the loco-
motive engineer receives a warning if another
locomotive comes on the same track within a
certain distance. The warning is automati-
cally conveyed to both locomotives by the
ringing of a bell and by the lighting of a red
electric bulb in the cab, and the two engineers
may speak to one another by telephone.
TO REFILL THE LAND WITH BIRDS
THE Audubon Societies continue to add
State after State to the area of bird
safety. They are organizations of bird-lovers
who work to educate public opinion to a
j)roper appreciation and protection of bird-life.
They have now been organized in thirty
States and have 60,000 members. Thus
the efforts of a few lovers of birds have
developed into a widespread movement of
national importance.
At first these societies tried to achieve their
end by arousing a sentiment to discourage
the wearing of plumage; but this was too big
a task. It meant the conversion of every
woman in the land to the courageous action
of defying fashion.
A more practical campaign was begun —
a campaign for State laws to protect birds.
Hundreds of thousands of circulars, explain-
ing the economic, educational and esthetic
value of birds, were distributed. Circulating
libraries and illustrated lectures were sent
from town to town. Meetings were held;
classes for bird-study were formed. When-
ever public opinion in a State seemed ripe, a
bill was introduced in the legislature and
many a lawmaker was surprised to discover
an active interest in birds that he had never
suspected. Even the Department of Agri-
culture at Washington began to inform him
of their economic value.
Thus the model bird law of the American
Ornithologists' Union, which forbids the
killing at any time of non-gamebirds, has
been adopted in all the New England States,
in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida,
Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, AVisconsin,
Arkansas and Wyoming. The campaign
this legislative season was carried on in
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri,
California, Oregon and Washington. No
State will escape, and probably within ten
years birds will be protected by law practi-
cally throughout the Union.
But even then the labors of the Audubon
Societies will by no means end. The laws
must be enforced and the public conscience
kept alive until sentiment enforces them.
Incidentally, the young people who form
these societies add a new pleasure to life by
their knowledge of birds and they see a new
beauty in nature. They educate themselves
while they are educating the community —
as all unselfish workers for any great aim.
A CRUSADE AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS
WE may find ourselves engaged i)res-
ently in a crusade for the practical
eradication of consumption; and pray Heaven
we may ! By a concerted effort street-cars,
stations, other public places, and even some
streets in some cities, were made and have
been kept clean of sputum; and now, with
increasing frequency and earnestness, the
proper treatment of the disease in its early
stages is urged, demanded, begged for.
There is talk of municipal hospitals; there
are plans for public instruction about the
disease ; and there are other signs of a general
awakening.
Every person who reads must now know
that the disease is not contagious; that it is
preventable; that many cases are curable —
most cases, if treated in time; that it is not
inherited ; but that it is transmitted by inhal-
ing the tubercle bacillus. Yet in New York
City alone one hundred new cases develop
every day; and there are 19,000 known to the
health officers. Yet there is not a hospital
in the city where the cases are treated in their
early stages.
It is perhaps the most striking instance that
could be found of unutilized definite knowl-
edge that is of vital importance. We know
definitely how to save hundreds of thousands
of lives; but because it is not a contagious
scourge that quickly causes painful death
we have been slow to stop the disease. All
that is needed is an earnest enough crusade.
If physicians and bodies of physicians,
boards of health, charity societies, women
and organizations of women, philanthropists,
the pulpit and the newspapers w^ere all to
forget less important things for a time and
fall to work, more lives might be saved every
vear than are lost in the bloodiest wars.
3164
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
CANADA FORGING AHEAD
CANADA is steadily broadening on the
horizon of the world's trade. Within
the past six years the Dominion increased her
imports and exports ninety-six per cent.
Since 1868 the trade between Canada and
this country has undergone remarkable
development. In 1868 the Dominion's im-
ports from the United States amounted to
$22,000,000. By 1902 these figures had
grown to $114,000,000, including iron and
steel and machinery, Si 8,000,000; electrical
apparatus, carriages and cotton goods,
each about $1,500,000. From Canada the
exports to the United States were in
1868 $22,000,000; in 1902, $69,000,000, of
which $16,000,000 came in wood and wood-
pulp, together with $24,000,000 in gold,
silver, copper and their ores. During the
past thirty-five years Canadian exports to
Great Britain have expanded enormously —
from $17,000,000 in 1868 to $117,000,000 in
1902. Last year the most noteworthy item
in this export trade was $25,000,000 in butter
and cheese, largely to be credited to the educa-
tion of Canadian dairymen by Professor J. W.
Robertson and his staff of the Dominion
Department of Agriculture.
The extraordinary forward movement in
Canada is shown also by the business of the
chartered banks, which are on the Scotch
model, with a thorough development of
branches. At the end of 1902 they had on
deposit $397,000,000, against $108,000,000 in
1887. The Dominion conducts savings banks
at 915 post-offices. In 1869, the second year
of its existence, this system showed less than
$1 ,000,000 on deposit ; last year this sum had
grown to $42,000,000,
HELEN KELLER
THE photograph reproduced in this
magazine of Miss Helen Keller and
of her teacher. Miss Sullivan (Mr. Joseph
Jefferson looking on), represents one of the
most remarkable results of patient teaching
in all human experience. Not only does Miss
Keller, who has been blind and deaf almost
from infancy, speak English, French and
German so that she may be understood by
any careful listener, but she understands these
languages when they are spoken to her. She
understands every word by the impact of the
speaker's breath on her fingers. Her attitude
when "listening" is shown in the photograph.
Her fingers are gently pressed against Miss
Sullivan's lips and Miss Sullivan is speaking.
Miss Keller's intellectual life and attractive
character make her a most interesting per-
sonality; and her own account of her release
from blankness is one of the most remarkable
of human experiences.
PORTRAITS OF MR. SARGENT AND
JUSTICE DAY
IN addition to the portraits of Miss Keller
and Baron von Sternburg, the special
German Envoy to the United States, there
appear in this magazine portraits of Judge
William R. Day, of Ohio, formerly Secretary
of State, who has been appointed Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
and a portrait of Mr. John S. Sargent, the
distinguished American painter, who, during
his present visit to the United States, will
paint a portrait of President Roosevelt.
TRUST-REGULATING LEGISLATON
THE sum total of the trust-regulating
acts passed by Congress falls far short
of the general onslaught with which the
session began — fortunately; for legislation
in restraint of commerce, even when it is
directed at definite abuses, is most difficult.
New laws either go so far as practically to
defeat themselves, as anti-trust legislation
in many States has gone, or they fall short
of checking the evils aimed at, as the
original Sherman law did.
Congress did two things. It created a new
Cabinet Department of Commerce which has
power to get the facts about interstate corpo-
rations, which the President may publish at
his discretion. This makes for publicity.
How it is going to work nobody knows, and
no opinion in advance of experiments is
worth much.
The new legislation makes the receiving of
rebates or improperly discriminating rates
on transportation as criminal as the granting
of them. This, it is hoped, will give tlie Inter-
state Commerce law a new vitality in the
direction of its greatest abuse ; and an appro-
priation was made to enable the Department
of Justice to prosecute offenders and to push
its cases to final decision with rapidity.
It is doubtful if more could have been
hopefully done and if the practical results of
what has been done will be great. We must
gradually make our way by experiments.
FINANCIAL DESPOTS AND
FREEBOOTERS
[Thb World's Work, publishes every month an article in which some timely and vital subject of the financial world
is taken up]
SOME time ago Mr. J. P. iMorgan, who
is the strongest personality in our
financial world not only because of
his ability but because of the variety of his
activity, frankly told the Interstate Com-
merce Commission that he made a certain
large transaction in order to eliminate a
speculator whom he considered dangerous
to his interests and to stable financial
conditions.
This testimony and the state of mind that
it showed provoked much comment on the
theory of the benevolent despot in finance —
on the power that one man may wield. The
comment turned not on criticism of Mr.
Morgan and his actions or his admissions, but
on the larger question of what may be called
the proper organization of financial life.
Mr. Morgan wields an influence out of all pro-
portion to his own fortune. He is not our
richest man. It is commonly supposed that
his personal fortune is much less than the
fortune of any one of a considerable number
of Americans. He brings things to pass not
with his own money only, but mainly with
other men's money — to a great extent with
the money of the whole investing public. It
is his activity and his influence and not his
fortune that is the main thing.
And Mr. Morgan is of course used only as a
type. The large question is: How far have
we gone in the organization and conduct of
finance ? Does the public safety yet rest in
the hands of any one man or even of any
small group of men? Are we in that stage
of development corresponding to the stage
in civil development when the king, or at
most an oligarchy, had all the power, and
the people none ?
If we may look forward to a time when our
financial life shall have the security that cor-
responds to the civic security that we now
enjoy under representative government, are
we not yet a long way from it ? ]\Ir. Morgan
confessed that he drove one freebooter from
the market. In other words, we had to
depend on him to do police work on the
financial highway. Is this system civiliza-
tion or a state of society that may rest only
on the strength of an individual ?
These reflections are far less definite than
the facts that usually fill these pages; but it
seems worth while, oftener than we do, to
consider what sort of large structure we are
building against possible disaster, or whether
we are building any. We are forging ahead,
individuals and corporations, each making
all possible profit and each fortifying, accord-
ing to his wisdom, his own structure. But
is there enough thought given to the whole
public welfare ?
The organization of clearing-houses, the use
on occasion of clearing-house certificates, and
the other forms of cooperation which financial
institutions have evolved, are important steps
in the constructive organization of financial
society. The recent demand in New York
City that trust companies shall increase
their reserves is another measure of
public safety. The safeguards thrown
around savings banks, national banks and
State banks are old influences for safety.
Perhaps nothing more can be done
under present conditions. But every once
in a while thoughtful men are brought to a
sudden halt to consider the power of one
strong man. If it be a powder for good,
might it not become as great a power for evil ?
To an extent, yes. A man of gigantic
strength always has abnormal power — for
good if he use it wisely, for evil if he use it ill.
This is true in finance, in politics, and in
almost every othet field of activity. But it
is doubtful if the danger is greater in finance
than in any other field.
Return to Mr. Morgan as an example. He
has built up his great influence by demonstra-
tion after demonstration of his constructive
ability and of his safe leadership. If the
great enterprises that he undertook had failed
3i66
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
or had been ill carried out, he would not be
strong. He is strong because of the power
that he has won by successful activity. It
is not a power that he can transmit.
The experience of the financial freebooter
points the same moral. He goes forth to
wreck and he wrecks. But his career is not
a long one. He fails to hold the confidence
of the public — even of his public. He builds
up no permanent influence.
The same law holds even with regard to any
financial oligarchy. There is a small group
of men in New York who, by combined action,
can control a very large part of the great
enterprises in the country They can control
a large part of the surplus wealth. But they
would soon cease to control them if they mis-
used their power. Their power depends upon
their safe use of it. Their own selfish inter-
ests depend on using their power conserva-
tively and constructively. This is to say
nothing of the sense of responsibility that
almost all successful men develop in propor-
tion to their acquisition of authority.
While, then, we doubtless are a long way
from the ideal organization of financial life,
and are yet in a period of large one-man
power and under the influence of strong
oligarchies, the devices for safety are more
numerous than they may at first sight appear
to be, and the structiire of finance is more
" civilized " than it seems. It rests — whoever
holds the power — to a very considerable
degree on public confidence. Public opinion
in the financial world does not express itself
by ballots, but by silent fluctuations in the
market, and by a much more delicate method
than it uses in politics.
The sheer accumulation of wealth by an
individual or by a group of individuals to
abnormal proportions is a much more danger-
ous thing than the building-up of power and
influence by activity in the use of wealth.
The greatest dangers in the financial world
are not from the active captains, whether
they be benevolent despots or freebooters,
but from the silent and quiet absorption of
"interests" that may be so managed or
manipulated as unduly to affect political
action or to monopolize trade.
The growth of great concentrated interests
necessarily concentrates power. There is no
help for that, even if help be desirable; for it
is only by the possession of power that men
can do great constructive pieces of work.
The ideal to bring about is such a state of
public opinion as will rigidly hold strong men
to a right use of power.
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF
WASHINGTON
WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
BY
Dr. D. C. oilman
PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTION
A YEAR has now passed since the
country was surprised and delighted
by the announcement that Mr.
Andrew Carnegie, the enlightened promoter
of public libraries in this and other countries,
had made a munificent gift for the endow-
ment of the Carnegie Institution in Wash-
ington.
Although the object of this foundation was
clearly set forth in Mr. Carnegie's letter and
in the act of incorporation, the methods to be
pursued were left to the trustees. The income
could not be appropriated until the trustees
came together in November last. Meanwhile,
the executive committee engaged in a very
careful study of the problem; institutions
were visited; leading men in many branches
of scientific investigation were consulted; a
voluminous correspondence was begun, and
the suggestions made in the public press and
in private communications were carefully
considered. The task of studying this com-
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
3167
plexity of counsel would have been over-
whelming if the conmiittec had not at once
proceeded to secure specific and confidential
advice from some of the most expert and
most eminent of their countrymen. Abstracts
of their recommendations were laid before the
trustees, at their meeting last November,
and that representative and authoritative
body reached some important conclusions.
In the first place, they decided to wait for
further light and for more thorough inquiry,
in respect to certain large projects submitted
to them. All the greater investigations were
postponed. No summary of these proposi-
tions has been prepared, but it is safe to say
that if the income of the Carnegie Institution
were doubled or trebled the learning, the
ability and the energy of our countrymen
could employ it all in wise undertakings for
the advancement of knowledge. The fields
are boundless. At present the work of the
Carnegie Institution must be restricted to
minor projects. Some of these are extremely
important and promise to bring forth fruit
that will be valuable to the world. But they
are, for the most part, so special and technical
that any enumeration of them would not be
interesting to the public generally for whom
this article is written.
The present time appears to be a con-
venient opportunity to explain what the
Carnegie Institution is undertaking to do,
and what it cannot do, what it is and what it
is not, and, accordingly, I gladly reply to a
request of the editors of this review for
information on these two points, first,
positively; second, negatively.
First, then — What can the Carnegie Insti-
tution undertake to do? The answer is
obvious if any one will refer to the original
limitations of the trust. It can select and
mark out certain lines of inquiry, and intrust
them to competent investigators, who will
report their results to the Institution, to be
in some one way or another made known to
the world. It can also recognize the ability
of certain leaders of investigation, in any part
of the country, and give them grants for the
continuance of the work upon which they are
engaged. These investigators may be found in
universities, technical schools, observatories,
museums, and in private life. Their number
is very large, and all the income could be
expended, and then it would be inadequate,
if all their requests were granted. Sometimes
a year of freedom, sometimes the appointment
of an assistant, sometimes the purchase of
instruments will be of the greatest benefit to
this class of overworked, underpaid men
eager to add their contribution to the stock of
human knowledge. The Carnegie Institution
can also engage in publication. Such memoirs
and papers as are the result of investigations
just referred to may be printed, although it
is doubtless true that the reports of progress
will find a more appropriate place in the
special scientific journals already established.
There are memoirs, however, so abstruse, so
technical, and, perhaps, so long, that they
cannot be accepted in any of the ordinary
channels of publication. These extended
memoirs may be of the highest value to the
world if they deal, as they may, with subjects
of fundamental significance. Here is an
inviting and important field for the Carnegie
Institution to occupy.
Another line of activity is closely allied to
the foregoing. There are many young men
of superior talents in the different parts of this
country eager to develop their powers and
to make a favorable beginning in their scien-
tific careers. It is not easy to discover who
are the most promising, most deserving of aid,
most likely to do well. The Carnegie Institu-
tion has decided to appoint, for one year, and
possibly for longer periods, a certain number
of such persons, who will be known as research
assistants. They may or may not reside in
Washington. No limitations as to age or
nationality, or sex, or academic standing are
prescribed. Good work already done will
have great influence in the selection. A
specific purpose, rather than a vague disposi-
tion, will be essential. The indorsement, or
at least the encouragement, of some one who
has already acquired a position in the scien-
tific world will be of value. Sometimes, but
not often, promising candidates may be dis-
covered far away from libraries and labora-
tories (as the late Doctor Keeler, the astrono-
mer, for example, was discovered in Florida).
After one, two or three years, it is probable
that individuals will be found under the aegis
of the Carnegie Institution worthy to be
called to important stations, or who will be
encouraged, independently, to enter upon
scientific careers.
Plans are also under consideration for bring-
ing to Washington from time to time certain
persons who desire to become acquainted
3i68
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
with the work of the scientific bureaus of the
Government, or who wish to make use (as
students, not as casual visitors) of the
Ubraries, archives and collections here main-
tained. Unexpected difficulties have arisen
in respect to the development of these plans,
but they are not forgotten.
This brief statement indicates in what the
Carnegie Institution has already engaged,
namely, the bestowal of grants for research;
the encouragement, by specific grant, of a
select number of investigators; arrangements
for printing scientific memoirs; the appoint-
ment of "research assistants," and prelim-
inary inquiries respecting large undertakings
to be decided in the future.
There is a reasonable curiosity to know,
specifically, what sort of investigations are
receiving Carnegie aid. The executive com-
mittee does not think it expedient, for many
reasons, to publish, at this stage of the develop-
ments, this list. It is incomplete; in many
cases it is conditional. In some instances
the recipients of aid do not wish to reveal their
work. But in due time, all the particular
appropriations will be communicated to the
trustees, and they will doubtless cause them
to be published. There is no concealment
about the Institution — only that degree of
reserve in the preliminaries without which
important results cannot be accomplished.
As examples of the aid that the Carnegie
Institution has already promised to give,
these cases may be mentioned: For the
encouragement of biological research a liberal
grant has been made to the Marine Biological
Laboratory, at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts,
an admirable station, frequented every sum-
mer by a large number of naturalists. For
want of the requisite pecuniary support, the
institution has been embarrassed; it will be
reinvigorated by this grant. Two tables
have been taken in Doctor Dohrn's celebrated
laboratory in Naples, and one in a station to
be established in the Bermudas.
A grant has been made for the continuati<^n
of the Index Medicus, the key to current
medical science, publication having been
suspended for the lack of pecuniary support.
Measures have been initiated for the study
of economic and social problems in the United
States, a vast amount of facts having been
accumulated in Washington and in the
several States of the Union which are now
to be examined, digested and studied by
competent economists.
The examination of the unprinted archives
of the United States will be undertaken, with
the cooperation of the officers of the American
Historical Association.
Much will be done in astronomy, and among
other things, the publication of the memoirs
of George W. Hill is soon to be tmdertaken.
Many minor grants have been devoted
to geology', physics, chemistry, psychology,
physiology and botany. One of the most
interesting botanical inquiries that have been
set on foot is that of the vegetation of the arid
regions of the United States, an inquiry quite
as interesting to the economists and the legis-
lators of this country as it is to men of science.
Second, negatively — From what has been
said it is obvious that the Carnegie Institution
is not a "university" in the ordinary sense
of that word. It has no faculty, it has no
body of students brought together in one
place. It has no systematic courses of
instruction. If lectures should be given
under its auspices, they will probably be by
specialists and to specialists, not popular
lectures nor the sort of expositions required
for the instruction of young pupils.
The fund is not intended for the aid of
scholars in their antecedent or professional
education. This must be provided for by
the existing universities and colleges. Only
those who are mature enough to show their
powers will be aided.
The Carnegie Institution does not propose
to build up a library nor to make collections
in archeology, ethnology and natural history.
The Carnegie Institution does not intend to
do that which other institutions or individuals
are doing or will undertake to do.
To sum up the whole matter, the Carnegie
Institution is a supplementary agency for the
purpose of strengthening scientific w^orkers
in any part of the country and aiding them to
carry on investigations which promise to be
of importance to the world.
GERMAN INTERESTS AND 'I1<:NDENCIES
IN SOUTH AMERICA
BV
FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG
TO many who have been wont to regard
the relations between Germany and
the United States as fixed for all
time by the panegyrists on the occasion of
Prince Henry's visit, the current crisis in
Venezuela has come as a'rude shock. To them
it has seemed that the German Government's
determined attempt to collect debts due its
citizens from South Americans, who bask
under the Monroe Doctrine, strikes away the
very foundations of friendship between the
two peoples. Such a conclusion is, of course,
clearly unwarranted. The collection of debts
is a perfectly legitimate business for a gov-
ernment, provided it be done after such
fashion as common international courtesy
demands.
The seriousness of the Venezuelan situation
does not arise from the mere fact that Ger-
many, in collaboration with Great Britain
and Italy, is coercing an American republic,
or even from the open display of force in
achieving this end, but rather from the fever-
ish and really quite uncalled for avidity with
which the Germans are conducting their side
of the affair. There is on their part the same
enthusiasm, aggressiveness and proneness
to break over the grounds of the justifiable
which proved so annoying to other powers
during the Spanish-American war and the
Peking expedition of 1900. The real gravity
of the Venezuelan trouble lies not in the
possibilities of an immediate war of the
powers, as the alarmists would have us
believe, but in the revelation it has made of
the German imperial temperament and the
possibilities of future German aggressions on
South American soil.
When one considers the increasing interests
of the German people in certain South
American States, notably Brazil and the
Argentine Republic, one is apt to regard these
latter possibilities as rather probabilities.
It is an open secret that in our councils of
state there has been of late years a growing
concern at the magnitude of German colon-
ization in the continent to the south of us.
The grounds for such concern are twofold.
In the first place, German imperial ambition
under the regime of Emperor William is
universally recognized as becoming more and
more insatiable. Twenty years ago Germany
had not one acre of land outside of Europe;
today she controls by right of full possession
2,500,000 square kilometres, not to speak of
probably an equal amount over which her
flag does not fly but which is fast being
populated and exploited by men of her lan-
guage and blood. South Africa, China, Asia
Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and finally South
America, are all the scenes of more or less
open German aggrandizement; and among
them, the last-named, at least since 1896, has
been distinctly favored by the Government
as a goal for the German emigrant.
The other chief ground for concern at the
increase of German population in South
America is the fact that of all the peoples who
migrate thither in any considerable numbers,
the Germans alone hold strictly aloof from the
natives and maintain intimate commercial
and social relations with the home-land.
Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, even Chinese
and Japanese, are quickly assimilated with
Brazilians or Argentines, but the Germans
never. In the naval debates of 1897 Minister
von Marschall declared in the Reichstag,
" Emigration must be directed into such chan-
nels that the Germans abroad may be kept
German." It is in pursuance of this policy
that South America has become the favored
land of settlement.
German colonies in South America, as else-
where, are almost uniformly commercial in
origin. A colony begins by the settling of
some merchant or merchant company in one
of the more favored cities, and grows by the
attracting thither, through trade opportuni-
ties, of friends and business associates, until
the business interests of the community pass
3170
GERMANY IN SOUTH AMERICA
completely into German hands. With the
merchants as a nucleus the colony is further
increased by the coming of agriculturalists,
bankers, manufacturers and professional
men, though its dominating commercial
character is never quite thrown off. The
settlers refrain absolutely from participation
in local politics. While native factions and
parties contend for offices and honors, the
German minds strictly his own business,
preserves the good- will of all elements, and
profits financially by the political preoccupa-
tion and industrial backwardness of the
natives. In most cases the colonies are quite
independent of the Government in whose
jurisdiction they happen to be located. They
are in the State but not of it. Not infrequently
they even go so far as to make their own laws.
This cannot but mean the gradual denational-
ization of great sections of the country.
The southern provinces of Brazil have
been weakened from this cause. A more
patriotic people than the Brazilians would
be much exercised over the situation.
The commercial and banking houses main-
tain the closest possible relations with institu-
tions of their sort in the Fatherland. During
the past decade German trade with Central
and South America has increased more rapidly
than that of any other nation. This fact of
itself would be quite harmless were it not
that this increase of trade has been brought
about almost wholly through German invest-
ments and settlements in these countries. It
is a trade of Germans with Germans — across
5,000 miles of saltwater, it is true — but never-
theless regarded as essentially domestic.
Great banking corporations have been cre-
ated for the express purpose of facilitating
this trade. Such are the German Brazilian
Bank, with a capital of 84,000,000, and the
German Transatlantic Bank of Buenos
Ayres, with a capital of $5,000,000, not to
mention scores of lesser corporations doing
business in practically every important South
American city. The total amount of German
capital supposed to be invested in banks,
stores and general real estate in Brazil alone
is $150,000,000.
In addition to interests of this sort there
are the railroads, such as the Great Railway
of Venzuela, controlled for the most part by
German capitalists. The exploring expedi-
tions now being conducted by Doctor Karl
von den Steinens in western Brazil are being
followed up as rapidly as possible by the
building of the Rio Grande Northwestern
Railway — a purely German enterprise. The
activity of the Germans in the sending out of
scientific expeditions and the construction
of pioneer railroads in certain regions of South
America reminds one strongly of the devices
by which Russia has been accustomed to
break the way for . political aggrandizement
along her Asiatic frontier.
Despite Doctor von Holleben's emphatic
assurances a year ago that German}^ has
absolutely no thought of acquiring territory
in the West Indies or along the South
American coasts, and despite the repeated
disavowals by other German officials of such
ambitions on the part of their country, the
fact cannot be obscured that precisely such
conditions are ripening in portions of South
America as the world has come to consider
inevitable stepping-stones to annexation.
A purely commercial imperialism, such as
Bismarck advocated, has long since proved
a dream. When the citizens of a great State
settle among a weaker and more backward
people, with the express intention of main-
taining their allegiance to the home-land,
experience attests that there are certain to
be occasions on which the government of that
State will be called upon to defend the inter-
ests of those who have passed beyond the
pale of its legal jurisdiction. Such defense
is the more likely to be extended if the parent
state is as devoted to the welfare of its people
abroad and as ready to make a display of
authority in their behalf as is Germany.
There are at present probably not more than
400,000 Germans in South America. But
their numbers and interests are increasing
so rapidly that it would be folly to close our
eyes to the possibilities of the situation.
Certainly well to the front among these possi-
bilities is the facing of the United States of
the alternatives which Secretary Root some
years ago predicted we must choose some day,
namely, abandoning the Monroe Doctrine or
fighting for it.
THE PIONKER" COACH IN FRONT OF TlIK HOLLAND HOUSE
Al Fiflli Avenue aiul Tliirlicth Street, New York
Photographed by A R. Dugmore
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
A STORY OF ORGANIZED LUXURY— MORE SERVANTS THAN GUESTS— THE LAND-
LORD A SYNDICATE— MORE THAN 1,000 ROOMS FOR 400,000 GUESTS A YEAR AND
A $500,000 ANNUAL PROFIT— A VAST MACHINE OF WELL-REGULATED ACTIVITY
BY
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
AMONG all our institutions of progress
there is none more amazing than the
modem hotel in immensity, in com-
plex activities, in social significance. With
a width of 200 feet and a length of nearly
400 feet, and approximately 300 feet in
height — these are the dimensions of one
of these great machines for convenient
living, while within its vast walls are more
than a thousand rooms. Its capacity is more
than twelve hundred guests per day, and
it employs eighteen hundred servants to
attend to their needs.
In a sub-basement, forty-two and one-half
feet below the street level, is the motive power
of this vast machine. Here is one of the
largest private electric plants in the world. Its
power drives the screws of nineteen elevators
and supplies the illuminating energy of twenty-
five thousand electric lights. One hundred
and fifty men are employed in these power
rooms, though the seven great boilers are
self-stoking, and one hundred tons of coal a
day are supplied to them in seven automatic
and never-ending streams. In the sub-base
basement, too, is the private ice-machine,
which freezes fifty tons of ice and forty dozen
carafes of drinking water daily, besides
refrigerating the four thousand pounds of
meat, fish and game necessary to feed the
huge and gorgeous army of guests and servi-
tors above stairs. It requires six skilled
butchers to handle this meat item, and five
men are employed to open the twelve barrels
of oysters that are served daily. These things
are bought in open market by men whose
sole business it is to buy well at whatever price
is necessary to secure the quality desired.
Photographed by A. K. Dugmore
THE DISTRICT OF MAGNIFICENT HOTELS
Sixtieth Street and Fifth Avenue, at the corner of Central Park. Tlie building on the left is the Hotel Netherland; next to it is the Savoy
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
3'73
The kitchen arrangcnu'iits of tlie "modern
hotel" are on the lirst l)asenient floor. 1
think 1 had a very dim idea about such things
until we went there. 1 believe I })ietured
to myself a properly attired clii-} with several
assistants before a rather large kitelien
range and in a good deal of a hurry during
the rush hours, ])erhaps forgetting his pan
of hot rolls in the oven now and then, or
letting the eggs get overdone.
My mental picture was not a good one.
There is a clwj, to be sure, but so far as I could
.see he does not cook. He is simply a cajitain
of the seventy-five other cooks who work in
three relays of twenty-five each. There is no
range, but a solici bank of broilers — immense
gridirons, beneath wliich are the fires that
never die. As for the four hundred loaves
of bread and eight thousand rolls required
daily, the chef does not worry his mind over
riioti.(,'r.i|>lic(l by Fallc
THE WALDORF ROOF-GARDEN
the patent cutters and mixers and ovens and
staff of bakers needed to supply the simple
item of bread; or concern himself with the
I
A MAMMOTH HOTEL STRUCTURE
The Majestic— one of the largest hotels in New York
Photographed by A. R. Dugmoic
•o
«
o
e
E
•e
c
Till': WOKKINCS C)l' A MUDKRN llUTKL
3'75
(lualit)' 1)1" IIk" I'K'vrn liundrrd pounds ofljiittcr
tliat arc each day n'([ui!vd to (,fo with it.
Neither docs lie trouble himself with the
pastrv, where marvelous thinji;s arc eon-
struetctl of candies and creams and fruits —
works of art, some of them entitled to
"honorable mention" in an academy of design.
The patrons of the modern hotel are fond of
desserts, and the daily item of two hundred
and fifty large pies convinces me that a fair
percentage of them are native born.
1 must not forget the item of eggs. Eight-
een thousand are re(iuired every twenty-four
hours. Boiled eggs do not get overdone;
they are boiled by cloek-work. A perforated
dipper containing the eggs drops down into
boiling water. The dipper's clock-work is
set to the second, and when that final second
has expired the little dipper jumps up out of
the water and the eggs are ready for delivery.
There are men who do nothing else but fill
and watch and empty these dancing dippers,
and it seemed to me great fun.
On another part of this fioor is the dish-
washing, where great galvanized baskets
lower the pieces into various solutions of
Pliotographed by McCormick
RECEIVING A VISITOR'S CARD
potash and clean rinsing water — all so burn-
ing hot that the dishes dry instantly without
THE OFFICE OF A .MODERN HOTEL
Photographed by McCormick
31/6
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
Photographed by McCormick
A HOTEL BARBER SHOP
wiping. Sixty-five thousand pieces of china-
ware are cleansed in a day, and an ahnost
equal quantity of silver. All told, there are
three hundred employees in the kitchen
departments of this huge living machine.
On another part of the first basement floor
is the laundry. Every day is washday in
the modem hotel. Eleven great revolving
washers are here, four centrifugal dryers,
almost exactly like the centrifugal bleachers
in a sugar refinery, and six ten-foot mangles
that take in a full-width sheet, smoothing as
well as drying it. But the ironing of shirts
and collars is done in the good old-fashioned
way — by hand, only that the irons are always
hot, for they are electric irons, and a perfect
evenness of temperature is maintained. They
are handled by a staff of sturdy-armed men
and women, and an ironer's wages are con-
sidered good.
On this floor, too, are the refrigerating
rooms, where champagne and other wines are
kept at a point just below freezing. Also,
the storerooms for an endless quantity of
liquors and cigars, and for the $35,000
worth of groceries kept constantly on
hand. Then there are the barber shops,
with twenty-seven barbers and bath at-
tendants, and the offices of a big im-
porting company, with the largest wine
cellars in America. Going about in this
wonderful electric underground world, one
would be likely to forget the upstairs, for
which it all exists, were it not for the constant
stream of waiters hurrying to and fro, placing
and gathering up their orders, pausing a
moment at the checking office, where sit half
a dozen keen-eyed, quick-witted young men.
A HOTEL BILLIARD-ROOM AT A QUIET HOUR
Photographed by McCormick
THE WORKINGS OF A MODICRN HOTEL
3177
A HOTEL BALLROOM WITH STAGE SETTINGS
Photographed by Fallc
who glance at every dish, see that it conforms
to the patron's written order, stamp the
prices and the total of each bill so that there
can be no possible error, intentional or other-
wise, on the part of the waiter.
There are four dining-rooms and two cafes
upstairs, and perhaps a thousand people are
being served at one time. They are the most
brilliantly dressed, best groomed people in
the world. They are also the richest. A
matter of a dollar more or less on a single item
is not considered. Their chief object in life
is to live. Their chief object in living is to
have as many good things to eat and to wear
as possible, and to eat and to wear them in a
gay atmosphere of lights and music and
flowers and flashing gems.
Besides dining-rooms and cafes on the
first floor, there are splendid foyers, or rest
rooms, fitted with every luxury in the shape
of easy chairs, divans and desks, though
perhaps the most striking feature of this
mezzanine floor of the modern hotel may be
its wonderful corridors running its length
and breadth, luxuriously seated and carpeted
throughout, including a gorgeous avenue
of Oriental fabrics, lapis lazuli and gold.
Photographed by Falk
A PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN A HOTEL SUITE
3178
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
LAUNDRESSES Al WORK
Photographed by McComiick
Then there are the luxurious Turkish smoking- is in the centre of this floor. Here is a force
parlor, the ample reading-rooms, and the vast of men, trained for a special service, each
billiard parlors. with his knowledge and his ability ready for
The splendid office of the modern hotel instant use, each with a judgment of men and
A HOTEL LAUNDRY
The plain clothes are all ironed by machinery
Photographed by McCormick
Till-: \\()RKIN(;S OF A MODKRN HOTEL
3'79
conditions and onuTj^cMicics that tMiahlcs
hini to decide wlicthor a case presented is a
matter for instant action or for managerial
consideration. At one corner of the otlfice is
a young man wliose only duty is to supply
information and guides to visitors. There
are six of these guides, and it is their business
to "show through" anv stranger who may
desire to see the glory and the inner workings
of the machine. Guides are also supplied to
strangers who wish to be directed about the
city, and sometimes to a party of guests on
an extended tour.
The office of a hotel was formerly a place
where women were rarely seen. Today
about that marble and gilded cage the tide
of fashion ebbs and flows, and mingles with
the stronger current and fiercer swirl of
the affairs of men.
Near the office there is a oattery of pneu-
matic tubes connecting with the upper floors
A bell-boy no longer carries up a visitor's
card. The card is put into an air-cartridge
and is fired straight to the floor where it
belongs. An attendant at a little desk there
sends it to the proper room. By and by the
Pholographetl by McCormick
IN THE KITCHEN
PREPARING THE VEGETABLES IN A HOTEL KITCHEN
Photographed by McCormick
3i8o
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
Photographed by McCormick
A PLEASANT CORNER IN THE DINING-ROOM
cartridge goes back to the office, and the
visitor learns whether the guest he wishes to
see is in his room, whether he will see him,
and if not, why, or, perhaps, when.
On the next floor above are two rooms for
public entertainment: one a complete theatre
1 02 feet long, with splendid decorations,
seated with gold-leaf bent-wood "hand-
painted" chairs, of which there are three
thousand in the hotel all told — the other a
ballroom, 100 feet square, two stories in
height, with two tiers of galleries for spec-
tators. The ballroom is used for dramatic
performances and for balls and other social
events. A card-party had just ended when I
went through, and a bushel of playing-cards,
once used and thrown away, were flung into
the corner. Everything is luxurious, lavish
and prodigal in the modem hotel.
There are five splendid banquet and recep-
tion rooms in all, and they are rarely unoccu-
pied. Lectures, readings, musicales, grand
opera performances, art auctions, mighty
social affairs that fill corridors and stairways
with a dazzling and humming overflow —
there is no end to these things. Night is like
day, only, if anything, more brilliant. Even
the casual visitor feels somehow caught in an
endless whirl of gaiety and recalls certain old
allegorical pictures wherein the festivities of
life were meant to be thrown in high relief.
SALOON, ROV.AL SUITE— THE WALDORF-ASTORIA
This suite was occupied by Li Hung Chang while in New York
FhotograpUed by i-iiijt
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
3i8r
THE DINING-ROOM OF ONE OF THE LARGE HOTELS
Photographed by McCurmick
And everywhere the symbols of luxury —
onyx, costly fabrics, gold ornamentation,
priceless statuary and art treasure — abound.
The clock and chair of Marie Antoinette and
the sword of Napoleon the Great are here, and
certainly they have never been amid more
luxurious surroundings.
It is said that a guest may spend a
profitable week in this hotel without once
going on the street. Entertainments are
always in progress; two orchestras supply
music; objects of art and interest are
on every hand, businesses of almost every
sort are represented on the ground floor,
and when at a loss for other amusement
the visitor may ascend to the fifteenth
floor and sit for his photograph, or spend an
hour in a gay roof-garden.
It is not necessary to bring a maid or a valet
to the modern hotel. This personal service
may be ordered along with a suite, by tele-
graph; and the guest whose trunks are
expressed ahead will find them properly
unpacked and arranged in the various closets
and drawers. This trained attendant may
be retained during the guest's entire stay, to
supply information, care for all personal needs,
to secure tickets and berths for departure.
Such service to an old, feeble or inexperienced
person is of genuine value. Of course, these
things are "extra" and cost a round sum,
but to those who may be considered legiti-
mate patrons of the great hostelries — guests
who do not hesitate to pay from $5 to
$50 a day for the apartment alone — the
matter of a few extra dollars for added com-
fort should not count.
Photographed by McConnicli
IN A HOTEL CAFE
3i82
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
Photo^aphed by A. R. Dugmore
THE NEW ASTOR HOTEL ON FIFTH AVENUE
In the matter of rates, it is possible to
obtain small inside rooms without meals
as low as $3.50, prices ranging upward
as high as $150 a day for one suite,
or $250 including a state dining-room.
All prices are for apartments only. The
old American plan, once so popular, has
well-nigh gone out. Guests prefer to take
their meals when and where they will.
It is doubtful if there are two modern
hotels in New York where rates will be
quoted for "room and board."
As for the apartments themselves, they are
of every sort, size and description. There
are Colonial suites, French, Italian and
V.' t^T v ",' ' '
Pliotographeil by A. B. I'aine
THE HOLLAND HOUSE
One of Fifth Avenue's modem hotels
Photographeii by A. B. Painc
THE OLD EVERETT HOUSE ON UNION SQUARE
Greek suites, suites of the far Orient, with all
the colors and luxury that wealth can pur-
chase and the looms of the East supply. As
the nations have combined to create the
American people, so it would .seem that
thev have conspired to produce that marvel-
ous and amazing institution, the American
hotel. It is a stupendous affair. The first
fat Dutch innkeeper of New Amsterdam, if
he were to be placed suddenly in the midst of
it all and we were to say to him, "This is
what you have brought us to," might find
himself at a loss for words. If we were to tell
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN IIOTKI
him tliat in tlie year 1902 more than four
hundred thousand j>[uests were registered at
one of these hotels, and that during the
present winter ai: average of three hundred
were daily turned away, he would try to
gasp and fail, and if wc were to add, as a
matter of frivolous detail, that it requires an
average of one and a half servants to eaeh
patron, if we told him what he must pay for
ins dinner, and then tried to explain to him
that the percentage of proht on each guest is
probably no greater than he reckoned from
his patrons in his little tile-roofed tavern
.iJ-
5^'^ Hi.. ^"^
—-'^■31 film mg
Fiiutoyraplied by A, B. Paine
ONE OF THE FINE OLD HOTELS OF LOWER FIFTH
AVENUE
The Brevoort House
three hundred years ago, he would probably
give up trying to think and accept any-
thing further without question. In the
matter of profit, one large hotel in New
York is said to have yielded $500,000
net returns in 1902, or considerably less than
one dollar on each patron, niany of which are
not registered, coming in for meals only.
This is not a big percentage, all things
considered. The sum total is probably less
than is distributed by the guests in tips
to the emplovees.
There are a number of hotels the dwellers
in which are chieflv families. These hotel
1 " ,1 .,.'ii:J l>y A. B. Paine
AN OLD DOWNTOWN HOTEL
Smith & McNeil's
dwellers are certain to be always warmed,
always lighted, always well cared for by
servants, who are controlled as an army
is controlled — by efficient officers, strict
discipline and exact duties. The servant
Photo^aphed t>y A K. Liugniore
A WET DAY ON FIFT\'-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK
The Hotel Netherland on the left and the Savoy on the right
3i84
THE WORKINGS OF A MODERN HOTEL
Photo^aphed by A. R. Dugmore
A TYPE OF THE OLD-STi'LE HOTEL
The Broadway Central
problem is solved for the hotel dweller.
So are the various problems that have to do
with tradesmen and mechanics. The hotel
dweller's problem is to furnish the money —
the rest is easv. It is true that there mav be
Photojrraphed by A. R. Dugmore
AN OLD LANDMARK
The Astor House
a certain lack of individuality in his home
life, and he must put up with rather narrow
quarters as compared to what he might have
in his own household. He must do without a
good many things that he would have in a
home of his own, and accustom himself to
having strangers above and about him when
sometimes he w^ould wish to be removed from
it all. But he has niany advantages. His
meals are always ready. His servants are
always at hand. He has a telephone in his
room that connects not only with the office,
but with the systems of the outer world. He
is a living embodiment of human irresponsi-
bilities.
In the matter of architecture the modem
hotel is a sky-scraper with peculiar adapta-
tions for its special purpose. A hotel is a perfect
plexus of flues, pipes, wires, tubes and sani-
tary connections. Hotel constructive engi-
neering has become an occupation of its own.
as well as hotel architecture, and able men
today give their attention wholly to these
branches of their professions.
Their problems are many. The architect
must be able to construct a vast ceiling like
that of the "Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, and be
ableto place on top of it thirteen stories of steel
and masonry — a feat said to be unequaled
hitherto. He must arrange for proper light,
ventilation, economy of space, a minimum
of noise, and he must reduce the chances of
fire to a degree where, as is claimed by man-
agers today, it is simply impossible for any
disaster endangering human life to occur in
a modern hotel. As for the engineer, he must
see first of all that all connections of wires.
flues and drains are safe and sanitary. He
must also provide for all vapors and smells
likely to arise from the kitchen below-stairs,
and see that they are carried to the highest
point of the roof, forced up by swift currents
through spacious ventilators, until there is
hardly a suggestion of an odor even in the
kitchen, where cookery on a gigantic scale is
always in progress. He must see that the
vast system of nerves and draughts and vents
and exhausts — startlingly like a human
sj'stem on a mighty scale — are most unlikely
to become disordered and are altogether
accessible in case of accident. Like the
architect, he has human comfort, safety,
life itself in his hands, and it is w^ell that
these men should devote a lifetime of
energy and study to their work.
PhotOj^raphed by A. K. Dugmore
MADISON SQUARE, WEST
The junction of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, showing the "Flatiron" building on the left and the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the right. The
remarkable contrast between the new sky-scraping building and the older structure is well illustrated
THE CLIFF-LIKE WALDORF-ASTORIA
The largest of the modern hotels
Pliotographed !>> A. B. Paine
I
11
.PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING
3187
But it is not the size, the construction nor
the furnishing of the modern hotel that makes
it a success. It is the fact that the institu-
tion has a system — that the armies are
completely and capably officered, and that
l)ehind these officers, at a little corner desk, in
a quiet, unnoticed nook, sits the commander-
in-chief to whom all otlicers report — the
manager of tlie "modern hotel."
The manager selects his subordinates, and
he holds tliem accountable. His subordinates
select the next in rank, and these in turn
select others. Each becomes a piece of a
great mechanism, and must be in place and
in perfect condition, or must be instantly
replaced from the hundreds of eager appli-
cants always on the waiting-list, marked
"Next." Good and promptly paid wages,
strict discipline, with accountability to
the next higher in rank, with an able
manager as the final court — this is the
secret of the very existence of the modern
hotel.
And now what of the hotels to come ?
The Astor House and the Fifth Avenue
in New York were each in their time
thought to be the end of human achieve-
ment. Yet the forward movement in
each case has been by leaps and bounds.
Only eighteen years ago a writer in the
L'cntiiry Muii^aziiic suggested the use of the
telephone for communication with the hotel
office, but even in his wildest flights he did
not foresee the present system of a long-
distance telephone in every room, making it
possible for the occupant to lie in bed and
hold a conversation with Chicago.
As to the future, the hotel architects are
already planning structures that will surpass
any now in existence. On the present sites
of the Plaza and the old Brunswick magni-
ficent public palaces are to rise; while it is
said that the Pennsylvania Railroad, above
an underground station to be located at
Thirty-fifth Street, between Seventh and
Ninth Avenues, is to erect a house of enter-
tainment in which a building like the Waldorf
Astoria could be lost. No conception seems
too great. Hotels today are filled as fast as
built, crowded, overflowing — rooms must be
secured days in advance. Facilities for travel
are increasing. Architects will plan, inven-
tors will conceive, capitalists will supply
funds for the achievement of whatever the
present or the future metropolitan public
may regard as the modern American hotel.
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE PRO-
FESSIONS—PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING
HONEST AND OUTSPOKEN OPINIONS OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL
TEACHERS IN ALL PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES— VARY-
ING VIEWS ON THE "RAG-TAG AND BOBTAIL" OF THE
LEARNED PROFESSIONS— HOW TEACHING MAY BE ELEVATED
BY
WILLIAM McANDREW
PRIN'CIPAL OF THE GIRLs' TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK
THIS story I had from a man who was
present: A wealthy woman who
affects patronage of education drove
up one morning to the school of which she is
a trustee and invited the teachers to spend
the evening at her home. When the refresh-
ments were served that night, one little cake,
which by mistake had escaped the vigilance of
the overseer, came into the hands of one of
the guests and proved to have a curved
omission as if something had been bitten out.
The discovery was made in a cozy corner
where some of the irreverent young women
of the teaching staff were making merry.
Annabel, who is a musical accompanist,
whispered to the girls that this was the second
successive evening she had attended a recep-
tion in this house, once as a hired entertainer
and once as a guest. She suggested that the
things to eat were what were left over by the
3i88
PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING
"society people" of the night before. At
this revelation there were indignant looks,
but the tieachers' inviolable safeguard, the
sense of humor, came to the rescue, and the
holder of the telltale wafer lifted it up and
proposed, sotto voce: "Here's health to us:
the rag-tag and bobtail of the learned pro-
fessions; beloved by children; tolerated by
youth; forgotten by maturity; considered
municipally, financially and socially as good
enough for what is left."
Some have wondered why so old, so neces-
sary and so glorified a thing as learning has
failed to reflect upon those who dispense it
more of its own respect and honor. Although
history does record some cases of praise to
teachers, they are comparatively few. The
usual record is after this fashion: "Crates
of Mallos was the first to teach grammar in
Rome. It came in this wise: Having had
the misfortune to fall into a sewer, thus break-
ing his leg, he was thenceforward considered
good for nothing but to be a teacher. " " Nero
caused one Paetus Thrasea to be put to death
for no other reason than that he had a sour
cast of countenance and looked like a school-
master." Horace mentions Orbillius, the
most famous teacher of his time, only to
confer on him an immortality of contempt.
The literature of our own tongue from
Shakespeare to Irving, in speaking of us, uses
no words so frequently as those of ridicule
and contempt. The first American school-
masters, say the historians of education,
were also gravediggers, street-sweepers, and
were employed in other occupations simi-
larly looked down upon.
For me, a teacher, to whine about our
neglected state and to entreat for our own
sakes a more decent respect, would savor of
petulance. This need not be done. The
people have done more for the teachers of
New York City than has been done for any
body of teachers in the world. We are
nearer worldly happiness than our brothers
and sisters anywhere. My purpose is quite
different. I desire rather to present the
proposition to you, parents of children,
wherever you are, that you are depriving
the growing generation of efficient training
and are falling short of the excellence you
would wish this nation to achieve. You are
doing this by failure to hold in higher regard
those who teach. This is not a question as to
whether they get all they are worth. As mere
persons, let them receive what their personality
brings them, but as companions and examples
for the children of the republic, every soul
of us has a deep and inevitable interest in
seeing that they are the best and most
respected guides and examples that can be
obtained.
This question of the quality and position
of school-teachers seems to be a pertinent
present-day problem. A score of well-known
men have, within a few years, contributed
suggestions on the elevation of the teacher.
This magazine has insisted upon counting
actual education as an important field of its
province. It has expressed the belief that
American teaching is not good enough and
that the fault lies in the position of the teacher.
Such assertions provoke more or less denial.
The protests in some educational magazine?
led the editor to send specific inquiries to a
large number of teachers themselves in everv
portion of the country, asking directly what
they feel their own positions to be. The
replies have been turned over to the present
writer, now for twenty years past a public-
school teacher, with the object of securing
from a school -man's standpoint as frank and
honest an estimate of ourselves as mav be
formed from hundreds of opinions. If this
were a monograph for educational associations,
its presentation, to give it the greatest value
to students of the subject, would require
printing each reply in full with each respond-
ent's name and position. Here, however,
it is required that the case be stated con-
cretely but briefly. Names, moreover, in
many cases must be omitted. So timid have
teachers become that the majority of those
responding have said: "Please do not give
our names. "
To begin with New England, the traditional
starting-place of school-teachers. They say
of themselves that they are looked on "some-
times with contempt, often with pity. " "The
young men fresh from college follow Thomas
Reed's example and take a school to keep
the pot boiling while they prepare themselves
for law or something else." "The young
women keep their eyes open for a husband
and an easier life. " "Conditions are growing
rather worse," says a Maine man. "As the
power of money increases, the low wages of
the teacher puts him at a social disadvantage,
to overcome which teachers see no adequate
compensations in other directions." Maine,
PUBLIC-SCHOOL TKACIIING
3i89
for instance, pays, in cities of more tlian
eight thousand inhabitants, an average of
$448 a year to its teaching and superior
officers. The average in the villages and
rural districts is so much lower than this that
"the service is the subject of persistent and
incurable ridicule." New Hampshire says
her "teachers arc usually commiserated."
"The women would prefer marriage, the men
the professions of medicine, law and engineer-
ing, because in them they would have a pro-
fessional standing and be taken with more
consideration by the bulk of society." The
repbrts from Vermont indicated that "such
of the public as know nothing about teaching
regard it as an overpaid sinecure, while the
more intelligent members of the community
look upon it as an uncertain makeshift, to be
taken up only by a man moving on to higher
things or by a woman watching and waiting
for her true estate: a husband, a home, a
family. " Rhode Island declares that "teach-
ing as an abstract proposition is highly re-
respected," but that the treatment of the
teacher herself is another matter. " In many
cases she does not respect her own calling.
How can she do so in an atmosphere of uncer-
tainty and neglect?" "No Rhode Island
woman can be content outside of a home of
her own. This deep and fundamental instinct
will always make teaching, so far as woman's
regard of it is concerned, a secondary interest,
and will always make her feel inferior to the
majority around her, who have achieved
wifehood and motherhood." As to the men
teachers of Rhode Island, "they are pinched
with small pay and discouraged by the
insecurity of tenure. The school-masters of
the cities are subjected to a political influence
that stunts and paralyzes manliness, while
those in the rural communities, as to their
acts, their speech and their very souls, are
the common property of the rustic demagogue
who wields the power of school trustee. "
The Connecticut teacher "does not have
a social standing because he cannot afford it. "
"He intends to leave the calling." The
woman especially announces that she expects
to teach only a short time, because "she
I would prefer to manage fewer children and
those all her own." One says: "The office
girl or the typewriter is more of a social success
because her evenings are free and her spirit
less fatigued; not because she has a mind or
Grand old Massachusetts, the school-master's
paradise, which produced Mark Hopkins,
America's greatest teacher, and Horace Mann,
the Moses who drew teachers as far out of
bondage as national opposition would let him,
sends more replies than any other State.
From them it is to be observed that "the
ordinary American citizen looks i^atronizingly
upon teacliers"; "he gives the impression
tliat he thinks that a man would not be a
teacher if he could be anything else;" "the
men in schools are not content;" "they are
leaving all the time for business, for law, for
medicine, for preaching, because these occupa-
tions bring more respect, and are freer from
absurd and petty exactions in the matter
of mechanical uniformity and routine." A
superintendent of long and wide experience
in the State asserts that " he does not know a
single teacher who feels that the money
received is adequate payment for the labors
rendered." Another reports that "the good
teachers could earn twice the money at other
work" and that "the poor ones would be dear
at half the price, " but that "public sentiment
will not permit adequate payment nor the
separation of charity and political patronage
from the selection of teachers."
The Massachusetts superintendents agree
that their teachers "cannot hold a high social
position because they cannot afford the time,
the strength nor the clothes necessary. " "In
earlier days," says one, "when the masses
were not educated, the school-teacher was
generally looked up to as a sort of superior
being, but of late years the teacher is a sort of
valet of the other professions. " "The calling
has not attained the rank of a profession.
It has not even the dignity of a trade. A
manufacturer will put in his shops appliances
that save labor and improve the output, but
the same man on a board of education will
vote down, as ridiculous, propositions for
telephones, cupboards, locks, letter-files, a
typewriter, a card catalogue, a stereopticon,
or a time-stamp." "Business men laugh at
our unbusinesslike ways; they ridicule the
petty bookkeeping we do, but regard as absurd
our request for a clerk and a counting machine
to prepare the statistical reports first required
of us by law, and afterward they make an
argument against us as inveterate winders of
red tape. We are carrying twentieth-century
burdens on a seventeenth-century hand-cart. "
A superintendent near Boston gives as a
3190
PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING
chief cause of discontent ' ' the uncertainty of
reward for labor, devotion, duty, extra study,
and superior service." " Pidl with a school
board counts for more than any special fitness
for service." "The best positions are so
frequently secured through personal influence
instead of merit and experience that the rank
and file lose heart and cannot be induced to
put into their work one atom of enthusiasm or
one stroke of effort more than they are obliged
to." "All work done under such circum-
stances without the vitalizing spirit of hope
is inferior work." "If a naturally enthusi-
astic teacher enters the service, its hopeless-
ness soon causes the loss of this animation and
a reduction to the appalling cynicism which
is the inevitable disease of most modem
school s}' stems."
A superintendent of one of Boston's rich
suburbs says: "Teachers have too little
social diversion. Their intimates are chosen
from their own body ; they are too tired or too
poor to take a high social position." He is
sure that "a teacher's calling is regarded as
respectable," but "not sure whether it is
above or below that of the girl who has
an office position. " The marriage problem
confronts every school superintendent; every
respondent admits that a woman teacher
ought to wish to marry, and that with a
corps composed chiefly of women educational
perfection must be a secondary consider-
ation. The superintendent's problem is,
therefore, how to get the best kind of
second-class service rendered for the money
allowed for it. All agree that the men
teachers, likewise, do not regard their work
as first-class. Says one: " Almost any other
calling is preferable for a man." Says
another: "No ambitious father or mother
wants a member of the family to be a teacher."
A third remarks: "Every school man I
know, but one, came into the ranks by acci-
dent or intending to remain a short while. "
Turning to the next group of common-
wealths one finds the teachers of New York
State ready to answer all the questions and to
be quoted as responsible for the statements.
Mr. Charles R. Skinner, the State Superin-
tendent of Public Instruction, and Doctor
William H. Maxwell, the Superintendent of
Schools of New York City, express themselves
as believing that one of the fundamental
reforms of education has to do with the social
and financial condition of the teacher. Both
men take open and decided positions advocat-
ting the elimination of politics from the
selection of teachers, the assurance of the
tenure during meritorious service, and the
payment of high wages for high attainments.
The State Teachers' Association has a perma-
nent committee on "the condition of the
teacher." It is undertaking an elaborate
and detailed account of stock in the differ-
ent counties of the State with the intent
to suggest the most practicable and effective
steps for the improvement of the service.
From the very large number of replies
received it appears that the life of a teacher in
this State is estimated by himself more hope-
fully than in any other in the Union.
One correspondent maintains that there
are more school systems in the State free
from political meddling than is usual in
America. Another calls attention to the
average salaries for the teachers of the cities
of the State — $863 a year as against $728 in
Massachusetts cities and S528 in the cities of
Pennsylvania. In the matter of social posi-
tion, the same general statement is made as
by the New England educators. Superin-
tendent Gilbert, of Rochester, says the
attitude toward the rank and file of teachers
is determined wholly by the ranks from which
teachers come and from their natural associa-
tion. A teacher whose mother is a scrub-
woman is naturally regarded by her family
as socially superior. There are many such
in the common schools. Persons of a so-called
higher rank frequently regard teachers as
they do all women-workers — as inferior.
Superintendent Walker, of Elmira, thinks
the public does not know and therefore does
not appreciate a teacher's work. Superin-
tendent Tisdale, of Watertown, "believes the
teacher never ranked as high as today, and
that the people are awakening to the danger
of retaining poor teachers." "As soon as
public sentiment condemns poor teaching,
good teachers can have anything that any
public service can command."
New Jersey has been in a condition of mild
educational ferment for three or four years.
Proximity to New York City during its
school reform raised salaries to a considerable
extent. All of the leading school-men,
including the State Superintendent, are busy
with plans for an improvement of the service.
The average monthly salary of men teachers
in New Jersey is $87 and of women $49.
PUHLIC-SCIIOOL TKALIIING
3191
The view of a superintendent wlio has had
experience in four States is that "Most
women and all men under thirty are discon-
tented in teaching. After that age they
become niore or less reconciled, but this
seems a sorry state of things for an occupation
requiring spirit, joy and enthusiasm. The
women, of course, would prefer even a hum-
drum life if it were a married one, but the
discontent of the men is due almost wholly
to lack of means. Pick out the men who are
teachers, not supervisors, and they have no
rank at all — they are a caste. The highest
school official feels that his calling ranks the
lowest of all the professions ; for a man doing
work as a class teacher the public has not
even contempt. He is a cipher with the rim
removed. We superintendents are furnished
with a few celibates, a crowd of half-baked
girls, and an equal number of disappointed
old maids with which to educate the growing
generations. Then some parent, too busy
to think, wonders why his boy doesn't like
school. The American educational system
today seems to me one of the most ridicu-
lously managed fool things on earth. There
is nothing funnier than the solemn way in
which we sit and speculate about it, when
everybody knows the trouble."
From Pennsylvania come many answers.
State Superintendent Nathan C. Schaeffer
leads. "To ask what callings rank more
dignified is to my mind an improper question.
If the King of Heaven should send two angels
on earth, one to break stones upon a highway,
the other to rule a realm, which one, knowing
himself doing his Lord's work, would dare
exalt himself above the other?" Another
Pennsylvanian, desiring not to be quoted,
cries : " If we count the estimate of the world,
teaching is not worth considering; if we prize
the approval of the judge within the breast,
no service can compare with mine. It is
my daily consolation that the Great Teacher
was despised and rejected of men much more
than I." Most of the Pennsylvania teachers
allude to the low wages of teachers in that
State; they average $352 a year for men and
$304 for women.
From the South the reports exemplify a
general tone of resolution to improve the
educational service of the district, no matter
how the public treats the teacher or what his
tinancial position may be. Says one superin-
tendent: "We are not in this occupation
for money ; there is a big work here that must
be done and we must do it just as long as we
can stand." Says another: "The teachers
of the South are more generally religious
than in any other district; the consoUitions of
religion are the only things that can uphold
a teacher in the sacrifices tiuit must be made. "
"Our teachers sufTer from the i)ublic's dis-
position to rate them from a monetary ])oint
of view. "
From the interior .States come the announce-
ments that longer and more expensive prepa-
ration is everywhere demanded of those who
would be teachers. In some localities this
is resulting in a failure to get enough teachers
to fill the schools. "It is the general opinion
among all the school men I know," writes an
Ohio superintendent, "that had they given
as much attention to any other calling they
would have been better off." "Young men
of talent do not care to teach: there is not
enough independence, surety of engagement,
or pay in it. " Indianians are said to "regard
teaching as a hard way to earn a living,
though honorable. " " The men are especially
discontented. " " It is impossible for teachers
to live up to professional or educational ideals
on present salaries." "The best men are
drawn off to larger liberty and manliness in
other professions." Superintendent W. A.
Miller, of Crawfordsville, says: "The most
serious threat to the progress of education in
America is the fact that the ability required
for successful school administration today is
wanted more in business than in schools —
that is, business offers three or four times the
school price. "
Michigan is a low-salary State. State
Superintendent Henry R. Pattengill tersely
puts it: "Teaching — noble in all but the
wages." Says Superintendent Stewart, of
Bay City: "Teachers are becoming better
educated, but in America money talks."
" Low^ salaries and chronic political meddling
are the curse of Michigan schools," says a
Normal school professor. ' ' Our city is notori-
ously indifferent to the treatment of the
teachers," writes a Detroit schoolmaster.
"Private schools flourish and offer a harbor
to teachers driven from the public system by
nagging politicians."
George Herbert Locke, Professor of Educa-
tion in the University of Chicago, and editor
of the School Review, declares: "Conditions
are growing better here ; people are awakening
3192
PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING
to the fact that the teacher ought to be a force
in the community, a force for righteousness in
pubHc and civic affairs." This is the city
in which the woman teachers have been at
law for their salaries for the past five or six
years. From rural Illinois and from all
through the central West come such answers
as this: "We have no cause to complain of
our social positions." "There is less snob-
bishness in the treatment of teachers here
than in the East." "Low salaries and
uncertain tenure of engagement prevent
retention of the best teachers." "Teachers
are not looked down upon. Everybody is
willing to help them get some better employ-
ment."
"In small towns," says Professor M. V.
O'Shea, of the University of Wisconsin, an
authority on educational conditions, "the
teacher is a model of intellectual excellence.
In larger places they are considered hirelings
who lack the polish, the spirit and the raiment
which 'good society' demands." "Dakota
teachers," says a correspondent, "are regarded
with mingled pity and respect. They are
birds of passage, turned out at the end of the
year. They cannot afford the expense neces-
sary to live well. Independence is impossible.
As they cannot return hospitality, they do
not get much of it. "
The teachers of the far West are not
expected to teach more than a year or two,
and so are regarded just the same as anybody
else. The Arizona teacher "is the oracle of
the place and expected to know a little of
everything." "In this State you can get
admitted to the bar or to the ministry easier
ihan j-ou can get a teacher's license."
" Montana school-teachers are mostly Eastern
girls; they marry faster than the superin-
tendent can get a fresh supply. The educa-
tional authorities desire a law to prevent
marriage of school-teachers except at the end
of June." "Everj^body of any consequence
in Idaho taught school once and so are good
to those who are temporarily engaged in it
now." On the Coast, President Benjamin
Ide Wheeler thinks the men would mostly
prefer law, medicine, commerce, theology,
railway management, engineering, etc.
President David Starr Jordan thinks "the
teacher makes whatever social place he
deserves. " Other replies from the Pacific
States agree in the main that teachers are
expected to leave the occupation in three or
four years, having in that tim.e prepared
themselves for an occupation more suited to
the ability and ambitions of a live man.
These, then, are the opinions of teachers
and superintendents as to the positions we
maintain for them. Again I urge that their
personal comfort and satisfaction are no more
to us than that of any other laborers. If
they are discontented, and can do better
otherwise, let them go out and make place
for those who are willing to be treated "with
mingled pity and contempt." But from the
point of view, if not of patriotic citizens
desiring the advancement of the country,
then of selfish parents wanting the best for
our children, we must do something to make
it worth while for bright men to stay in the
ranks. We must leaven the teaching mass
with some superior talent which can be held to
work long enough to perfect an art which is
now chiefly short-time guesswork in the
hands of "birds of passage." Scarcely a
daily paper is printed without the obituary
notice of some distinguished man, like Abram
S. Hewitt, who "taught school for a few years"
in this or that town . What drove or drew them
out of teaching ? What would not American
teaching be today if the traits and powers
which made those men successful could have
been held to its service and given freedom
and encouragement to advance ? Among our
five hundred thousand and more American
teachers, why is it that we do not have a
greater number who have discovered an
eminently successful career, not in manage-
ment, but in the actual work of instruction?
It can be seen that the operations which give
fame to a Doctor Lorenz are simpler than
the functions of perfect teaching; but wc
have no one who remotely suggests a Doctor
Lorenz. Knowing American sentiment as
we do, we cannot expect to attract or hold
the best talent in our ranks at $47 and $39 a
month, the average salary of men and women
teachers respectively in the United States.
The well-to-do trustee whom last I heard
discuss this question said: "We cannot
expect teachers to enjoy the material benefits
of this life. They must, in the spirit of the
missionary, as martyrs maybe, give their
life to the service." That means celibacy;
that means asceticism; that means a perfec-
tion of unnaturalness which, however in-
wardly glorious, does not radiate the sort of
atmosphere I want my children to bask in.
PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING
3193
I want them taught by red-blooded, virile
men, and by pleasant, rosy, buxom women;
the sort of people I myself would be glad to
meet and talk with long and often. So do
you. This missionary spirit may be well
enough for a few devoted souls in China, but
our nation, the richest in the world, is a loser
if it persists in making a business of preaching
missionary spirit to its hired men and women
in the schoolroom.
Nor will the government let me demon-
strate by a model school that high wages will
draw better talent into teaching and keep
it in better condition. Government has a
monopoly of schools. I could not compete
with it. The only circumstances in which
private schools can succeed are when the
public schools are so bad that intelligent
people are unwilling to patronize them, or
when there is a sufficiently large number of
persons desiring fashionable exclusiveness
to support a private school because it is
exclusive. American sentiment combats
both reasons and tends to keep the public
schools just good enough to prevent any
considerable number of school-teachers set-
ting up their own institutions and winning
real respect and standing by superior
triumphs springing directly from their own
ability and skill. The only possible way
this triumph can be won is by a superior
teacher who has an independent fortune
sufficiently large to enable him to own his
plant, to take pupils free, to compete on their
own ground with the public schools and to
demonstrate on the spot the conditions under
which teachers can do the best work. It is
not sufficient to say that endowed schools are
doing this, for the wages of their teachers,
the slavery of their routine, the insecurity of
tenure of their employees and the general
lack of inside and outside inspiration are not
strikingly in advance of the public institu-
tions. Trustee or family politics seem fully
as baneful as the politics of the ward or
county. The ultimate destination of their
endowments, even in this age of marvelous
gifts to "Education, " is not in teaching at all.
The average donor has not passed beyond
the stage of wanting to see his money materi-
alize in buildings, books, or something that
he can go to see and feel.
Teaching is today suffering not so much
from lack of buildings and apparatus, to
which most of this money goes, as from a
dearth of red blood, manly strength and
ambitious hearts.
Yet Lewis Elkin, of Philadclijhia, has just
left his fortune, not for buildings, but to
pension worn-out teachers. Next we shall
see some man (or more likely some woman)
of wealth awakening to the unifjuc sanity of
recognizing that the actual teacher, and not
the building or the supervising officer, is the
seat of educational progress. We shall see
some one bestowing moral and financial
encouragement on actual education itself,
not upon the place where it might be given
Meantime, and all the time, there is a spirit
underneath the whole of American education
— notwithstanding the answers which the
teachers, in respect for the truth, had to make
to the editor's direct questions — a spirit in
some places heroically strong, which is push-
ing the work of teaching upward in spite of
all the circumstances which would seem to
make it impossible; it crops out in some part
of every reply received; it declares that,
however the public regard it, this work is
intrinsically and inevitably the most dignified
and important that any man or woman can
engage in. It is a spirit that leads some men
and women to remain at work, not only
admitting that they are in the rag-tag and
bobtail of the professions, but in fact because
they are in the rag-tag and bobtail — because
that is where there is at this moment the
greatest need for them. If teaching is moving
one little barleycorn toward the front, it is
because of the work of such as these, looking
beyond the common regard of communities
to the real satisfaction, the authentic, legiti-
mate, incorruptible content of rendering a
service inferior to none. That it does not
move forward faster seems to be due to the
community. Wherever a teacher is ashamed
to be known as such, you will find that what
passes for the best society of the place is
chiefly to blame. This fact suggests the
unique opportunity for such citizens of wealth
or position as are looking for chances of real
service. Pick out one public school. Add a
little to the monthly pay of every one within
it ; but above all go to the teachers and tell
them you for one respect them for their work.
It is only by realizing that their devotion
to a profession that requires self-sacrifice
is recognized for what it is, that the teachers
can labor single-heartedly in these days of
insufficient recompense.
COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
MARCONI'S DEMONSTRATION OF THE POSSIBILITY OF TRANS-
OCEANIC TELEGRAPHY AT FROM FIVE CENTS TO TEN CENTS
A WORD— STATIONS TO COST ONLY ABOUT $200,000— IN THE
CAPE COD STATION WHEN MESSAGES ARE SENT TO ENGLAND
BY
LAWRENCE PERRY
WIRELESS telegraphy is a commer-
cial fact. When Marconi, after
months of final preparation, sent,
on January 19th, President Roosevelt's mes-
sage to King Edward from Cape Cod to
Poldhu, the last doubt vanished. While I
was at South Wellfleet on Cape Cod — where
I went to meet the inventor and to get a
view of his work — he said that in six months
his invention would be on a business footing.
It was the cautious remark of a man who
was assured of his success. The experimental
stage of wireless telegraphy is passed.
Imagination can hardly picture a drearier
place than the Marconi station at South Well-
fleet. Surrounded by a stockade, guarded
night and day, the four towers rise two
hundred and ten feet above the gray sand
dunes, while beneath squat a few low build-
ings constituting the plant. Here I found
Marconi the day after his successful test.
In appearance he suggests the Englishman
rather than the Italian — his mother was
Irish and he studied at an English school.
His tastes are all English. He has a short,
quick, determined way of talking.
Visitors are not allowed to see his inven-
tions in operation. When I asked to see
him send and receive a message he hesitated.
But he decided quickly.
"Come on, " he said.
Walking along the board-walk under the
great towers, it was noticed that from the
horizontal stay-wire running between the two
northerly towers were strung a number of
telegraph wires, about half-way down con-
verging like those of a gigantic harp.
"These wires receive and send out the
ether waves," said Marconi. "There are
fifty of them there, which, I have found, send
and transmit the waves with sufficient power
to carry to England. I used to think that
you needed great heights ; now I find that the
more wires you have the less height you need.
These fifty wires are joined to the wire
running into the ooerating room. But come
in here. "
He opened the door, and the visitors entered
a room where few have been. The centre of
this place was filled with great box-like
Leyden jars; while at the easterly side was
the magnetic-detector w^hich has replaced
the coherer in receiving messages; on the
south side was the induction coil and great
zinc and copper tanks of oil. Over the
Leyden jars, which occupied the greater
portion of the room, were four huge sheets of
zinc bound with copper. On the concrete
floor were rubber mats, and the walls and low
ceiling were of hardwood. Here some impor-
tant devices were completed late in January
and some important discoveries made. Queer
instruments stored in all parts of the room
evidently played their part in the general
scheme, but no one but Marconi knew what
they were or what they were for. On a
northerly wall over a platform were tables
with a brass sending-key and a great wooden
lever also used for sending. Marconi stood
on this platform, his hand resting near the
sender.
"Now," he said, "when I signal to the
electrician fifty thousand volts will come
into the room. Stand up here by me and
don't touch anything. Keep away from those
jars, because the current does not w^ait for
you to touch it. It will jump to you. "
I confess I stood as close to Marconi on
the little platform as I could. A volt meas-
ures speed; an ampere means volume —
Marconi has secured' great speed with little
volume; so that, if anything slipped and the
fifty thousand volts passed through you, you
would get about the same shock as though
COMMKRCIAL WIRKLESS TKLKGRMMIY
3»95
Phot> ,
MARCONI AND HIS ASSOCIATES LEAVING THE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH STATION
AT SOUTH WELLFLEET, MASSACHUSETTS
J L. Perry
vou had formed a ground connection with a
trolley wire, which measures about five hun-
dred volts, but has fearful amperage. This
scene is indelibly stamped in my memory:
the room, packed with its queer, mysterious
instruments, of some of which the electrical
world knows nothing, and that slight, youthful
figure of Marconi, with his eyes fixed on the
indicator, his sensitive hands on the key.
You thought of what this man of twenty-nine
had accomplished — of his long fight, his
courage; and here you saw him, in the midst
of that accomplishment, ready to reveal
it to his wondering companions.
"All ready!" he cried to the electrician
who stood in the power-room watching the
inventor through the long connecting hallway.
A lever was pulled and a dim hum filled the
room. The indicator of the volt meter began
to race past all sorts of high figures on the
face of the dial.
"Now I'll send to Poldhu. " He pressed
the key.
There was a blinding flash of bluish light,
for with each movement of the key great
sparks jumped two inches between the two
silvered knobs of the induction coil. One
knob of this coil is connected with the earth,
forming the ground connection, the other
with the wire leading to the aerial wires.
Each spark means an oscillating impulse
from the battery to the aerial wire, and from
the wire the oscillations of ether occur which
carry through space at the speed of 187,000
miles a second. With the blinding flash
accompanying each movement of the key
occurs a report to be compared accurately
with the noise attending the discharge of a
Krag-Jorgenson rifle. It was terrifying — the
light, the noise, and in the midst of it all the
inventor calmly pressing the key, making
more noise, more light. Imagine a company of
I
3196
COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TELEGRAPH!
Photographed by Frederick Collins
MARCONI READING A MESSAGE
infantry firing at will in a tunnel and you can
understand the sound that accompanies send-
ing a message. Marconi, who stuffs cotton in
his ears when sending, is now experimenting
to deaden this sound. But somehow, to one
impressed by the fact that here, in this very
room, a message was being sent through the
air across that gloomy stretch of 3,000 miles
of ocean, the noise and the light seemed
fitting — gave the proper touch of the super-
human, of force, of intensity.
Quite different was the process of receiving.
When the light and the banging ceased there
was a strange silence as ^larconi walked over
to the receiving instrument. He set in
motion the wheels of the magnetic-detector.
No sound came at first, and while waiting
Marconi pointed to the detector. The incom-
ing oscillations from Cape Breton, he said,
would be caught there. He pointed to a wire
passing around the outside of the two wheels
of the detector. This wire is of soft iron,
insulated, through which a slight alternating
current passes. The ether waves disturb this
current sufficiently to cause either a dot or a
dash, as the case may be, and this is recorded
on a ticker. It was a strange experience.
Suddenly the detector began to move and
the ticker to click. Every one started for-
ward. Slowly the tape ran out of the ticker —
dot, dot, dash — so they came; and by placing
a telephone receiver to your ear you could
hear plainly the b-r-r-rang of the induction
coil hundreds of miles away. While the phe-
nomenon was taking place it was difficult to
tell whether the faint sound one heard was
the impulse, coming hundreds of miles
through the air, or one's own heart beating.
It is impossible to analyze your impressions
in that place.
"Of course unforeseen things may occur,
but I think now we shall be on a business
footing inside of six months," said Marconi
afterward. " Overland or across sea, it makes
no difference ; you know we have sent mes-
sages overland from Cornwall to St. Peters-
burg, 1 ,500 miles. The waves will go through
anything. For instance, we have Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland between this station and
Poldhu, but the ether waves travel all right.
Wireless telegraphy is assured. "
If any person can invent a name for wireless
messages, he will have the thanks of ^larconi.
He calls them etherographs, for want of a
better term.
Marconi is not the discoverer of the ether
waves; neither did he evolve the theory of
wireless communication, which he has brought
to such a practical realization. He acknowl-
edges adequately the work of predecessors
in leading up to his invention : Professor
S. F. B. Morse, Doctor Oliver Lodge, Sir
\
I
3I9S
COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
MARCONI
Fhotographed by Falk
William Preece, Sir William Crookes, Edison,
Tesla, who perhaps came nearer than any to
working out a system of wireless communica-
tion; Hertz, the discoverer of Hertzian waves,
and Professors Trowbridge and Dolbears, of
America. He used the coherer invented by
Branley and Calzecchi. Although when criti-
cized on this point he abandoned that impor-
tant instrument for receiving messages, and
produced his magnetic-detector; he utilized
Professor Rhigi's oscillators and the dis-
coveries of Henry and Hertz. But all these
were simply parts : wireless telegraphy in its
entirety, its successful application, its brilliant
originality, is r,bsolutely his.
The idea of it, so Marconi has stated, came
in 1894, while reading in an electric journal
an account of the work of Professor Hertz
with ether waves. He .ras interested in the
Hertzian theory that waves of ether could be
carried through space; but feeling that great
numbers of scientists must be pursuing the
phenomenon, ^Marconi did nothing for a year.
Then hearing nothing from the world of
science, he began to investigate for himself.
For detecting the waves sent from his oscil-
lator Hertz used a metal hoop broken by a
small gap. When the hoop was brought
within the influence of the transmitting
instrument it was noticed that a small spark
leaped across the gap in the hoop. This
showed that the waves when radiated into
space could be detected at a distance by this
metal hoop. The thought came to Marconi
that if he could interrupt the waves en route,
so to speak, from the oscillator, breaking
THE GRAY ATLANTIC OVER WHICH THE MESSAGES PASS
A photograph taken from a Ararconi tower
COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TELEGRATIIY
3199
them up into long and short periods, similar
interruptions would be detected in the spark
of the metal hoop. A short emission of the
transmitted waves would signify the dot of
the Morse code; a long emission, the dash;
and these would be registered in the distant
receiver. Later Marconi conferred with
Professor Rhigi, and in 1894 Doctor Oliver
Lodge issued a book publishing the result of
his experiments with the ether waves, sug-
gesting a number of possibilities, but neglect-
ing that of telegraphy altogether. IMarconi
utilized all available material, but it is only
fair to say that new elements of his own
invention made long-distance wireless com-
munication a success.
Briefly, the Marconi system of telegraphy
consists of setting in motion, by means of
his transmitter, electric waves, which pass
through the ether (a colorless, rarefied,
unknown agent, supposed to fill all space)
and are received on a wire or wires strung in
the air. Like water, ether has waves, which
may be set in motion just as waves from a
stone thrown in a pond — it is the same prin-
ciple exactly. Air waves and ether waves
are totally different ; sound is the result of the
vibration of air ; light the result of vibration of
ether. Air waves travel infinitely more slowly
than ether waves ; that is the reason you see the
lightning flash before you hear t^ie thunder.
Electricity means etheric vibration. Wireless
telegraphy simply means the unharnessing
of electricity which has long been transmitted
only by wire. Marconi has demonstrated
that since ether is everywhere the waves can
be set in motion and sent on long journeys
without the medium of wires as well as with
them. But after these deductions he had
first to invent two mechanical processes —
one for setting the ether waves in motion so
that they would travel great distances, and
the other for receiving and registering these
waves. Finally he evolved an apparatus
which, when a current from a battery passed
through it, would cause the current to jump
between two brass or silver balls, described
in the foregoing, and, passing thus into the
aerial wire, would be radiated into space. By
turning this current on and off with an ordi-
nary sending-key its waves would be divided
into dots and dashes. To catch these waves
an aerial wire was hung up many miles away.
The waves which the w4re catches are too
weak to operate an ordinary telegraph
instrument. In order that they might be
strengthened Marconi utilized the coherer of
Calzecchi and Branley. The coherer was a
little glass tube two inches long, jjluggcd at
each end with silver plugs. The ends of these
plugs very nearly met in the middle of the
tube. Within the narrow si)ace in the tube
were little atoms of nickel and silver. Tlie
incoming ether waves, though not strong
enough to work a telegraph sounder, are
strong enough to cause the loose silver and
nickel particles to cohere . When the particles
are loose they will not carry an electric
current; when they cohere they are good
conductors of electricity. Thus when they
cohere, a current from a powerful battery
runs through the tube, and operating the
Morse instrument, causes the ether wave which
entered the coherer in the first plate to be
registered as a dot or dash, as the case may be.
As soon as this has been recorded, a little
tapper causes the particles to fall loose, as it
were, and thus it is ready for the next wave.
Marconi has abandoned this coherer now,
however. Instead, he uses the magnetic-
detector.
Around two wooden wheels half a foot
in circumference runs a wire consisting
of soft iron, insulated, through which a slight
alternating current passes. The magnet
causes the current to alternate, which means
flowing first one way around the wheels, then
the other way. The ether waves disturb the
regular flow of this current, and additional
current, pouring in at the moment of the
disturbances, increases the force of the dis-
turbing waves so that it operates the Morse
instrument.
In his first experiment I\Iarconi believed
that the ether waves could be sent great dis-
tances only from great heights ; so he used
kites to carry his receiving and sending wires,
believing that the curve of the earth hindered
the progress of the waves. Recent experi-
ments have sho-wn, however, that the waves
conform to the earth's curve, and that the
aerial wires need not be very high pro-
vided sufficient power be utilized in trans-
mission. The sending of great power caused
the instruments to become overheated, and
this was one of the problems solved recently
at Cape Cod. From the appearance of the
operating room it looks as though oil were the
chief medium in keeping the instruments
cool while fifty thousand volts were being
3200
COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
shot into aerial wire; but that, of course, is
only conjecture.
Marconi first began to experiment with his
invention in his father's fields in Bologna.
Later he came to London, working in the
laboratory of Sir William Preece. Then
came signals overland on Salisbury Plain,
through walls and houses and everything
else; and finally, in 1897, came the great
success of sending a message from the Needles
on the English Coast to the Isle of Wight.
In July, 1898, came its practical test and
its complete success, by the Dublin Daily
Express, in reporting the Kingstown yachting
regatta. Since then Marconi has persevered
and fought under all sorts of discouragements
and doubts until wireless telegraphy is about
to become something that will be quietly
accepted, just as the telephone and telegraph
were, each in its turn.
The extent of its commercial success is
already remarkable. In England there is the
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, capi-
taHzed at $5,000,000. In this country the
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of
America is capitalized at $6,500,000; and
the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of
Canada has just been organized. The Italian
Government deals personally with Marconi,
and he is now preparing to establish wireless
connections between Italy and Argentina, a
distance of some six thousand miles. With
the United States the American Company
is putting through its system from Seattle
to Juneau, Alaska; and in other ways this
government is experimenting with different
systems of wireless telegraphy. Gerniany is
taking up the Arco-Slaby system, which has
not yet been brought to the perfection of the
Marconi invention. France is experimenting
with various plans, and so is Russia. About
seventy British cruisers and a number of
English lightships have the ^larconi system
installed, and the great ocean liners find it
almost a necessity. Off our coast the
Nantucket lightship supplies information of
incoming vessels hours before they would
otherwise be reported. The United Fruit
Company, controlling the tropical fruit trade
of the Gulf of Mexico, has. contracted with
Marconi for the establishment of stations at
its Central and South American ports. Every
ship of the company will be fitted with the
Marconi apparatus and will carry an operator.
Other private concerns in all parts of the
globe are taking an active interest in the
development of wireless telegraphy. The
public believed in the invention before its
success was assured. Marconi thoroughly
believes that it will supersede to a great
extent the telegraph and the cable. The
wireless system will secure almost a monopoly
in the sending of matter that cannot be
codified, as, for instance, stock reports and
press matter. Marconi says that written-out
matters can be sent in full across the ocean at
ten cents a word for commercial matter and
five cents a word for press matter, the rates
now established at Glace Bay; and that he is
prepared to meet any reductions his com-
petitors may make. He promises a reduction
an\nvay when improved facilities and the
volume of business warrant it. Indeed,
Marconi prophesies that in time the rates will
be so lowered as to render it no more costly to
send a message from New York to London
than it costs now to telegraph from New York
to Philadelphia. It costs only $200,000 to
install a transatlantic wireless telegraph sys-
tem, and once installed there is nothing to get
out of order: no breakages to repair, except,
probably, a wire or so once in a while. The
repairs for one year to a perfected wireless
telegraph system should not equal the cost of
keeping a cable repair steamship in commis-
sion for two months.
The scheme of timing a sending instrument
so that it will send ether waves vibrating a
specific number of times a second, and be
received only by a receiving instrument
tuned to receive just that number of vibra-
tions, is one of the greatest of the Marconi
achievements. It had been maintained that
a rival to the concern using the wireless
system could simply rig up the aerial wire
and catch the ether message also. The
waves radiate in all directions, all efforts to
send them in one direction only like a
searchlight having failed where great distance
is involved. This, too, was the fear expressed
in regard to the war-ships of nations at war.
But now the system of tuning has obviated
all this. Every firm or country may have
their instruments tuned to send and receive
only a certain number of vibrations by the
ether waves.
Marconi says that there is no limit to the
distance of wireless communication. It is
only a question of increasing the power of the
apparatus. He counts on sending messages
COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TELEGRArilY
3201
cross the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco
to Japan in due time. England still refuses
to allow Marconi to transmit messages over-
land, and until that is done public business
y wireless telegraphy will be delayed.
Within a short time stations will be erected
t Seattle and San Francisco to open com-
lunication between these ports and vessels
t sea. The State of Washington and Alaska
re now being connected ; and in a short time
the whole of the Pacific Coast will be lined
with stations for communication with ship-
ping. On the Atlantic the iMarconi Company
already has three such stations, all in active
operation — one at Sagaponack, on the end
of Long Island; another at Babylon, Long
Island, and one at the Nantucket lightship.
They are working perfectly and a large
amount of business is already being trans-
acted. A school of wireless telegraphy has
been established in Babylon where telegraph
operators are instructed in the use of the
delicate instruments. It is only the best
operators who can become successful in send-
ing and receiving; the finest sense of hearing
is requisite. There are from four to six
students in the school all the time, and they
learn t]ie system in about three weeks. They
receive free lodging at the quarters of the
company, and when they have finished the
course of instruction they are employed at a
salary of from $60 to $100 a month.
With the short-distance stations on the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the transatlantic
stations in Canada, England and this country
and the future trans-Pacific wireless system,
there will be communication with all parts of
the world. A station is soon to be erected in
South Africa; and at Monte Mario, Italy, the
most powerful station in the world will shortly
be built, at which place ]\Iarconi will work out
the remaining problems of wireless telegraphy.
Among other things at Cape Cod he solved
the minimum power necessary to carry the
ether waves across the Atlantic.
There seems no limit to the pictures that
one's imagination sees in the future. Every
newspaper ofhce in the land might be equipped
with wireless receivers. Every home could
I have one. A message received of an event
anywhere could be "marconied" simulta-
neously to every newspaper in the land, and
I
on ticker tapes. Marconi has already thought
of this project. When Marconi's work is
completed France can talk to Russia without
paying any other government, and England
can communicate with Italy direct without
tlie aid of branch systems. It means much
to international politics. Marconi says it is
just as easy to communicate by wireless
telegraphy over land for any distance as it is
across the water. He did not believe this at
first, but now he finds that it is so.
The equipping of ocean greyhounds with
the Marconi system has taken away part of
the dread and mystery of the sea. Steam-
ships can now communicate with one another
or with the shore at a distance of hundreds of
miles, the case of the American liner Phila-
delphia, which talked with Poldhu from mid-
ocean, 1,551 miles, on February 22, 1902,
coming to mind. Recently the Philadelphia
and the Lucania played a chess game en route,
and a plan of supplying liners with daily news
from shore at $5.00 a day is now being con-
templated. In April, 1899, the Goodwin
Sands lightship of? the English coast was
struck in a collision, and with her Marconi
apparatus was able to send for assistance
across twelve miles of ocean. Life-saving
stations along the coast of England have
frequently received warning, by the wireless
system attached to outlying lighthouses, that
vessels were drifting ashore through the fog.
When the invention is perfected so that the
Weather Bureau can flash warnings from
shore stations to the coasting fleet plying
the coastwise lanes a great step will have
been taken; but at present the tests of
this nature, owing to various atmospheric
disturbances, have not met with complete
success.
It was only a little more than a half-century
ago that the present network of telegraph
wires w^hich knits continents together began
with Morse's invention. A comparatively
few years later the whole world was amazed
at the successful laying of the first trans-
oceanic cable. And now comes this new step,
more wonderful perhaps than either of its
predecessors. The wonder of this invention,
the simplicity of it, strike the imagination
with the same sense of awe that thrills one
for the moment when in a blinding flash
Marconi talks with Poldhu.
RECENT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE AND
SURGERY
THE CONQUEST OF YELLOW FEVER AND MALARIA— CURING A DISEASE
AMONG THE SOUTHERN "POOR WHITES "—NEW USES OF ANESTHETICS-
DOCTOR LORENZ'S WORK— EFFORTS TO FIND A CURE FOR BLOOD POISONING
BY
A. T. BRISTOW, M.D.
AT this time, when "the world is made
over every half-century," when no
task seems too difficult for the force
of men's minds and the energy of men's
muscles, the practical science that counsels
ways of keeping minds vigorous and bodies
strong and healthy is adding rapidly to its
equipment. Anesthesia, antiseptics, the new
science of bacteriology, sanitary science, all
these have been realized within less than
fifty years, and new developments come
with a speed that is bewildering. The dis-
covery of today is common gossip tomorrow,
and the day afterward it is history.
Two or three years ago a ship aboard of
which was a case of yellow fever sailed from
port to port for weeks before the passengers
could find a landing, and when at last they
left the boat they were quarantined for a
considerable time. We know now through
the investigations of the United States Yellow
Fever Commission that all this hardship was
unnecessary — that yellow fever spreads only
through the agency of the mosquito.
The story of the investigations tells of
self-sacrifice and courage that transcends
the bravery of the soldier on the battlefield.
The excitement of battle buoys the soldier
up so that he forgets danger, and he remem-
bers the old adage, "Ever}^ bullet has its
billet." But when a man in cold blood
deliberately allows a mosquito, which has fed
on yellow fever patients for days, to bite him,
and this with the full knowledge that he may
become infected with one of the most rapidly
fatal of all the tropic fevers ; when men
wrap themselves in the clothing taken from
yellow fever corpses, and so clad lie down to
sleep on beds covered with filthy blankets
and sheets from yellow fever hospitals, with
soiled towels from yellow fever patients
spread on their pillows, and so spend their
nights for three weeks, we can call it real
heroism, courage or sacrifice. It is all three.
Briefly told, the story of the investigation of
the United States Yellow Fever Commission
in Cuba is as follows :
As the cause of yellow fever is unknown,
and as animals are immune to this disease,
it was necessary that all experiments be con-
ducted upon human beings who, never having
had the fever, were therefore susceptible.
In order to test the theory that mosquitoes
convey the fever from sick to healthy indi-
viduals, it was necessar}^ for the investigators
to submit themselves and their volunteers
to the bites of insects known to have bitten
yellow fever patients. As a result of their
investigations the commission discovered
one curious fact, namely, that the organism
of infection, whatever it may be, took twelve
days to travel from the mosquito's stomach
to the salivary glands, and that this period
might be prolonged during cold weather to
eighteen days. This fact explains certain
cases in which mosquitoes known to have
bitten yellow fever patients nevertheless
failed to communicate yellow fever to sus-
ceptible individuals. In one series of cases
the mosquitoes were permitted to bite at
intervals of four, six and eleven days, respect-
ively, after having fed on yellow fever patients,
without producing the disease ; but the same
mosquitoes used after the twelfth day gave
rise to yellow fever.
Doctor James Carroll, a member of the
Board, allowed himself to be bitten by a
mosquito which was known to have bitten a
severe case of yellow fever twelve days
before. The usual period had therefore
elapsed at the close of which the insect was
capable of conveying disease. After five
RECENT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 3203
days Doctor Carroll was taken down with the
disease and passed througli an attack of
moderate severity. He, fortunately, recov-
ered. Doctor J. W. Lazcar was bitten by
a mosquito wliich ten days previously had
bitten a mild case of yellow fever. No
result followed this bite. The twelve-day
limit had not expired. It was, however,
necessary tliat such experiments should
be made in order to establish this important
fact beyond a doubt. Later, while in the
yellow fever hospital, Doctor Lazear delib-
erately allowed a mosquito of unknown species
to settle on his hand. Five days afterward
he developed yellow fever, and after a week's
illness he died. The investigation still went
on, however, and these men exposed them-
selves to certain infection until they had
proved beyond reasonable doubt that the
mosquito was a conveyer of yellow fever.
An important question still remained
unanswered: Could the fever be conveyed
by contact with clothing, or contracted by
sleeping in a house in which yellow fever
patients had died, provided mosquitoes were
excluded ? This question was tested in the
following way: A small house was built,
consisting of one room, 14x20 feet. It was
tightly ceiled and well battened on the
outside. It was provided with two small
windows, 26x34 inches, so placed as to pre-
vent any thorough ventilation within. In
fact, everything was done to invite infection,
if this were possible, without the aid of
mosquitoes. Entrance to the house was
effected through a vestibule arranged after
the manner of an airlock in a caisson, the
vestibule being divided in its middle by a
screen door protected without by a solid
door and having a second wire door across the
inner entrance. The windows were also
carefully screened. This was a tropical
climate, and it was the intention of the men
who had volunteered for the purpose to
spend the tropical nights in a room which
was tightly closed, and to which the smallest
amount of ventilation necessary to life was
admitted by two small windows a little more
than two feet square. When the building was
ready, three large cases filled with soiled
I clothing from yellow fever hospitals of
Havana were opened, and Doctor R. P. Cook
with two privates of the hospital corps entered
the house and closed the doors, then unpacked
it around the room. It is evident that it
would have been impossible in a small room
of 14x20 feet to have hung clothing from
three large boxes in any way so that the
inmates could avoid constant contact.
These men lived here for twenty days. At
the end of that time they were placed in
quarantine for five days, but they did not
develop the disease. Further experiments
went on for sixty-three days, and conditions
were made still more trying, but not a single
individual developed the fever.
To settle the question, How does a house
become infected with yellow fever ? a second
house was built, divided into two rooms
separated by wire screens. Everything in
this house was carefully disinfected by steam,
and then into the large room a number of
infected mosquitoes were introduced. A sus-
ceptible individual entered this room and
permitted himself to be bitten a number
of times, and after three days developed
yellow fever. Two non-immunes slept in
this house for eighteen nights in the part of
the room which was screened from mos-
quitoes and did not develop the disease.
The conclusions are the results of months
of most painstaking investigation, during
every hour of which the investigators faced
death by one of the most fatal of tropic
diseases.
Of eleven conclusions which the commis-
sion formulated as a result of their investi-
gations, four are of immediate public interest.
(i) Yellow fever is transmitted by means
of the bite of a mosquito. (2) Yellow fever
cannot be conveyed by contact with articles
of clothing supposedly contaminated, and
disinfection of such articles is therefore
unnecessary. (3) A house may be said
to be infected with yellow fever only when
there are present contaminated mosquitoes.
(4) The spread of yellow fever can be most
effectually controlled by measures directed
to the destruction of mosquitoes and pro-
tection against the bites of these insects.
At present yellow fever, which has been
constantly epidemic in Cuba, has been prac-
tically stamped out. It is impossible now
that epidemics of yellow fever should ever
again devastate our southern ports. And
it is evident that the extermination of the
mosquito is a pressing necessity, not only of
sanitation, but of practical economics. The
cost of a single epidemic of yellow fever
3204 RECENT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY
would defray the expenses of mosquito
extermination over an area equal to the
entire region likely to be infected.
Doctor Walter Reed, the head of the com-
mission, died this winter in Washington. His
widow, under the law, has the trifling pension
of $2 5 per month. When we remember the
shotgun quarantines of a few years ago, the
hordes of trembling and often destitute
refugees fleeing from the stroke of death,
denied asylum and driven with guns from
town to town ; when we reflect on the enor-
mous losses to commerce, the interruption to
travel occasioned by a quarantine based on
ignorance and selfish terror, it is impossible to
overestimate the value of the work he and
his associates accomplished.
The mosquito bears the same relation to
malarious fevers that it does to ^-ellow fever :
it transmits the disease by its bite. There
are several species of the malaria parasite,
which is of microscopic size, but the
variety which produces a mild infection can
be readily distinguished from that which
induces a dangerous fever. It was there-
fore possible to select for experimental
purposes a parasite which would give
rise to a mild attack of malaria only. The
role of the mosquito in disseminating disease
had before been suspected. As early in the
past century as 1807 the theory had been
propounded that the mosquito was the active
agent in propagating malarial diseases. From
that time there have been constant investi-
gations to prove the theory. Commenced
in 1898 and 1899, within the last two years
a long series of experiments with human
subjects have finally demonstrated beyond
reasonable doubt that malarial fevers can
only be disseminated by the bite of the
mosquito, and also that certain species only
of the mosquito are able to communicate
the disease. It has also been proved that
kerosene oil thrown upon water in which
the young of the mosquito are developing,
by keeping the oxygen from them, destroys
them immediately.
Travelers in the South have frequently
observed the extreme pallor of the so-called
poor white trash; but until the past year no
one has ever suspected that these people
were the victims of a disease, which was, in
part at least, responsible for both their mental
and physical condition. They have been
treated by local doctors for malaria and
anemia, they have been dosed with quinine,
arsenic, iron — all to no purpose. The dis-
covery of the true cause of these symptoms,
bodily and mental, was made during the
last year by Doctor C. W. Stiles, of the United
States Marine Hospital Service. There is in
Europe a condition of anemia which is pro-
duced by an intestinal parasite called the
hook worm. This is a small worm not much
larger than a sewing needle, which, when it
inhabits the human intestine, occurs in large
numbers. Its eggs, of microscopic size,
through contaminated water or uncooked
vegetables, spread the disease. Doctor
Stiles went South for the purpose of ascer-
taining whether there was such a disease
prevalent in this country. He examined
some fourteen hundred convicts in one of the
southern prisons, without, however, finding
the disease. But going into what is known
as the sand belt, he soon encountered indi-
viduals with characteristic symptoms. Weeks
were spent in the affected territory. It was
found that the disease was limited to the
sand belt, never being found in the clay
region except where the individuals had
come from the sand belt. Persons moving
from the clay to the sand soon became
affected. The disease does not occur in the
well-to-do because of their more cleanly
habits of life. As many as fourteen hundred
of these parasites have been found in one
person's intestine. The anemia they occa-
sion is intense. Persons affected with the
disease soon tire and want to leave their
work; they are incapable of continuous exer-
tion, they contract morbid appetites — become
clay-eaters; and Doctor Stiles observed one
case in which the morbid appetite took the
form of a predilection for live mice. The
form of the affected individual is stunted
and fails to develop, so that a lad or young
girl of eighteen or twenty has the appear-
ance of a child of twelve or fourteen. The
disease may be cured by the administration
of simple drugs to destroy the parasite. The
spread of the disease is to be prevented by
more cleanly personal habits and sanitary
precautions. This discovery is recent, and
promises to put the poor white of the South
on an equality with the northern farmer in
the point of health.
The recent wars in Cuba and South Africa
have attracted the attention of governments
to the problem of protecting their troops
RECENT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE AND SURGlvRY 3205
from typhoid fever, a disease which numbers
more victims than bullets. This also is due
to the contamination of food or drink. The
British Government undertook the task of
attempting to protect certain of its troops
sent to India and South Africa by the use
of a protective serum obtained by iniinimizing
horses against typhoid. This is injected
under the skin in the same manner as the
antitoxin of diphtheria. Of 11,295 men
observed in the British Army, 2,835 were
inoculated and 8,460 were not inoculated.
Of the inoculated, less than one per cent,
contracted the fever, while two and one-half
per cent, of the non-inoculated contracted it.
This experiment has little to commend it,
for, as there were nearly four times as many
men who did not receive the serum, there
were four times the number exposed to infec-
tion. A more striking series of cases, however,
from which a deduction might be made is
the following: Among 655 individuals, 511
were inoculated. Of these, only seven were
attacked; while among the 144 not inocu-
lated there were 47 cases of typhoid fever.
With regard to tlie prevention of this dis-
ease, however, the public are in as much
need of education as the Georgia "cracker."
When communities learn that careful sani-
tation is, in the long run, less expensive than
disease, and cease to contaminate running
water, wells and springs, we shall cease to
have typhoid fever.
Protective and curative serums against
plague and cholera have been made, two tropic
diseases which, now that we have colonies in
the tropics, concern us as Americans. It
cannot, however, be said at present that
these serums have proved as efficient pro-
tectives against their respective diseases as is
vaccination against smallpox or curative as
is antitoxin in cases of diphtheria.
In surgery there has been in the last year
or two a constant and steady improvement
in technique, due largely to the conferences
which surgeons hold in their different societies.
An abundant and progressive medical litera-
ture is also largely responsible for the free
interchange of experiences and opinions, so
lA ^^^^ surgical events in one hospital soon
' become the property of all surgeons. In
the latter half of 1899 a new method of anes-
thesia was introduced. This consisted of the
I introduction of a solution of cocaine within
ducing an anesthesia of the sensory nerves
of the body as they are given off from the
spinal cord. The method is simple: the
back having Ijcen thoroughly scrubbed and
cleansed, a long and slender hollow needle
is pushed boldly between the s])ines of the
vertebrae until it enters the canal in the
spinal column which contains the spinal cord.
The cocaine solution injected into the spinal
canal diffuses itself in the cerebral sj)inal
fluid. Within varying periods of time, aver-
aging, however, about ten minutes, com-
plete anesthesia is established as high as the
arms, and sometimes higher. It is then
possible to operate without any pain what-
ever on the part of the patient, who is, how-
ever, entirely conscious. It seems positively
uncanny to be able to carry on a conver-
sation with a patient while performing
operations ordinarily most painful. I have
had a patient chat unconcernedly through
an operation which involved the use of the
actual cautery on the most sensitive parts of
the body. Through the years 1901 and
1902 this method of anesthesia was exten-
sively used both in this country and Europe.
Surgeons, however, here at least, soon found
that there was an advantage in the ordinary
anesthetics, ether or chloroform. Moreover,
there was an element of uncertainty about
the new method. In some parts of the
body anesthesia was never to be depended
upon. Unpleasant after effects were not
uncommon, such as long-persistent headache,
sometimes lasting for two weeks. The new
method used is chiefly in selected cases which
are unfit for chloroform or ether. The
sphere of local anesthesia by cocaine has,
however, been much enlarged.
The use of the X-ray for the detection of
foreign bodies has been extended through
improvements in instruments and by a more
thorough comprehension of the subject.
Within the past year and a half a new use
has been found for the Roentgen ray. It has
been observed that it exercises a favorable
influence on cancerous growths. It is par-
ticularly useful in superficial cancers of the
skin. I have seen such growths disappear
after a number of exposures to the ray. Even
in unfavorable cases improvements have
been noticed, such as relief from pain. Some
physicians devoted to the X-ray have, it is
feared, been overenthusiastic in their reports,
but it is certain that many cases of cancer,
3206 RECENT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY
not amenable to the knife, have, for a time at
least, been favorably influenced by this par-
ticular treatment.
Twice during the past two 3^ears the heart
itself has been successfully sutured after
stab wounds. This is an operation which
can be done very rarely because such injuries
are generally immediately fatal. When the
wound is valve-like, or very small, this opera-
tion occasionally may be attempted with
complete success.
The tour in this country of Professor
Lorenz, of Vienna, has attracted public
attention to his method of treating congenital
dislocations of the hip joint. A child has a
congenital dislocation of the hip joint when
it is bom with one or both of the thigh bones
out of the socket. In such cases, the socket
is usually too shallow, and the tense muscles
resist the efforts of the surgeon to bring the
head of the bone into its proper place. There
are two methods of dealing with these muscles :
One is by cutting them with a knife through
an open wound, and the other by tearing
them apart by main force underneath the
skin. The latter is Doctor Lorenz 's method.
It is not new to the surgeons of America, and
the operation has been done a number of
times in different parts of the country. Its
chief advantage over the open method lies
in the fact that the child, in a few davs after
the operation, is placed on its feet with the leg
in plaster and compelled to walk. It is to
be understood, however, that the limb is not
in the ordinary position adopted in walking.
If this position were attempted the bone would
immediately slip out of place again. To
keep the head of the bone in its place after the
dislocation has been reduced, it is necessary
that the thigh be flexed nearly at a right
angle on the body and extended outward.
This, of course, shortens the leg, and it is
necessary to put a high shoe on the foot.
The leg is kept in this position by plaster of
Paris bandages, which, applied when moist,
rapidly set into a hard, stone-like mold,
which keeps the limb rigid in the position
described. The limb is then forced to bear
its proportion of the weight of the body, and
this has a tendency to deepen the socket.
This plaster is not disturbed for eight months.
At the end of this time it is removed, and, if
the dislocation does not recur, in a short
time the leg comes down from its abnormal
position to a natural one and the child is
cured. This happy result is not attained in
all the cases treated after this method, even
by Doctor Lorenz himself, the relapses
being about forty per cent, of the total
number of cases.
There are small glandular bodies attached
to the upper border of each kidney, known
as the suprarenal capsules. Until recentlv
their function was entirely unknown. A
substance called adrenalin has been extracted
from these glands which when placed in
contact with mucous membranes in water
solution renders them bloodless. This has
been of great service to those surgeons who
operate on the nose and throat, as they first
render the vascular parts bloodless by the
adrenalin solution, and anesthetize by cocaine.
It is then possible for them to operate without
causing either hemorrhage or pain.
Many attempts have been made to find
remedies for blood poisoning. Fortunately,
since the introduction of antiseptic surgery,
and as a result of our knowledge of the causes
of this condition, such cases, previously very
common, are now quite rare. They do occxir,
however, and physicians have been in search
of an agent, harmless to man, which would
be destructive to the organism which
causes blood poisoning. Up to the present
time no such agent has been found. Recently
some experiments have been made with
formalin by introducing it into the veins in a
solution of one part of formalin to five thou-
sand of water to which a little salt has
been added. It is too soon to give an opin-
ion as to the usefulness of this treatment.
There are great problems still to be solved in
surgery. Most important of all is the discovery
of the cause of cancer, which hitherto has de-
fied the most acute investigators of the world.
On this problem laboratories everywhere are
working, and every surgeon in every hospital.
Sometimes it seems as if the secret is within
our grasp — nevertheless it stili eludes us. No
great advances can be expected in the treat-
ment of cancerous growths until we have
solved this the most hidden secret of disease.
The world owes much to the labors of scien-
tific men. Their work is accomplished in
silence, in the stillness of the laboratory, the
quiet of hospital wards and in the sick-room.
To their unwearied hands we may entrust
without fear this most difficult problem of
disease. Its solution is only postponed.
No man shall call it impossible.
IN IIIK UKOKJN OK 'IHK l'K( )l^()Si:i) A I'I'AI, \( 1 1 1 A N I'XKK.
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
SOME OF THE METHODS BY WHICH SCIENTIFIC FORESTRY IS
REPLACING WASTEFULNESS WITH CONSERVATIVE CARE— HOW
TURPENTINE WAS GATHERED— USING BLACK WALNUT FOR
FENCES — PARTICULAR EXAMPLES OF BETTER MANAGEMENT
BY
OVERTON W. PRICE
ASSISTANT FORESTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AT WASHINGTON
Illustrated in part from photographs furnished by the United States Bureau of Forestry
THE Bureau of Forestry at Washington
has lately been overwhelmed by
requests from the southern States
for assistance in the application of practical
forestry to private lands. Back of these is
the old motive of learning how the productive
capacity of a forest may be preserved, and
I how, at the same time, the forest may be
I
made to yield a fair return on the capital
it represents. And, although the work is
young and the forest lands which are being
managed conservatively are only a minute
part of the southern timber lands, there is
already a practical realization of what well-
directed forestry can do for timber lands
which have been used for each year's result
3208
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
"BOXING" FOR TURPENTINE
The tree is scored each year higher up the trunk and on another side until it is girdled as high as a man can reach
rather than to conserve the lasting value of
the forest. The South is prosperous, and her
forests in large measure are paying for it.
A FIRE IN A TURPENTINE ORCHARD
Here the tree growth is among the richest
and most varied in the world. And the
recent movement for a national reserve in
the southei-n Appalachians is, without doubt,
leading to a better understanding of the
need of careful forestry.
Just as differences in soil, slope and ex-
posure within the limits of a farm wood-lot
produce distinct forest types, so the forests
of a country fall naturally in great divisions.
In the South these are the southern pine
forest, the northern forest and the interior
hardwood forest. The limits and the condi-
tions of these sections are interesting in
many ways. In the Southern pine forest,
which occupies the great coastal plain from
Virginia to Texas, long-leaf pine is the charac-
teristic tree. With it mingle the seven other
southern pines in a proportion fixed by the
suitabilitv of forest conditions to their indi-
SAVING TIIK SOUTHERN FURKSTS
3209
THE iMETHOiJ uF FELLINt, YELLOW PIXE
i hy Davison
CUTTING UP YELLOW PINE
Photographed by Davisoo
3210
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
HANDLING LOGS IN THE WOODS
riiutugrdpiica i-y uiviiun
HAULING LOGS OUT OF THE WOODS
Photographed by Davison
TURPENTINE ORCHARDING
The deep notch to catch the drip is an invitation to windfall and damage by fire
3212
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
vidual requirements. In the moist places
oaks, gums, hickories and ash are prominent,
while in the swamps and bayous the bald
cypress reaches its best development.
The northern forest stretches southward
along the Appalachian Mountains to northern
Alabama. It contains a remarkable and
varied mixture of trees common both in the
North and in the South. The spruce, the
white pine and the sugar maple find in the
higher parts of the Smoky Mountains and of
the Blue Ridge conditions similar to those
United States. It was the region of giant
walnut, oak, cherry and yellow poplar.
The hickories, ash, basswood and butternut
here reached their largest size, and the forest
was characterized throughout by the remark-
able luxuriance of its grouch.
Fifty years ago the southern States con-
tributed only one-tenth of the total lumber
product of the country. They now yield more
than one-fourth, and the proportion is rising
steadily. The Civil War was followed closely
by a peaceful invasion of the South. Lumber-
LOADING LOGS ON A TRAIN WITH OXEN
Photographed by Davison
of lower altitudes in the North woods ; while
in the mild climate of the southern foothills
they are replaced by magnolias, gums and
live oak. In all, the southern Appalachian
Mountains contain more than one hundred
different kinds of trees.
The interior hardwood forest stretches
from the western base of the Appalachian
Mountains to the Mississippi River, and was
formerlv the finest hardwood forest in the
men turned in increasing numbers from the
depleted northern pineries to the hardwoods
of the Appalachian ^Mountains and the soft
woods of the coastal plain. Sawmills and
settlements sprang up, a new field for labor
was opened, and growing activity in the
manufacture of lumber became a prominent
feature in the developments of southern
industries. The result has been that the
South owes much of her prosperity to the
SAVINC; THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
3213
lumber iiidustrw I>u( Ihc end of her timber
su])ply is ah-e;uly clearly in sight.
Perhaps there is no point upon wliieli
authorities diiTer more than as to the standing
timber in the southern States and elsewhere
in this country. Our forest lands are so vast,
their composition so varied, and our knowl-
edge of them based upon so slender a thread
of information, that even an api)roximate
estimate of their contents is largely guess-
work. The period necessary to exhaust the
long-leaf jiinc at the ]:)resent rate of consump-
The history of lumbering in the South
(litTers only in detail from its develoj)ment
elsewhere in this country. It grew rapidly
from small beginnings to a great industry,
every branch of wliich is aimed at the prompt
conversion of trees into money. Realization
is gaining ground rapidly that the old form of
lumbering, with its rough-and-ready methods,
its enormous profits, and its disregard of the
future, is a thing of the past. It has gone
with the buffalo "killings," with the flush
times that marked imf)rovident use of
Photographed by Davison
LOADING LOGS ON A TRAIN WITH HORSES
tion lias been reckoned to be from fifteen to
thirty-five years, while statements differing
quite as widely have been made for the
southern hardwoods. The time that will
I elapse before the merchantable trees have
' all been cut is not the urgent question. The
Ifact that so far no general remedy has been
applied to prevent an already imminent
timber famine is in itself a matter of grave
resources whose limits had not yet made
themselves felt.
There is no region in the United States in
which the adoption of conservative methods
in lumbering is more urgent than in the South,
nor one in which it is a sounder business
measure. In the Pine Belt, wdiere logging
is easy and profits are large, the future crop,
which it is the object of forestry to produce,
is of high potential value. The successful
3214
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
A TRAIN OF LOGS AT A MILL
Photographed by Davison
reproduction of the forest requires the appli-
cation of comparatively simple measures.
Fires that would sweep the ground bare
of seedlings in the North woods or in the
Appalachian Mountains destroy only the
very young long-leaf pine. After four or
five years a thick casing of needles protects
the seedlings from the ordinary fires — a
provision of nature that has done much to
preserve the long-leaf pine from extermina-
tion. But in spite of its resistance to fire and
its capacity to perpetuate itself under adverse
conditions, the long-leaf pine has one enemy
with which it cannot cope successfully.
Turpentine orcharding, the source of the
great naval stores industry of the South, is
yielding slowly to improved methods, but
centuries cannot eradicate the harm that
has been done. There is no more deplorable
sight to the man who has a sense of the value
of trees than the abandoned turpentine
orchard — a grim array of mutilated trunks,
scorched and charred where the box is made,
broken by the wind, infested by insects, and
worthless except to illustrate the futility of
killing the goose which lays the golden eggs.
The South is full of such pictures.
The forests of the southern Appalachians
contain perhaps the clearest examples of
misuse that this country has the misfortune
to present. Fences built of prime black
walnut, because walnut happened to be the
tree nearest the line of the fence, enclose
many a mountain field, the value of which is
but a trifle compared to that of the trees
from which its fence-rails were split. The
region contains numberless " deadenings, "
the local phrase for girdling the forest trees
so that they die, and cultivating the ground
beneath them. And in the places where the
axes have been plied more vigorously and
from which the great logs of tulip tree and
oak have come, there are results typical
of the point of view that sanctioned the
walnut fences and justified the deadenings.
Here the ground is piled high with the debris
of the lumbering, tinder for the next fire.
Here are tops and trunks smashed and riven
by careless fellings, logs left lying because of
small unsoundness, young growth trampled
and bruised beyond necessity. Time will
make mold of the debris and will heal the
scars upon standing trees. As long as a
remnant of the forest remains the second
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
3215
I
crop will gi"OW, although greatly haiiii)cri'(l
by its unfa\oral)lc surroundings. Hut it is
the composition of the second crop which is
the urgent question. With the big trees,
the mother trees of the valuable species, gone,
sourwoods, dogwoods and other kinds of
little value are all that remain to shed the
seed from which the new growth will spring.
Each development of the knnbcr industr\'
has left its mark upon the southern forests.
There was the era of the portable sawmill,
a small but insatiable monster which moved
from place to place leaving mutilated spots
where it rested and destroying more timber
than it sawed. Then with capital and
energy and increased demand came the large
sawmill, representing a million or more of
invested capital, which established itself in
one spot and built a settlement around it,
reaching out farther and farther and cutting
more and more closely throughout the neigh-
boring country, in order to turn out its
lumber by the many millions of feet each
\car. The small mill, the large mill, and
then the ap])lication of practical forestry —
that is the logical secjuence. The small mill
came first bccau.se standing timber cost
])ractically nothing in the early days, and it
therefore paid best to skim the cream of it.
The large mill followed because with an
increase of demand grew the profit of meeting
it. And since the large mill cannot be moved
advantageously, and sooner or later must shut
down unless new crojjs of timber may be
obtained from the lands which have been cut
over to feed it, the application of conserva-
tive forest management is its natural and
inevitable consequence.
There are forests, however, which are
already being managed conservatively. The
domain of the University of the South, near
Sewanee, Tennessee, for example, possesses
an educational value far out of proportion
to its comparatively small area. Cattle had
rhutographed by Davison
32i6
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
LUMBER IX PILES
Photographed by Davison
LOADING LUMBER FOR EXPORT
At Port Arthur, Texas
Photographed by Davison
SAVING Till-: sou'iii i:rn i<'() rests
3217
AN OLD TURPENTINE ORCHARD
The forest was culled for lumber and boxed for turpentine and then fire ran through it
REPRODUCTION OF LONG-LEAF PINE
The larger seedlings will probably survive the next fire
I
32i8
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
overgrazed the forest, fire had run through it
and a slovenly form of lumbering had been
practised in it long before the University was
founded. Under the supervision of the
Bureau, methods have been introduced which
insure the production of a second crop, while
the profits of lumbering have been notably
increased by enforced system and economy.
The joint result is that the University has
gained a higher return from cutting over a
quarter of its holdings than all the timber it
formerly possessed was estimated to be worth.
Moreover, the lumbering now husbands
the productive capacity of the forest instead
of destroying it.
Upon the tract of the Sawyer & Austin
Lumber Company, consisting of one hundred
Photographed by Darisou
SHORT-LEAF PINE
In Arkansas
AFTER THE LUMBERING
The second crop will be tardy and of low value
thousand acres of southern pines in south-
eastern Arkansas, an experiment in practical
forestry is under way which is of direct value
to other owners of pine lands in the South
It consists not only in the leaving of seed
trees, in care in the fellings and in methods
for the full utilization of the trees felled, but
notably in a carefully devised system for the
protection of cut-over areas from fire. It is
upon similar protection that the future of
the pine belt chiefly depends, and a demon-
stration of its practicability at moderate
expense is the best argument for its adoption.
As a result of its work upon the Stevenson
and Wetmore lands in the Smoky Mountains,
the Bureau of Forestry has succeeded in intro-
ducing rules for conservative lumbering as a
part of the contract under which the timber
is sold. To those who have watched the
progress of forestry in this country the
inclusion of measures fostering the production
3220
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
of a second crop in a contract for the sale
of stumpage is a notable step in the right
direction.
The tract of the Kirby Lumber Company
in southeastern Texas offers a remarkable
the preparation of which is now going on,
owns the timber rights upon one and one-
quarter million acres, an area approximately
the same as that of the State of Delaware.
It is the main source of livelihood to about
Photographed by Davison
A TREE FALLING
opportunity for proof of the business ad- fifteen thousand persons, and is remarkable
vantages of practical forestry. The Kirby for the quality of its long-leaf pine lands and
Lumber Company, which has recently applied the completeness of its equipment. The
to the Bureau of Forestry for a working plan, application of conservative management to
LUNG-LEAF PINE IN LOUISIANA
Photographed by Davison
3222
SAVING THE SOUTHERN FORESTS
the forest of this great corporation will be of
incalculable value, not only as an experiment
upon the largest private holding in the United
States, but also as furnishing the most
forcible example that the South can afford of
the fundamental change in the attitude of the
lumberman toward the work of the forester.
There is no reason why the practical
wisdom shown in these instances should not
govern the treatment of all the southern
timber lands. The widespread adoption of
scientific forestry will tend not merely to
make timber property a permanent source
of continued revenue, but to save the South
from such secondary effects of thoughtless
denuding as have played havoc with the
water supply of streams in other parts of
the country.
THE FOREST DISTRIBUTION IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES
Showing the extent of the soulhein wooded belt th.Tt scientific forestry may preserve
GREAT QUESTIONS OUT OF THE VEN
EZUELAN TROUBLE
WHAT OF THE PUTURE?— SMALL HOPE OF STABLE CONDITIONS— THE FEEL-
ING OF FOREIGN RESIDENTS— THE INTEREST THAT THE SEVERAL TOWERS
HAVE IN THE REGION — THE GENERAL FEELING OF UNCERTAINTY
BY
JOHN CALLAN O'LAUGHLIN
THE Caribbean Sea should be called
hereafter an American Lake," re-
marked Admiral Dewey one eve-
ning while sitting on the quarterdeck of his
flagship, the Mayfloivcr, during the recent
naval maneuvers. "It would be well to
accustom the world to the name and what
it means."
The attention of the world was then riveted
upon Venezuela. Ostensibly to obtain repa-
ration for outrages upon their subjects and
interests, Great Britain, Germany and Italy
had destroyed the little navy of President
Castro and were preparing to establish a
"pacific blockade." The statesmen who
pondered upon the action of the European
Powers readily understood that Venezuela
was an incident and that something more lay
behind. In other words, the lesson it was
intended she should learn was imposed for
the benefit also of other American govern-
ments. Europe was asserting her interest
in the affairs of the western hemisphere, and
the United States, which had been informed
of her intention, was standing by watching
developments, its fleet, filled with ammuni-
tion, within striking distance of the scene of
"pacific" hostilities.
From the time of its discovery by Columbus
the Caribbean Sea has been repeatedly the
ground of international conflict. It is not
going too far to say that Europe and the
United States are now in a sense contending
for mastery there. Great Britain and Italy
fell into the plan to coerce Venezuela, to
obtain redress, and to maintain and, if pos-
sible, increase their prestige in the western
hemisphere. Germany's primary purpose was
to assert, herself, to extend her influence
and power and to demonstrate that she
must be regarded as a factor in American
iffairs. The Civil War convinced Secretarv
of State Seward of the necessity of placing
the American flag in the Caribbean Sea; but
at the time the Senate looked through differ-
ent glasses on that section of the world. The
Spanish-American War brought about what
Mr. Seward foresaw. Porto Rico was acquired
and Cuba passed under our protection. The
United States induced the Danish Government
to sign a treaty providing for the transfer of
its possessions in the West Indies to this
country; but German influence is supposed
to have prevented ratification of the treaty
by the Danish parliament. Now the United
States is on the eve of building the Panama
Canal. Its construction will increase the stra-
tegic and commercial value of the islands and
of the countries bordering on the Caribbean
Sea ; and, in the light of the conditions present
and impending, the action of the Powers
with respect to Venezuela assumes an impor-
tance which must be considered seriously by
the American people.
The European nations which have terri-
torial interests in the Caribbean Sea are
Great Britain, France, Denmark and Holland.
Germany has not a single foot of land there,
and has given repeated assurances that she
has no intention of acquiring it. Her activity
elsewhere, however, is remarkable. During
the last seven years she has established
herself in China, where she owns Kaio Chou
and claims commercial control of the province
of Shantung; she purchased the Caroline
and Ladrone islands, with the exception of
Guam, from Spain; she became sovereign
over the islands of Savaii and Upolu of the
Samoan group, and has increased her terri-
torial interests in Africa. Her policies of
territorial and commercial expansion move
together; the one she considers the comple-
ment of the other. She has aggressively
pushed her trade in Central and South
3224 QUESTIONS OUT OF THE VENEZUELAN TROUBLE
America, but her navy is not yet strong
enough to justify an attempt to brush aside
the Monroe Doctrine.
Commercially, the United States is the
dominant power in the Caribbean Sea. The
products of the islands and of the countries
whose shores are washed by the waters of
Admiral Dewey's American lake are prac-
tically the same. The United States is their
natural market. The American acquisition
of Porto Rico and the negotiation of the
reciprocity treaty with Cuba seriously men-
ace the prosperity of the other islands and
affect that of the neighboring continental
republics. Deprived of an outlet for their
surplus products, the colonies of Europe
in the Caribbean Sea must necessarily become
poorer and poorer and make a greater drain
upon the mother countries. The gravity of
the situation was recognized by Great Britain
in her recent protest against the Cuban
reciprocity treaty. Already most of the
islands receive financial support from Europe.
Strategic reasons compel Great Britain and
France to retain their West India possessions.
Denmark was anxious to sell her islands,
and their inhabitants desired transfer to the
United States. Holland finds it necessary to
credit her Dutch West Indies with $40,000
annually.
In Curacao I asked a leading merchant
how the natives would regard American
protection. "We prefer to be under the
Holland flag," he answered, "for the reason
that Willemstadt is practically a free port, and
there is little likelihood that our government
will ever become involved in war. We are
greatly disturbed by the probability that a
German Prince will succeed to the throne
if Queen Wilhelmina should have no heir.
Except the few Germans here, I know of no
one who desires Germany as his sovereign
State. Next to Holland, we want the United
States."
While practically all the West Indies are
looking forward to ultimate annexation by
the United States, political Venezuela enter-
tains no such desire. A rich country, there
can be no question of its ability to support
itself provided it has peace. A constant
succession of revolutions has brought the
people to poverty. During the blockade
many sold jewels in order to obtain the neces-
saries of life. The natural effect of the action
of the Powers has been to create a feeling of
hatred for them and to emphasize the depend-
ence of the country upon the United States.
Great Britain, Germany and Italy will have
their claims paid, but commercially thev
will be losers. Plastered throughout the
republic where all may read are cards
which set forth the request of the government
that Venezuelans refrain from purchasing
goods of German, English or Italian manu-
facture. The newspapers in all their issues
print a similar notice. The effect of this
move was immediate. Shopkeepers reported
a decrease in the demand for articles manu-
factured and imported by the countries
tabooed and an increase in the sale of
American and French made goods. Had
the Powers considered the possible effect of
hostile action, they might have looked at
their trade returns and attempted a more
diplomatic adjustment.
The United States leads in Venezuelan
commerce. Its imports and exports for
the year 1901 amounted to $10,205,900.
Germany was second in Venezuelan trade,
the value of her commerce being $3,903,200.
France stood third with $3,320,000; and
Great Britain was fourth with $3,083,400.
Italy's commerce is comparatively of slight
importance. "Our interests do not lie
here," said an Italian official; "they exist
in Argentina. The important reason why
our government participated in the
coercion of Venezuela was because Germany
desired it."
During the blockade I ate dinner at La
Guayra with a German who spoke bitterly
of the exactions he had suffered. "I tell
you," he said, pointing to the British man-
of-war and the Italian cruiser, which were
lying at anchor, "these ships should open fire
on the forts and raze them to the ground.
Punishment of the harshest character should
be visited upon these people. They are
thieves and cowards. They lay tribute upon
ever}^ man who they think has money; and
if he does not comply with their demands
he is made to suffer. Recently I went to
Guanta to collect a bill for a firm by which
I w^as employed. In spite of secrecy, the
news of it reached the general in command.
He called on me and announced that he
desired a "loan," and asked for a sum equal
to that which I had obtained. I told him
I had no money. He was incredulous and
ordered a search of my baggage. When
QUESTIONS OUT OF THE VENEZUELAN TROUBLE 3225'
he proposed to search my person, I rcphecl
that if he did so I should lay the matter
before my Government, which would seek
reparation. I also took occasion to suggest
that he would receive $1,000 if the matter
were dropped. This suggestion was acce})t-
able and I escaped without further payment.
There is no security for foreign life here.
A German was killed some time ago. Capital
punishment is not permitted by law, and the
native charged with the crime, after insistent
demands by the German representative,
was finally arrested and tried. He received
a year's imprisonment only, and I suspect he
was released before the expiration of his
sentence."
Mr. W. H. D. Haggard, Minister of Great
Britain to Venezuela, told me when I met
him in Caracas and subsequently in Trinidad,
after his departure from Venezuela, that
action by his Government had become
absolutely imperative. "My country was
patient and long-suffering," he said. 'Tts
subjects had been barbarously treated ; vessels
flying its flag had been seized without cause
and their crews outraged, and demands for
redress were evaded or were contemptuously
put aside." Mr. Haggard's estimate of the
Venezuelan people is shown by his state-
ment that he left Caracas without announcing
his intention, "because he did not care to
have a repetition of the Peking trouble of
1900, when the foreign envoys in the Chinese
capital were besieged by Boxers and were
rescued by an international army."
On the day the blockade of Venezuelan
ports was established, Vice-Admiral Sir
Archibald Douglas announced that the war
would be "opera boufTe" in character; that
there would be no landing of marines and
no bloodshed. As Vice-Admiral Douglas
was commander-in-chief and had just con-
cluded a conference with Commodore Scheder,
the German squadron commander, it was
expected that the blockade would have
none of the usual accompaniments of war;
but Vice-Admiral Douglas apparently counted
too much upon the assurances of the Germans,
as is shown by the bombardments which
occurred at Maracaibo. Those bombard-
ments. Commodore Scheder insisted, were
tthe consequence of Venezuelan attack upon
the German gunboat Panther; but the
Venezuelans claim that the Germans were the
merits consideration in view of the attitude
of the defense force elsewhere.
The only bombardment in which the
British engaged was that of Puerto Cabello
before the blockade began, and the Germans,
though they were not interested, participated.
Commodore Montgomerie, who, in his flag-
ship, the Charydis, directed the attack upon
the forts protecting Puerto Cabello, informed
me that he decided to bombard only after
giving the Venezuelans ample time to make
reparation for a wanton and outrageous
insult to a British vessel and its crew and
the British flag. He regretted the necessity
for this action, but he said that not a single
person was struck, and the only casualties
ashore resulted from two soldiers falling into
a ditch and breaking their legs. British
officers were surprised at the German desire
to join in the bombardment of Puerto Cabello.
I found the sentiment of the British gen-
erally was that their Government had made
a mistake in joining with the Germans.
They have not forgotten — though it was
suggested with some bitterness that London
had — the cablegram sent by Emperor William
to President Kruger of the South African
Republic on the eve of the Boer war, and one
of them asserted that Kipling was justified
in decrying in verse the alliance between the
two antipathetic nations. "The people of
the United States," said a high-ranking
naval officer, whom I met at Trinidad,
"believe that Germany is enlarging her navy
in order to destroy the Monroe Doctrine.
I tell you Germany rather contemplates a
war with Great Britain. Our interests clash
far more with hers than do yours."
It is the opinion of foreigners in Venezuela
that there will never be continued peace under
native administration, and that foreign con-
trol is necessary if the country is to be orderly
and prosperous. Germans would naturally
prefer the extension of German rule to Venez-
uela, but this is clearly impossible with the
United States determined to uphold the
Monroe Doctrine; and they therefore advo-
cate joint control by the Powers having
subjects and interests there. British sub-
jects in Venezuela and British colonists in
Trinidad favor this plan also. But they
recognize that the United States would never
permit European participation in an American
government; and they say that if their sug-
gestion cannot be adopted, then the United
3226 QUESTIONS OUT OF THE VENEZUELAN TROUBLE
States alone should undertake the govern-
ment of the republic.
"Venezuela knows that you will not permit
her to suffer territorially," said one of these
men. "She understands that if any European
nation attempts to punish her seriously for
outrages perpetrated upon their subjects
and interests, the United States will inter-
vene and say ' Hands off.' You, therefore,
are responsible for her excesses though you
specifically disclaim responsibility. If you
propose to enforce the Monroe Doctrine
and enjoy the advantage consequent from
such enforcement, then you should discharge
the attendant obligations."
While President Castro promptly appealed
to the Monroe Doctrine w^hen the occasion
for it developed, he and other Venezuelans,
as well as the whole of Central and South
America, fear that the United States has a
selfish purpose in its enforcement.
During a conversation with President
Castro I asked him what he thought of the
Monroe Doctrine. He considered a moment.
"Properly interpreted and properly applied,"
he responded, "it is an excellent princi-
ple." In other words, he reserved to him-
self and to his country the right to say
when the United States was justified in
its application. President Castro's answer
is that of every other Venezuelan politician.
Among business men a sentiment is growing
in favor of partial control of the republic
by the United States. They see no prospect
of stability under native administration.
A formidable revolution under the leader-
ship of General Matos, which has the covert
support of Great Britain and Germany, is
now in progress against Castro's Govern-
ment. "If Matos succeed," said a Venezuelan
merchant, "a revolution will be inaugurated
against him by one of his own men, if
Castro does not keep up the struggle. That
will mean a continuance of the present dis-
turbed conditions. It will also mean further
calls upon business houses for money by the
new Government and the revolutionary forces.
No Venezuelan cares to see an inch of the
territory of his country seized by a foreign
government; all would prefer native to
foreign administration, even though the
United States were in control. But if some
arrangement could be reached by which the
United States would guarantee stability of
government, as in the case of Cuba, then
Venezuela would enter upon an era of pros-
perity which would parallel that of the
Great Northern Republic. We have rich
natural resources; our people are intelligent,
energetic and industrious, and our national
debt is small. The sole thing we need —
stable government — we have not, and the
United States owes it to its own people as
well as to other nations to see that this need
is supplied."
It was apparent from the pause that followed
this exposition of Venezuela's necessity that
I was expected to make a reply to this com-
prehensive statement.
"But the United States could not inter-
vene in Venezuela," I remarked. "You
know that in spite of the unselfish attitude
we have observed for eighty years, we are
suspected of a desire to extend our sovereignty
over the whole of the western hemisphere.
To put our foot in Venezuela would be to
arouse every other American nation and to
affect serioush' our standing with them.
Besides, we have problems that engage our
attention elsewhere."
"The suspicion that you propose to enlarge
your territory," I was told, "was confirmed
by your acquisition of Porto Rico and the
Philippines and 3'our demand of Cuba that
she give you virtual control while retaining
her independence. Venezuela is on j'our
conscience, and as long as you fail to act
Europe will create pretexts, ostensibly to
protect her interests, but really to increase
her prestige at your expense."
Still the important fact which strikes the
observer in Venezuela is the satisfactory
position occupied by the United States.
During the bombardment of Maracaibo an
American walking along the streets of Caracas
frequently heard the exclamation : "America
for the Americans."
The Venezuelan newspapers have never
tired of asserting that to the western world
Venezuela must be considered as the touch-
stone by which the temper of the Monroe
Doctrine was to be tried. By the construc-
tion of the Panama Canal the commer-
cial and strategical value of Venezuela and
Antillean territory will be immeasurably
increased. It is the realization of this that
contributed to present European activity,
and it is a like realization that is responsible
for Admiral Dewey's designation of the
Caribbean Sea as an American lake.
A STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN AIM
now CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES DIFFERS FROM CITIZEN-
SHIP IN ALL OTHER COUNTRIES— THE SINCERITY OF PATRIOTISM
AND THE BREADTH OF SYMPATHY— THE NECESSARY APPLICATION
OF THE AMERICAN IDEA TO INDUSTRY AND TO SOCIAL RELATIONS
BY
AUSTIN BIERBOWER
AM ERIC AN citizenship diflfers in several
essentials from citizenship in otlier
countries, and some peculiar duties
arise from the difference which require special
attention now when our institutions are
receiving a general reexamination and are
subjected to special strain through the
attempt at expansion.
An American, having a great country, has
wide relations in his patriotism. He loves
something great, which is important in the
character of a people. When a man must fix
his affections on the small it tends to belittle
him. One is measured by what one loves.
With our vast and opulent domain, we need
never be ashamed of the object of our affec-
tion, but can be enthusiastic for our country
without seeming ridiculous; which a Belgian
or Portuguese can hardly be. While it is
demoralizing to have to champion a petty
cause (since in tr3'ing to maintain its impor-
tance one unconsciously develops insincerity),
the espousal of the great protects all the
virtues. The American need not be afraid of
exaggeration if he talks in superlatives, for he
can boast of his country without lying. His
difficulty is to reach the truth rather than to
keep from transcending it, and he can indulge
in limitless ideals without despair over their
ultimate realization.
The first characteristic of American citizen-
ship, therefore, is a confident pride of country
I that goes parallel with love of country, a pride
that is well founded and honest; so that an
American feels a satisfactory self-respect as
an American, and seldom gets an^-thing but
respect from others. He cannot be easily
ridiculed, and he need not be sensitive about
- foreign opinions. A scoffer who would laugh
I at the United States is like the simpleton who
would ridicule the sun. Owing to our size.
country, even in words, for most antagonists
seem unworthy of us. Only three or four
nations are ever compared with ours, and we
need not fear the comparison then. The
American can accordingly indulge a generous
high-mindedness toward the world without
the usual temptations to jealousy which
characterize small peoples.
A second feature of American citizenship
springs from the fact that we are a growing
country. Great as we are, we expect to be
greater. Our eyes are turned to the future
and our pride is founded in hope. It matters
much whether one is on the rising or declining
side in his feelings, whether his enthusiasm is a
swelling or a receding tide. Americans are
in the line of the world's movements, going in
the direction in which things are enlarging.
Our country is to take part in nearh'' all events
that are to come, and to act with the
whole world as an arena. We have a career
before us rather than behind us, and enter on
battlefields yet to be won. We are in the line
of permanent movements, too, and not of mere
episodes. Our acts must have an influence
that is to grow with the enlargement of the
country and of the world's civilization; so
that in making history, we are not building a
fabric that is soon to fall, but one that will
grow for centuries. Like King Arthur and
Romulus, we are beginning a State, and not,
like Kosciusko, losing one. While the
eloquence of Demosthenes was lost because
he spoke for a falling Greece, that of Patrick
Henry and Beecher was treasured up and
invested with perpetual power because they
spoke for a coming empire. It is the rare
privilege of Americans to do what will not
be lost on humanity, as the deeds of most
centuries were. What they build will be
builded on. We are working at a founda-
tion rather than a pinnacle, and are looking
1228
A STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN AIM
up instead of down. Growth is to be our
next movement. "Forward" is our watch-
word, rather than " Halt. "
A third feature of American citizenship
restilts from the fact that our country repre-
sents liberty and equality, so that in being
proud of our cotmtry we are proud of some-
thing good. In taking up the cause of the
United States one takes up the cause of right.
Most countries represent tyranny or some
form of inequality, so that their citizens, to be
patriotic, must be unjust. In Europe they
are committed to the interests of the Bourbons
or the Hapsburgs, and stand for the aggran-
dizement of privileged classes. We stand
for the equal rights of all the people; and
nothing can be better. We have no royalty
to defend, no discriminations to maintain, no
wrongs to perpetuate. There is no contra-
diction between our patriotism and our ethics.
One need not be a bad man to be a good
American. It requires no qualms of con-
science to take up any of our principles.
Feeling that ours is the cause of humanity, we
can enter as heartily into the American spirit
as into a religious or philanthropic move-
ment. This is an important element in our
moral and intellectual character. We need
not stretch our consciences or warp our judg-
ment to be loyal, but can give our undivided
selves to our cause without abating any of our
manhood. Americanism is a sum of virtues,
standing for a principle. Our flag has a
meaning of which we approve. It is demoral-
izing when one's national sentiments are in
conflict with one's private convictions. The
liberals of most foreign countries are disaf-
fected toward their national institutions, so
that many of their best citizens live not in the
spirit of their country, but in hope of revolu-
tion. In America, on the other hand, loyalty
is a virtue; the good are committed to our
institutions ; and to be more of an American is
to be a better man. One cannot have our
national spirit and be unjust. Our under-
lying principles — liberty and equality — are
the substance of all governmental ideals, and
in America the ideal and the practical are for
the first time reconciled. Our constitution
expresses their union in the most substantial
form yet attained.
Another circumstance affecting American
citizenship is the fact that our country
represents progress. The traditions of our
fathers have little weight when pitted against
our common sense. The world's best ideas
have a chance to be put into practice.
Thought and activity are alike free. Old
machinery, old opinions, old institutions are
constantly passing away, and we are in a
coimtry of revision. Americans are accord-
ingly independent and aggressive. Instead
of being a led people, chained to precedent,
they search for the unknown, rather than
try to recall the forgotten. Frontiersmen
rather than antiquarians in civilization,
we are carving a way, instead of digging up
the forgotten paths. We are more interested
in discovering new truths than in handing
down old ones. The search for the better is
our most characteristic occupation — inven-
tion. We are most interested in what has
never been done at all, and never known
at all. News is everywhere sought in
thought, as novelty is in action. The turning
of the unknown into the known and of the
untried into experience is our most peculiar
and characteristic mission.
The first duty of American citizenship is a
liberal patriotism. Nor is this feeling of
magnanimity for land and numbers alone.
American patriotism must be a love not of
race but of many kinds of people — of English,
Germans, Italians, Irish, Scandinavians,
Africans, Chinese, Indians and Tagals. It
must be cosmopolitan. American patriotism
comes near being humanitarianism.
Another duty of American citizenship is to
apply our principles of liberality and equality
to our new domain and keep our republican-
ism intact through our varied expansion.
While we can afford to grow beyond our
limits and even beyond our continent, we
cannot afford to grow beyond our principles.
We are making great experiments and en-
countering new dangers in our development
from primitive simplicity, and the problem
is how to go forward without shifting from
our traditional foundation of equal rights
and universal liberty.
A more immediate duty of American citi-
zenship, and one appealing directly to the
individual, is to apply our principle of equal-
ity to our business and social relations. We
cannot have the people politically equal if
they are unequal in other respects. While
all cannot have the same wealth, rich and
poor classes being unavoidable, as also
intelligent and ignorant, we should, by
giving all an equal chance, reduce these con-
A HUNDRED YEARS UE OHIO
3229
ditions, and especially avoid great extremes.
It is not safe, either for our republic or for the
wealthy, that there should be many fortunes
which exhaust the materials which make
competencies for thousands. The very rich
menace the moderately wealthy, and the
very poor menace in turn the rich. All must
have a competency or hope of it.
In the children we should start anew with
all our American rights. The common school,
which provides an equal education to a cer-
tain point and sends out the youth equipped
alike for the battle of life, is the great leveling
agency for preserving our American spirit.
It is our periodical equalizer, which, removing
the advantages of the fathers, restores the
common equality of nature. Our peculiar
American idea is to furnish all equal weapons
and then see that there is no unfairness in
the fight ; and as often as some unavoidably
get too far ahead in one generation, to start
all over again in the children of the next.
Another duty of American citizenship is to
adjust with like liberality our political idea
of equality to our social relations. With
a better acquaintance with men we find
them more alike. The workingman's intel-
ligence rivals that of the professional man,
and the qualifications of the artisan are
everywhere recognized as a culture. There
are virtues in the poor which the ancient
world did not know.
A liberal appreciation of the varieties of
culture should therefore characterize the
American in this age of difTcrentiation,
especially of that culture which differs from
his own. He has entered into a confederacy
with all kinds of men, and he should feel con-
genial amid a great variety of differences.
Many are willingly poor that they may be
scholarly or that they may work out some
problem for the race. Others sacrifice posi-
tion for their children, and all who deprive
themselves of anything make it possible for
others to have more of it; and they should
suffer no additional disability for this heroism.
Those who have the advantages ought not to
discriminate against those who concede them.
Refinement, not exclusiveness, ought to be
the test of social distinction in a republic,
which in all things is inclusive. One does not
lose his respectability in this country by allow-
ing others to be respectable, or degrade him-
self by mixing with many people.
Nearly every social problem that now con-
fronts us might be solved by simply a return
of the people to a manly and generous com-
mon sense, which would enable them to enjoy
their possessions without a sacrifice of taste or
happiness, and at the same time make such
enjoyments more common. The American
aim is simply the welfare of the race in which
we have enlisted a part of the race and are
trying to stand as an example for all others.
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
A STATE THAT HAS PEOPLED MANY COMMONWEALTHS AND EXERTED A
CONTINENTAL INFLUENCE— GREAT FIGURES WHICH SHE HAS FURNISHED
TO THE COUNTRY'S SERVICE— HER TRIUMPHS IN INDUSTRY, EDUCATION
AND PROGRESS— CAUSES OF HER POLITICAL PROMINENCE IN THE REPUBLIC
BY
CHARLES M.
HARVEY
OHIO, a hundred years young, will have
the good will of the whole American
people on May 21 and 22, 1903, when,
at her old capital at Chillicothe, she will cele-
brate the centenary of her admission to
statehood. In the large sense this will be a
national observance, because, almost from
the days of Edward Tiffin, her first Governor,
down to those of George K. Nash, her present
I
executive, Ohio has played a conspicuous
part in the political and also in the social
life of the republic.
The fourth of the States in population and
w-ealth (New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois
being the only commonwealths which lead her
in these respects), the oldest State west of
the Alleghanies except Kentucky and Tennes-
see, Ohio is a large and important part of the
3230
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
American nation. The State which gave
birth to all the Presidents — Grant, Hayes,
Garfield, Harrison and McKinley — elected
from the close of the Lincoln-Johnson term
to the present day, except Mr. Cleveland, and
which claims another President, William
Henry Harrison (through residence for many
years at the time of his election and through
his identification with her political and social
interests), Ohio is also the mother of many
other statesmen. In the present Senate her
sons by birth include not only the two men
whom she herself has in that body, but
r
(IMS Mil §123 im Emmim
immmM^mmmm w wi
■ IfMlLTira
A TABLET UNVEILED AT CHILLICOTHE
Fairbanks and Beveridge of Indiana, Allison
of Iowa, Alger of Michigan, and Scott and
Elkins of West Virginia. She is the birth-
place of eighteen of her own twenty-two
members of the House of Representatives,
as well as of Hitt, Selby, Crowle}^ and George
W. Smith, members from Illinois; Landis of
Indiana, Rtimple, Hull and Hepburn of Iowa;
Bowersock and Calderhead of Kansas; Irwin
of Kentucky, and Gardner of Michigan.
Secretary of State John Hay is an Ohio man
by residence, as, by birth and residence, were
his two immediate predecessors, William R.
Day and John Sherman. In William H.
Taft, the Governor of the Philippines, Ohio
has contributed a man who has made
American sway in the antipodes popular.
Ohio is likewise the mother of States.
She has contributed more of her native-bom
children to the building of other communities
than any other State of the forty-five except
New York, and, in proportion to population,
her contribution has been far greater than
New York's. Most of them have gone West,
though many have gone South, and some of
them, reversing the sun's course, have moved
to the East. Every city of any consequence
from New York Bay to the Golden Gate has
a colony of Ohioans. New York's Ohio
society includes, among others, Whitelaw
Reid, editor of the Tribune, Edison and
Brush, electricians, and Ward, the sculptor.
OHIO AS AN EMPIRE BUILDER
About the time that Jefferson was felici-
tating his fellow Americans on possessing
a "chosen country with room enough for our
descendants to the thousandth and thou-
sandth generation, " although the nation's
westerly boundary was then the Mississippi
River, Ohioans were beginning to spread
westward into the region that is now Indiana
and Illinois, and were enlarging and giving
impetus to that volume of immigration
which has peopled a country three times
as large as Jefferson had in mind — and all
within three generations.
In 1900 there were 1,114,000 natives of
Ohio residing in other parts of the United
States than the State of their birth. New
York, with 3,000,000 more inhabitants than
Ohio, was the only State which made a greater
contribution (1,289,000) to the rest of the
country's population, and this was only
175,000 larger than Ohio's. Pennsylvania
with 937,463 and Illinois with 1,012,000
natives living outside their own boundaries
in 1900, each of which is larger than Ohio,
made smaller additions to the citizenship of
the rest of the country. Almost half the
entire contribution made by the dozen States
of the North Central division to the stalwart
Americanism of the part of the United States
outside their own borders was furnished by
the Buckeye State alone.
There were 178,000 native Ohioans resid-
ing in Indiana in 1900, or more than those
of the combined three next highest States —
Kentucky, Illinois and Pennsylvania. In
Illinois there were 137,000 Ohio men, as
against 128,000 from Indiana and 111,000
from New York. Kansas, Michigan and
Iowa each had 88,000 Buckeyes, Missouri,
80,000, California, 34,000, and Oregon, 13,000;
while 26,000 of them were in New York.
Naturally this wide diffusion of Ohio men
enables them to see things from more angles,
makes them more hospitable to new views,
and causes them to think in larger terms
geographically. Many of them have risen
to high stations in their new homes. But
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
3231
OHIO UNIVERSITY, ATHENS, OHIO
The building to the left of the centre is the oldest building for higher education in the original Northwest Territor>-
THE SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, ATHENS, OHIO
At the entrance of the campus of Ohio University
3232
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
THE OLDEST NEWSPAPER IN OHIO
Established in 1880
while Ohio has thus been making a large
contribution to those forces of national
expansion which have made the United States
fill a big place on the world's map and win a
still larger place in the world's councils, her
own population has grown a hundredfold in
THE STATE HULsL AT COLUMLL;, OHIO
Photographed by Baker
GOVERNOR GEORGE K. NASH, OF OHIO
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
3235
the ccMitury, increasing from the 45,000 of tlic
latter part of St. Clair's governorship of the
territory to the 4,500,000 of this fourth year
of Governor Nash's.
At the outset Ohio owed a vast debt to the
country. General Rufus Putnam's Massa-
chusetts Revolutionary soldiers settled the
Marietta region, at the mouth of the Muskin-
gum. John Cleves Symmes' New Jersey
men and Pennsylvanians, most of them also
okl soldiers, went to Cincinnati. General
Nathaniel Massie, with his Virginia and
Kentucky soldiers, many of them being
General George Rogers Clark's victors at
Kaskaskia and Vincennes, who won the great
Northwest for the United States, colonized
Virginia's military lands between the two
Miamis. Moses Cleaveland, along the border
of Lake Erie, founded his New Connecticut,
the later Western Reserve, peopling it with
some of the choicest spirits of New England.
None but the daring and enterprising
attempted to cross the Alleghanies into the
Ohio valley in those days, and none but the
physically capable got there. Thus the
original Ohioan was a composite of the best
that was in American blood and training.
The debt which the Buckeye State thus
incurred to the country has been paid with
compound interest in the past hundred years
through the diffusion which has made the
whole West an expansion of Ohio.
THE state's national FIGURES
On a granite block just erected in the
cemetery at Mansfield, which marks the
grave of a distinguished American, are these
words and these only: "John Sherman."
It would be as impossible to write the history
of the politics of the United States from 1855
to 1898 without telling the story of that man's
deeds, as it would be to write the annals of
the war of 1861-65 without giving a com-
manding space to the achievements of that
other Ohio man, elected President in 1868,
of whom " Miles O'Reilly " wrote :
If you ask what State he hails from,
Our sole reply shall be,
He hails frotn Appomattox
And its famous apple tree.
In the war of secession and the reconstruc-
tion period Ohio furnished to the country's
service in civil station such national charac-
ters as Chase, the head of the Treasury and
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Stanton,
who "organized victory" for the Union cause;
Sherman, the Wades (Benjamin F. and
Edward), Corwin, Pugh, John McLean,
Allen, Payne, Cox, Lewis D. Campbell,
Schenck, Garfield, Keifer, Hayes, Thurman,
Pendleton, Bingham, Riddle, Ashley, the
younger Thomas Ewing, and Jay Cooke, who
financed the country's bonds and provided
the sinews of war for the Government. To
the list of the nation's fighters in those
days it furnished Grant, Sherman, Sheridan,
Rosecrans, McPherson, Gilmore, two or
three of the McCooks, Custer, O. M. Mitchell,
Buell, Jacob D. Cox, Garfield and Hayes.
An enumeration of Ohio's great personages
from the fall of Sumter to the restoration of
the Confederate States to their old relations
to the Union sounds like a roll-call of the
entire nation's ablest and greatest sons
during that period.
Back in 1814, when Ohio was the newest
State excepting Louisiana, Madison called
Return J. Meigs (who had been United
States Senator and Governor) to the office of
Postmaster General. Between his days and
the Civil War period McLean, Cass, Ewing
and Corwin were among the eminent Ohioans
who held Cabinet posts, and since the recon-
struction Stanbery, Cox, Foster, Delano and
Harmon have been members of presidential
councils, while the State portfolio has just
been held by three Ohio men — Sherman, Day
and Hay — in succession. Of the eight mem-
bers of Harrison's Cabinet of 1889, all of
whom were residents of States other than
Ohio, five were Ohioans by birth.
A state of fierce political feuds
There has been a dash of savagery in Ohio's
politics from the beginning, as John Sherman
could have testified, for he was one of its recent
and frequent victims. The region now called
Ohio was claimed by France and England,
and by the Shawnees, Mingoes and other red
men at an earlier and later date. England
drove France out of the region, and then
England was driven out by the Americans,
after which the Indians turned on Haem.
Before the Indians were finally disposed of,
the feud between the Federalist territorial
Governor, St. Clair, and the fierce JefTersonian
Democracy of the frontier, under the lead of
Tiffin, Worthington and their associates,
resulted in St. Clair's removal by Jefferson
under circumstances of peculiar harshness.
I
3-36
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
and on the eve of the State's admission,
which would itself have brought his service
to an end. Tifl&n, St. Clair's leading antago-
nist, and the State's first Governor, was himself
a victim of the same ferocity a quarter of a
century later, when he was removed, while
on his deathbed, from the office of Survej-or
General of the Northwest by President
Jackson in 1829, because Tiffin had supported
Clay for President in 1824, when the election
went to Adams, and because he did not
support anybody in 1828, when Jackson was
elected. Thus he made himself construc-
tively an enemy of Jackson, for everybody
who was not for "Old Hickor}-" w^as deemed
to be against him.
There has thus been a spirit of conten-
tiousness and barbarit}- in Ohio politics from
a date anterior to Ohio's existence as an
organized community. After Chase's death
Ohio's most conspicuous son was Sherman;
and Sherman, by reason of his long and able
service in the House, the Senate and the
Cabinet, became an avowed aspirant to the
Presidenc}'. A prominent and active candi-
date in the conventions of 1880, 1884 and
1888, he was beaten each time, partly through
treachery in his own camp, by men of far
less political experience. Although he was
betrayed as often and as badly as Clay or
Webster, he never was guilty on that
account of the petulance and weakness shown
by those leaders, but preserved his courage
and balance to the last. Foraker and Hanna
have taken part in recent years in as impla-
cable feuds as those in which Sherman was
beaten, though neither was in the role of a
presidential aspirant.
A COMMUNITY OF COLOSSAL ACTIVITIES
When, in the sum.mer of 1870, John D.
Rockefeller, his brother WilHam, Stephen
V. Harkness, Samuel Andrews and Henry M.
Flagler, petroleum refiners, with their head-
quarters in Cleveland, consolidated their
interests, gained control of the railroads for
their purposes, and established the Standard
Oil Company, that quickly became the
United States' largest industrial combination
under a single head, the world's original
"octopus" came into being. But the com-
bination was even more important for what
it foreshadowed than for what it immedi-
ately and directly accomplished. It set an
example for that consolidation which has
seized most of the great activities within the
past dozen years, which has given capital
and labor an immeasurably larger power than
they ever had before, and which has enabled
the United States to furnish the greater part
of its own needs in the manufactures and to
make industrial conquests in Europe and all
the rest of the globe. That pooling, in the
capital of Ohio's Western Reserve, of the oil
men's interests (and the Standard, in January,
1903, paid its shareholders $30,000,000 in
dividends for 1902) a third of a century ago
was the beginning of the application on a
world-conquering scale of that industrial and
financial concentration and combination
which has thrown open every great country
on earth to the "American invasion. "
Nature as well as man contributed to make
Ohio's fortune. With a great waterway,
Lake Erie, on her northern border, and
another, the Ohio River, on her southern
and eastern boundary, she was liberally
endowed with fortune's favors. The Presi-
dent's grand-uncle, Nicholas J. Roosevelt,
with capital furnished by Fulton, Livingston
and himself, built near Pittsburg the first
steamboat that ran on western waters, the
Xc'cL' Orleans, which went down the Ohio in
181 1. A few years later steamboats started
on the great lakes, on the State's opposite
verge. Canals connecting the Ohio with
Lake Erie began to be built in 1825. In that
year Lafayette, on a tour through the United
States, called Ohio the "eighth wonder of the
world" on account of its industrial activity
and general prosperity. The national road,
running westward from the Potomac, was
completed to the Indiana line by 1838, but by
that time the railroads began to supersede
that thoroughfare. All the important trunk
lines running east and west before the Civil
War were compelled by the exigencies of
the slavery interest to run north of the Ohio
River, which meant through that State.
Most of them run through it yet.
Geography, transportation facilities, the
discoveries of coal, iron ore, petroleum,
natural gas and other material riches, and
the existence - of great hard-wood forests
within it, gave Ohio the fourth place in the list
of States in 1 900 in the value of its manufac-
tured products. It stood first among the
States in that year in the production of
wagon and carriage materials and in the
manufacture of wagons and carriages, as well
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO 3237
as in the aggregate of its manufacture of the 1804. This is the Ohio University, the oldest
various sorts of cK'iy procUicts; second in iron institution of learning north of the Oliio River,
and steel output, in agricultural implements and the lirst anywhere in the United States
and in food preparations; third in the endowed by Congress. It must not be con-
products of foundries and machine shops, founded with the Ohio State University,
of flouring and grist mills, and in distilled a larger and newer institution (established in
liquors, tobacco, cigars and cigarettes; fourth 1872), situated in Columbus, the State capital.
in the factory product of boots and shoes, Thomas Ewing, United States Senator and a
car and general shop construction and repairs member of W. H. Harrison's and Taylor's
by steam railroad companies, in the factory Cabinets, has the distinction of receiving, on
product of women's clothing, glass, petro- his graduation from Ohio University, the first
ieum refining, and rubber and elastic goods; degree of A. B. ever granted in the Northwest,
and hfth in the factory product of men's In addition to the two just mentioned,
clothing, in electrical apparatus and supplies, some of Ohio's institutions of the higher
malt liquors, planing-mill products, and in learning — Western Reserve, Kenyon (of
book and job printing, and t'he printing and which Rutherford B. Hayes was an alumnus),
publishing of newspapers and periodicals. Oberlin, Miami (from which Benjamin
For the past score of years the centre of the Harrison was graduated), Wesleyan, Antioch,
manufacturing of the United States has been Hiram (which Garfield attended for a time,
in Ohio, just as the population centre was though he finished at Williams), Marietta,
there from i860 to 1880, and then passed and others — are known all over the country,
into Indiana, where it yet is. The country's Ohio has contributed many men of eminence
manufacturing centre was nine miles south- to institutions outside her own borders,
east of McKinley's home in Canton in 1890, among them in recent years being Burke A.
the year of the enactment of the McKinley Hinsdale, of Michigan University, and George
tariff. It was seventeen miles southeast of T. Ladd, of Yale. Some of these are very
Mansfield, the home of John Sherman, in 1900. creditable successors to Antioch's old presi-
dent, Horace Mann, and to Finney, Mahan,
A GREAT EDUCATIONAL CENTRE Fairchild, Lyman Beecher and others con-
But empire building, politics, war and nected with Ohio's schools in the earlier days,
industry do not exhaust the scope of Ohio's Piatt R. Spencer began, in a little log school-
preeminence. Her forty-one colleges and house near Geneva, Ohio, the system of pen-
universities entitled to grant degrees exceed manship which afterward spread all over the
in number those of Illinois, which State ranks country. Oberlin, established in 1833, open
next to Ohio in this respect. The first-born to all races and both sexes, was the pioneer in
of her seats of learning, the Ohio University, coeducation, which has since extended all
situated at Athens, in the county of that over the West, and has furnished the first
name, may truthfully be said to be actually concrete demonstration of complete liberty,
older than the State of Ohio. equality and fraternity which the world
A clause in the Ordinance of 1787 — the throughout its history has ever seen.
West's Magna Charta — sets forth that, The large number of the institutions of the
"Religion, morality and knowledge being higher learning in that State gives every
necessary to good government and the happi- resident a chance to get all the educational
ness of mankind, schools and the means of advantages at his own door; and they explain
education shall forever be encouraged." the wide prevalence of college graduates
Under the contract in that year between the among her public men. This has much to do,
Ohio Company of Associates and the Conti- too, with the fact that there are fewer illiter-
nental Congress two townships of land w^ere ates in Ohio in proportion to population than
set apart for the purpose of a university. On in any other States except Nebraska, Iowa
January 9, 1802 — a year and seven weeks and Oregon, 99.51 per cent, of Ohio's people
before the inauguration of Tiffin, the State's between ten and fourteen vears of age being
first Governor — the territorial legislature able to read and write.
enacted that: "There shall be an university Another educational agency, the newspaper,
instituted and established in the town of appeared in Ohio even earlier than the
Athens," and a charter was granted to it in college. In the cluster of log huts with
I
3238
A HUNDRED YEARS OF OHIO
their three hundred inhabitants which St.
Clair christened Cincinnati, in honor of the
society to which he belonged, William
Maxwell, in 1793 (earlier than the establish-
ment of any of New York City's present
newspapers except the Commercial Advertiser,
founded in the same year), began printing
the Centinel of the NortJiwcsterii Territory, the
first newspaper published north of the Ohio.
iMaxwell's paper's descendant, under consoli-
dations, reconstructions and changes of
name, is today Cincinnati's Commercial-
Tribune, the oldest newspaper in any western
State. Nathaniel Willis in 1800 started the
Scioto Gazette, which is flourishing today, in
Chillicothe, then the territorial capital, and
afterward for years the capital of the State.
The fourth State in population, Ohio is
fourth also in 1903 in the number of her
newspapers, although she has more news-
papers in proportion to population than
either New York or Pennsylvania.
Among her literary celebrities residing
outside her borders are Howells, "Susan
Coolidge," and Edith Thomas, as well as the
historians, James Ford Rhodes, Hubert
Howe Bancroft and William M. Sloane.
While residing in Cincinnati with her husband,
Calvin E. Stowe, who was connected with
Lane Theological Seminary, of which her
father. Doctor Lyman Beecher, was president,
Harriet Beecher Stowe got some of the
incidents, scenes and suggestions which
inspired "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
CAUSES OF Ohio's political preemixence
"I suppose that Ohio has got all that she
deserves," said General Garfield, on the
morning of March 4, 1881, just as he left his
hotel in Washington to go to his inauguration.
"Ohio has got all that the other States will
stand, anyhow," said a distinguished New
York Republican leader, to whom these
words were addressed.
Unmistakably that State had the centre
of the stage on that day. Hayes, the retiring
President, made way for Garfield, to whom
Chief Justice Waite administered the oath of
oihce, and close to these the other most con-
spicuous personages on the platform were
William T. Sherman, Commanding General
of the Army, Philip H. Sheridan, second in
command, and John Sherman, who had been
the largest figure in Hayes' Cabinet, who
had just been returned to the Senate, and
who was destined to have a longer career in
that body than any other man who ever
entered it — all natives and residents of the
commonwealth except Sheridan, who, though
bom elsewhere, passed the greater part of
his life in the State of Ohio.
What have been the causes of Ohio's pre-
eminence in America's public life of the past
few decades ? Some of them ma}' be broadly
outlined thus: Starting out with the best
blood of the nation, situated at the gateway
of the great W^est, she had at the outset a
majority of the immigrants from the States
which furnished the bulk of the migrating
peoples and of the European immigrants,
and she was the pathway of those who went
farther into the Mississippi Valley, or be^'ond
the great river. Situated at the meeting
point of the North and the South, the East
and the West, of the later days, she focused
and reflected all the streams of national
tendency. Location, lineage and education
gave her citizens an initiative, a daring and
an individualism which enabled them to
impress themselves on the country's social
affairs and on politics.
As a path-breaker in politics she furnished
in Thomas Morris the earliest avowed aboli-
tionist who ever served in Congress. She
gave more votes to Bimey, the Liberty
party's candidate for President in 1840 and
1844, than all the rest of the West combined.
More stations of the underground railroad
were in Ohio than in any other State. This
courage and initiative were represented even
in follies. Her Vallandighajn became the
leader of the Copperheads of the North in
the Civil War days, but he was overthrown,
while a candidate for Governor of Ohio in
1863, by John Brough, the Unionist nominee,
by a majority of 101,000, the broadest
margin ever gained by a candidate for
Governor in an}' State up to that time.
Under the leadership of Pendleton, Allen and
others, she incubated greenbackism in 1867,
and quickly gave it a national vogue, but the
same spirit of Ohio independence and courage,
incarnated in Rutherford B. Hayes, defeated
Allen in the Governorship canvass of 1875,
checked the rise of the Greenback wave,
overthrowing the so-called "Ohio idea,"
and won for Hayes the presidency in 1876.
Tom L. Johnson, running a Socialist pro-
gramme with a circus attachment, was
beaten in the State election of 1902.
A HUNDRKl) YEARS ()!'' OHIO
3239
Her independence and individualism made
her a doubtful State in tlie Whi^ party's days,
and sent her occasionally to that party's side.
Although won by the Republicans in every
presidential canvass since their party first
appeared, her Republican lead has often been
short, and it was so small in 1892 that one
Cleveland elector squeezed in, notwithstand-
ing the fact that the Republican candidate
was one of her native sons, Benjamin
Harrison. Tod and Brough, Democrats —
both supported by the Republicans on Union
tickets — were elected Governors of Ohio
during the Civil War. Several Democrats,
in straight party fights, carried the State
for Governor since the war. Beginning with
Thurman, who succeeded the old Republican
stalwart, Benjamin F. Wade, the Democrats
had one member of Ohio's delegation in the
Senate from 1869 to 1897, when Calvin S.
Brice retired, and for part of this quarter of
a century they had two members in the
Senatorial chamber.
An "October State" until a comparatively
recent time, her State elections every four
vears, which occurred two or three weeks
before the presidential vote of the country
was cast, assumed a national character,
which sent into that State the strongest
stump-speakers that each party could muster.
Thus the canvass commanded the entire
country's attention. The election of a
Governor in 1903, in which the Republicans
will select a new man and in which the
Democrats intend to make a supreme effort,
will attract more attention than any other
State campaign of the year. To a larger
extent than most of the other States, Ohio
has selected strong men for both branches of
Congress, and has kept them there for long
periods, Sherman's thirty-two-years' service
in the Senate exceeding that of Benton,
William R. King, Justin S. Morrill, or any
other person who ever sat in that chamber.
Moreover, Sherman was in the House six
years and in the Cabinet more than five years.
From 1820 to 1890, when Illinois got ahead
of it, Ohio was the most populous of all the
western States, and for most of this time it
was the third State of the Union, and its elec-
toral vote was correspondingly an object of
great attraction for all parties. Here are some
I of the reasons why Ohio won the reputation,
obtained the vogue and exerted the swav
r—
Ohio has made much history. She began
making it long before her admission as a State.
Greater than Tnjjan wars were waged within
her borders in the wild brave days of the
country's youth. The story of Ohio's career
is an epic of the conquest of America.
At the annual dinner of the Ohio Society in
New York City, on January 16, Secretary of
State Hay corroborated the conclusions of
Mr. Harvey in the following words:
"A distinguished American some time ago
leaped into unmerited fame by saying 'Some
men are born great, others are born in Ohio.'
This is mere pleonasm, for a man who is born
in Ohio is born great. I can say this as the
rest of you cannot — without the reproach of
egotism, for I have suffered all my life under
the handicap of not having been born in that
fortunate commonwealth. I was born in
Indiana, I grew up in Illinois, I was educated
in Rhode Island, and it is no blame to that
scholarly community that I know so little.
" I learned my law in Springfield and my
politics in Washington, my diplomacy in
Europe, Asia and Africa. I have a farm in
New Hampshire and desk-room in the District
of Columbia.
" Of my immediate progenitors, my mother
was from New England and my father was
from the South. In this bewilderment of
origin and experience I can only put on an
aspect of deep humility in any gathering of
favorite sons and confess that I am nothing
but an American.
" I lived a little while in Ohio and was very
happy there, but obeying a call which seemed
to me imperative, I went to Washington some
twenty years ago. I might be pardoned for
thinking I had not left Ohio, for every great
department of national activity and power
was under the direction of a citizen of that
masterful State.
"The President was an Ohio man, equally
distinguished in character and achievements ;
the finances of the country were in the strong
and capable hands of -John Sherman, the
army gladly obeyed the orders of Tecumseh
Sherman, with Phil Sheridan as second in
command, while at the head of our august
Supreme Court sat Chief Justice Waite: the
purse, the sword and the scales of justice, all
in the hands of men coming from a State
which breeds men who know how to make
war, to make monev and to make laws. "
THE MUNICIPAL CHARACTER AND
ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHICAGO
THE FORWARD BOUND OF OPINION ON SOME GREAT ECONOMIC SUBJECTS-
DEMOCRATIC TO THE CORE — THE PRAIRIE OPEN-MINDEDNESS —COMMON-
PLACE ACHIEVEMENTS THAT SEEM REVOLUTIONARY IN THE EAST— THE
UPLIFTING POWER OF A FEW MEN— A RIGHTEOUS KIND OF TAMMANY— THE
MOST INTERESTING GREAT CITY IN THE WORLD IN ITS BOLD INNOVATIONS
BY
FREDERIC C. HOWE
Theories attd plans for municipal reform Jill volumes, but little has been written to show, in careful summary, what
our great cities have recently done. What definite progress are they making in good government and in the building up
of civic character ? For a decade or more tnany thoughtful men and many earnest organizations have been at work.
Some great problems have been solved in some cities ; others in other cities : and others remain 7tnsolved.
In this article and in several more that are to follow a first-hand, personal study of the achievemettts, the present con-
dition, and the character of some of our principal tnunicipalities is made in definite concrete terms. These articles are
written to help to a clear understa?iding of what has been done toward the solution of the gravest problem in democratic
government.
PARADOXICAL as it may seem, one
can appreciate Chicago only after he
has known the prairies of the far
West. The stragghng railway towns scat-
tered here and there along the great trunk
lines which enter the city are miniature
Chicagos in the making. They are ragged,
unkempt, uncared for and unadorned; an
abiding place just beyond the homesteader's
tent in permanency. The church and saloon
have both come in, and the vigilance com-
mittee has vanished, but the rough-and-ready
life is there. Of tradition there is none; of
restraint, little. Of independence, vigor and
self-confidence there is a surplus. Government
is public opinion in process of formation.
Improvements are emerging, but the prairie
is just around the corner. And Chicago is a
frontier town increased a thousand fold.
This is the impression of the visitor. It is
ultimately the belief of the resident. He may
treat it as his home, and love it as his city,
but at heart he is but one of two million and
odd people whom necessity, choice or chance
has cast into the community which the four
quarters of the globe and the best portions of
America have builded into a city.
Chicago is unfused. It has not yet found
itself. Historically, it happened; as a matter
of fact, it is still happening. It has many
organizations, but little organized life. Some-
time it will have such a life. Then it will be
one of the greatest, possibly the greatest, of
American cities.
Constructed on a rectangular plan, its
business streets present in dreary succession
sheer walls of brick and stone, irregular in
height, size and appearance, unadorned and
ugly. Here and there a building arises which
suggests an architect rather than a contractor;
but beauty, municipal beauty, Chicago cannot
claim, save in palatial residences, splendid
boulevards and magnificent parks. Street
life is still the life of the frontier. Adver-
tisements of every description offend the eye.
The saloon, cheap restaurant and variety hall,
with garish signs of every conceivable nature,
decorate the faces of buildings, corners and
other available space with announcements
of their attractions. Certain streets suggest
a Midway Plaisance to catch the thousands
of fugitive transients who pass through the
city or call it a home.
Under foot are badly built, badly engineered
pavements and sidewalks. The streets are
badly lighted and are a mass of mud in spring
and fall, of dust and wind in summer and
winter. Overhead is a murky sky and dingy
side walls, and everywhere the din and roar of
surface and overhead cars, vans and truck
wagons, strike the ear. Noises of an indcscrib-
able municipal sort prevent conversation,
even if conversation were possible, for Chicago
does not stop to talk on the streets. They are
filled with eager, hurrying, crushing crowds,
rushing, jamming and seeking only to move
on. The purpose of every one seems to be
to get somewhere else. Life is movement.^
CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHICAGO
3241
Ivipling said C'hicago rcnundcd him of an
Indian famine relief-distribution force at
work.
Such is possibly an exaggerated picture of
Chicago in its downtown regions. Every
appearance seems to indicate inefficiency in
public administration. The external evi-
dences are all against good government.
Nothing seems to be done as it should be done,
and most things seem to be neglected alto-
gether. But probably in no city in America
are the seen and unseen forces more at
variance. Chicago is essentially a new city.
Its life is that of the keen, enterprising, rough-
and-ready sort. It is eager. Conservatism
has not had time to crystallize. A full life
is offered to the last comer who has anything
good to suggest. Its hospitality is of the
open, tolerant sort. It holds no obligations
to the past. It has its eye on the future.
Life is always in today, not in yesterday.
For effects it cares little, for immediate life
everj'thing, and for fundamental reality
probably more than any other city in the
world. Chicago is individualistic in the
extreme in its methods, socialistic in its hopes
and ambitions. Within twenty years it will
probably surpass Glasgow, which it suggests
in many respects, in municipal enterprise;
and in half that time it will lead America in
the ownership and operation of public util-
ities. In this respect, Chicago will break the
way. As a force it will revolutionize America.
Precedent, tradition, caste, the opinion of the
club, church or the status quo count for little.
No one speaks with authority, but an essential
truth finds a ready response. The spirit of
the city is one of buoyant, leaping self-
confidence, knowing no obstacle and resolute
in its purposes. And there is a vibrant note
here. Chicago seems to trust the people.
There is no fear of democracy. There is no
hesitant doubt of the city's future.
And the city has an easy tolerance. Its
ideals are economic and industrial rather
than esthetic and refined. And there are
many Chicagos. It is not metropolitan; it
is cosmopolitan. There are 1,314,453 persons
of foreign birth or foreign parentage living
in the city. It is often said that Chicago has
more Germans than any city in Germany,
save two or three, and more Irish than any
city save Dublin. A large percentage of the
officials in the Mayor's cabinet and the
council are of foreign birth, the Irish, German
and Bohemian races pre<lominating. The
city is Pan-l"2uropcan in its temperament and
American to the core in its democracy. It
is extravagant in its luxuries; it is degraded
in its poverty. It employs thousands of
children of school age in its factories and
sweat-shops in defiance of law, and, like a
sponge, sucks to itself the young men and
women of the exuberant western prairies.
It is the Mecca of the tramp and the criminal,
who find access to it easy by the many rail-
roads which converge in Chicago, and the
public are an easy "graft" in their ready
tolerance of the unsuccessful. Its tenements
are crowded and squalid, and are in sight of
spacious palace-like mansions occupying
park-like grounds. Dignity has not yet
come, and the judge of the court may be
found at the ten-cent lunch counter, along-
side of the professional juror. The inner
sanctum of the great financier or the manager
of the leading daily is as open to a humble
depositor or subscriber as to the successful
promoter or advertiser. A conservative
journal may be edited by a philosophical
socialist, and the inner advisers of the Mayor
are likely to be men of the most radical views.
Democracy is of the advanced sort, while
conservative Republican leaders are hospi-
table to many principles essentially radical
to the eastern mind.
Chicago is open-minded. Just as an esoteric
Oriental will fill an auditorium in Boston, so
a new political idea will pass sympathetically
over the city like a prairie fire. While other
communities wait for organization, Chicago
accepts the man. In igoi a bill "for the
submission of questions of public policy" to
the electors became a law of the State. It
required a petition of twenty-five per cent,
of the registered voters to have a public
question presented at the polls. The Legis-
lature thought this percentage would be pro-
hibitive. And it would have been so in the
average city. Not so in Chicago. There
was a breezy wakefulness about the citizens
which forced results with unexpected vigor.
A young lawyer, Daniel L. Cruise, of
comparatively little prominence, who se-
cured his legal education while serving as
a mail clerk, in less than a year after
the passage of the law forced the sub-
mission of three questions to the people
of Chicago by the presentation of a peti-
tion bearing 109,000 signatures. These
I
3242
CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHICAGO
questions and the votes thereon were as
follows :
For ownership by the City of Chicago
of all street railroads within the cor-
porate limits of said city.
For such ownership . . 142,826
Against 27,998
Majority almost five to one in favor 1 14,828
For ownership by the City of Chicago
of the gas and electric light plants, said
plants to furnish light . heat and power
for public and private use.
For such ownership .... 139,999
Against 21,364
Majority almost six to one in favor 1 18,635
For the nomination of all candidates
for city offices by direct vote of the
voters at Primary Elections to be held
for that purpose.
For direct primaries . . . 140,860
Against 17.652
Majority almost eight to one in favor 123.208
To the surprise of all, both the friends and the
foes of the referendum, the majority in favor
of these questions was far heavier in the
Republican wards than in the downtown
districts, a refutation of the idea so preva-
lently advanced that municipal ownership
is sought only by irresponsible and property-
less classes.
Of a similar sort was the contest waged by
two women school-teachers, Miss ^largaret
Haley and Miss Catherine Goggin, represent-
ing the Chicago Teachers' Federation. The
school funds of Chicago were inadequate.
Teachers were unpaid, and underpaid, were
retired for a portion of the year and the
schools closed. It was discovered that the
law requiring the taxation of public service
corporations at their franchise value was
ignored by the taxing bodies. The teachers
raised 82,000 to contest the question. Mass
meetings were held all over the city, able
lawyers were engaged, mandamus proceedings
were begun, and carried through one coi:rt
after another until the Supreme Court issued
a writ requiring the taxing authorities to
place these properties upon the tax duplicate
at their full market value. By this proceed-
ing S6oo,ooo of back taxes was turned into
the city treasury and an annual increase of
$1,000,000 made to the city revenue.
Such is the force of individual effort in
Chicago. The citizen seems to believe in
his own powers and sets out to achieve his
purposes without organization, whether it is
in business, politics, philanthropy or reform.
In 1893 a few men began an agitation
for civil service reform. Xo more hope-
less cause seemed conceivable. The two
political parties were boss-ridden and
seemed impregnable in their control of the
city and the Legislature. Corruption, vice
and spoils were in the ascendency. In 1895
one of the best civil service reform acts in
America was passed at Springfield. It was
achieved not by argument merely, but by
careful business and campaign methods.
Not only was local interest aroused, but
Chicago manufacturers, jobbers and profes-
sional men distributed tens of thousands of
printed letters and postals all over the State,
to be sent by men to their Assemblymen,
asking their support for the measure. Spring-
field was deluged with petitions, letters and
postals. The Assembly was forced by the
burden of the demand to ignore the party
lash. They responded by passing the act as
desired. For several years the measure
received scant support from the local admin-
istration. The spoilsmen were too much for ,
the Mayor, whose appointees to the commis-
sion "took the starch out of the act." Today
all this is changed. Alert public opinion has
forced the appointment of better commis-
sioners and they in turn dignify the act in
its administration. The result has been a
reformed public service. A better class of
men are seeking oflEice. A higher morale
characterizes public work. Enforced politi-
cal assessments are at an end. No longer are
pay-rolls padded at election time ; inde-
pendence and self-respect pervade the depart-
ments. The city hall machine, in so far as it
is an official organization, is broken, and
public office is becoming a public trust.
Today even the elective officials indorse the
law and encourage its honest demonstration.
Yet another instance of the force of person-
ality. Six years ago Chicago was governed
by the "Gray Wolves." The crooks had
control of the City Council by a vote of
about fifty-six to twelve. The office of alder-
man was rated as being worth S50.000 a year.
In 1896 John Maynard Harlan, son of Justice
Harlan of the Supreme Court, with one or two
other young men, entered the Council. He
arrested public attention, called a crook a
crook, and the corruptionist, whether rich or
poor, by similar terms. He manufactured
CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHICAGO
3243
headlines for the press. About the same time
the Municipal Voters' League was formed by
a few energetic men. Among them were
Walter L. Fisher and Edwin Burritt Smith.
The League solicited funds and began to issue
bulletins on the eve of election, giving the
voters full information as to candidates for
the Council. The announcements went into
the lives, characters and public records of
the candidates.
At first the public received the announce-
ments with indifference or suspicion. The
politician treated the bulletins as a "kid-
glove" effort of the "rayformer,", who would
soon tire of the business and return to his club.
But the League stuck to its purpose. It
secured headquarters. It employed secre-
taries and investigators. It elected some
aldermen. Soon the public began to trust
its statements. The press seconded its efforts,
and the press of Chicago is independent and
non-partisan in such matters. The politi-
cians began to wonder. Soon the political
leaders brought their candidates to the League
for inspection before they announced their
candidacy. Today the public awaits the
League's announcements and follows its
advice. A trained staff is constantly em-
ployed. The League is in politics to stay.
It is the best organized machine in the city
and has Tammanyi'ied the honest and intelli-
gent voter. It is the most effective organiza-
tion of its kind in America. Its administra-
tion is centralized. It is quick and free from
machinery. It has no axes to grind; no
political purpose to advance. It is disinter-
ested and inspired with a love for the city
and decent government. It has 100,000
voters of the city classified and indexed, and
has succeeded in electing fifty-five aldermen
out of seventy, who are honest and competent.
This majority controls the Council on a non-
partisan basis. They are conscientious in
their attention to public duties, and far
and away the most efficient municipal
assembly in America. For several years not
a boodle ordinance has been passed by the
Council.
But this giant of a city is bound, Gulliver-
like, by the thongs of a State Constitution,
adopted in 1872. Its hands and feet are tied.
It has issued no bonds since the World's Fair.
Its valuation for purposes of taxation is
kept down to twenty per cent, of the true
valuation. The assessment amounts to but
I
$374,580,440. Its bond limit is but five per
cent, of its valuation for purjmses of taxation.
As a result, the city is limited in its bor-
rowing powers to one per cent, of the real
value of property. Its indebtedness is lower
today than it was thirty years ago when the
population was but little more than 300,000
and the city had an area of but thirty-six
square miles. Today, it covers one hundred
and ninety-six square miles. The bonded
debt is but $19.42 per capita. It was $46 per
capita in 1 87 1 . The per capita debt of Boston
is $91.61 and of New York $81.27. New York,
with half the street mileage of Chicago, spends
five times as much for their cleaning, while
Boston, with one-seventh the mileage of
Chicago, spends a much larger sum for this
purpose. With the exception of the expen-
diture for police, fire and health, all depart-
ments of the city are on the same inadequate
basis. The per capita revenue collected per
annum is less than any other large city in
America, with the exception of Cleveland
and Indianapolis. It is but $15.81 per capita
as compared with $45.37 per capita for
Boston and $30.35 for New York. The city
cannot borrow any money for permanent
improvements, however imperatively they
may be needed, and is waiting release from
the limitations imposed upon it by a country
Legislature to take up plans for municipal
betterment on an extended scale. Chicago
needs a new charter. Were it freed from
the Legislative restraint and given virtual
home rule in its local affairs it would astonish
the world.
Like many of our American cities, the
charter under which the city operates is a
historical survival. In the complexity of its
machinery it suggests London. Until very
recently, the rural township government
existed side by side with the city government.
In addition to this, there still exists a county
administration under three commissioners,
despite the fact that there are less than a
hundred thousand people in Cook County
outside the city limits. There are three
separate Park Boards, two of which are
appointed by the Governor and one by the
Circuit Court. A sanitary sewer district has
charge of the construction of the drainage
canal. Altogether, the municipal functions
of Chicago are divided up among eight differ-
ent corporations, each of which maintains
its own officers, levies its own taxes and
3244
CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHICAGO
expends its own money without regard to
that unity of action so necessary in efficient
administration.
A magnificent park system has been devel-
oped under these boards, with forty-five
miles of splendid boulevards connecting one
part of the city with another. Certain streets
have been developed into residence boule-
vards, and the parks themselves have been
turned into veritable commons or play-
grounds for the public. No "keep off the
grass ' ' signs depress the' spirit of sport ; an
increasing interest is shown in the develop-
ment of public baths and playgrounds. At
present there are twenty-four playgrounds
in use. Public -spirited citizens have taken
up a project of unparalleled possibilities for
the construction of a breakwater botdevard,
extending from Jackson Park to the mouth
of the river in the centre of the city.
The plan contemplates an esplanade or
speedway 500 feet broad and from five to
seven miles in length, constructed far out into
the lake, and enclosing a lagoon for pleasure
craft and sports between it and the shore.
The estim_ated cost of this development is
$25,000,000. The plan is unique in America or
anywhere else in the world, and will, if carried
out, redeem the loss which Chicago has suffered
from the occupation of the lake front by the
railroads. A similar project has been dis-
cussed for the construction of abutting quays
along the Chicago River, which could be used
for business, promenade and architectural
purposes, and which would convert that river,
which now runs clear as the lake itself, into a
stream attractive as the Seine at Paris, the
Thames at London or the Oder at Berlin.
These are Chicago dreams. But in this great
western metropolis the dreams of today have
a way of becoming realities tomorrow.
The responsible administrative agencies of
the city are the Mayor and the City Council.
"While eastern cities, affrighted at the ineffi-
ciency and corruption of their representatives,
have abandoned the democratic traditions of
the past, and have lodged great power in the
Executive and left the Council an anomalous,
powerless survival, Chicago has retained the
early type and reposes large powers in its
aldermen. The City Council is a body of
seventy members, two of whom are chosen
from each ward. They receive a salar}^ of
$1,500. The budget of the city is made up
by the Finance Committee, subject, as is all
legislation, to the veto of the Mayor. Six
years ago the City Council was a byword of
reproach. Candidacy for membership in it
was almost a confession of dishonesty. An
aldermanic syndicate trafficked openly in all
sorts of legislation. It granted franchises to
itself under the guise of a dummy. These
franchises were sold by the syndicate to the
highest bidder or were used as "strikes"
against the existing railroad companies. In
1896 the Council granted six franchises of
immense value in utter disregard of public
protest. Today but four of the old gang
remain in the Council. The corruption bom
of public franchises and grants in the streets
is at an end, and the public go to bed on
Monday evening with reasonable assurance
that nothing will be done by the Council
seriously to imperil the city's interests. This
has been largely achieved through the efforts
of the Municipal Voters' League, and there
seems to be no public sentiment demanding a
substitution of larger executive responsibility
for the distributed democratic powers which
the Council now enjoys.
Still, the office of Mayor remains a dignified
post. The Corporation Counsel, the Comp-
troller, the Commissioner of Public Works,
the heads of the Fire and Police Departments
are all executive appointees, as are the mem-
bers of the Civil Service Commission, the
members of the School Board, the Health
Commissioner, the City Electrician, the Build-
ing Commissioner, and a number of other
officials. Many of these officials are men of
talent, with a full sense of official responsi-
bility. The merit S3-stem has relieved the
Mayor and his subordinates from the stress of
the spoilsman, and has freed their hands for
large public business.
In the one community in America where
the spirit of the people, the conditions of
trade, the topography of the city and the
wide dispersion of population unite in demand-
ing excellence and rapidity in local trans-
portation, we find the worst of conditions.
Aside from the suburban and elevated rail-
road traffic, the service is slow, inadequate
and dilapidated. Cable, overhead electric
and horse cars block the streets; the equip-
ment is worn out; the cars dirty. This is
explained by the companies on the ground
that their franchises are about to expire, and
that improvements cannot be made until this
question is disposed of. And this is the
CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS OK CHICAGO
3245
burninjT issue of municipal politics in Chicajj;o.
All others are subordinate to it. For the i)ast
half-dozen years the City Council, the Munici-
pal Voters' League and the press have been
studying the franchise question in a mo?t
intelligent manner. Many valuable reports
have been published on the subject, and the
present policy of the city seems to be one of no
franchise extension until the city is empow-
ered by the Legislature to own and operate
the lines and no action under such power
until the question has been submitted to a
vote of the people for approval. Apparently,
the preponderance of opinion is in favor of
public ownership, if the referendum vote of
last year is any index of public opinion.
But the city's financial condition would
seem to preclude such action now, and the
present purpose of the city seems to be in the
direction of a short franchise, with full return
to the city in the form of low fares or a tax
upon gross receipts, and better service, with
an underground subway system through the
business districts to relieve the congestion of
traffic. This, with full public accounting,
and the right of the city to acquire and operate
the roads at any time, seems to be the pro-
gramme of the administration. And no city in
America has proceeded with more intelligence
in the treatment of this great question than
has Chicago, and there are many who predict
an early ownership of the entire transporta-
tion system by the municipality.
The friends of municipal ownership insist
that the question is no longer a speculative or
experimental one with Chicago. They say it
is foolish to contend that the city cannot
successfully operate its own street railways.
They point to the water and electric lighting
plants for verification. The former system is
a most extensive one, the supply of water
being obtained from Lake Michigan through
immense submarine tunnels, constructed by
the city under the bottom of the lake, to
intake cribs some miles from the shore. The
plant has been in the hands of the city since
1854, when it was purchased from a private
corporation. The cost, without allowance for
depreciation, has been more than $34,000,000.
Its present bonded indebtedness is $4,000,000.
The gross earnings for the fiscal year ending
December 31, 1901, were $3,504,457, while
the net earnings to the city, after all expenses
for operation, maintenance and interest are
deducted, were more than $1,250,000.
Chicago also lights its own streets by elec-
tricity. It claims to do this for $57.48 a
light, which figure, however, does not include
loss of taxes, interest on investment and some
other charges. The j)lant is free from indebt-
edness, having been built from the proceeds
of taxes levied for that purpose. The prop-
erty of the department is valued at $1,300,000,
and is ably conducted under the merit system.
Two other enterprises of tremendous magni-
tude merit notice. One of these is the con-
struction of the Chicago drainage canal at a
cost of nearly $40,000,000. This great project,
which covered a quarter of a century of
agitation and work, has finally been completed
except as to a portion of the intercepted
sewer system. By this system all the sewage
of the city will be dumped into the canal, the
river's flow will be reversed, and Lake Michigan
will be utilized as a great natural flushing tank,
carrying the sewage into the Mississippi
River. This will prevent the pollution of the
water supply of the city, will cleanse the
Chicago River, and will ultimately render
serviceable immense water-power for public
uses. When this is finished the water supply
of the city will be as free from impurities as
the lake itself. Already the Chicago River
has become a clean flowing stream instead of
the vilest of sewers, to the great comfort and
growing health of the city.
In addition to this, the city has gradually
brought about the abolition of the railroad
grade-crossing. In 1892 355 deaths, or
twenty-three per cent, of those from accident
in the city, were caused by the railroads. In
1 90 1 the number of deaths had been dimin-
ished to 241, or fourteen per cent, of the
accident cases. Hundreds of miles of tracks
have been elevated above grade by ordinances
of the Council. This has been done without
cost to the city, the expense being borne by
the railroads themselves. The tracks are
unsightly, it is true, and it is possible that
future years may cause the community to
regret that they did not require the tracks to
be placed below grade rather than above; but
it is a remarkable achievement in the face of
the obstacles which the railroads usually
interpose to such legislation.
The problem which is the most serious one
in New York — i. e., the relation of the public
and the police toward vice, the saloon and
gambling — is also a problem in Chicago. But
it is solved on the frontier principle. The
3246
CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHICAGO
easy tolerance of another man's habits which
marks the West characterizes the city admin-
istration so far as it relates to these questions.
For Chicago is a "wide open" town. The
saloon closes when the last customer departs.
Sunday differs from the other days of the
week only by the volume of business done.
The theatre, the variety show and other
forms of public recreation flourish on the first
day of the week as they do on the seventh.
And there seems to be no general demand»
for a severe enforcement of the Sunday-
closing laws. At least, this question does
not present itself as a political issue ; and the
public, whether moved by indifference to
such matters or a desire for the utmost free-
dom, raises no organized protest against the
continuance of these conditions.
The police force of the city has been sub-
jected to severe arraignment in the past. The
various forms of vice and gambling were said
to be subject to police tribute and blackmail.
There is reason to believe that there has been
considerable improvement in this regard in
late years, but the street evidences indicate
a widespread prevalence of vice and crime in
striking contrast to some eastern cities.
Part of this is due to the fact that Chicago
receives at one time or another the flotsam
and jetsam of the whole country. Moreover,
it is the trading centre of the West, and the
drovers, ranchmen and miners look upon it as
their eastern rendezvous. The lack of fixity
in employment, the immense foreign popula-
tion, the railway terminals which dump the
criminal and the tramp into the city's popu-
lation, all contribute to this condition. The
morale of the police force is not of the highest,
nor the protection to life and limb of the best.
Chicago does not seem to get her money's
worth from her police force, and it is prob-
able that this department of public service
will respond to better conditions only with a
change in public sentiment toward law and
order.
Any intelligent opinion of the administra-
tion of Chicago must have in mind many
things not visible on the surface.
The large western cities, especially those
whose growth has been rapid, are burdened
with many things to be done, with few people
to do them. They have no accumulated
experience to draw upon, and are like the
western farmer who can find no time to paint
his house because lie must first get in his crops.
Moreover, Chicago's financial resources are
inadequate, and apparently there is no means
of relief save through a State constitutional
convention. Her temper is easy and tolerant
of vice and even of lawlessness. The political
machine and the party boss are still formid-
able, though they are held in check by a
steadily increasing independent vote which
esteems the city above party. The dignity
of public office is increasing and the City
Council is coming to be looked upon as a door
for higher political preferment. Partisan-
ship and favoritism play a large part in local
matters, but bribery and direct corruption are
practically at an end. The merit system is
well administered, and economy is enforced
by the financial limitations of the city as well
as by a recent investigation made by a firm of
expert public accountants, who have reorgan-
ized and placed the departments on a strict
business basis and have rendered possible a
great reduction in the working force and a
consequent saving of nearly $100,000 to
the city in salaries.
The one fundamental need of Chicago is to
be free from the limitations placed upon her
by the State constitution, free from the
ignorant control of an indifferent State Legis-
lature, free to put the tremendous powers
lying more or less dormant in her life or
absorbed in commercial pursuits, to work on
her upbuilding. A city that can do the
things she has done in the face of the obstacles
that have been overcome can be trusted to do
an3^hing. Chicago is a giant manacled and
fettered by a rural community inspired by
fear and ignorance. The State will not
unloose the chains, partly because of the
corrupt spoils which come from local legisla-
tion, partly because partisan leaders and
franchise owners fear the city will put an end
to their sinister purposes.
But endow Chicago with home rule, give
her such powers as she sees fit to exercise,
and she will advance by leaps and bounds;
her civil development will equal her wonderful
commercial expansion; for no city in America
is more ambitious, none is freer from obstruc-
tive conservatism, and none can claim more
distinguished contributions to the power of
the American people to abolish abuses and
reestablish local self-government on an endur-
ing foundation. And this is a city which six
years ago was a reproach to her citizens and a
byword of corruption to the* nation.
WIDENING THE USE OF PUBLIC
SCHOOLHOUSES
HOW THE EXPERIMENT SUCCEEDED IN BOSTON OF OI'ENING
THEM ALL DAY AND ALL THE YEAR— INDUSTRIAL CLASSES,
PLAYGROUND FACILITIES AND BATHS— APPLYING THE SYSTEM
IN CONGESTED DISTRICTS— THE COST AND THE REAL SAVING
BY
SYLVESTER BAXTER
WHEN the public pays for schools, it
pays for institutions in the form
of grounds and buildings that lie,
as a rule, in profitless idleness eighteen hours
out of every twenty-four. During those
eighteen hours they are fenced-in bug-
bears, in cities at all events, shunned by the
children for whom they have been erected,
a waste of investment that private capital
would not tolerate for a moment.
Boston not long ago awoke to this anomaly
through the influence of Mr. J. J. Storrow, a
prominent young lawyer and a member of the
Public-School Association — a non-partisan
organization which is bringing new vitality
into the city's school system. It was found
that the city's educational plant, which cost
$13,110,700, was being used only five hours a
day for about two hundred days in the year —
only about a quarter of the possible work-
ing time. A special committee, accordingly,
made a start toward greater economy by
experimenting with longer hours of use for
two selected schools, with the hope of extend-
ing the system later to others. The Hancock
school at the North End, where the foreigners
live and where the great majority of the
children leave school at the age of fourteen,
was chosen because Headmaster Button had
already opened several of his schoolrooms
in the evening and allowed his pupils to read
and study in them. The Lowell school in the
suburb of Roxbury, in an entirely different
sort of neighborhood, was the second school
chosen. The work was not regular evening
school work, but what might be called " public-
school extension." Evening classes were
given in cooking, dressmaking, millinery,
drawing, gymnastics and other studies. In
the summer the schoolyards were turned into
playgrounds and the buildings opened as
industrial schools. These activities kept the
schools in use the year round.
At the North End school the yard with its
swings and tilts and sand-courts, and the
building with its classes in domestic science,
basket-making, sewing, drawing and color-
work, embroidery, music, reading and games,
teemed with life. There was a kindergarten
of one hundred and fifty children, a reading-
room furnished by the Boston Public Library,
and in the neighboring Paul Revere school a
bathing establishment that served two hun-
dred persons a day. Did the children appre-
ciate these privileges? The average attend-
dance in the yard of the Hancock school was
two hundred and fifty in the morning and
three hundred and fifty in the afternoon;
and, as only young children were admitted,
it was not uncommon to see a ten-year-old
youngster borrowing a baby to take care of
in order to gain admittance. In addition to
the opportunities given at the schoolgrounds,
moreover, there were field-work and nature-
study classes which brought the children out
of the city to the parks, the woods and the
seashore. As a rule, these children paid their
own fare — ten cents.
Mr. Storrow tells of a visit he made to the
Hancock school one winter night. "I stood
outside the schoolhouse in the crowded
North End street. Not a single room was
dark. The building looked like a great
factory. Within we saw young women learn-
ing to make dresses and trim hats and cook.
At the top of the building I saw a circle of
boys gathered around the master, who was
teaching them to play the violin. In some
rooms foreigners were learning English,
repeating sentence after sentence as each fell
I
3248
WIDENING THE USE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLHOUSES
from the lips of the teacher. Altogether, I
suppose there were twenty rooms in use.
The experimental work was so successful
that the idea has been applied to other school-
houses in other sections of the city, and it is
proposed to extend it until all demands are
met. The scope of the evening drawing-
schools has been considerably enlarged.
Opportunities for training in the fine arts, as
well as in mechanical drawing, are increased,
and free instruction in drawing from life-
models is given. It is particularly desired
to make wider use of the magnificent plant of
the Mechanic -Arts High School, with its fine
facilities for manual training and technical
instruction, by duplicating its day work with
evening courses that would open its opportu-
nities to hundreds who would profit by them
immensely, but who are now barred by the ne-
cessity of earning a livelihood . Such gratifying
results have come from the playground use
of the Hancock schoolhouse yard that it is
now proposed to throw open the yards of eight
schoolhouses in various congested districts.
The idea is to have no supervision beyond
what the schoolhouse janitor may casually
exert. The children will be left to their own
devices. There may be some broken windows
now and then, but it is felt that no partic-
ular harm will be done if these are not too
numerous.
Stress is laid upon making the schoolhouse
of all possible service to the public, even
giving it the character of a sort of free
neighborhood clubhouse. At a crowded public
meeting on the subject held at the Lowell
school, Mr. Storrow said that the committee
wanted to keep the schoolhouses open not
merely for intellectual work, but for anything
that will tend to make our homes more attrac-
tive and comfortable and our lives pleasanter.
"Come here and learn how to make dresses,
to cook, or sew. Moreover, do not always
come here for the sake of work. Get used to
using the schoolhouse for having a good
time; have a dance here in the hall once a
week, if you can. Meet here to discuss
neighborhood matters. In short, we are
anxious to have you wear out the threshold
of this schoolhouse for any purpose that
will make life pleasanter, happier, and more
worth the living. "
The direct economy effected is something
extraordinary. In the summer work at the
Hancock school the expense of the playground,
including the entire cost of equipment, was
only $1.25 for each child. The expense of the
industrial and kindergarten departments for
the same period was only $2.25 a pupil.
With the entire cost of the public schools
amounting to an average of say something
near $30 for each pupil, the additional cost
entailed under the extension system makes
an average of but a few dollars for each
pupil thus served — say $7 or so. With
these additional pupils included in the total
attendance the average cost for each pupil is
brought down very considerably, to say
nothing of the benefits to those who use the
schoolhouses for social and recreative pur-
poses, such as the occasional free concerts
under the auspices of the Music Commission
of the city. Another development likely to
come is their use for courses of free lectures,
as in the public -school extension in New
York City. The extension of these additional
features is trifling in comparison with the total
cost of running the schools, particularly in
view of the benefits derived. The " plant "
itself remains the same, and requires no
enlargement for the purpose. Therefore,
there is no increase in interest and sinking-
fund requirements. The wear and tear is
somewhat greater, meaning a slight addition
for repairs and perhaps for depreciation.
The main item of additional cost, however, is
in operating expenses, comprising principally
the increased charges for heating and lighting,
the expense for the additional staff for instruc-
tion, and the cost of material used — the
Massachusetts plan of free text-books includ-
ing also papers, pens and pencils and drawing
materials. Some charge, for the sake of
exactness, should also be made for the addi-
tional cost to other departments of the city
that take part in the work, like the Public
Library and the music department.
President Eliot of Harvard University has
said: "There is no such waste of a plant as
to shut it up and not use it." The recogni-
tion of this fact in educational economics is
certain to assure an immense advance in the
character of the American people wherever
the principle is practically applied.
WHY SHAKSPERE IS NOT UNDiaiSTOOI)
OUR GREATEST LITERATURE NEGLECTED BECAUSE OF ITS UNINTEL-
LIGIBILITY— CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TO WHICH THE
OBSCURITY IS DUE— THE EXPLANATION OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP
THERE is a Judge in a certain western
town whose habit it has been for
many years to read a play of
Shakspere's to his family every Saturday
evening. The town is a university centre
and above the average in culture, but
the Judge's practice causes comment
because even there, as everywhere else,
the latest novel is far more likely to be
the food of everyday reading than
Shakspere; for Shakspere in the ordinary
American home is used chiefly to fill book-
shelf space. Why? Take down a play,
even one you read at school, and read to see
if you comprehend the tongue in which Shak-
spere wrote. Time has so changed idiom, the
meaning of words and the manner of English
thought, that what was as clear to
Elizabethan theatregoers as Pinero's dramas
to an audience of today is fogged for modern
readers with baffling unintelligibility. Thus,
lurking in the mind of the ordinary reader,
even one who feels the mighty power of
Shakspere's literature, is a haunting sub-
consciousness that Shakspere is "hard
reading. " The reader has a little of the feel-
ing he has toward Chaucer. Some will deny
it, but let those who do take down a play
and try to understand a single scene, as
Shaksperian audiences understood it. It is a
pretty test. This, after all, is why the great-
est literature of any language is neglected
for fustian stuff, or, if not that, for an unvaried
consumption of second, or third, or fourth,
or fifth-rate books. Even those who do read
Shakspere — consider if this be not true —
' ' Aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own
thoughts."
We read about Shakspere, listen to
lectures about Shakspere, talk about Shak-
spere, quote Shakspere; but not one in ten
thousand of us can really read common
passages of Shakspere intelligently. We
patch out a lame sense from his words to fit
our own notions of what their meanings ought
to be. Thus, like poor Ophelia, we make our
Shakspere speak things of doubtful import
that carry but half a sense. His fine speech
is really nothing — empty sound ; though our
crude rendering of it leads us to fine and
stirring inferences, we only aim at his thought ;
we do not hit in the gold. We guess that
there must be a fineness in the lines since
they suggest fine emotions; but there is
nothing sure in our reading and much that is
unhappy.
Take for example the following lines from
the second scene of the first act of ' 'Macbeth, "
where their Norwegian allies turned on the
Scots and aided Macdonwald's rebels:
Soldier: — As whence the sunne 'gins his reflection
Shipwracking storms and direful thunders
So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come
Discomfort swells.
Some editors interpolate a "break" at the
end of the second line, but does even
that give the passage clear-cut signification,
even if the editors were warranted in rewriting
what Shakspere wrote ? The sun does not
reflect its light, nor is it clear from the lines
as written what the storms and thunders do.
"Comfort " could hardly come from a spring —
and why "seem'd to come"?— and the sun
could hardly be a "spring." "Discomfort"
seems a sapless word to apply to a hostile
onslaught of quondam friends. What other
impression, then, is given an unscholarly
reader than that Shakspere used a surpris-
ing number of bombastic words to say that
the Norwegian action made the Scots uncom-
fortable, that the passage not only falls short
of great literature, but is even inept?
This vague, awkward and clumsy English,
however, is only vague, awkward and clumsy
because we try to read it without knowing
the idiom of the time when it was written —
the ordinary, current, everyday speech of
Elizabethan England. If we read Shak-
spere with a knowledge of this language his
works are a different book — indeed, the
greatest and finest literature ever penned,
I
3250
WHY SHAKSPERE IS NOT UNDERSTOOD
compared even with Homer, or Virgil,
Euripides, or Horace.
" 'Gins" in Middle English and early New
English is a common form of the word which
is now "begins, " and not an arbitrary poetic
license; "his" is the regular form of "its" in
Shakspere's time; "reflection" was in
common, everyday use for direct, as well as
indirect, shining when this passage was
written; the verb of motion, when it could
easily be supplied from the context, was
omitted in Middle English and early New
English idiom, and the passage needs no
' ' breaks " or " comes " or " bursts " or " swells ' '
to make clear sense. "Spring" meant
"source " in Shakspere's time, and was applied
to the sun, which was the "source of the
day," — we still have it in our poetic "day-
spring" — i.e., dawning. "Comfort" in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the
regular word for "succor," "aid" — we still
say, "give comfort to the enemy. " " Seem'd
to come " in Elizabethan English is a frequent
idiom for "was on the point of coming,"
"was just coming." "Discomfort," as the
Oxford Dictionary shows, was a common
word for "disaster" in the seventeenth
century, quite intelligible to Shakspere's
audience and perfectly fitting to the thought.
Every one of the words noted in these few
lines, save "'gins," is in common use today;
but each has so changed its meaning between
Shakspere's time and ours that the context
is dull and colorless, the notions vague and
confused, and the sense unintelligible if we
apply to it any standard of unscholarly
criticism.
To go further, one reads in the second scene
of the fifth act of Macbeth :
He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule
As enemies are gathering thick about Macbeth
at this stage in the drama, any modern reader
would naturally assume that "cause" is
simply the modem "cause," but in Eliza-
bethan English the word means "disease,"
and the passage in reality refers to Macbeth's
growing madness. "Naught that I am"
looks simple, but who would be aware that
Shakspere meant "Wicked that I am?" or
•who would understand from " I cannot taint
with fear" that "taint" means "wither"?
The three words, through changes of mean-
ing, no longer convey what Shakspere meant.
Again Macbeth soliloqtiizes in the third scene
of Act V. :
Seyton! I am sick at heart,
When I behold — Seyton, I say ! — This push
Will chere me ever, or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough ; my way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age.
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but in their stead,
Curses not loud but deep, mouth honor, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.
This passage contains two phrases that have
passed into current speech, but it is safe to
say that the sentence following the daft king's
second agitated call to Se^^on is misread a
thousand times to once that it is understood
as meaning, "This contest will chair, or
enthrone me permanently, or overthrow
me now. " A favorite passage from Macbeth
is the well-known apostrophe to sleep, which
contains the line "Sleep that knits up the
ravell'd sleave of care. " It requires knowl-
edge of Elizabethan English to be aware that
" knit " means simply " gather together, " and
that "sleave" is not "sleeve," but a bunch
of loose material like flax or silk fibers ready
for spinning. With this knowledge, the
signification of the passage is far from that
which the ordinary reader gives it.
Macbeth speaks of "the disposition that I
owe"; he means "possess." Earlier in the
play Lady Macbeth says — cold-bloodedly —
of Banquo and Fleance, "In them Nature's
coppie is not eterne," employing the Eliza-
bethan legal term "copy" to say "In them
Life's tenure is not eternal." For another
example one reads in the First Folio, the first
collected edition of Shakspere's plays :
How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding ?
This is after the banquet, at which Banquo 's
ghost appears, when Macbeth and his queen
are discussing the events of the evening.
Attempts have been made by editors through
the use of unwarranted punctuation to make
this read, "How say'st thou? That Macduff
denies his person at our great bidding ? ' ' but as
Lady Macbeth has said nothing of the kind,
such endeavors have left the line as hazy as
they found it. Yet it was common idiom to
Shakspere's contemporaries to say " How
say'st thou that" for "What do you say to
the fact that," a rendering that makes the
puzzling passage crystal clear.
I
WHY SIIAKSPERE IS NOT UNDERSTOOD 3251
These illustrations have been chosen at fashion, destroy the rhythm of the verse. If
random from a single play to show a reason one read in Macbeth, for example,
why Shakspere's dramas are not so often "When I came hither to transport the tidings
■re came a rumor
•' ^ . — vv nen i came nitner to transpor
common reading matter for unscholarly Which I|have heavily borne, ther
book-lovers as their quality makes them pre- ^^ "^^"y worthy fellows that were out."
eminently fit to be, and to hint that a little the second line seems crude; or if one read in
self-examination on the part of those who do " Henry IV.," Part I, in Hotspur's speech to
read Shakspere will prove that the abrupt the King,
assertion that Shakspere is practically unin- "When I was dry with rage and extreme toil "
telligible to modern minds is not so radical one has to wrench the words to make melody,
as it seems offhand. For it is plain that if a It would seem either that " Shakspere
word or an idiom had one meaning to Eliza- nodded," or that he took poetic license,
bethan England and has another to the But "heav'ly" was Elizabethan pronuncia-
English-speaking world of today, to gain tion, and so was "ex'-treme": Shakspere
modern meanings from these metamorphosed wrote here the common locutions of his time,
forms of speech is to comprehend awry, which Stories and legends and superstitions and
is tantamount to not comprehending at all. beliefs, now forgotten, were current in Eliza-
Those editors who have changed the bethan England that gave Shaksperian
Elizabethan spelling, for example substi- passages a point that modern readers quite
tuting "cheer" for "chere" in the passage miss, and so fail to find the matchless
quoted above, as in the Cambridge text, gold the verses really contain. So runs the
have not merely failed to help modern tale. We are taught to read great works in
readers out of the slough of misunderstanding foreign tongues — that is part of a liberal
— they have plunged them deeper in. education — but Shakspere, greater than
Chaucer's poetry and Spenser's is frankly the others, nearer at hand, and a part of the
recognized as being written in a tongue that is stuff of our intellectuality, is neglected or
not ours; explanations and glossaries are "botched up fit to our own thoughts. "
required to understand it. Through an "Appreciative" criticism is naturally unable
unwarranted assurance it has been widely to furnish guides and fingerposts to intelligi-
taken for granted that with Shakspere the bility, and many an editor has lamentably
case is different — that his tongue is ours. It failed to point aright. Some, indeed, have
is not. It requires translation as Chaucer even confused what they tried to make
and Spenser require translation. Take down clear. Readers have accordingly been con-
your text of Shakspere and see if that fact tent either to skip w^hat they could not under-
is indicated, or if the editor has given you stand or to guess at it and read on, with
any clue to the dramatist's meaning. See if associations in mind that Shakspere and his
there are not lines on every page which your contemporaries could not have dreamed of.
education, which, perhaps, has taught you Well-informed persons, moreover, have been
to understand Virgil and Homer, has led to believe that, in order to heighten the
failed to teach you to understand. Not effect of his finer passages, Shakspere delib-
one man in twenty thousand can read erately wrote the less brilliant ones more
Shakspere intelligently, and it is unfortu- crudely. These cruder passages, of course,
nately probable that not one in a thousand are merely those which the ordinary reader
is aware that he cannot read Shakspere is unable readily to translate into meanings
intelligently. clear to his modem mind.
In addition, moreover, to this veil of hazi- With modem scientific scholarship equip-
M ness wrought by the change in language, ped by recent research to tell us to the full
there are other results that cast a blight just what Shakspere conveys — beginning,
Ion Shakspere's glory. Pregnant lines are indeed, to give us Shakspere's Shakspere
taken for bombast. Apparent slips in art or without slips and errors and nods and
in sense are frequent ; stupid editors have been stupid transliterations and respellings —
fond of appending to lines they did not under- the opening of a new century should give us
stand, "Here Shakspere nodded," whereas a Shakspere revival in America as enthusi-
Shakspere didnot nod atall. Again and again astic as that in the early part of the last
AMOMC
TAE WORLDS
WORKERS
THE ADVANCING AUTOMOBILE
THE progressive march of the automo-
bile impresses itself upon us only
when some new and surprising truck or car-
riage passes in the street. The excitement of
the innovation is gone, and the machines are
so common that they go by unnoticed. Few
people realize the vast number of automobiles
of all kinds that are being put together in a
hundred factories or the immense usefulness
they have already served. They are drawing
nearly ever^-thing that horses used to draw.
They are operating great agricultural machines
on the prairies and delivering mountains
of merchandise in the city streets. They are
being tried already along western roadways
in opposition to" trolley lines, which can
travel only on one beaten track. They are,
in every new office they have assumed,
swifter, safer and cleaner than the things they
have superseded. Looking into the future,
prophets are seeing individual machines,
possible to the rich and poor alike, solving
many transportation problems. They are
the crowning achievement of a preeminently
mechanical age.
Many of the late details of automobile
development are interesting. The light bugg\%
for example, unfitted for bad weather and
bad roads, uncomfortable at its best and
adapted only to low speeds and limited mile-
age, has lost favor as a model. In their place
are massive tonneau machines. The "rail-
way car" is the new model, with its standards
of comfort and convenience, if not of speed.
When one sets out on a two-hundred-mile
ride between breakfast and sunset, no fifty-
mile vehicle will give satisfaction. Instead
of flimsy running-gears, we have a steel frame
borne on artillery wheels and heavy springs,
with long wheel-base and easy-riding quali-
ties. Upon this is an aluminum body,
capacious, splendidly upholstered — as com-
fortable and complete as a parlor car. The
tonneau has become popular partly because
of its wide rear seat set well back from the
other and enough higher to overlook it.
One of the indications of a tendency
toward practical usefulness rather than mere
sport is the number of carriages fitted with
canopy tops, storm curtains and removable
plate glass fronts. Hitherto every summer
shower, however light, has meant a drenching,
and only the automobilist can fully realize the
value of this new feature. Automobile cabs,
fire apparatus, ambulances and trucks are
becoming almost commonplace in many cities,
and each of these machines displaces several
horses. There would seem to be no service
the horse has rendered which cannot be done,
and better done, by a machine. The motor
delivery wagon and van for freight transfer,
along with the electric cab, are in straightfor-
ward competition with the older vehicles.
They pay, and that is the test which deter-
mines their fitness.
During the past year steam and electricity
have given way in great measure to the less
reliable but more convenient gasoline motor.
This has been improved in many important
particulars, such as sparking and gear-
changing.devices, and there has been a marked
preference shown for greater power. Twenty
horse-power is neither very high nor very
low this year. France has passed through a
similar enthusiasm for the high-powered
internal-combustion engine, but the French
are now beginning to return to steam. Its
flexibility is a strong argument in its favor
and its faults have been overcome to a
surprising degree. Electricity still has no
improvement to offer upon the old lead cell,
Edison's nickel-iron cell being several months
in the future.
A noveltv which is still untried but which
promises much in theory and may prove
revolutionary is the new gasoline-electric
machine. It should combine every advan-
tage of economy, endurance, ease of control,
reserve power for hill-climbing, and the other
things which either alone possesses — pro-
vided some unforeseen fault does not counter-
act all its virtues.
Although the competition is so sharp that
firms have failed in the past twelve months,
there is no break in prices. Five hundred
dollars is the minimum, about one thousand
the price of thorough efficiency, and several
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
3253
thousand the price of luxurious complete-
ness. The })oor man's automobile has yet to
be made. Tlie many-cylindercd high-power
gasoline engine is hopelessly costly to build
and rccjuires the services of a skilled mechanic.
While it is the prevailing type of motor the
automobile must continue a rich man's
machine. Meanwhile it has made steady
])rogress toward efficiency, simplicity, and
the development of a prevailing type — which
must precede its universal acceptance.
The horse is rapidly losing ground in our
cities and every summer motor vehicles go
out into the country districts. The move-
ment for good roads, started by the bicycle,
is now being hurried on by the owners of
automobiles. The "scorcher" of bicycle days
will soon tire of his racing automobile, already
the horses on our roads are ceasing to fear the
monster, and public interest is proved by the
already large sales this season. The time of
considering automobiles as expensive and
novel toys for amusement has passed long
since, and the measure of its possibilities for
usefulness is so great that the widest play of
the imagination suggests nothing that seems
impracticable.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICAN AND
EUROPEAN PLOWS
THE American plow, simple-looking tool
as it is, is a fine type of industrial art.
The handles, beam, share, mold-board, land-
side, colter and frog fit together at various
angles. Its curved parts are as graceful as a
pigeon's wing. The mold-board of the com-
mon American plow is cut from sheet-steel
made by a union of three plies. The back is
ordinary sheet-steel, the middle ply is tough
and gives the mold-board strength; the front
is tempered so hard in a red-hot bath that a
file will not cut it. This plow-bottom is
ground with an emery wheel and polished on
a grindstone until the turning surface is
smooth as glass. Its bolt-heads fit with such
nicety that it is almost impossible to find
them with the naked eye. The plow is so
carefully adjusted that if it is thrown over
while running it will right itself. There isn't
an unnecessary pound of wood or iron about
it. Even the clevis-pin is tempered to reduce
its size. With this American tool an eighteen-
year-old boy can turn over three acres of
ground a day. But the French farmer looks
with suspicion upon an American plow. So
does the German, and the Englishman, and
I the Belgian.
A common French plow is so different from
the American pattern that not one-half our
1 '"'""
tion. It has no handles. It has a truck but
no seat. It has two shares, two skim-colters
and two knife-colters. In short, there arc
two plows, one in the air, one in the ground,
concave to each other. All the parts are
heavy. It cuts a deep, narrow furrow, and
the skilled plowmaker discerns at once that
it leaves the ground in ridges. This plow is
made in sizes — one for a small horse or a small
ox, another for a horse or an ox, another for
two small horses or two small oxen. There
is still another for two horses or two oxen, and
so on up to six horses or six oxen. The two-
horse plow retails at $50. The maker of this
French tool maintains that it is forged by
hand and that it is much stronger than the
American make.
NATIONAL PECULIARITIES IN AGRICULTURE
PERHAPS the most interesting implement
used by French plowmen is the bascule.
This plow is sometimes eighteen feet long and
of sufficient strength to cut a furrow thirty
inches deep. It is used in plowing for vines
and in cutting drains. It is used occasionally
also by hop-farmers, potato-growers and
gardeners. Near Paris are municipal gardens
fertilized with the city sewage, and these
gardens are periodically plowed with the
bascule. One purpose of plowing is to let
air into the soil, hence the deeper the ground
is worked the more air it will contain. French
farmers, therefore, sometimes attach a hook
to their stirring plows which acts effectively as
a sub-soiler.
In many European countries the soil
becomes very hard. Fields newly plowed
have at times lumps a foot thick that can
hardly be crushed with the heel. For this
reason plows scour easily, but they are held
to their course with difficulty. The clods are
finally reduced by rains, and when sowing
time comes the fields lie in loose ridges.
Theee ridges are easily broken down with a
cultivator and converted into a seed-bed.
The man who owns a small farm in France
cannot afford to have it cut up with dead
furrows or checkered with back-furrows. To
avoid this the French plow is made double.
This plow is composite, being a right and a left
or a reversible tool, and the team goes back
and forth on the same side of the unplowed
ground. The field is finished with only one
back-furrow and a finish-furrow at the hedge.
French plow-horses are stallions and are
hitched tandem. It is not uncommon to see
three men and three horses work one plow.
One man drives, another manages the plow,
while a third follows with a spade to dig up
the "cuts and covers." This crew may plow
3254
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
a full acre a day. The American plow is
evidently not adapted to French custom. If
it were, our exports of plows to that country
would soon reach prodigious invoices.
The French peasant loves his home farm.
He seldom migrates. The comers of his farm
are not right angles. He does not work to a
line, like the American. He inherits a taste
for the haphazard, the picturesque, and he
delights in a free-hand way of doing things.
He cultivates the eye. This makes him an
artist. For centuries poets and painters have
celebrated the grotesque beauty of rural
France. Libraries and galleries everjrwhere
abound with these works. But not one of
them attracts more attention than Rosa
Bonheur's old-time plowing scene in Nivemais.
In the valley of the Guadalquivir a traveler
may still see a type of the primitive plow of
Asia. In the old daj^s it was made of a
crotchet. Xow^ada^^s it is made of two
crotchets ; one is shod with a chisel of iron for
the plow; the other is bound in rawhide for
the handles. Bullocks are yoked to the
implement. In many parts of Europe oxen
are broken to draw from the horns, but these
Spanish and Portuguese cattle generally draw
from the neck, to which a yoke is fitted with
bows. These yokes are sometimes twenty
inches high and only two or three inches
thick. The broad surfaces are not infre-
quently hand-carved in designs. There may
be vines and clusters of grapes and grow-
ing com and the bearded heads of wheat.
Sometimes these decorations are inspired by
religious subjects. The comfort and capacity
of the ox are sacrificed to satisfy the artistic
taste of the peasant. And this makes it
difficult, as one might imagine, to sell many
American plows in Spain.
In Germany the plow is nearly always
geared to a truck. It is heavy and awkward
but strong. Steers and cows are not infre-
quently used for power. The work is done
slowly, but it is done well. In Switzerland
it is not unusual to see a cast-iron plow made re-
versible similar to the "side-hill" tool of West
Virginia. There is little difference between
the English and German plow, except that
the rod-breaker is common in the former coun-
try. The Asiatic plow is still very primitive.
German manufacturers have studied these
conditions and are selling large shipments in
Russia, Siberia and Siam. They retail a plow
in Odessa for $5.
Professor Patrick Geddis, of Edinburgh,
once said that it is easy to tell the character
of a people by the character of their plows.
The Chinaman stirs the soil for his rice-paddy
with a stick and covers the seed with his foot.
The American breaks up his grovind with
three horses and plants his cornfield with
two horses. The stature of the Chinaman is
four feet, that of the American is six feet.
Except in a small Manchurian territory about
Harbin, where a small group of modem grist-
mills has been built, Chinese farmers can
hardly be induced to try an American plow.
It is said that English plow samples have lain
in Mongolia untouched for twenty years. At
home the manufacturer fas4iions his goods to
suit the taste of his customers. The commer-
cial traveler calls upon the trade who want his
goods; the retailer stocks with what his
customers want rather than with what they
ought to have. Foreign trade is conducted
after the same plan.
MEETING THE FOREIGN DEMAND
A FRENCH mowing scythe is only about
twenty-eight inches long. It is seven
inches wide at the heel and broadly curves
along the edge to the point. This scythe is
hung to a straight bar with a single handle —
that for the right hand. This handle is a
post set in the b,ar from which a straight arm
extends; from this arm a second post rises.
The mower wears a belt to the front of which
a cow's horn hangs. This holds a whetstone.
When this rustic's scythe is dull he falls on his
right knee, places the bar over his shoulder,
with the point of the sc}'the in the ground,
and whets the blade. He may even hammer
it on an anvil anchored to a stump or a stone.
This mower will cut one-half acre of grass a
day and the stubble will look as though it
were done with a lawn-machine. The English
mowing scythe is similar to the French, only
not so grotesque.
Notwithstanding the skill of the French
sc\i:he-man, our export of hay-making ma-
chinery is very large. The foreign agent
of a Chicago company asserts that his firm
sells more than twenty thousand reapers
and mowers and self-binders in Europe annu-
ally. Our reaper firms have adapted their
goods to the foreign habit. Many American
one-horse mowers with thirty-six-inch sickles
are used in England, Scotland, France,
Germany, Austria, Russia. Belgium and
Hungary. These machines have opened the
way to other and commoner American pat-
terns. The}' compete with domestic and
Canadian goods, and their superiority is
seldom questioned.
It is sometimes said that American goods
are sold abroad more cheaply than they are
at home. Yet American self-binders that
retail for Si 25 in Iowa cost S225 in Hungary.
Nor is inferior machinery commonly sold
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
3255
abroad. There is an Ameriean firm engaged
in manufacturing sewing-machines with
branch shops in Scotlanch Not infrcciuently
customers on the Continent insist upon
liaving machines imported across the ocean;
but whetlicr made by Scot or Yankee there
is no difference between the price of these
goods of the same grade. A cheaper grade,
however, is made in Scotland to supply a
cheaper demand. These machinery firms
began by making what the Europeans wanted ;
now the European wants what the American
makes. And that is the natural result.
A Scotchman named Bell invented the first
reaping machine which employed the principle
of a vibrating sickle. Laborers became appre-
hensive that the device would lessen the
demand for their service. Accordingly they
held an indignation meeting and proceeded
to destroy the Bell machine with stones and
sledges. In less than five years from that
time the same principle was applied in this
country, and today Scotch farmers buy their
best reapers and mowers in the United States.
But Bell's machine was made to turn to the
right instead of to the left, so that all our
reaping goods shipped to that country must
be made to traverse the field in a way reverse
to the old American custom. The foreign
habit has so impressed itself upon the manu-
facturers, however, that they now supply
their American trade with many machines
which turn to the right.
FACTS OF OUR TRADE WITH EUROPE
GOOSE-QUILL pens and drying pow-
ders are still used in the House of
Lords and in His Majesty's law courts. They
are used in the French Chamber of Deputies and
in the Court of Cassation also. But the people
are coming to care little about maintaining
these ancient dignities. Europeans need our
fountain-pens and blotting-pads; they need
our typewriters and rolling-top desks; they
need our carpet-sweepers and curtain -rollers,
our elevators and electric devices — they are
beginning to buy them in large invoices.
Their carpenters' handsaws are mounted like
our bucksaws and their squares are made of
wood. They need our handsaws, steel
squares, spirit-levels, and screwdrivers; our
hot-water, hot-air and steam heating appara-
tus. Foreigners do not produce these things
as cheaply as we do. As conditions become
i better understood and closer relations develop,
large invoices of these goods will supplement
our exports of cereals, cereal flours, tobacco,
mineral oils, cotton, phonographs, linotypes,
telephones, bicycles, engines, meat products
and machinery. Much will depend upon the
price of the goods and their adaptability. A
Cincinnati hrm was called ujjon t(j dismantle
a lot of wood-working machinery which it had
installed for a firm in Sweden. The opera-
tives could not stand the work — tlie speed
was too high. The feed had been gauged to
the American scale. An expert reduced the
feed. After that all went well.
Englishmen wear a shoe which they call a
boot, quite different from the American gar-
ment. It is large for the foot, made of stout
leather which lacks luster, and has a sole nearly
an inch thick. Frenchmen wear a wooden
shoe which they call a sabut. It is fitted with
a leathern stocking, which latches tightly
around the ankle. Many of those intended
for women are lined with felt. In Germany,
Norway and Holland prodigious wooden shoes
are worn. One reason why American work-
men accomplish more in a day than workmen
abroad is because of shoes. Our shoes are
lighter, easier on the feet, and thus permit
greater action. German leather, however, is
superior and the shoemaker uses a sensible
last. In all these countries felt slippers are
worn about the house, many of them having
soles of plaited cordage. In the Pyrenees
Mountains an important cottage industry
has developed among the peasants who make
these shoe bottoms.
Throughout the Balkan States, in France
and in Russia much leather is tanned and
large quantities of fancy grades exported.
Manufacturers in this country import enamel
leather from Europe. But our shoes are much
neater, they fit better, and they retail at
prices twenty-five per cent, lower than
European shoes. There are reasons, however,
why we do not sell more leathern goods abroad.
In England an important and growing portion
of the shoe business has passed under the
control of profit-sharing, cooperative societies.
Starting in Rochdale, these companies had
a precarious existence for twenty or thirty
years. But success has followed better
methods of administration, and today they
own some of the finest business houses in
Manchester and in other cities in northern
England. The shares are sold at a guinea,
and this enables a large number of mechanics
to own stock.
As a result, all the shoe trade which the
guilds and unions control goes to these
cooperative stores and factories. Such dealers
as Manfield, who also have houses in the
principal cities of Europe, have an established
trade into which it is difficult to break.
Natural conditions furnish another reason
more fundamental than these. During the
winter season it drizzles and rains a great deal
I
3256
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
in the British Isles. Arctics, overshoes and
rubbers are not worn so commonly as they are
in our own country. We must study physical
conditions in order to reach the possibilities
of foreign trade. We have the hides and
quick processes of tanning; we have the best
mechanics for fabricating shoes and the best
operating skill. We have the capital. In
certain commercial fields our supremacy is
admitted, and one reason for the dominating
success of American business men in these
fields is their ability to meet emergencies.
The American inventor, manufacturer and
salesman must come into close personal con-
tact with the foreign trader and consumer.
They must learn the essential facts and adapt
their products to the people for whom they are
planned in order to win success.
FIGHTING HARBOR FIRES
DING — ding — ding ! "
The Captain stopped abruptly in his
conversation with a visitor whom he had just
shown over the Battery fire station, whirled
in his office chair and sat counting the strokes,
his feet under him for a quick spring.
"If that's for us, you come along, too, " he
interjected as the gong paused again, and the
visitor's pulses quickened with excitement
and anticipation.
"We go!" cried the Lieutenant, as he
leaped for cap and coat. A clatter of chairs
and dominoes broke out in the lounging-room
as the men abruptly abandoned their game;
the gong began to repeat, and some one out-
side on the wharf was shouting.
"Meet me in the pilot-house," came the
sharp direction of the Lieutenant, and the
visitor, joining in the rush for the door, was one
of the straggling line as it raced down across
the wharf and swung himself over on a rope
like the others to the fire-boat's rail. As he
made his way forward the lines were cast off,
and before he reached the pilot-house New
York's "floating Niagara," as the firemen
call her, was under way.
The wheel went over to starboard and the
rumble of the steam steering-gear under the
floor mingled with the warning roar of the
whistle as she passed the wharf-end and
swung toward the East River and Brooklyn.
The speed steadily increased until the 750-
horse-power engines were driving her a good
twelve-knots clip and the foam went racing
back in a rolling wake behind. Then the
visitor began to learn.
The New Yorker, the largest of New
York's five fire-boats, carries with her twenty
men: officers, engineers, pilots, firemen and
stokers, when she responds to an alarm.
Steam is always up. When either boiler is
cooled down for inspection and repairs the
other does double duty. In going to and
from fires the boat is in command of the pilots,
and, contrary to the general impression, it has
no right of way. The siren is used only on
entering a slip at a fire to attract attention.
Shore fires one thousand feet back and fires
in the enormously valuable shipping of the
harbor and North River are the New Yorker's
lawful prey. She sometimes releases the
city engines from an obstinate water-front
fire, and reaching out with more than five
thousand feet of hose, her crew drowns the
conflagration in worthless harbor water, to
the saving of the city's fresh- water supply.
But when this fire fighter races down the
harbor to meet some iron furnace struggling
in from the sea with its load of desperate men
and perishing goods, the name "floating
Niagara" is earned. Firebrands may rain
on cement deck and steel sides, but the little
craft closes in; and through hose lines, gal-
vanized iron flooding-pipes and four great
"monitor pipes" — nozzles mounted on pilot-
house and deck like rapid-fire guns on a war-
ship— she pours twelve thousand gallons of
water a minute into the burning hull. There
are ingenious appliances for reaching the fire
however it may be hidden away in a ship's
cargo, and more than twenty streams of from
one to six inches' diameter are available when-
ever they are needed.
An account of the fires against which the
New Yorker has led the attack since she went
into commission would rival in interest the
story of any ship-of-war that ever floated.
Close upon a seventeen-hour fire not long
ago, the New Yorker was called out in the
gray light of the morning for thirty-two con-
secutive hours' more of fighting in the dense
smoke of a city lumber-yard fire. Twelve
million seven hundred and sixty-six thousand
gallons of water thrown and five men disabled
was this fire company's record.
LABOR-UNION STORIES BY AN EMPLOYER
THERE are two classes of men in this
labor question," said a manufacturer
the other day — "men who own property
and men who do not; and the first class is
likely to be the check on the second.
" For instance, there's a mechanic whom I've
known for years — a clean-cut, hard-working,
thrifty man, who has taken good care of his
family and has saved enough money to buy
a pretty home outright. He joined the
union when he saw he could be forced
into it and then forgot all about it — for
he's a hard-working fellow, who is interested
AMONG TIIK WORLDS WORKERS
3257
in his task and believes in his eniph^yer
more than he docs in his labor leader. A
strike was ordered and he reluctantly went
out with the rest. Time hung heavy on
his hands, and he decided that he'd give his
new house a coat of ])aint. So he left an
order with a union painter, and the next
morning he was out early to supervise the
job. lie fidgeted about until 8:1 5, when the
painter drove up and leisurely prepared for
his work. It was half-past nine when the
man began to paint, and then he did it so
slowly that the striking machinist grew
tired of delay and, putting up a ladder on the
other side, went to work himself. He had
been painting away vigorously for some
time when he heard a voice below him :
" ' Hello, what 're you doin' up there ?'
" 'Painting my house,' he answered.
" 'Have you got a union card?' said the
painter.
" 'Yes,' said the man, who was gradually
getting angry at the questioning.
" ' A painter's card?' asked the man below.
" 'No, I haven't a painter's card. I've a
mechanic's.'
" 'Then,' said the painter, 'come down
off that ladder and quit paintin' or I'll leave
the job.'
" The mechanic came down from the ladder
and walked up to the painter he had hired.
" 'Look here,' he said, 'this is my house
and this is my land. Now you get off it
just as quickly as you can pick up your
paint.'
"And he painted his house unaided that day
and the next, and then went back to work
in his old place.
" I remember," he went on, "reading in
The World's Work about the native
labor in India when they put up that
big American bridge out there. The natives
could do only one well-defined task; the
Americans could do almost anything. There's
a machine in my shop that merely needs to
be watched, but it must be watched by a
skilled mechanic. While he is watching
that machine he can do another task that is
more valuable. But by the rule of the
union, that man must sit in a chair all day
and watch that machine. He mustn't do
anything else. It's waste time for him, for
he can't grow very rapidly there, and it's
adding to my cost if production without
doing any one any good. The American
workingman can't afford to be a man with
only one job. They've got to work with us
if we're to keep our prosperity. We can't
do it without their help, and we certainly
can't do it in the face of their opposition."
ONE USE OF MACHINERY
THE picture of an EngHsh or German
farmer walking about his fields in
a pair of brogans made in America from a
hide which, tanned and likewise finished in
America, was originally taken from one of his
own cattle, might be a little fanciful, but it
is within j)Ossibility, as a glance at foreign
trade reports for 1902 will show. We
imjiorted about $60,000,000 worth of hides
and skins, of which a good part came from
England and other European countries, and
we exported, largely to the same countries,
$20,000,000 worth of shoes and finished
leather. Two trips across the Atlantic and
considerable land travel beside offer thus a
fair measure of the superiority of our shoe
and leather manufacturers over their foreign
competitors. The efficiency of the leather
maker helps the shoe manufacturer in his
fight for the world's market, as nearly two-
thirds of the value of his product is the cost
for materials alone.
The introduction of machines that not only
reduce the amount of labor but frequently
replace skilled labor with unskilled, and the
quickness of employers to adopt new processes,
account for our success. A visitor to a modern
tannery would see a man here and there dump-
ing a hide upon a moving feed-table that
smooths and straightens it out and then passes
it through a machine, pressing it evenly and
gently against a revolving cylinder, spiraled
with knife-blades, and drops it out at last
clean and without a cut or tear. He would
see "putting-out" machines that pressed and
scraped tanned hides at the rate of 350 dozen
per day, attended by only one man; or
splitting machines where a belt of thin steel,
sharpening itself by touching an emery wheel
as it whirled, could split a hide with the deft-
ness of magic into sheets as thin as tissue
paper — a machine that can be adjusted to
the thousandth part of an inch. The ancient
tanner paid an expert high wages to guess at
the contents of his hides when sold by measure.
Today an unskilled workman hands the
irregular-shaped pieces to a little machine
that looks something like a table with a
double top, which, quicker than the mind of
the expert could guess it, reckons with
exactness the square contents in both the
metric and standard systems.
But the new processes tised in tanning are
most surprising. Leather used to be tanned
by soaking it for seven days in a weak solution
of hemlock or oak bark to give it color, then in
pits of stronger solution for six weeks, moving
the hides every day or so; then in " lay-away "
pits still stronger for another six weeks; by
3258
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
filling them with new bark for another six-
weeks' soak, and repeating this last operation
thrice or four times. All this made good
leather, but it took from six to eight months.
Today even the thickest hide can be tanned
by chemicals in three hours. Germany has
led in the discovery of new processes, but
American tanners have been quick to follow
the German example.
THE SCHOOL NURSE
ONE of the most important services of
the Board of Health in a large city is
the careful medical inspection of school chil-
dren to stop the spread of contagious diseases.
In some of the crowded districts of New York
last fall more than two thousand children a
week were turned away. Rigid examination
and exclusion like this greatly lessens the
possibility of widespread epidemics. It was
felt, however, that something was due the
children whose education was thus delayed
for the public good. To this end an experi-
ment was tried with a single school nurse,
having much the same duties as the "school
nurse " now so important a part of the London
school system. And the result after three
months was an appropriation by which twelve
regular nurses at the beginning of the new
year were set at work
The nurse by whom the experiment was
tried was assigned a group of four schools
with a school population of about 4,500
children. She visited each school every
school day. Her work was divided into
schoolhouse work and visiting work. At the
school, pupils who were but slightly ailing
received treatment first. When these chil-
dren were cared for Miss Rogers took up her
list furnished by the medical inspector of the
pupils excluded.
Forestalling the danger of contagion, the
child was sent home by the medical inspector.
This separated the pupil from his schoolmates,
however, only during school hours. The
school-going and excluded children inter-
mingled after hours for play. The nurse
visited all of these children at their homes.
She explained to the parents the school and
Health Department rules. She told why the
child must be isolated, how he should be
treated and attended to in order to carry out
the directions of the medical inspector or
dispensary physician and insure an early
return to school. These visits were repeated
that the case might be watched, a record being
made of each case and each visit. A daily
report was handed to the Health Board.
The duties of the school nurse are outlined
in this work. She continues the w^ork begun
by the medical inspector, and works only
under the direction of the Health Department.
She first attends to the minor infections,
which, if neglected, would soon exclude the
child from his class-work. This is done at
the school. Then she attends to the children
who have been sent home — sees that they
have medical attention and regular treat-
ment. She gives the mother or caretaker a
practical demonstration of how it is all to be
done, and exacts a promise of as complete
isolation as is possible. She continues the
work of the previous visit and sends back to
the school for medical inspection all such
children as seem to her to have responded to
the treatment and recovered enough to be
admitted to class-work. Thus she teaches
the child not only to protect himself from
contagion by keeping him from his playmates,
but he learns as well that a cure in time saves
many school days for him, and that the
doctor as well as the teacher is his friend.
A typical case is that of a boy twelve years
old who had never had a day's schooling.
His ambition was to be able to read the street
signs before he began to go to work. His
mother had taken him to school each term,
but because of a slight disease he was always
excluded from the overcrowded schools.
Each time the mother had been sent to the
dispensary, and each time had been given an
ointment, which she had applied. But he
did not have proper care. With the nurse's
help he was soon at school again. At the age
of twelve he began to learn his letters with
the prospect of two years' schooling before
him.
One of the most important results of the
school nurse's work comes with the added
knowledge of how to take care of children's
little ailments which the mothers acquire by
watching the nurse's methods. She fills in a
gap in what, in other ways, is a most admira-
ble and necessary system.
By the addition of the nurses' services the
chance of a bad epidemic among school
children is still further obviated. The child,
moreover, gets immediate and adequate care
at the school and at home during his illness,
and, because of the example of the nurses'
scientific and practical work, better general
care, when sick or well.
riiot"ifraphedby C. M. Bell
MR. GEORGE BRUCE CORTELYOU
THE FIRST SECRETARY OF THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR
(See pages 3337 and 3334)
THE
WORLDfSWORK
APRIL, 1903
Volume V
Number 6
tTbc flDarcb of j£vcntB
IX a general view of tlie work of Congress
during its recent session, the acts that
stand out are such tilings as the tenta-
tive anti-trust legislation and the creation
of the new Cabinet Department of Commerce
and Labor, and the conclusion of the isth-
mian canal negotiations — in other words,
great subjects of commercial rather than
primarily of political importance.
The canal has fortunately been kept clear
of politics. For many years both parties
have been committed to it. In the back-
ground of the anti-trust legislation partizan-
ship does lurk, or the possibility of it. But
the legislation that was enacted was con-
sidered to be in response to a demand made by
the masses of the people. There is no doubt
that the public temper called for at least an
effort to assert national authority to some
extent over the great commercial combina-
tions. Nobody yet knows wiiat this legis-
lation will accomplish; but for the time being
it has quieted, if not satisfied, the popular
feeling that something should be done to
sliow that "the trusts shall not own the
government."
Considered politically, the Republicans
have stolen the Democratic thunder. An
anti-trust cry might have played, and if
prosperity wanes may yet play, an important
part in the next presidential campaign.
But, with fair wind and weather, this cry
can now hardly be used with great effect by
the Democrats against the Republicans.
CopjTight, 1903, by Doubleday, Page
The President (for it was chiefly his work,
because of his persistent agitation of the
subject) has relieved his party of the neces-
sity of occupying a defensive attitude.
Politically considered further, this anti-trust
legislation has not been sufficiently radical
to drive the great commercial interests into
an unfriendly attitude to the Republican
party; or, to put it in another way, the
Democrats have given these great interests
no reason to prefer a Democratic administra-
tion. The party in power, then, rather
strengthened than weakened its popular posi-
tion during this session of Congress.
MR. ROOSEVELT'S PARTY LEADERSHIP
CONCERNING other questions of national
politics as they are left at the close of
this last session of Congress — most of them
are dead or settled, except the tariff. That is
quiescent, but it may at any turn of the road
become active. The anti-imperialistic cry
has ceased to attract public attention. The
large appropriations for the navy (for we are
now definitely committed to a policy of great
naval expansion) can hardly arouse definite
partizan opposition. The old anti-English
yawp is now seldom heard in our national
politics. Coercive measures directed at the
South are not likely to be revived unless they
take the form of an effort to reduce Congres-
sional representation. Of course, the old
free-silver agitation is ended. A straight,
hard, open fight will come, when it comes,
& Company. All rights reserved.
3262
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
about the tarifif; and, until that come, the
Republican party seems to have reasonably
clear sailing before it; and Mr. Roosevelt has
so far kept and strengthened his hold as
captain. In the silent under-world struggle
for party leadership he seems now definitely
to have won. The political outcome of this
past session of Congress was the demonstra-
tion of his victory. The formerly discordant
elders now sing in tune or they sing low.
THE NEGRO CONTROVERSY LOCAL IN ITS
POLITICAL EFFECTS
IT is now hardly more than a year before
delegates will be chosen to the national
conventions. Although we shall have a long
session of Congress before next summer —
and a long session of Congress is sometimes
fruitful of political issues — the outlook for
Mr. Roosevelt's nomination is as clear as
such a thing can be a year beforehand.
His unusual personal popularity has suf-
fered in a part of the Union and for a reason
that can have little or no influence either on
his nomination or on the vote that will be
cast for him. There has been a persistent
and almost violent change of feeling toward
him in the South. If the South could pre-
vent either his nomination or his election, it
would do so. But northern opinion is not
going greatly to concern itself about the
South's difference with the President about
the Negro: or, if it do, sentiment in the
dominant Republican States will show itself
rather with Mr. Roosevelt than against him.
The probability is that this whole subject,
which has caused so much excitement in the
South, will cut a small figure in the next
national campaign — unless the next Congress
happen to give it such expression as may
bring the Negro again into national political
discussion. Such an event inight follow an
effort to cut down the Congressional repre-
sentation of the southern States or an effort
to repeal the fifteenth amendment to the
Constitution. But it is likely that the sub-
ject will be exciting and important hereafter
only in the southern States. For any agita-
tion to repeal the fifteenth amendment, if
it should be made, would bring only futile
discussion and stir up sectional feeling. Its
repeal is the most impossible of impossible
tasks. There is now no reason to suppose
that the present discussion will be an impor-
tant factor in the next national election.
HOW TWO MEN TALKED THE GOVERNMENT
STILL
TWO Senators took (and wasted) nearly
one-third of the working days of the
last session of the Senate — Mr. Quay, in
trying to secure the admission of Arizona
and New Mexico, and Mr. Morgan, in trying
to defeat the treaty for the Panama canal.
Neither had his party behind him. Neither
had a party issue. Neither had a chance
to win. Neither won popular favor. Both
were simply stubborn, and Mr. Morgan was
stubborn for an honest preference. He had
no personal advantage to gain.
The situation was shameful. Yet it is a
situation that may at any time recur for
any purpose — whether for a stubborn whim
or for an unworthy motive. Under the
rules of the Senate, debate cannot be
closed, a final vote cannot be reached by
the majority, no matter how large, until
every Senator who wishes to talk ceases
to talk.
Now, whatever may be the value of free
and thorough discussion, it is plain that one
thing has resulted from this system — the
action which must be taken sooner or later,
and which cannot be forced by the majority,
is reached by "compromise." That is to say,
it is reached practically by traffic — by what
are known in politics as "deals."
Thus it is a matter of historical though
not official record that the passage of the
Dingley tarift"-bill in the Senate was secured
by conceding to an obstinate minority the
passage of the Sherman Silver-Purchase law,
probably the most pernicious and disastrous
financial legislation ever enacted in the
United States. And later the passage of
the misnamed Wilson tariff act was effected
by placating — we had almost said buying —
votes with provisions so abhorrent to
President Cleveland that he refused to sign
the bill, permitting it to become law withou'
his signature.
Can proper and sufficient debate be had
without the privilege of endless talk in tlie
Senate ? Some of the most able and honor-
able members that body has ever had have
thought that it could be. The majority
could have the power to close debate on
fixed conditions and after a certain time,
not arbitrarily — the plan, in substance, of the
House of Commons.
And it must be remembered that Congress
Photographed for The World's Work by Frances Benjamin Johnston
MR. JAMES R. GARFIELD
COMMISSIONER OF CORPORATIONS IN THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR
{See page 3334)
3264
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
is not now, as it was in ourearlier history, the
chief, almost the sole forum of discussion.
The press serves that purpose in some respects
admirably, not merely by the pens of its
writers, but by the publicity it gives to the
utterances of men in a position to influence
opinion. Its efficiency in this direction has
grown far more rapidly than has the efficiency
of Congress. President Roosevelt's speeches
on the trust question last summer were read
by many times more voters than were reached
by all the speeches in Congress during the
session. Xor must it be forgotten that
debate in the Senate, though it may possibly
change opinions, rarely changes votes.
T
THE NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY LAW
HE strong and persistent effort to secure
the repeal of the national bankruptcy
act failed at the last session of Congress;
but the law was so amended as really to
insure its continuance. And it seems to
have proved its worth. Its chief purpose
is to fix such conditions to the release from
debt as tend to make traders honest. Start-
ing with the assumption that it is better for the
community that debtors who cannot pav,
and who have conducted their business in
good faith, and are ready to give up all their
assets to their creditors, should be freed to
begin again, the law was carefully framed
to prevent the release of those who have
meant to cheat or have been criminally
careless or extravagant. The testimony of
commercial organization, especially that of
the strong Credit Men's Association, with its
ramifications in every part of the Union, is
conchxsive that the law has done much to
raise the standard of commercial integrity
in both the retail and the wholesale trade.
It has been found, on the one hand, that
credit is more easily had bv those who are
entitled to it, and on the other hand that
pure misfortune is more readily remedied.
Both debtors and creditors of sound character
have profited by its operation.
The amendments that have been made
to it throw the burden of proof on appli-
cants for discharge of indebtedness that
they have complied with the law, and espe-
cially that they have kept sufficient and cor-
rect accounts. A man claiming so great a
favor from the law on the ground that he
is unfortunate but honest cannot complain
if he is forced to prove his honesty.
PROGRESS IN CHILD-LABOR LEGISLATION
THE movement North and South for
the legislative restriction and regula-
tion of child-labor accomplished definite
results during the recent legislative season.
Child-labor laws were enacted in Alabama,
South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.
In Georgia, where the Legislature meets again
in June, legislation is regarded as inevitable:
and in Texas, where the Democratic party is
committed to the reform, the movement for
a child-labor law will probably be attended
with success. The passage of these measures
in Alabama and the Carolinas shows that the
tendency of southern opinion, even where the
textile interests are strongest, is humane and
sound.
The laws thus far secured in the South are
not perfect. The South, however, has been
the home of the doctrine of " non-interference,"
and the mere recognition of the principle of
State control is a long step in advance.
Climatic conditions are partly responsible fo-^
the conservatism of the measures enacted,
for the child of twelve in the South is usuallv
as fully developed as the child of fourteen in
the North. The Alabama law, which is
similar to the legislation in most of the southern
States, totally prohibits child -labor in factories
for all under twelve, except in the case of the
children of the widowed mother or the dis-
abled father; it prohibits child-labor for all
under ten without exception; it prohibits all
night work for all under thirteen ; and it limits
night work to forty-eight hours per week for
all under sixteen. Such regulations are far
from adequate, but they represent a decided
advance upon conditions in which certain
mills have been working children of from six
to ten years of age for thirteen hours a day —
and sometimes far into the night. Almost
all of the women's clubs in the southern States
have been on the right side of this question
from the first
The movement at the North also for more
satisfactory child-labor legislation in Illinois,
New York and Pennsylvania is likely to
result successfully. Best of all, there is being
created a public sentiment, a national solici-
tude in the interest of the factory child, which
will prove quite as helpful and effective as
better laws.
The essential soundness of the American
character shows itself quickly and firmly in
response to such a movement.
REV. DR. EDMUND M. MILLS
WHO MANAGED THE COLLECTION OF THE METHODIST THANK-OFFERING FUND, BY WHICH $20,000,000
WAS OBTAINED FOR EDUCATION AND BENEVOLENCE
(See page 3300)
rhotographed for the World's Work hy A. R. Dugmore
MR. HEIXRICH CONRIED
THE NEW MANAGER OF THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE IN NEW YORK CITY
THE CORPORATION INVESTIGATORS
3267
THE MORE STRINGENT LAW AGAINST
RAILROAD REBATES
NO amount of preliminary discussion
can throw much Hght on the real
value of the anti-trust legislation of Congress.
It is divided into two parts — that aimed at
interstate railroads and that aimed at other
interstate corporations.
The Elkins bill, which strengthens the
present Interstate Commerce Act, is aimed
at preventing the giving and receiving of
secret rebates. It looks as if its rigid enforce-
ment would make rebates and discriminations
in rates practically impossible. In the first
place, it makes rebates an offense where there
is no discrimination shown. Under the
former law they could not be punished unless
discrimination were proved. Now variation
from the published rates and failure to
publish rates are in themselves punishable.
In the second place, the penalty of imprison-
ment for individuals is done away with, and
every offense of an officer or agent is made
the offense of the corporation, which
may be fined for it from. $1,000 to $20,000 in
each case. Under the old law evidence that
would lead to the imprisonment of persons
was almost unattainable.
In the third place, the taker as well as the
giver of rebates is made accountable, and the
chances of detection are greatly increased.
Finally, the courts are given power to
proceed civilly against corporations, and to
enjoin illegal actions, a power more extended
and elastic than that of criminal procedure.
Special authority is also given to advance
cases under the law by summary action, and
to appeal from the court of first instance
directly to the Supreme Court, which ought
to save much time and uncertainty. It is
the opinion of those best qualified to judge
that this law can be made effective.
At the same time it is to be remarked that
"unity of interest" between the main trans-
portation lines and the main industrial com-
binations has made the old form of favor by
rebates less frequent and less sought after.
So much for the restraining legislation that
is aimed at railroads.
THE LAW TO INVESTIGATE CORPORATIONS
THE new anti-trust law is meant to apply
the remedy of publicity. It provides
for the investigation of corporations by the
new Department of Commerce and Labor.
A Bureau of Corporations is created in the
new Department of which the head is called
the ' ' Commissioner of Corporations. " The law
says that he "shall have power and authority
to make, under the direction of the Secretary
of Commerce and Labor, diligent investigation
into the organization, conduct and manage-
ment of the business of any corporation, joint
stock company or corporate combination
engaged in commerce among the several
States and with foreign nations except com-
mon carriers," and "to gather such informa-
tion and data as will enable the President of
the United States to make recommendations
to Congress for legislation for the regulation
of such commerce." "The information so
obtained or as much thereof as the President
shall direct shall be made public. " For
these purposes he is given the same power as
the Interstate Commerce Commission to
"subpoena and compel the attendance and
testimony of witnesses and the production
of documentary evidence and to administer
oaths."
This is a definite extension of governmental
power. It is admittedly experimental. But
it can bring, in a sense, any corporation under
the investigation of the general Government
whenever the Secretary of Commerce and
Labor may so direct.
THE CORPORATION INVESTIGATORS
IMPORTANT and even surprising conse-
quences may follow these investiga-
tions by the Government into the conduct of
corporations. With more knowledge the way
may be made clearer for further legislation
than it now is; for the Administration and
Congress and the economists themselves are
yet groping — feeling their way toward some
clearer course of action.
At the head of the Department of Com-
merce and Labor the President has placed his
friend and former private secretary, Mr.
Cortelyou, and he has appointed as Commis-
sioner of Corporations Mr. James R. Garfield,
of Ohio, former Civil Service Commissioner,
an able and independent man, of experience
in public life and of aggressive energy, shown
heretofore in the support of excellent aims.
In such hands the authority to investigate
may be used with vigor, and the President as
well as the trusts may be surprised at the
outcome. Probably, on the whole, Mr.
Garfield's roving commission for inquiry, if
3268
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
not exactly the ' ' very long stride in advance ' '
which Mr. Knox declares it, is as long a step
and in as nearly the right direction as could
have been taken.
WHY SO MUCH UNINVESTED CAPITAL?
JUDGE GROSSCUP, of the United States
Circuit Court, recently delivered an
address at the University of Michigan in
which he argued that industrial consolida-
tion was making the mass of the people mere
lookers on and not participants. Yet, as he
showed, the wealth of the people has rapidly
increased. From 1890 to 1900 the increase
of population was about twenty per cent.;
of "general wealth" about twenty-three per
cent., and of bank deposits eighty-five per
cent. Then he put this question:
"Can any one explain this disproportion of the
growth of uninvested capital — a disproportion begin-
ning with activity in consolidation and rising
rapidly as consolidation increased — except upon the
inference that the people, having little confidence
in existing trust organization, have been thus cut out
from ownership in the industries of the country- ?
Showing as they do that the people at large
are withdrawing from ownership in the industries of
the country, they point to a time in the near futiu"e,
if the present methods of consolidation go on, when,
barring the shopkeeper, the farmer and the owner
of city real estate, and barring the man who is will-
ing to take chances upon an unknown venture, there
will be but comparatively few proprietors among
the run of citizens who ordinarily would be inter-
ested in the coiantr\''s industries. "
In another part of the same address he
said:
"There is now in the hands of the people
uninvested capital nearly sufficient to buy out, at
the valuations of 1890, the existing manufactories
or the existing railroads, or one-half of the farm
property of the country. It constitutes nearly one
dollar in ten of all the dollars that measure the
countr%''s entire wealth; and what is more, it is
available at any moment to enable the people at
large to re-enter the proprietorship of the country. "
THE PEOPLE RICH IN SPITE OF THE TRUSTS
OR BY THEIR HELP ?
THE situation, as set forth by Judge
Grosscup, is that, although the great
companies are consolidating the industries of
the country, the people have more money
than they ever had before. This state of
things causes different men to draw very
different conclusions.
The defender of trusts will say that the
trusts have added to the people's prosperity
by paying good wages and dividends, and
that a large part of the trusts are owned by
the people.
From another point of view, it is said that
the people are afraid to invest in trust shares,
and are hoarding their money in banks that
pay from two to four per cent., for fear of
losing it; and that they are debarred by the
trusts from engaging in industrial under-
takings for themselves.
From another point of view it will be said
that men who keep their money in banks that
pay only two to four per cent, thereby confess
their lack of ability to make profitable use
of it in productive ways. The man who
shows the qualities of industrial leadership
can get all the money he needs.
This striking statement of the facts about
the people's wealth, therefore, does not point
the way to any conclusive opinion. Opinions
depend on the state of mind of those who
consider them.
A GREAT ENGLISH EDUCATOR ON AMERICAN
SCHOOLS
"At rare intervals in the history of a nation there
comes a great outburst of physical and intellectual
energy which, with overmastering power, carries
forward the masses of the people, together with its
leaders, in an exhilarating rush of common effort.
In the United States of America such a movement is
in progress to-day. It reveals its force at three
points — the American workshop, the American
office and the American school. Of the tremendous
power of the movement no one who has witnessed
it can doubt. ... Of all the educational
movements now going forward in the world, that
in America seems to me at present the most forcefxU
and pregnant in great issues. "
THUS spoke Mr. Michael E. Sadler, the
English leader in education, who spent
some time in the United States last summer,
in summing up in an address at Glasgow his
conclusions about American education. His
judgment on the subject is as highly regarded
as is the judgment of any man living. The
favorable things in his summary are these:
1. The earnest belief that he found in
education. "That is the heart of the whole
matter," said he. "America believes in
education. . . . The American school is
radiant with its belief in its mission. "
2. "An eager belief in individuality,"
which "is the essence of a democratic com-
EXTENSION OE I'UHLIC SCHOOL INELUENCE
3269
monwealth. " . . . " For the work of the
earUest grades of American education the
harshest critic would give Httle else than
praise. In the first four years of school life
the child is stimulated to self-expression and
self-realization by teachers skilful in their
art and unwearied in their practice of it. "
"Thus the American believes in education
because education e([uips individuals for the
tasks of American citizenship."
3. He found a conviction that great
changes are impending in the subject-matter
of education. Teachers are endeavoring to
"tear out the non-essentials." They have a
tendency to "employ labor-saving appliances
in education" and to "avoid to the utmost
the waste of precious time. "
4. The Americans "have grasped the fact
that for national welfare under modern con-
ditions the highest and most costly types of
technical and university training are as
indispensable as the kindergarten and the
primary school." . . . "The American
organizer of industry believes, as a rule, in
tlie college-bred man." He added:
"Modem industry and business need the products
of the highest education, but they cannot afford to
pay for, nor will they put up with, fine academic
airs and fastidious nonsense, or unwillingness to do
the rough work which every one must learn to do
who means in truth and through and through to
learn a trade."
And he paid a tribute to the American
generosity that establishes well-equipped
universities and technical schools.
These four important facts impressed Mr.
Sadler very strongly.
THE SHORTCOMINGS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION
BUT Mr. Sadler found also several
reasons for friendly criticism of our
educational thought and practice which may
be more useful for us to consider than his
praise.
He feared that our methods "stimulate
interest without laying corresponding stress
on intellectual discipline"; and he finds that
parents also fail in the discipline of children.
This tendency he regarded as a revolt against
"the repressive precision of the overstrict
Puritan home. "
I This lack of severe discipline leads to super-
ficialitv "with its attendant evils, exaggera-
He fears that we make too many short cuts
and are too fond of the last new thing.
Another criticism of American training
and of American life is, that the men become
unduly concentrated on business pursuits —
not for the sake of wealth, but for the material
comforts and for the power that success
brings. "One is tempted to say that a
special danger of American life is the pursuit
of material success in the spirit of idealism,
while the converse danger in English life is the
pursuit of ideal aims in the spirit of material-
ism." We need "variety of culture, variety
of type and variety of standards of success."
AN ENORMOUS EXTENSION OF PUBLIC SCHOOL
INFLUENCE
IN another part of this magazine the story
is recited how the public schools of
New York have entered upon the education
of adults, offering free lecture courses, many
of which would do credit to the halls of
colleges or the platforms of the old-time
lyceum. Boston, Newark and other cities
are copying the example of New York; and
the plan is applicable to villages and to
towns large or little. Everywhere the school
building may become a new social centre
for the people of its district, in summer and
winter, by night as well as by day. A capital
lantern with a sheet twenty feet square, and
a hundred carbon pencils for electric illumina-
tion, can be had for Si 1 5. Slides ready made,
or made to order, may be had at moderate
prices in all our cities. A school equipped
with a lantern and rightly chosen pictures
can give a new meaning to many subjects; it
can continue beyond girlhood and boyhood
the instruction of the people, and, not less
important, their worthy entertainment as
well. Everywhere in America there are men
and women able and willing to carry out
programmes that can add a new interest and
joy to the community's life. The staff of
the nearest academy or college may be
enlisted, then lawyers and journalists, clergy-
men and physicians of the neighborhood, and
anybody else who deserves to be heard. An
inventor may tell how he came to perfect an
ingenious machine. An amateur astronomer
may show how much of the heavens declare
themselves to a common opera -glass. An
old resident may recall distant days of hard-
ship and triumph, and their contrasts with
the age of the wireless telegraph and the
3270
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
steam turbine. Those who travel may take
their neighbors with them, after they come
home. Men and women worth knowing
would be better known than they are and
would contribute more to the community's
information and pleasure. Their experience,
talent, culture, would pass into the common
treasury for a currency that would enrich
others and themselves. And there would be
measureless relief from the vacuity and
dulness which oppress millions of our
people, especially in lonely villages in the
dreary nights of winter.
THE WIDENING SCOPE OF INSTRUCTION
GROUPS of facts present themselves
with startling rapidity that confirm
Mr. Sadler's opinion that the American
people are in dead earnest about education.
Such a great movement as Mr. lies describes —
of free popular lectures of solid worth; the
equipment, at the other extreme of educa-
tional work, of such an institution as the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research;
the endowment of men to carry on research
in many fields of work, by the Carnegie
Institution; the continued benefactions to
well-established institutions, as the recent
anonymous gift of $1,000,000 to Barnard
College in New York, and the gift of quite as
much to Trinity College in North Carolina by
Mr. Washington Duke and his sons — these
are only detached instances of what is going
on in every part of the land for education
both in some of its most popular phases and
in some of its most learned.
It was significant that the announcement
of a sort of traveling medical university that
is about to be equipped by the German
Government attracted universal attention
in the United States. The most skilful
surgeons and practitioners of medicine will
go from place to place and perform operations
and make diagnoses and give instruction to
local practitioners. It is a plan that to the
lay mind at least shows much common sense.
THE BITUMINOUS COAL SETTLEMENT.
WHILE the extraordinary anthracite coal
commission was still in session, and
the operators and the mine-workers were
disputing their claims with unpromising and
uncompromising bitterness, in the bitumin-
ous region the mine -workers' organization met
the employers and came to an agreement.
An advance of about one-eighth in the average
wage was made and accepted for a year.
A strike that had been discussed rather than
threatened was thus averted, and reasonable
stability is assured.
It can hardly be assumed that a like
result could have been reached in the anthra-
cite region in a similar way, for the conditions
are somewhat different. But only a few
years ago such a result in the bituminous
region was declared by the employers to be
hopeless for much the same reasons now
assigned in the anthracite region — the great
differences in the conditions at the various
mines and the impossibility of holding the
union to responsibility. It may be that
Mr. Mitchell cannot do with the miners of
Pennsylvania what he has done with those
of the half-dozen States in which soft coal
is produced. But to the outside observer the
real obstacle may well seeim to be the lack of
that good-will and intelligence in one region
which has been shown in the other.
THE POSSIBLE END OF THE IRISH LAND
QUESTION
NOT long ago a brilliant Irish member of
Parliament visiting this country was
asked to define the Irish land question as it
then was. He replied by quoting the saying
of Lord John Russell about the Schleswig-
Holstein question: "Only two men ever
understood it, I and another. He is dead
and I have forgotten it." So hopeless did
the Irish situation seem at that time from the
tangle of interests, prejudices, passion and
political ambitions in which it was wrapped.
Today, at the opening of Parliament for a
session at which Ireland bids fair to be the
chief matter of discussion and action, the
chances of something like a solution are bright.
The change is largely due to the conference
of landowners during the winter represented
by Lord Dunraven and Lord Mayo, and the
occupiers of the land represented by John
Redmond, Timothy Harrington, William
O'Brien — all members of the Irish party in
Parliament — and by T. W. Russell, a Con-
servative. This conference recommends
Government aid in the transfer of land from
the present owners to the present tenants, at
prices to be based on income, the Government
to guarantee the payment of the income or a
price that will yield the income at from three
to three and one-half per cent., and to collect
TROGRESS FROM THE liOTTOM 3271
the amount from the purchasers in instalments, well as the making of woolen fabrics and the
The process would involve a net loss to the numerous small home industries connected
Government, the exact amount of which is with the faiTn. By cooperation the best
not definitely estimated. But it is contended stock and machinery, too costly for small
on both sides that this loss would be much tenants, are obtained. Uniform quality
more than offset by the reduction in the and preparation of goods are secured, with
cost of ruling Ireland, even, in fact, by the the advantage that these give in the markets,
less cost of the constabulary alone. better terms are made for transportation,
In theory this looks like buying peace, and sales are made directly by the agents of the
it would have been resented and denounced society, and markets are developed and
five years ago. Now there is a fair chance that extended. In the agricultural banks, with
it will be accepted. There is comfort in the joint liability, the miracle has been accom-
inference that in the long run the selfish plished of a group of insolvents making a
interests of men tend more and more profit by lending to each other. Extraor-
to produce peace and justice. The elimi- dinary as this is, it is literally true,
nation of the Irish land question from Apart from the material benefits secured,
the great controversies of our time and in connection with them, there has been
would mark a new epoch in English an increasing advance in mutual confidence
experience and would give the rest of the among the members of these organizations,
world relief that it would be grateful for. accompanied by a corresponding advance in
self-respect. Here, then, are the roots of the
HOW THE CHANGE HAS BEEN WROUGHT IN material and moral progress which has made
IRELAND possible the approach to agreement between
ONE of the most effective causes of the the landowners and the occupiers. Farming
promised new and happy era in the has been made profitable. When there was
Irish land question is the movement for "help little or no profit in it the parties to a loss
to self-help" of which the Honorable Horace could not well agree.
Plunkett is the active leader. Oflficially it It is interesting to know that when Doctor
is known as the "Irish Agricultural Organiza- Frissell, the Principal of Hampton Institute
tion Society." This society, which began for the training of Negroes and Indians, was
work about nine years ago, now has 70,000 in Ireland last summer, he was so impressed
members, and since nearly all are heads of by the work of Mr. Plunkett that he invited
families, it represents at least 350,000 of the him to visit Virginia to investigate con-
agricultural population of Ireland. Its pur- ditions in that State and to make suggestions
pose is to organize the farmers for cooperation, about the practicability of a similar organ-
not in the ownership of land, but in its culti- ization in the South. This Mr. Plunkett did,
vation, in the provision of the supplies and and it is probable that organizers who have
machinery, in the preparation and the had signal success in Ireland will come to this
marketing of the crops, and in the provision country to begin a similar movement,
of financial credit. The central society fur-
nishes organizers and instructors, but the PROGRESS FROM THE BOTTOM
management of business is entirely democratic ' I ""HE Negro conferences held every
in each society. The two cardinal principles X year at Tuskegee Institute in
are that the progress — the salvation, indeed Alabama get to the bottom of things. There
— of Irish farming must come from the indi- is probably no other meeting of men at which
vidual farmers, and that it can be attained there is such a frank discussion of the
only by united effort. fundamental facts of everyday life. Are
Some of the industries in which the organ- you out of debt ? Do you own your house ?
ization has accomplished great things are Have you any land ? How are you getting
the production or manufacture of cheese and on ? Men come from considerable distances
I butter in factories and creameries, the pro- and hold "experience" meetings by asking
duction of poultry and eggs, the raising of and answering such questions as these. These
cattle and hogs and the production of pork, conferences have now been held for twelve
bacon, hams and lard, the raising of sheep years, and every year the reports are increas-
ind the production of mutton and wool, as ingly encouraging. The people and the
3272
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
newspapers of the South show a growing
and eager interest in these meetings.
Mr. Booker T. Washington has thus briefly
summarized their aims: "Securing homes,
the freeing of ourselves from debts, the saving
of money, the encouragement of intelhgent
producers, the payment of taxes, the culti-
vation of habits of thrift, honesty and
virtue, the building of schoolhouses and
churches, the securing of education and high
Christian character, and friendship between
the races." This year he said that because of
"the many homes that have been sectued,
schoolhouses built, debts paid, taxpayers
produced, and State and local Negro confer-
ences organized, the feeling of hope and
encotuagement" throughout the entire race
is justified. "No race that is patient, long-
suffering, industrious, economical and virtuous,
that is persistent in efforts that make for
progress and that cultivates a spirit of
good-will toward all mankind, is ever left
without reward."
Wrangling about appointment to public
office may or may not have a place in the
many-sided economy of American life, colored
as well as white; but, whether it has or not,
the straightforward sort of work done and
reported at these meetings spells advance-
ment in capital letters. There may be doubt
about other things, but there can be no
doubt about that.
SILVER COUWTRffiS MOVING TOWARD THE
GOLD STANDARD
MEXICO recently took a step toward
extending the gold standard and to
solve the vexed problem of the use of silver as
currency in a way to avoid the effects of rapid
changes in its value measured in gold. Here-
tofore the standard of value in Mexico has been
silver, which it also exports in very large
amounts both as coin and as bullion. Its
standard coin is the dollar, or peso, at a legal
ratio of sixteen-and-one-half to one of gold.
Within the last thirty years the market ratio
has fallen until a dollar in gold exchanges for
about tnirty-two in silver. The payment in
gold of the interest on Mexico's considerable
national debt and the violent fluctuations in
foreign exchange have thrown heavy burdens
on the country, which have been borne with
extreme honesty and courage, but which
hinder the progress of industry — a progress
that has still been remarkable.
What Mexico now proposes is to keep a
steady relation between silver and gold by the
issue of a new silver coinage at the ratio of
thirty -two to one, to be limited as nearly as
possible to the needs of trade, and to be kept
at par by the use of a gold reserve in the
treasury. In principle this is the present
system of the United States, which maintains
about $500,000,000 in silver coins and cer-
tificates at par at the ratio of sixteen to one
by the strict limitation of the amount, by
taking silver for public dues, and by a gold
reser\^e pledged to the maintenance of the
parity of all forms of money issued by the
Government. It is also the plan in substance
adopted in 1893 by Great Britain for the
currency of India when it stopped the coinage
of silver and formed a gold reserve to main-
tain the par value of the rupee. It is prac-
tically the system adopted by the same
country in the Straits Settlements and in
the Confederated Malay States and by the
Netherlands Government in Java.
It is a definite abandonment of the bimetal-
lic scheme which rested on the unlimited
coinage of both metals at a fixed ratio, for
this plan rests strictly on the limitation of
the coinage of silver. In other words, the
old bimetallic plan has been practically
abandoned throughout the organized world.
The Government of Mexico recently sent
to this country a Commission, consisting of an
eminent banker, Mr. Creel, and a member of
the Senate, Mr. De La Garza, to invite the
moral cooperation of the United States in the
adoption of this general plan by countries
having the gold standard at home, but having
possessions, like our own in the Philippines,
with a silver currency. The Chinese Govern-
ment joined in this appeal, and it was cor-
dially received by President Roosevelt. Its
success will rest on the firmness with which
the issue of silver coin can be limited and by
the provision of a sufficient gold reserve to
maintain the parity at the ratio adopted.
The plan means, of course, the ultimate
adoption of the gold standard by Mexico.
China must sooner or later follow some sucli
example. Then the old silver question will
have been practically settled the world over.
Every movement toward a universal gold
standard buries still deeper the silver heresy,
which, supported by practical politics, men-
aced American prosperity and the good
repute of the United States for many years.
ABOUT THE SIZE OK FAMILIES
3273
INTERNATIONAL HATRED IN THE OLD WORLD
AND IN THE NEW
HERR ERNST VON WILDENBRUCH,
a name Carlyle might have invented,
a poet of BerUn, whom the Emperor has
honored, in a recent article expressed the hope
that Germany will join with the United States
in maintaining the Monroe doctrine. "The
greatest struggle of the twentieth century,"
he declared, "may be a contest of the Germanic
race against Latindom. Germany started
the strxiggle in 1870 and America continued
it in 1898. It is the inevitable strife of the
Germanic races against the Latin races,
which must continue until the Germanic
race is supreme. In the struggle," which
he hopes will next take the form of extending
the authority of the United States over all
Latin America, "no German can be in doubt
as to where his sympathies and active aid
should go."
This is a frank bit of barbarism, which
is not as untrue as it is undesirable. But it is
a feeling much stronger in the Old World
than in the New. There is something in the
dominant feeling in the United States that
may perhaps be called a prejudice against
the Latin peoples ; but it is not a race prejudice
nor a political prejudice, but rather the
feeling of impatience that the economically
efficient man has toward the economically
inefficient. There is not the slightest reason
to fear that the people of the United States
will ever have such a hostile attitude toward
the people of South America as the Germans
and the French have toward one another.
There is no inherent animosity, nor animosity
of any sort; and the influence of trade, which
is strong, is constantly to bring a better
understanding. The German poet harks back
to the pre-democratic era, and he will find
no response on this side the Atlantic.
THE INSTRUCTIVE ASPECT OF COMMERCIAL
FAILURES
THE elaborate study of commercial fail-
ures, extending over a period of
twenty-seven years, made in Dun's Review,
shows a remarkable — indeed, an almost
incredible — diminution of the relative impor-
tance of failures to the volume of business.
If the liabilities of failed commercial enter-
prises were shared by all the other commercial
enterprises in the country, the loss of each
would have been less than $100 last year.
The defaulted indebtedness was only ninety-
nine cents on every $1,000 of solvent pay-
ments made through clearing-houses. These
figures are only of failed merchants, not
manufacturers nor banks. The smallness of
the losses caused in the commercial com-
munity by mercantile failures is, therefore,
not a heavy tax on the successful.
Still the absolute number of failures is
great — more than 11,000, or about one per
cent, of all — and the aggregate liabilities (not
all of which was loss, of course) were last year
more than $117,000,000. The number of
failures has increased during these twenty-
seven years in times of bad crops, of panic,
etc., as, for example, in 1893, when they were
fifty per cent, more than in 1892. But the
most interesting aspect of this study is the
personal aspect of it.
And yet the personal aspect of it cannot
be made very clear by any statistical study.
Although the immediate and assigned causes
for mercantile failures can be set down in
columns — such as extravagance, incompe-
tence, lack of capital and dishonesty — most
of these are some form of deficiency in charac-
ter or in ability. The specific instruction that
can be got from this list of causes is little.
Yet every failure is an instructive warning to
those who can find out its real cause by a
knowledge of the personalities involved;
and no very instructive study of them
can be made in any other way. A person-
ality in some way defective is behind every
one of them.
ABOUT THE SIZE OF FAMILIES.
IN an argument for a shorter college course
and for graduation at an earlier age
President Eliot, of Harvard, showed in his
latest report that the graduates of the uni-
versity "do not reproduce themselves."
Twenty-eight per cent, of the members of
six classes that had been out of college twenty-
five years or more are unmarried, and those
who have married have, on the average, only
two surviving children, "so that the married
pairs just reproduce themselves on the
average." And he added:
" It is probable that the regrettable result is due
in part to the late postponement of marriage on
the part of educated young men, a postponement
which the protracted education now prescribed for
men who enter the learned and scientific professions
makes almost unavoidable. The young physician,
3274
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
lawyer, engineer or architect is now fortunate if he
marries at twenty-eight or twenty-nine, whereas he
shotild have married at twenty-five or twenty-six.
To make earUer marriage possible is one of the
strong inducements for bringing to an end the school
course at seventeen or eighteen, the college course
at twenty or twenty-one, and the professional train-
ing at twenty- fottr or twenty-five."
It is pretty well established that the time
of marriage is deferred also in what may be
called the upper working classes by the
increase in the number of young women who
can support themselves in the greater variety
of pursuits now open to them, and that the
number of children for each married pair is
becoming gradually smaller. That there is
a relative diminution of the offspring of
native Americans in some rough proportion
to the education of the parents is obvious.
This is what President Roosevelt in a recent
letter denounced with characteristic emphasis
as "racial suicide."
These two causes of a low birth rate are
very different. In the case of women who
decline to marry or who postpone marriage
because they are economically independent,
the social damage is perhaps not a damage
at all, but a benefit. They simply refuse to
marrv" for purely economic reasons ; and when
they do marry they are likely to marry more
satis factoril^^ There is a certain social
loss here, but it is doubtful whether it be
as large as it might seem.
The case of cultivated men who marry
late or do not marr}^ at all is different. They
are often mistrained men — self-conscious
and unsocial. It is doubtful if society would
gain by their marriage. To put it bluntly,
such men are socially not worth reproducing.
The very fact that they abstain from
marriage is the best proof that they are not
normal social units.
It is easy to become somewhat excited
about almost any aspect of this subject,
especially if one pay heed to the statisticians.
But the saving fact is. Nature is very wise.
We may easily set up false standards and
assume that this class or that class ought or
ought not to reproduce itself. But, without
regard to our theories, in the main those who
are best fitted for parenthood reproduce
themselves. The trouble is that many who
are unfitted also reproduce themselves. It
is perhaps well that the selfish and mistrained
are barren. The misfortune is that so many
clearly incompetent to rear children have
so many. But here again Nature is wiser
than we are.
It is unreasonable to become alarmed
when one looks about and sees the great mass
of American families consisting of three or
four or five or six children. Perhaps it is well
that they are not seven or eight or ten or
twelve, as many families of two generations
ago were. But the family of at least four
children is yet common enough to hold us
back from despair.
IMAGINATION AND HONESTY
ANEW YORK architect of talent and
experience was recently reported to
have said in a public discussion, "I would
rather have a man with imagination coupled
with dishonesty than a man with rectitude
coupled with stupidity." And then to clench
his meaning by a concrete example, he added:
"The people of New York owe Tweed a great
tribute. It was his imagination which gave
us Riverside Drive, which is the most beauti-
ful spot in the city. He may have been
corrupt, but he was practical."
This is a sentiment not uncommon among
men of culture keenly interested in art, and
especially among those who are interested
in art provided at the public expense. Your
honest man in office, who feels that he is
spending the money of others and who is
perhaps a better judge of morals than of
architecttire and landscape effects, often
seems slow and dull to men to whom lasting
beauty is more important than temporary
economy. But the sentiment is not a sound
one, nor is the method of securing improve-
ments by recklessness a proper one.
The real cause of the sloth with which
public art moves is the difficulty of putting
men who have imagination in authority —
in local, or State or national life. Political
methods and the routine of public duties do
not appeal to them. But for that matter,
men of imagination are hard to find in private
life — even in the artistic professions.
DOES POVERTY HELP CHARACTER ?
A RECENT eulog\- of Lincoln by Ex-
Governor Black was the most suc-
cessful after-dinner speech of the season in
New York, judged by the impression it made
on the audience. The impassioned tone that
OPERA IN NEW YORK
3275
touclied their hearts may be understood from
this brief passage:
"It is not wealth that counts in the making of
the world, but character. And character is best
formed amid those surroundings where every waking
hour is filled with struggle, where no flag of truce is
ever sent, and only darkness staj'S the conflict.
Give me the hut that is small enough, the poverty
that is deep enough, the love that is great enough,
and 1 will raise from them the best there is in human
character."
No one is to be envied to whom this does
not appeal. Yet is character best formed
by the struggles of poverty? Washington
did not know cramping poverty. He had
fair schooling for the time, powerful con-
nections and aristocratic associations. The
toil that he subjected himself to in youth was
voluntary. Another Virginian. Robert E.
Lee, was born to wealth and social distinction.
Such a list could be made as long as the list of
great men who came to distinction through
poverty. The moment we commit ourselves
to a sweeping generalization on either side of
such a controversy, we find as many facts to
overthrow it as to support it. It is neither
poverty nor wealth; it is discipline, it is con-
centration, it is work — these and other things
make the complex thing that we call
character. Heredity may have much to do
with it. Surely it is not poverty alone. Else
how numerous would be our heroes !
THE SMALL CIRCULATION OF NEW BOOKS
THE sale of several hundred thousand
(say, from 100,000 to 600,000) copies
of several novels is every day commented on
as something extraordinary. If a book have
qualities that commend it to 100,000 persons,
these same qualities would commend it to
twice or thrice or six or eight times as many
— if the publishers and booksellers had
machinery to find them.
For the machinery they have is the book-
stores; and a very small proportion of the
population lives within reach of bookstores.
Comparatively few new books are sent by
mail. There is apparently no practical way
to make bookstores as numerous as grocery
stores. Bookselling does not naturally ally
itself to grocery-selling, and books alone do
not 3^ield a large enough income in many
small towns and villages to reward energetic
I shopkeepers.
I The book-agent is yet the best distributor
of books. But, as a rule, he does not dis-
tribute new books. There is a single j)ub-
lisher in New York who sells, through agents,
more sets of books every year than any
publisher sells of any new novel. For the
American home is yet by no means filled with
books. Few, outside the cities and larger
towns, have as many books as they wish or
can afford. The market is practically unlim-
ited, if it could be reached; and the art
of bookselling is yet probably in its
unorganized infancy.
In proof of such an opinion, consider the
circulation of the most popular magazines;
for they are distributed, as books cannot be,
at a cheap rate of postage. One periodical
has reached the sale of more than a million
copies a month. It has no quality of popu-
larity that certain books do not or might not
have. The chief difference is the advantage
that the periodical has in its method of dis-
tribution.
If the subject be rightly understood, then,
the wonder is not that certain novels reach
editions of 100,000 copies or 300,000 or
400,000, but that they do not reach even
larger editions, as they will in the future.
DOCTOR J. L. M. CURRY
THE death of Doctor J. L. M. Curry,
successively member of the Pro-
visional Confederate Congress and of the
Confederate Congress, teacher, preacher.
Minister to Spain, and agent of the Peabody
and Slater funds to further education in the
southern States, closes a career of unusual
versatility and usefulness. Popular educa-
tion in the southern States owes him the debt
that every great movement owes to its able
agitators and pioneers. He had the apostolic
temperament, and he made more speeches
to further the cause he served, perhaps, than
any other man in the country ; and his sincere
and attractive character brought to him as
many friends, of high station and of low, as
■any man now living can. boast of.
OPERA IN NEW YORK
AT the Metropolitan Opera House in New
York are heard the greatest singers
in the world in the greatest operas. The
coming of a new manager, therefore, is an
occurrence of both financial and musical
importance. Mr. Conried has succeeded Mr.
Grau, and the promise is of evenly balanced
and still more noteworthy performances.
FRANK NORRIS
BY
W. S. RAINSFORD
RECTOR OF ST. GEORGE'S, NBW YORK
WE need today men who can see, who,
seeing things and men as they are,
can still firmly believe — believe
in the general soundness of life, the "worth-
doing" of it all. And still more, we need men
who can put down accurately what they see
sanely. Such a student, believer, artist was
Frank Norris.
He has left us in the very morning of
his life. He has gone before he struck the
stride of midday marching. The best he
has given had promise of still better work.
But he lived enough, and put enough
life into his line, to give notice to all that
he is of those who, even in youth, are con-
tent with nothing less than to see life
sanely, and to see it whole.
The honesty, the bravery, the faith of the
man, all live in his work. The pity of it,
that time was given to him only to make a
beginning. Frank Norris 's work rings true —
always true. There is not one unmanly
or unhealthy note struck. He takes it for
granted that ordinary people, if we covdd
only really see them, are interesting enough
to write about, yet he never knows a trace
of the sordid.
It was my privilege to be counted among
his friends for years. I seldom have met so
lovable a man. He had unquestionably
great dramatic power. He believed with
all his soul in the future of democracy,
and ever and always he tried to serve
his brother men.
WHENCE COME OUR IMMIGRANTS
AN INVESTIGATION OF THAT PART OF RUSSIA FROM WHICH A
LARGE NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS COME TO THE UNITED STATES
BY
MAJOR W. EVANS GORDON, M.P.
MEMBER OP THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON ALIEN IMMIGRATION
ENGLAND, of course — and America as
well — attracts foreign elements from
all parts of the globe. If a line be
drawn from Kustendjeh on the Black Sea
to Libau on the Baltic, and another from
Kalisch in Poland to the easternmost point
of the Province of Ekaterinoslav in Russia,
these lines will traverse the length and breadth
of the vast area from which comes a mass
of immigrants whom English and American
population must assimilate. England's
doors are wide open to these people, and
many thousands yearly pass the test of
the immigration laws of the United States.
The slums of Vilna and Warsaw, the ghettos
of Lemberg and Galatz, the remote villages
in the Provinces of Minsk and Tchemigov,
all send their quota to swell the ever-rising
tide.
As a member of the Royal Commission on
Alien Immigration, I have thought it most
important to investigate this question on
the spot, and accordingly I spent the last
Parliamentary recess in visiting the homes
of all our different aliens. I propose to
tell here exactly what I found.
I reached Dvinsk, my first halting-place in
the Russian Pale, on a mournful rainy Satur-
day morning. Leaving the railway station,
with its luxurious restaurant and many com-
forts, one stepped into another world. Three
miserable droschkies, ghosts of the smart
WHENCE COME OUR IMMIGRANTS
3277
St. Petersburg carriages — the horses mere
bags of bones — the drivers huddled bundles
of rags with metal numbers on their backs —
stood steaming and dripping in the rain and
a sea of mud. Beyond the mud a rotting
wooden fence, and then some tumble-down
wooden shanties, inhabited apparently by a
few melancholy women and pigs. The station,
as often happens in Russia, was three miles
from the town, and the drive gave me my
first impressions of Russian country roads.
The crazy carriages bumped over patches
of cobbles and plunged axle-deep into pools
of unfathomable black mire. After twice
breaking down, we arrived in the town. The
main street is not disagreeable to look at;
the houses are stucco-fronted, with sides of
unpointed brick, or wooden bungalows of the
familiar Russian type. The roadways are
laid with cobblestones and the footwalk is of
planks. The inn looked better than I
expected, but smelled considerably worse. I
recognized a smell I remembered in the slums
of Calcutta and Bombay. The rooms w^ere
decent and clean. The decoration was early
Victorian, the furniture upholstered in dusty
red Utrecht velvet, and the sanitary arrange-
ments prehistoric.
The town is said to have 80,000 inhabitants,
and some 70,000 are Jews. The persecuting
May Laws of 1882 drove many of these from
the villages and smaller towns into the larger
centres of population, hence the high pro-
portion of Hebrews to be found in the place;
hence also much of the misery and poverty
from which these poor- people suffer. The
preponderance of the Jewish race was at once
apparent, the Sabbath sending the whole
place to sleep. Not a shop was open, not a
stroke of business being done. The only
sign of life was in front of the synagogue;
there a large crowd of decent-looking folk
were holding their church parade, promenad-
ing up and down.
The town is situated on the Dvina, a
mighty stream in full flood when I saw it.
On its banks is a beautiful boulevard. But
the place was deserted and depressing at that
time. An aged Jew, gazing at the flood and
wreckage with mournful eyes, was the only
creature I met. I talked with him, remark-
ing that the flood was working sad havoc.
"Not sad," said he, "but blessed. The
world has been too wicked of late: it will be
piirer and better when the water subsides. "
Not understanding, I asked him to ex-
plain. "The wars," he said; "the wars in
China and Africa. What wickedness ! The
Almighty is washing the sins of the earth
away. "
His point of view was quaint and a little
touching. He seemed to regard the flood as
a sort of divine flushing of mundane drains.
On the next day, Sunday, I was able to see
the town in its business dress, though the
Russian law forbids the opening of shops by
the Jews till i p. m. on the Christian day of
rest. After that hour the markets were in
full swing, crowded with country folk and
soldiers from the cantonments near by. All
were eagerly doing business with the Jews.
A peculiar feature was that the soldiers were
mostly sellers and the Jews buyers. Strips
of embroidered Russian cloth, old boots,
uniforms and a mass of miscellaneous odds
and ends were the articles which the Czar's
"Tommies" had for sale. Every article
was the subject of a protracted bargain, and
each group of soldiers in their white jackets
and caps was surrounded by a crowd of Jews
in long rusty black coats, with the character-
istic stoop of the shoulders and flowing beards.
Round the markets were many drinking and
gambling dens and disorderly houses, into
which I saw the soldiers being decoyed and
dragged. The police gave me a bad account
of the morality of the place, and at night, too,
hospitable invitations were extended to me
at every second door. No doubt the crowd-
ing of the Jewish population into the towns
has led to a general deterioration both moral
and physical. The struggle for life is a
desperate business for many of them, and
scruples diminish in proportion to its severity.
Whatever the cause, sexual immorality is
prevalent in towns like Dvinsk. The house
accommodation is poor and squalid, but there
is always light and air and space, and con-
sidering Dvinsk from the purely residential
point of view, I personally should prefer it to
some streets I could name in towns at home.
To those anxious to see for themselves
what a Russian ghetto is like at its w^orst, I
would recommend a visit to Vilna. From
the fort which crowns the hill in the middle
of the town, the hill up which Napoleon rode
in 1 81 2, when Vilna w^as the centre of his
advance upon Moscow, one of the most
beautiful views imaginable is obtained. The
town lies at your feet, with its clustering red
3278
WHENCE COME OUR IMMIGRANTS
roofs and hundred gilded domes and spires
and cupolas; the glittering river and lovely
wooded country, stretching away for miles,
make an unrivaled picture — and it is difficult
among such surroundings to realize the
squalor and misery which the place contains.
There are said to be some 80,000 Jews here —
not, by any means, all poor. By far the
greater part of the trade, and practically all
the shops, are in their hands. But the
submerged tenth is submerged indeed.
The Ghetto is a seething mass of humanity.
Many of the streets and alleys are so narrow
that the pavements almost touch. At inter-
vals throughout their length are arched gate-
ways leading into courtyards round which
the dens and cellars in which the people live
are clustered.
I spent a whole day in visiting them. In
the comers of the court one would find a
wooden trough into which all the refuse of
the houses was thrown. The stench from
these receptacles filled the whole air. The
stucco walls were blistered and rotting as if
infected by the poisonous atmosphere within.
Inside, the people were crowded pell-mell,
regardless of health, age or sex. In one room
I found a lunatic in the middle of a family of
young children. I was followed as I walked
by a crowd of haggard, anxious, careworn
people, staring at me with mournful eyes.
Some openly begged alms, others had trifles
for sale. Many seemed to pass their time in
the synagogues, rocking and chanting them-
selves into oblivion of their miseries. I came
across several who had been to Whitechapel,
and had been sent back, I suppose, as fit for
nothing. One man with a large family
wished to make another trial of England, and
asked me, of all people, for money to help him
to get there. The situation was not without
a certain pathetic humor.
The slums of Vilna, it is evident, are
not a desirable recruiting-ground for the
East End of London or the East Side of
New York. Until a year or two ago the
poor Jews found plentiful employment in the
building and allied trades, in which there was
a "boom," but this has been followed by a
"slump," and the unemployed are propor-
tionately as numerous as they are in London.
At such times their thoughts turn to America
and England; dreams of high wages and
regular work fill their minds ; anyhow, it will
be something new, and at the worst they will
be sent back. And so they arrive in the
Thames. Unless they have health and means
of earning a livelihood, the United States are
closed to them by strict legislation — as are
the English Colonies. The well-to-do Jewish
community in Vilna does its best, and the
place is full of admirable charitable institu-
tions and schools. But here, as in all other
great towns, there seems to be a residuum
which is never reached, or, if reached, is never
permanently benefited.
There are other towns, however, in the Pale
where things are better. Pinsk is one of them.
Here Jewish skill, labor and enterprise have
been combined to good purpose. It is a
picturesque place. The streets of wooden
houses and cottages are lined with trees;
there are a quaint old church and seminary,
and the river banks are full of life and color.
The population is 40,000, of whom 37,000
are Jews. This disproportion, as in most of
the towns of the Pale, would have resulted
in congestion in all employments open to
Hebrews had it not been for the energy and
enterprise of certain leaders of the community
such as Messrs. Lourie and Halpem, who,
by starting factories, have succeeded in
profitably utilizing the labor of their co-
religionists. In Mr. Halpem's match factory,
for instance, 1,500 hands are employed.
Here 3'ou can see a huge log go in at one end
and come out half matches and half boxes
at the other. From first to last none but
Jewish hands touch it, and the whole process,
from rolling and sawing the heavy timber
down to deftly pasting the labels round the
boxes, is done by them. In all there are
eighteen factories in Pinsk, employing between
4,000 and 5,000 hands. If only similar
industries could be started in other centres
the great and tragic Jewish question in
Russia would be well on the way to be solved.
I am certain that the only true and permanent
solution will be found on these lines. The
idea that Jews will not engage in manual
labor has long since been exploded. Twenty-
five years ago it was based upon fact. The
venerable Mr. Lourie, who throughout his
long life has been struggling with problems
connected with his people, told me that he
well remembered the time when no Jew
would even consider working as an artizan
or entering a Christian school. They still
much prefer to become employers or traders;
but circumstances have brought about a great
WHENCE COME OUR IMMIGRANTS
3279
change, and they eagerly accept employment
in factories when opportunity offers. As
to the schools, after tlie first plunge was taken
the rush for education was so great that the
Russian Government became alarmed and
closed the doors to all but a very small per-
centage of Jewish children. It may be that,
in the course of the development of his
industrial policy, M. De Witte, the great
Russian Minister of Finance, will find it
advantageous to use the great mass of intelli-
gent and industrious labor which the Jewish
community provides ready to his hand and
which now runs to waste. I hope so.
Numbers of first-rate mechanics and artizans
are being turned out annually by the Jewish
technical schools, and for them the whole
of Russia, with its vast field of employment,
is open. There is no necessity for them to
emigrate. The Jew, moreover, is not handi-
capped by the one hundred and eighty-five
State holidays which an orthodox Russian
workman has to keep. But, apart from the
adoption of a more enlightened policy by the
Government, much might be done by the
Jewish community themselves. The vast
sums expended upon colonization — the tens
of thousands of pounds annually thrown
away in a senseless and pitiful game of battle-
dore and shuttlecock, in which the unemployed
Jews are driven backward and forward
between Russia and Galicia on the one hand
and England and America on the other,
could, I believe, be far better and more use-
fully employed in providing work and occupa-
tion for the people in their native land. The
idea at the back of this movement is that,
removed from the restrictive influences of
Russian laws, these people thrive and prosper.
But this idea has only been to a small extent
realized in practice. The bulk of the poor
emigrants here become and remain poor
immigrants and emphasize the little-known
truth that the Jews as a people are the poorest
race of the earth. From 75,000 to 100,000
members of the community in New York,
says the report of the United Hebrew Charities
for the year ending October, 1901, "are
unable to supply themselves with the imme-
diate necessaries of life, and are dependent on
the public purse."
In Pinsk there is plenty of poverty — the
poverty which is common to all large towns
in every country — but nothing hopeless or
abnormal. The 5,000 hands in regular em-
I
ployment leaven the mass, and the homes,
though humble and very poor, still in several
instances show signs of comfort and compara-
tive prosperity.
From Pinsk I made a tour into the interior
ofthe country. I was anxious to see the con-
dition of things in the small towns and villages.
The enterprising Jews have started lines of
steamers which ply on the numerous streams
that intersect the country and add to the
prosperity of the town. On one of them I
took a passage.
It was a market-day, and the river was
crowded with primitive boats and dug-out
canoes laden with many kinds of produce.
The scene was curiously Eastern and reminded
me strongly of parts of Lower Burma. Our
boat was crowded with Russian peasants and
Jews. I may here say that throughout my
travels I was unable to discover any trace of
ill feeling between the two peoples. In the
villages, Jew and Gentile live harmoniously
together. The Christian peasantry are
engaged solely in agriculture ; all other employ-
ments and handicrafts are conducted by Jews.
Their capacity for business and organization
is, on the whole, I think, a benefit to the
peasantry. It is the Jews who find a market
for the produce of the land, and every village
and townlet in the Pale contains an agent or
correspondent of the big exporting firms in
Riga, Libau or Odessa. It is this elaborate
organization which gives rise to the complaint
so often heard in Russia, that the Jews are the
exploiters of the peasantry. I have no doubt
that in many instances the moujiks do fall an
easy prey to the superior intelligence and
astuteness of their Hebrew brethren. At
the same time, it is, I believe, a fact that the
general condition of the Russian peasants in
the region where Jews are allowed to reside
is superior to that which obtains outside the
alloted provinces.
Any one undertaking a country tour in
Russia must be prepared to rough it. The
only available conveyance is the ordinary
country cart — a wooden frame on four wheels.
The roads are partly sand or mud and partly
logs of wood cut into lengths and thrown
upon the ground. A few miles of the latter
leave the traveler in much the same condition
as he would be after a severe flogging with a
heavy stick. The inns, too, are queer places
— in one I spent the night on the floor,
surrounded by a zareba of insect powder,
3280
WHENCE COME OUR IMMIGRANTS
successful attacks on this work being main-
tained throughout the night. The people
are simple and good-natured, but sunk in the
depths of ignorance and superstition. In the
whole country I passed through there was not
a single school or doctor. In one village,
Gorodno, an epidemic of scarlet fever was
raging, and the children were dying like flies,
without the least prospect of any medical
assistance ! It was curious to think that
here, forty-eight hours from Berlin, one was
in the midst of conditions far more backward
and less civilized than are to be found in the
remotest comer of our Indian Empire.
It would take too much space to describe
all I saw in Poland, Galicia and Rumania,
and I must therefore confine myself to a few
points. There is one feature common to all,
namely, the tendency of the Jews to congre-
gate in the towns. In the fifteen provinces
of the Pale they are obliged to do so by law.
In Poland and Galicia no such legal obligation
exists, yet it is in the towns we find them.
In Warsaw alone some 300,000 Jews have to
make a living, and in Lodz, the Manchester of
eastern Europe, there are nearly 150,000.
In the latter town the overcrowded and
insanitary conditions under which the poor
people live are appalling. One tall wooden
house which I inspected was packed solid with
humanity. I found people living in the apex
of the roof between the tiles and the top ceil-
ing. I had to crawl into this noisome recep-
tacle on my hands and knees and to climb a
ladder to reach it. The police had interfered,
I was told, but the place was occupied again
as soon as the backs of the authorities were
turned. Such incidents are reproduced in
the East End of London. Lodz is a great
spinning and weaving centre, and many of the
factories are owned by Jews. I was surprised
and sorry to find that they employ hardly
any Jewish labor. There seems to be a diffi-
cultv in connection with the Sabbath and the
Sunday, and keeping the machinery idle for
two days in the week instead of one. This
objection has been overcome in Warsaw,
however, where, in I\Ir. Finekin's lace factory
and Mr. Polakiewitz's tobacco works, Jewish
and Christian hands are both employed with
happy results. These establishments left
a very agreeable impression on my mind.
Every care is taken of the workpeople, even
schools for the children being provided on the
premises. The wages are small judged by an
English standard, from 6s. to 15s. per week
being the average, but living is cheap and the
wants of the people few, and they are infinitely
better off in every respect than persons of a
similar class earning double the money in
London or New York.
In Galicia the condition of the Jews seemed
to me worse than in Russia or Poland. A
fatal apathy and bigotry seemed to have
settled upon the majority of the Hebrew race
here. They are divided into factions, and
engage in incessant quarrels with one another.
There are no laws to oppress them, but they
are extremely unpopular with their Christian
fellow-subjects, and as a class are wanting in
those qualities of push, enterprise and desire
for education for which their co-religionists
elsewhere are so conspicuous.
A considerable portion of the land in
Bukovina and Galicia is owned by Jews, who
are, moreover, said to hold mortgages on
many of the remaining estates. But there
are few manufacturers, and a great part of
the Jewish population seems to have nothing
to do. The housing conditions were not bad — ,
infinitely superior to what I had seen else-
where, or to what I can see any day in my
own constituency in London.
The Rumanian Jews stand head and
shoulders above their Galician brethren, and,
where not interfered with by the law, do well
for themselves. I came across many robust
working-men who presented none of the
painful ghetto characteristics. Nearly every
house in a Rumanian town is roofed with tin
plates, and this industry is exclusively in the
hands of the Jews. The work needs agility
and involves much exposure. It was curious
to see a church being roofed in this way by
Jewish workmen who were accompanying
their labors by chanting a Hebrew psalm.
The general conclusions I arrived at
regarding the houses and life of the Jewish
people whom I saw on my journey to the
homes of our aliens, are that their standard of
existence is a much lower one than obtains
in this country, their food is less in quantity
and poorer in quality — meat, for example, is
seldom eaten, and a fowl would never be
killed except in cases of serious illness or dire
necessity. Their wages are lower and their
requirements fewer and more simple. In the
large towns the housing conditions are
deplorable, and sanitation as we understand
it is unknown. In the villages, where the
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
3281
number is restricted and no newcomers are
allowed to settle, the lot of the Jews is by no
means bad. Many of them are poor, but the
whole population is poor, and their life is no
harder than that led by people similarly
placed in England or Scotland or any other
country in Europe. I have said enough,
however, to show that a large part of the
recruiting-ground of our aliens cannot be ex-
pected to produce any of the (jualifications
of good citizenship — a fact keenly appre-
ciated by the United States, the English
Colonies, and, most striking fact of all, by
the authorities of the Jewish settlements in
South America, whose recruits are filtered
once, twice and thrice before being accepted.
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT
CITY
THE TYPICAL EXPERIENCE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE BIG
NEW YORK APARTMENT BUILDINGS— THE ENORMOUS GROWTH
OF APARTMENT - HOUSES — HOW THEY CONTRIBUTE TO
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE AND THAT OF THE COMMUNITY
BY
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
(Ulustrated from photographs taken by the author)
A SHORT time ago the tenement
dweller — a person whose habita-
tion was bounded on the top and
bottom by other habitations, and who some-
times found it cheaper to move than to pay
rent — was scorned by the house-dweller, who
had upstairs, downstairs and basement,
secured for a term of years. Today it is
said that nine-tenths of the population of
Manhattan Island are dwellers in tenements,
and that one-half of them move from one to
six times yearly. I have heard of a family
that moved three times in one month.
The word "tenement " is no longer popular.
We hear of "fiats" and "apartments" now,
of rentals as high as $6,000 and even $10,000
a year, but the law makes no distinction.
Every house, however big and expensive,
which contains layers of inhabitants, all
duly recorded, labeled and pigeonholed, is
a "tenement."
The rise and progress of the New York
City " fiat -dweller " presents a sociological
object lesson. It begins, as likely as not,
with a young man from the country. He has
secured employment in the metropolis at
wages which seem liberal, and with good
prospect of advancement. Almost imme-
diately he begins to plan for a home. He
cannot afford a house. The Sunday papers
are fairly overflowing with offers of fiats —
"Three light rooms and improvements at $20
and upward; steam heat." On Sunday
afternoon he climbs numberless flights of
stairs to look at certain tiny nooks. Within
the year he has brought his bride from her
country home to become a mite in a great
human hive — a flat-dweller in Harlem.
When the new things are all brought in
and all placed, and hung, and dusted for the
last time, the two march back and forth from
one end of their play-house to the other —
being careful, of course, not to upset any of
their wedding presents. Then they go to
the window and look out over wide expanse
of housetops, or down vistas of flapping
laundry, and are happy. They will probably
never be quite so happy as that again.
They begin to move at the end of the third
month. For one thing, the apartment is too
small. One doesn't need much in a fiat,
but one must have two or three chairs, and
perhaps a stand-table, and then there are the
wedding presents. The house is too new.
In a perfectly new house the windows and
doors and drawers are likely to stick, that
the plumbing and heat supply have not
been tested, nor the janitor service duly
seasoned. Then the stairs — four long flights
are really too many.
3282
THE FLAT- DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
The new rooms are larger, and more expen-
sive and nearer the ground, but they are also
darker and dirtier, and perhaps occupied by
certain elusive "tenants " who forgot to move,
and whose rights and powers of occupation
are not easily gainsaid.
The well-balanced country girl shudders
at these things. Cleaning preparations, cor-
rosive sublimate and various cimicides are
presently ranged along the kitchen shelf.
The fight has begun — the everlasting warfare
that rages night and day between the New
York City fiat-dwellers and the voracious
hordes of the lower animal kingdoms.
Through the dim watches of the night
croton-bugs, which she at first takes for
young roaches, file across her kitchen ceiling,
or marshal in solid phalanx down her sta-
tionary tubs. Mice scramble in the walls
— rats clatter through her ""inware.
They must have a better apartment, a big-
ger apartment, and a lighter apartment, even
if they have to pay half their income to get it.
They are more careful this time in their
selection. They consider north and south
exposure, roof or pulley-line accommodations
for laundry, appearance and probable tem-
perament of the janitor. They compromise
at last on another new house, for after all
cleanliness is the first consideration.
Of course they have bought more things
by this time even though none of the six
rooms can show a measurement of more than
ten by ten, while the "girl's room" off the
kitchen is a mere closet. It is winter when
they move, and the steam-supply does pretty
well, except when the wind comes across
North River and the mercury falls to zero.
On days like these the radiators become
unambitious and forgetful. Discussion with
the janitor is unavailing. He, or she, insists
that there is some mistake — the woman on
the third floor is complaining of the heat.
They do not press the matter. They have
discovered that the janitor is absolute. Also
that he receives no pay but his rent ^some-
times not all of that. His life is a never-
ending round of ashes and condemnation.
Other peculiarities develop. A family
moves in overhead, with a trio of boys
that clatter up and down, like a Texas
herd on a stampede. Across the way
another family has a mania for cooking cab-
bage, while on the first floor onion stew has
a daily place on the bill of fare.
Meantime, the young man has had an
increase of salary. With the coming of the
spring they move again and for a time occupy
"nice, quiet apartments near the elevated
railway." It is a pretty suite — better and
more expensive than any they have occupied
heretofore. The janitor, too, is rather cleaner
looking than usual, and more accommodating.
The doors swing on their hinges; the plumb-
ing and the pulley-line are in working order.
They are quite happy until with warmer
weather and open windows the crash and
clatter and jangle of the elevated and the
trolley make days of disordered nerves and
nights devoid of rest.
They move twice during the next 3'ear,
acquiring knowledge with each migration.
They learn, among other things, that the
schedule of "fiat" prices is adjusted to the
penny — that when a good-looking fiat is to
be had at what seems a low price there is some
drawback that will develop sooner or later.
It may be the noise, it may be dampness, it
may be the neighborhood. It is certain to be
something, and the fiat-dweller gets precisely t
what he pays for, neither more nor less.
They learn also that there are houses of the
better class, such as they now select, that do
not " take children." Neither can they move
now at will, for in the better places they
are obliged to sign a lease for a year, and
must either sublet or serve out their time.
Often they do the former, for apartments
are always in demand, and at many of the
better houses there are long waiting lists of
would-be tenants.
The young man from the cotmtry prospers.
He is industrious and energetic, and raises
of salary are frequent. Fhght by flight he
ascends the apartment scale, until finally he
is able to enter a vestibule adorned by palms
and Turkish rugs and be lifted to his comer of
a vast domicile in an elevator. His rental
is from $1,200 to $1,500 a year at this
stage, and he is not likely to move until
his term expires. The janitor problem is no
longer difficult. He is called a superinten-
dent now, with a corps of efficient assistants,
all decently clad and properly paid. Heat is
usually to be had from the radiators, and
when these fail there are always the gas logs.
He is high enough up in the world to solve
the light problems, at least until some other
sky-scraping apartment uplifts beside him.
Then he will move on. He will move anyway,
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OK A GREAT CITY
3283
A HANDSOME APARTMENT HOUSE ENTRANCE
APARTMENTS NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO CENTRAL
PARK
I
ONE OF THE MOST MODERN OF APARTMENT HOUSES
3284
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
FLAT-DWtLLERS HERE MAY HAVE A GLIMPSE OF THE HUDsuN
APARTMENTS WHICH LOOK OUT OX THE TREETOPS OF CENTRAL PARK
TllK 1< LAT-UWKLLERS OF A (.Rl-lAl c; 11 V
3285
wlicn his lease expires, for he can ])ny a
rental of $2,500, and he has learned that
it pays to do so. It is true, his salary
is onlv double tiiat, but he has discovered
that to tlie llat-dweller on Manhattan
Island it is not tlie table, not tlie bank
account, but the apartment that is "the
thinj:;. "
The "family" p;oes liome in the summer
and the former country girl " liolds forth" on
the joys of a])artment life — tells of its
convenience and its luxury — of the cold-
storage refrigerator that freezes ice-cream by
merely turning on the current; the long-
distance telephone, the row of electric buttons
that at the slightest pressure will bring almost
anything under the sun. She tells of these
things to her wondering hearers — tells of
them triumphantly, not to say boastfully —
but now and again when she is alone her
eyes wander about the great sunlit sitting-
room with its wide fireplace, then to the
whispering trees, long waving clothesline
and clambering vines without, where the
"brood" is laughing and playing and shout-
ing for sheer happiness. For a moment she eyrie habitation with its dizzy outlook on
forgets to feel triumphant, and remembers the smoky, wash-hung roofs, its gilded radiators.
M44?!
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ir
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OPKN FIRES ARE POSSIKLK
AN APARTMENT INTERIOR
Photographed by R. F. TurnbuU
I
3286
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
its tesselated halls, and its clacking elevator,
with something that is almost like a sigh.
Perhaps — if they are wise enough, and care
enough for the children — they will give up
apartment life in the end and move to the
suburbs. They will take a house there — one
as much like a flat as it is possible to find —
with gas range, stationary tubs, electric bells
and sham fireplaces. Or if the fireplaces be
real, they will, as likely as not, put gas logs in
them, and in other curious and amazing ways
endeavor to simulate the apartment house
plan and atmosphere. They have learned
the profession of flat-dwelling too well to live
it down in a day, or in a year. Every trip to
of which still survive, though most of them
have given way to make room for sky-
scrapers, and for other flat-houses of greater
proportions but of smaller rooms and smaller
respectability. Also, many residences were
converted into apartments, and among these
are still desirable habitations for persons of
quiet tastes who are willing to forego a few
"improvements" for the sake of large rooms,
closets, and real open fires.
Apartment building became more and
more popular. Once the wave got started,
it went rolling to the northward. It billowed
around Central Park. The heights of Harlem
were inundated and swept away. Across
A DRAWING-ROOM IX A FLAT
Photographed l>y K. h. 1 urni-uU
the city is beset with temptation — every fine,
new apartment house is discussed and per-
haps examined. They are likely to return
and end their days in one.
Apartment building of the better class
began in 1869 when Rutherford Stuyvesant
put up the buildings at Nos. 140 and 142
East Eighteenth Street, two substantial and
roomy houses which, in spite of their location,
still rank among the best of the older New
York city apartments. The success of the
Stuyvesant buildings was followed by the
building of a score of other apartments, some
the river and up the Bronx raged the
tenemental tide. Morrisania, Melrose and
Tremont were overwhelmed, their individu-
ality lost amid a myriad of square, five-story,
contract -built structures — put up, pushed up.
thrown up by anybody and everybody who
could get hold of a bit of land and a company
willing to make a loan.
Of course they were built too fast and too
poorly. Rentals cheapened and houses began
to fall to pieces within a year. Land-
lords became poor. The more houses tliey
had the poorer they became. The poorest
\>
Q
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o
o
>«
CO
3288
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
THE OUTLOOK FROM THE FRONT OF A FLAT
man I ever knew owned a
him a pair of my old shoes.
block. I
gave
Perhaps it was as well that the houses were
poorly built. For now they are coming
down. Another wave has set in — buildings
ten, twelve and sixteen stories high, with
elevators, and the old five-story drift is
being pushed aside to make room. Seven
years ago there was but one elevator apart-
ment house above Central Park — the
Monterey. Today there are many — wonder-
ful towers of steel, stone and stucco,
each capable of sheltering a good-sized
village.
The Ansonia, just completed, at Seventv-
second Street and Broadway, is the latest and
largest apartment house in the world. It is
seventeen stories high, the top story being
used exclusively for servants. It has sixteen
elevators, more than 300 suites of rooms,
and 1,800 people may be luxuriously shel-
tered within its fire-proof walls. There are
dining-rooms upstairs and down for those
who do not occupy housekeeping suites, a
grill-room and palm garden; and the whole is
illuminated by 18,000 electric lights. Busi-
ness houses of every sort, from a bank
to a barber shop, are on the main floor,
while throughout the building are pneu-
matic tubes, dumb-waiters, push buttons,
long-distance telephones, and means of re-
THE OUTLOOK FROM THE REAR OF A FLAT
THE ELAT-DW ELLKRS OF A GREAT C El \'
3289
THE ONLY YARD !> IHI ROOF
frigeration as well as heating, so that winter
or summer an equable temperature may be
maintained. The Ansonia cost the owner,
W. E. D. Stokes, nearly $4,000,000, and its
yearly rentals range from $500 for a single
room and bath to $10,000 for a large double
suite. It is a vast experiment in wholesale
flat-dwelling that is attracting world-wide
attention. Apartment houses, especially the
finer ones, are a boon to those persons of
social inclinations and no vast amount of
capital. A cottage for the summer and an
apartment for the winter is the solution of
their problem, and the volume and swiftness
of New York's social maelstrom has doubled
and quadrupled during recent years.
I do not know how many apartment houses
there are in Greater New York city. There
are more today than there were at this time
last week. A year ago there were more than
40,000 on Manhattan Island alone. Perhaps
; 70,000 would be a fair guess all told,
; counting up to five o'clock this after-
noon. Rentals range all the way from $5
' a month for a wretched tenement hole in
the lowest depths of the East Side, where
WHERE THE LLEVATtD THUNDERS BY
3290
THE FT.AT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
MR. GEORGE McCANN
The oldest janitor in the oldest apartment house in Xew York
narrow, svinless houses seem overrun by
a perfect tangle of fire-escapes, to $500 a
month for a marvelous ten-room suite with
every luxury and convenience that whim can
devise and ingenuity and wealth supply.
But, whatever 3'ou pay, or wherever 3'our
suite may be located, you are still bounded on
the top and bottom, and perhaps on the sides
as well, by other suites occupied by persons
whom you may not know or wish to know, yet
THE STUVVESAXT
The oldest apartment house in New V'ork
whose social events, domestic disasters and
culinary economies may and do become an
element and an influence in your dailv life.
A fairly decent apartment of seven small
rooms may be had for $40 per month,
with steam heat. Certain labor-saving
appliances reduce the cost of living some-
what, so that flat-dwelling is rather cheaper
than residence in a detached house, the
rental becoming about one-half the expense.
Perhaps the saving is more than made up in
doctors" bills. Dark or half- lit suites — and
most of them are either one or the other —
are not conducive to health, and it seems to
me that a long period of fiat-dwelling must
result in the city's physical deterioration,
just in proportion as the apartments lack
direct sunlight and pure air.
Whatever may be the physical effect of flat-
dwelling, it is likely to mean artistic and, in
some cases, even moral decline. No matter
what his original tendency toward individu-
ality of taste and a regard for the genuine
things of life, the flat-dweller will at last
accustom himself to accepting conventional
plans and designs that are thrust upon him.
" Just tell me what color paper you want
— green, blue or pink — and I'll fix it for
you," I heard an agent telephone to a newly
signed tenant. " I know all the kinds. You
needn't bother." The apartment in ques-
tion yielded an annual rental of $3,000.
Doubtless the tenant did not care. A man
who has worked up to a $3,000 apartment
has likely reached an artistic poise where he
is willing to put aside all care and have his
paper selected for him. He has grown to
like whatever is supposed to be the proper
thing.
At that point moral decline is apt to set in.
You can't lose individuality and retain strict
honesty. One of the foremost apartment
owners in New York city — the promoter of an
apartment house in which there are dining-
rooms — assured me that some of his wealthiest
tenants took silverware and glasses from the
tables, slipped nuts and confections into their
pockets, and that at the table-d'hote dinner
more than one man came down alone, and
carried away enough in his pockets of bread,
cakes, and even cooked birds, to make a
dinner for his wife who stayed upstairs to
save a dollar. Such is the moral degenera-
tion that goes with lincrusta Walton, gas
logs, and a thoroughly artificial life.
THE ANSONIA
The largest apartment house in New York city
Photographed by Irving L'nderhill
IMMENSE APARTMENT HOUSES IN UPTOWN NEW YORK
TlIK FLAT-1)\\ IM.I.ICRS OF A GRKA'l ( ITY
3293
WHERE APARTMENTS LINE UOTH SIDES OF THE STREET
The centre of Harlem flatland
The effect of flat life on children is bad.
Their childhood becomes a medley of assorted
and variously connected rooms, stair climb-
ing, roof prospects, elevator and pavement
associations. They have no real home —
nothing to look back upon — their individu-
ality is nipped and blighted by the frost of
many moving-days. And they grow to like
it — that is the worst. The prospect of mov-
ing and of a new flat is looked forward to
somewhat as they anticipate Fourth of Julv
and Christmas.
They grow to regard all nature from a " flat "
point of view. A little girl I knew went into
the country last summer and heard for the
first time the tinkle of the bells as the cows
came home at evening.
"Oh," she said, "I hear the ragman com-
APARTxMENTS ON A STREET LEADING UP TO GRANT'S TOMB
3294
THE FLAT-DWELLERS OF A GREAT CITY
ingi" The ragman who drove through her
street had cow-bells on his cart. To her the
cow-bells may always suggest the ragman.
Such impressions are not easy to live down.
Of course the apartment house is the natural
result of space limitations. For those who
desire or are compelled to live on Manhattan
Island there is no alternative. The island
is small and it is full to the edges. Dwellings
become fewer each year — lawns and gardens
are forgotten. Within twenty-five years, at
the present rate of building, there will be
hardly a square foot of available ground that
is not occupied either by a sky-scraping
office building or by an apartment house.
Then it will be simph^ a question of going up
or down^higher and even higher into the
air, deeper and still deeper into the depths
below. Lawsuits will develop and test cases
will be tried to decide how high up and
deep down a title may extend, and what are
the aerial and subterranean rights of way.
Meantime what of the poor — those who are
too poor to go to the suburbs — too poor even
now to remain where they are ? Will they be
crowded down and still down into the depths,
to become at last a weird and ghastly race —
the "molocks of Wells's 'Time Machine,'" or
will the vast fiat tops of the mighty houses of
the near future be covered with their cottages,
their clothes-lines, and their gardens — a
development already suggested by the many
drying -lines, some janitor lodges, and tubs
of growing plants. I fear the latter idea is
visionary. The top is "too good for the poor."
It will be used for great glass-covered hot-
houses, where artificial farms, warmed and
enriched even in winter by the waste heat
and vapors, will supply with food the vast
artificial life below. The poor will go down
and still down — the graduation from poverty
to wealth will be an absolute and literal scale.
Perhaps this is a long look ahead, and then
again, as Frank Xorris's Annixter would say,
"Perhaps it isn't." Among the many prob-
lems of flat -dwelling life on Manhattan
Island, perhaps the most important is the
vital question of space.
AN APARTMENT HOUSE INHABITED CHIEFLY BY BARNARD COLLEGE STUDENTS
The Horace Mann School just behind
THE "ROOM" AT LI.OYDS
Here the sliips of the «hole world are »-atch:d
LLOYDS
THE GREAT MARINE INSURANCE COMPANY WITH A SEA-WIDE BUSINESS
WHOSE RECORDS SHOW THE HISTORY AND THE CHARACTER OF EVERY
IMPORTANT SHIP AFLOAT AND THE RECORD OF EVERY MASTER
—THE ROMANCES AMONG ITS RECORDS— ITS INTERESTING HISTORY
BY
CHALMERS ROBERTS
PROSAIC modernity has left little
romance in the life of the ordinary
man who goes down to the city
and toils. Commercial activity has stretched
such a network of interests over the earth
that few regions are now beyond the reach
of breakfast-table bulletins. Only the sea
remains the home of mystery, retains all the
charm of uncertainty. And, therefore, those
whose business is concerned with the sea
have perhaps most of old-time romantic
flavor in their lives. An unceasing war
wages between the grim old monster and
the men who insure ships against its fury.
How it must delight now and then to upset
all their calculations, to force back the
ever-advancing tide of man's mastery over
it ! For the story of Marine Insurance is
one of constant conquest over the chances
of the sea. of constant reduction in the risk
taken and the rate asked. But even yet,
until the day when Marconigrams flood
the face of the waters and every ship has
a spark-emitting masthead, the risk and
mystery remain greater than in any other
insurance underwriting. Modern statistical
3296
LLOYDS
THE TOP OF THE STAIRCASE AT LLOYDS
On the right is the entrance to the committee room, on the left to the sub-committee room, at the back to the luncheon room
returns have made it easy to compute the
average of human Hfe, but mortality tables
for ships have not yet been constructed.
This is undoubtedly the oldest form of
insurance. From the earliest times ship-
owners have combined for the mutual pro-
tection of their constantly endangered prop-
erty. Those earliest voyagers to distant
seas, the Phenicians, practised a kind of
bottomry. Before the master sent his small
bark on a voyage to the edge of the earth
he mortgaged her against her return. If she
came back safely he restored the loan with
a heavy premium. From that time until
now marine insurance has been bound up
with the wars, frauds and vicissitudes of
commerce and is full of fine tales of adven-
ture. It is particularly fitting that Great
Britain, the very existence of which is bound
up in the rapid movement of a large com-
mercial fleet, should be the home of marine
insurance in its most perfectly organized
form. For this form of protection against
the chances of the sea may be said for all
modern purposes to have been bom in London.
One may go further and fix its birthplace
in the coffee-house kept by a certain Edward
Lloyd in Tower Street in the seventeenth
century. For, although there was little evi-
dence that Lloyd himself engaged in any
sort of insurance, he has given his name
thereto and has become in fact a godfather
or patron saint of marine commerce.
The early association between coflfee-houses
and marine underwriters is not to be wondered
at, for these resorts became almost from
their date of opening a general place of
meeting for all men of business. The first
on record is found in 1652, when a Turkish
merchant named Hodges introduced the
brown berry in this way and opened what
contemporary chronicles call a "Kauphy
LLOYDS
3297
JJ.OYDS NEW BUILDING
lb
House." And bc'lorc tlic name of I^hnd
occurs, notices and advertisements were to
be seen showing that shii)i)ers and under-
writers used the new taverns, particularly
those in the city, as ])laccs for auctions of
ships and underwriting against their possiljle
loss or damage. The first mention of the
name of Edward Lloyd is in an advertise-
ment in tile London (nizcltc in 1688. The
advertisement reads:
" A middlc-si/'Ad man having black curled hair
and pock holes on his face is wanted for having,'
stolen a numl)er of watches. A reward of one .guinea
is offered for information as to the delinfjucnt, and
3(n Consitjcration «y ;v.<W'"^'^^'/
_ Jot dnr llur.Jrrd l'oundi,.ixnd MrcrJ,nf ta IhgCKMt Jt
'•^^^-- UfiSum Tiaivtdtf yy^-«' ' "t^
We who havt hcmnii Juh/irihed mr Htmes, <h, /cr curftim jtxtrcUy, and
hr HUT Jcvtrol and rrjptaivc Heiri, Extailirri, Admhupatm, and Afgwi,
and not me for the cUut or olheri 0/ Ui, or for the Hiin, ExeetUori, AMmi-
firalor,, or Ajjipu, <j the ether m othtri of Ut, affumt, engage, and framje,
Ihfit We, uljunv.ely, g[ curjfvfraljsint rffieOive H{/r», £«oil£", AAmiu-
JtratoTt, and AJJigm,JhaU and will pa,, or tia/f to k pa,d, ■in'o the fiad
Ueiri. Exenlori, AJmni/lralori, and ^gni, iht Swm arid Sum of MoMj
ahuh We have haeuiM rejpe&vel, J>if<Til>td, mthmtan, MateMt mitUvcr.
3n£a[r .
/
• *»»'^/^'" ^
/-
y/^
V:
/jr
/ // . '^^
/''
THE CRIER'S KoSTRU.M
The famous Lutine bell behind
LLOYDS POLICY ON THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON, 1813
those w-ho would earn money are directed to apply
to Mr. Edward Llovd at his Coffee House in Tower
Street."
Edward Lloyd moved in 1692 to Lombard
Street, and it was here that he began the
publication of Lloyd's Xeu'S, a paper which
contained intelligence from foreign countries
and home centres. In fact, very little else
is known concerning the man whose name
has now been carried to the uttermost corners
of the earth. Almost the only other record
left of him individually concerns a dispute
which he had with the House of Lords in
consequence of some comments which he
LLOYDS
3299
made upon a petition from the Quakers.
In this encounter he appears as a doughty
man, for when the noble Lords demanded
that he pubhsh a retraction of his statements
he dechned to do anything of the sort. He
returned their demand with a reply that
"Mr. Lloyd will print no more at present."
And no more did he. It was thirty years
later before his paper was revived as Lloyd's
List, since when it has gone on uninter-
rupted to its present honorable age. Little
further is known of its founder, but after
his death the coffee-house kept its original
name for many years.
It does not appear throughout the greater
part of the eighteenth century that mer-
chants and underwriters frequenting Lloyd's
rooms were bound together by any organiza-
tion. It was probably as a result of the
enormous gambling crazes of the seventeenth
century, so inseparably bound up with the
history of insurance, that formal and final
organization took place in 1 7 7 1 . But Lloyd's
coffee-house played an important part in
the long reign of insurance scandals and
financial bubbles which make almost the
whole of the eighteenth century famous in
financial annals. In 1768 a writer in the
London Chronicle declared that Lloyd's
coffee house was the scene of all manner
of illicit gaming, and that insurance had
been developed into more or less fraudulent
bets upon elections, on resignations of the
Government, on the lives of distinguished
people, and even upon the execution of
certain well-known peers.
To look back briefly over this curious
development of financial history we find
that it was an important day when nearly at
the end of the seventeenth century the son
of an Edinburgh goldsmith escaped from
the King's Bench prison in London, having
been tried at Old Bailey for murder and
condemned to death. The fugitive son
reached the coast of France, and in the
Hue and Cry which went after him his
name was given as John Law and he was
described as "A black, lean man about six
feet high, large pock holes in his face and
easily known by his high nose and his loud
and broad speech." Although the descrip-
tion of this fugitive is not attractive, he
seems to have been able to exercise wonderful
influence over those of the highest birth and
rank. He became the intimate friend and
counselor of the Regent of France, Comp-
troller-General of the Exchefjuer of the
Kingdom, and the originator of the most
gigantic financial imjjosture ever known.
Not only individuals but masses of people
and nations must go mad at certain periods,
for in no way else can be described the furious
seething mass of people whirhng around a
group of needy speculators in the Rue Quin-
compoix, Paris, during 17 18 and 17 19. In
these years Law and his Mississippi Company
ruled everything. The disease proved infec-
tious, for, leaving Paris, it came to England
and found its culmination in the South Sea
bubble. During this time, and in fact for a
period of about forty years, the greatest
scoundrels in England were starting insurance
companies and selling shares at prices varying
from a quarter of a dollar to $5,000. At the
time of the South Sea mania there were more
than two thousand schemes afloat in the shape
of joint stock undertakings representing a nom-
inal capital of $2,500,000,000, about five times
the current cash existent in all Europe. It
was only necessary for an unknown person
to take a room and to advertise to receive
subscriptions amounting to thousands of
pounds, which, it is needless to say, dis-
appeared along with the promoter. At this
time all manner of insurance swindles were
afloat. Advertisements may be seen offering
to insure horses from natural death, to
increase children's fortunes, and there was
even a company which offered general
assurance from lying.
It was in 1774 that the association of under-
writers and brokers calling itself The New
Lloyds settled down in the Royal Exchange.
It was here, at about this time, that the
printed policy of insurance was first made
uniform; and that adopted on the 12th of
January, 1779, is used with few alterations
today. In fact, it is identical except that
the opening formula, "Be it known that,"
has been substituted for the more pious,
"In the name of God, Amen." The associa-
tion was again reorganized in 181 1, but was
not finally incorporated by an Act of Parlia-
ment until 187 1. The objects of the incor-
poration were stated to be (i) carrying out
marine insurance, (2) the protection of the
interests of members of the association, and
(3) the collection, publication and diffusion
of intelligence and information with respect
to shipping.
3300
LLOYDS
In 187 1 the society created a Nautical
Institute called Lloyds Register of British
and Foreign Shipping. This classification of
ships is the work of a separate executive.
The first steamer noted on Lloyds Register
was the James Watt, 294 tons, bxiilt in the
previous year at Greenock, and classed as
"A I." That brief but very significant
term, "A i," has become so general a col-
loquialism that people who constantly use
it have probably little idea of its origin.
In imitation of Lloyds there was founded
at Rostock in 1868, and aftem*ard trans-
ferred to Berlin, the Germanische Lloyds.
After this French, Russian and American
companies have been similarly formed. The
name has also been adopted by navigation
companies, perhaps because of the security
it seems to promise. The North German
Lloyd of Bremen, fovmded in 1857, traverses
the North Sea, the waters of England, North
and South America. The Austrian Lloyds,
founded in 1836, was at first a marine insur-
ance company, but now it sends ships through
the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas and
across the Indian Ocean to Hongkong.
The great central room in the handsome
Lloyds building in London is available only
for subscribers and members and is generally
spoken of as the "Room." Subscribers
pay $25 per 5'ear and have no voice in
the management of the association. Non-
undem'riting members pay an entrance
fee of S60, while underwriting mem-
bers pay an entrance of $5 00 and also
deposit securities of a value of from $25,000
to $50,000, according to circumstances.
Lloyds is managed by a committee chosen
from its own members, which in turn appoints
clerks and a secretary' to attend to the daily
routine of business. The mode in which this
is done is ver\' simple. Brokers write on a
slip of paper the name of the ship, the ship's
master, the nature of the voyage, the sub-
ject to be insured, and the amount at which
it is valued. If the risk is accepted, each
underwriter subscribes his name and the
amotmt he agrees to take or underwrite, the
insurance being effected as soon as the total
amount is made up, and in these times of
progress in shipbuilding and navigation the
sum paid by the insured to the unden^-riter
is a very moderate tax indeed.
As in the old days of insurance gambling,
all manner of risks mav be covered at Llovds,
but marine insurance is the only kind which
receives official recognition. There are two
classes of members — brokers who act for
clients, and underv\'riters who do business
on their own account. Admission is not
easily obtained, and the most careful investi-
gation is made into the character of all appli-
cants. No one who has been in the "Room"
at Lloyds during office hours will forget
the animated scene. The underwriters sit
at tables ready for business, and to them
brokers come constantly submitting risks
to be covered for their clients, or perhaps
some member comes to gain information
before undertaking a certain risk. As has
been said before, the intelligence system at
Lloyds is as perfect as modem ingenuity can
make it. The coasts of nearh' all the civi-
lized world are subdivided into districts
which are covered by Lloyds agents, and
much fuller news is obtained when the sub-
ject for information comes within reach of
the signal stations which have been erected
throughout the world at Lloj'ds's expense.
All the marine insurance companies of the
world practically are dependent upon this
source of information. To the underwriters'
associations in Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux,
Genoa, Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, and in
fact all the commercial centres of Europe:
to New York for the underwriters' associa-
tion there, and to Melbourne for the under-
writers in the Autralasian colonies go constant
btdletins from Llo^'ds. The registers avail-
able for members are wonderfully complete.
Near the entrance to the "Room" is the huge
casualty book, in which may be found
recorded the fate of many a gallant ship.
In another set of volumes are set down the
movements of every British vessel, for these
are entered up as the telegraphic news arrives,
and the actual position of the vessel and the
name of the place where she was last spoken
is given.
There is still another register containing
the biography of every skipper in the British
Mercantile Marine, where and when he was
bom, on what ship he served his apprentice-
ship, what vessels he has commanded, the
casualties that have befallen them, and any
other information which may be of help to
the underwriter about to undertake a risk in
which this particular captain is concerned.
There is another volume called the Confi-
dential Index, which is not so easilv obtainable
LLOYDS
3301
by the public. In tliis the underwriter
finds the history and financial standing of
every ship-owning firm and company. Here,
also, is to be found a list of captains who
have had their certificates suspended, with
reasons for suspension, and whatever other
mformation is considered of value to those
who conduct marine insurance business.
One of the most distinctive sights to the
average visitor to Lloyds is the crier, who
stands in a rostrum under a great sounding-
board and announces good or bad news as it
is received from the four corners of the earth.
A great ship's bell is placed above his right
hand, and when it rings out, all the noisy
babble of the place ceases, as every one is
keen to hear whether the news announced
concerns some long-belated ship's arrival in
port or if the intelligence adds another name
to the many which have surrendered to the
fury of the sea. And after this will be posted
a very brief formula concerning the missing
ship, which is full of significance, for it means
that all hope is gone and that captain and
crew are dead in the eyes of the law. There
is a room devoted wholly to the posting of
these notices and telegrams, and it has come
to be called "The Chamber of Horrors."
The bell which announces the news, good
or bad, which is daily received, is itself con-
nected with a romantic chapter in the history
of Lloyds. The late Mr. Frederick Martin,
the historian of Lloyds, as well as the best
authority upon marine insurance, tells very
fully the story of the wreck of the war-ship
Lutine, to which this bell formerly belonged.
For about sixty years the bell itself lay at
the bottom of the Zuyder Zee. The ship
went down in the autumn of 1791 with all
on board save one solitary survivor. It was
originally a French man-of-war, but after
its capture by Admiral Duncan it was added
to the British Navy. At the time of the
disaster she was on her way to Hamburg,
with a large amount of gold and bullion on
board, consigned there by English merchants.
But as this was the day of the newspaper
hoax, the most extraordinary stories were
printed in the London papers at the time
about the cargo. One story had it that
the Dutch crown jewels were on board and
that the treasure on board amounted to
$10,000,000. There is no doubt that
the amount was a large one, but as
England was then at war with the Nether-
lands, and the Netherlands Government
claimed tlie wreck, English underwriters had
little hope of recompense. It is said that
local fishermen succeeded in salving coin
and bullion amounting to $415,000 from the
wreck and were allowed by their Govern-
ment to retain a third of this.
But peace had been restored many years;
in fact, not until 1858 were salvage operations
begun on a scientific scale. As a result of
this search, Lloyds secured in all the sum of
$110,810, as well as the bell which bears the
royal crown and arms of Bourbon, and
the ship's rudder, from which were made a
great armchair and a table which are to be
seen in the underwriters' room. This sum
saved, however, by no means satisfied the
expectation of those carried away by the
glamour of submarine treasure-seeking, for
even in 187 1, when the Act of Incorporation
was granted, the committee of Lloyds secured
the insertion of a provision that "the society
may from time to time do or join in doing
all such lawful things as they think expedient
with a view to further salving from the
wreck of the Ltitiiie."
It is needless to say that this organization
is to a great extent the public prosecutor as
well as the police system of the sea. It is
largely owing to the relentlessness of Lloyds
in dealing with wrong-doers that many old
forms of piracy and sea knavery have come
to an end. This is not to say that the mem-
bers of Lloyds quibble over genuine mistakes.
They have been known to pay insurance
without question even where the ship lost
had sailed from another port than that named
in the policy. Still it is inevitable that
underwriters should at times be victimized.
Of course, unscrupulous owners and captains
do not scuttle ships now with the same
impunity which they enjoyed in the early
days of marine insurance. But the records
at Lloyds are filled with stories of bold
buccaneering men of the sea and also filled
with the very severe punishment meted out
to them.
Even today cases of fraud discovered in
attempts to secure marine insurance unjustly
are dealt with very severely by the courts.
A well-remembered case at Lloyds concerns
the yacht Firefly. Not long after this boat
had been insured for a considerable sum,
two men landed in an exhausted condition
from a rowing-boat on the south coast of
3302
WHAT IS THE BEST COLLEGE?
England. They told a long ston.^ of ship-
wreck, of perils braved, of how the Firefly
had gone down and under what great diffi-
ctilty they had escaped. It was subsequently
discovered that the whole story was an
invention, and that the ver\' boat in which
the escape had been made had been stolen
by the shipwrecked mariners. They were
just upon the point of receiving the sum
of insurance money they expected. They
obtained instead a lengthy term of im-
prisonment as the just meed of their
audacious crime.
But with the developments of modem
science these enterprises have become as
rare proportionately as have the actual
risks which nowadays threaten marine com-
merce. Marine unden\'riters of a hundred
years ago would indeed be amazed at the
enormous reduction which has taken place
in insurance rates. The price of gold bullion
between London and New York is only twenty-
five cents net per loo lbs. and this covers not
only the risks of the transatlantic voyage,
but transit from the London house to the
liner and from the liner to the firm in New
York to which the btdhon is consigned.
And the most easily negotiable of securities,
even when sent by registered post between
England and the United States, can be covered
by insurance at the rate of one-third per
loo lbs. There comes a time, however, when
this very rate rises by leaps and bounds
and seems to point in its rise to a great loss
in life and property.
Only recently a great Atlantic liner was
announced to be three days overdue. On
the third day there was no noticeable advance
in the rate charged for those who had neglected
to insure property shipped upon it, but on
the fourth day, when anxiety as to both the
passengers and the property on board had
increased, it was ominously announced from
Lloyds that the rate of insurance upon that
particular vessel had been advanced to $io in
S500. This was on Tuesday. On Wednes-
day, when no further news had been heard,
the rate had jumped to $25 in the $500. On
Thursday it reached $50 and by Friday the
enormous sum of $100 in $500 was declared
to be the rate in any and all manner of insur-
ance upon the missing vessel. It is needless
to say how horribly these announcements
confirmed the anxious fears of those most
deeply concerned in the arrival of the vessel,
for all the world knows that if there is any
hope it will be longest found at Lloyds. It
is also needless to say that when the great
liner in question finally reached her dock
in New York, nowhere was there greater
rejoicing at the announcement than in the
room where it was tolled out by the bell
of the Luiine and read by the crier to the
assembled crowd at Llovds.
WHAT IS THE BEST COLLEGE?
A CLASSIFICATION OF SUCCESSFUL MEX ACCORDING TO
THEIR COLLEGES— SMALL COLLEGES SURPASS— A STRIK-
ING DISPARITY BETWEEN CO-EDUCATIONAL AND MEN'S
COLLEGES— NEW ENGLAND COLLEGES THE MOST FRUITFUL
BY
EDWIN G. DEXTER
THE best college is the one which sends
out the largest percentage of its
graduates to fields of broadest use-
fulness, thus contributing most largely in
proportion to its size to general culture and
progress. Assuming this definition, it is
possible to form a judgment from an examina-
tion of "Who's Who in America" as to the
sort of college that has given the country
successful men. The criterion is not infal-
lible, but it would be difficult to find a better.
"Who's Who" for 1900 contains the names
of 8,602 Americans, 3,237 of whom were
college graduates distributed among 200
colleges. One himdred and fortv-four of
these colleges, embracing all the more impor-
tant institutions, have in round numbers
260,000 living graduates, only 2,655 of
WHAT IS THE BEST COLLEGE
3303
whom were mentioned in "Who's Who."
Classifying these 144 colleges according to
size, wc have the following table:
Table I. Classification as to Size
chiefly whether a co-cducational or a men's
college is better for men :
Table III. Classification as to Sex of
Student Bony
0
„ 3
.2 0
C.2
6^
rtT3
?l^
f'g
3 0
0 u
S u
IZC)
HO
S:
P.S
85
67.387
953
1.40
26
34,810
328
•94
33
157.617
1.371
.86
Below 500
500 to 1,000
Above 1 ,000
Although this table would seem to show
conclusively that the smaller college is best,
it should be remembered that the larger
universities furnish men from graduate or
professional schools who are not accounted
for in this list — which includes only graduates
with the bachelor's degree. On the other
hand, men are accredited to large colleges
who really graduated from small ones. The
"Who's Who" names show almost no gradu-
ates of more than ten years' standing, and
many colleges, notably the western state
universities, may no doubt have passed
from the small class to the large since their
prominent sons were graduated; so that
the classification is hardly accurate. These
facts, however, do not seem to disturb the
advantage of the smaller colleges. For,
though Harvard and Yale — leaders for the
large colleges — far exceed the average, there
are nine of the colleges with a membership
below 500 which surpass them.
The second table shows the result of a
classification on the basis of sectarianism :
Table II. Classification as to Sectarian
Affiliation
Sectarian
Non-sectarian
75
69
^
•Si
2
•2^
0
C w
bo
.9 0
a
■wxl
>
y^
hJ
S:
c 2
<u
a>
75.476 585
184,367 2,070
(is
.78
1. 12
Study shows that non-sectarian colleges
average three times as large as the sectarian,
but the two individual colleges with the
largest number of eminent graduates are
not only small, but sectarian.
In the third table the important com-
parison is between the first and second
classes in the table. The question here is
Co-educational
Male . . .
Female . .
3
C 0
'^
• Sx:
"3
u
0
1'^
11
^'0
(a
c
>
.2'o
c 0
5cc3
hJ
S:
&.S
94
138,247
802
■58
46
114,660
1.839
1.60
4
6.736
14
•03
Deducting from the total number of living
graduates of co-educational institutions one-
fourth, about the present proportion of women,
we still have a sufficient preponderance of
success for men in favor of the college for men.
Table IV. fails to throw much light on a
much discussed question :
Table IV. Classification from the Stand-
point of the Size of College Towns
V (U
J3 60
Less than 30,000 pop. 115
More than 30,000 pop. 29
Dividing the country into five geographical
sections we have the following result:
Table V. Geographical Distribution
nt
z
3
c °
■d
■~Xi
•s^
?fn-H
0
C w
5^
60
.2 0
c 2
C
^3 45
f,-2
>
g^
.-H
S:
euS
150-2
36
1,494
■99
109,6
07
1,161
1.06
New England
Middle . . .
Southern .
Central . .
Western .
3
•0
.ii
0
■s^
^V,
h «
0
c «
4.. c
.So
bo
c
>
.2'o
g^
c 0
Ha
'^u
J
S:
-1-S
19
53.620
1,116
2.08
26
77.310
751
•97
38
39.799
271
.68
55
79.934
447
•59
6
7.135
39
•54
In 1890 however, about 43 per cent, of
the college students in the country were in
the central and western states, whereas in
1900 there were about 47 per cent. This
growth has not affected the number of names
in "Who's Who." Moreover, the co-educa-
tional character of the western universities
tends to bring down their percentage. Yet
seven of the twelve leading colleges in our list
are in New England.
The best college seems to be the small,
non-sectarian college for men in N^ew England
in towns of more than ,^0,000 inhabitants.
THE COMING OF THE AUTOMOBILE
THE MOTOR AGE WILL FOLLOW THE RAILWAY AGE— GOOD
FOR ALL PURSES— HOW THE AUTOMOBILE WILL AFFECT THE
LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY— THE CAR-
OWNER HAS SIX TIMES THE SPHERE OF THE HORSE-
OWNER— A GREAT INDUSTRY AND A SOCIAL REVOLUTION
BY
HENRY NORMAN, M.P.
EDITOR OF THB ENGLISH " WORLd's WORK "
FIRST, the age of the stage-coach — a fine,
manly age, full of splendid horses and
vigorous men, redolent of romance
and gay with color. Second, the age of
the railway — the foundation of modem indus-
trialism, the creator of vast wealth, the
parent of great cities. Tomorrow and there-
after, the age of the motor — a revival of
country life infinitely beyond that of the old
coaching days, a vehicle of national develop-
ment greater than the railway, an industry
destined to be inferior only to iron, coal,
and shipbuilding, a social revolution in the
life of the individual man and in the organiza-
tion of the community.
Doubtless today this forecast will seem
exaggerated. A year or two hence it will be a
commonplace of opinion. Today we all talk
of automobiles and motoring; we see a huge
show of motor vehicles; we read striking
statistics of production; we learn of non-
stop runs of hundreds of miles, and of speeds
exceeding those of the fastest expresses; and
we find in this a convenient topic of dinner-
table talk. But few even of our leaders of
opinion have yet realized that we are on the
eve of a more momentous change than that
inaugurated by Watt and Stephenson, with
even greater consequences to the community
than their steam automobiles on fixed rails
brought about.
The automobile is no longer an experiment,
and motoring is no longer only a pastime or a
luxury. The internal-combustion engine for
locomotion is finally invented. Of course, it
will change and improve. It may be a two-
cycle engine instead of a four-cycle; it may
continue to be fired by electricity, or it may
fire itself automatically by compression; it
may be combined with a dynamo and a
series of electro-motors; it may burn gasoline,
alcohol, common petroleum or heavy gasoline
residue; but substantially in its present
fundamental form it has its own age of activ-
ity before it, until the problem of storing
in cheap light-weight accumulators electrical
energy generated at Niagara or Imatra or on
the Zambesi is solved, to transfigure once
more the practical applications of power.
Some of the most successful of the automo-
biles of toda}' are propelled by steam engines,
and these have certain distinct advantages
of their own; but I am speaking here of the
new invention — or, rather, the new applica-
tion— of the gasoline engine, with which prob-
ably eighty out of every hundred mechanic-
ally propelled vehicles, other than those for
heavy traction, are equipped; and of this it
may safely be asserted that for aU practical
purposes it is today thoroughly efficient,
even without the certainty of its constant
improvement. Not much more than a year
ago the motor-car was a noisy, ill-smelling,
costly and unreliable machine — a public
nuisance. Today it is silent; if it smells,
the driver is to blame; it is within the reach
of a man of modest means; and it is as little
likely to break down as any other fine
product of human ingenuity. I do not mean,
of course, that every car one meets on the
road has these admirable qualities, but that
they characterize the latest inventions in the
motor world. A car of twenty horse-power,
capable of carrying four passengers at forty
miles an hour, can hardly be heard by those
on board; in fact, its extreme silence is a
new element of danger, as the only notice of
its approach is the horn of its driver. It is
on land, in that respect, what the canoe is
on water. These most silent cars are for
the moment expensive, but even moderately
priced cars can be had as silent as anybody
THE COMING OF THE AUTOMOBILE
3305
ought to desire them. This, for the benefit
of the non-expert reader, is due chiefly to
two factors: the balanced and slower revo-
lution of the engine by the increased number
of cylinders, and the introduction of the
valve which is opened and closed mechanically
in place of the valve held shut by a spring
and opened by the suction of the piston.
Opinions differ yet upon the advantages of
the new method, but in my humble and
amateur judgment the motor with automatic
spring valves will be as obsolete a year hence
as the bicycle without free-wheel action
is today. There are, moreover, today one or
two makes of car with the older valve which
are almost as silent as need be.
Improved methods of combustion and
lubrication have practically abolished offen-
sive odors. Pneumatic tires, once the bane
of the motorist's life — for he never dared be
confident that he would not have to spend
an hour in tedious and dirty repair of a
puncture by the roadside — now with luck
will run a thousand miles without mishap,
and several thousands before they need be
re-covered or replaced. And it is by no
means certain that the inflated rubber tire
is destined to remain an essential part of a
motor-car. In the vehicle of the future,
concussion due to inequalities of road surface
may be absorbed by springs, either in the
wheel or on the body. This would be a more
scientific method. Side-slip, too, the one
and only real danger of motoring, both to
the motorist and the public, is on the eve
of being, if it is not already, overcome. Gasoline
costs twenty-five cents a gallon, and a gallon
will take an average car twenty miles, and
each new car put on the market runs farther
on less — one make of car has just run fifty
miles on a gallon. A driver with access to
a small workshop who cannot do most of his
own repairs does not know his business, and
as it is to be hoped that before long an ele-
mentary knowledge of mechanics and the
ability to handle all simple tools may be
considered a necessary part of every man's
education, the car-owner who does not keep
a mechanic-driver ought not to need to send
his car to a professional repairer except in
case of something breaking. It is truly
absurd to see, as one often does, an owner, or
indeed a driver, hurrying his car in alarm
to the makers if the engine says "puff" when
it ought to say "pafi," when the same man
would doctor his horse without a misgiving
— though putting a motor-car in order is
child's play compared with getting a sick
horse well, as anybody knows who has tried
both.
And as regards cost — too big a subject to
be dealt with here except in very general
terms: For $7,500 or a little more you can
get the best car in the world, a magnificent
vehicle, of the utmost comfort and the most
unnecessary speed — a marvel of carrosserie
and luxury and workmanship, the dernier cri
of motor fashion. And parenthetically I
must add that something more than the
possession of a big bank account ought to
be necessary before a man is permitted to
drive one of these tremendous engines upon
the public roads. In the hands of a man
who really understands them and has had
ample experience in driving they are under
perfect control, but it is almost criminal for
anybody to drive them who has not these
qualifications. But to return to the question
of cost: for $3,500 or $4,000 you may, if you
know or are well advised, procure a car to all
intents and purposes as good as the most
costly. The highest prices last only for a
season, and all prices are coming down fast.
The car that about $2,500 will buy is not
much inferior, and nobody who does not need
the social distinction of owning the very latest
and biggest and fastest and smartest need
drive a better car than can be had for that
reasonable sum.
To come to "light cars," $1,500 or a trifle
more, combined with a certain knowledge of
the curious varieties of price for the same
thing, will make you the owner of a vehicle
that will carry four passengers safely and
reliably and comfortably at thirty miles an
hour on the level, and at an average of
eighteen miles on ordinary country roads, and
that you may be proud to show your friends.
Below this figure, the buyer will do well to
choose a two-seated vehicle, possibly with a
detachable spider seat behind for a servant
on occasions. Nothing is more unsatisfactory
than a car too heavy for its horse-power.
These were turned out in quantities not long
ago, and today they are for sale second-hand
by the hundred for what they will bring. A
first-rate two-seated car, by one of the best
makers, perfect for its work in all respects,
in which you can start for Edinburgh from
London or for Chicago from New York with-
33o6
THE COMING OF THE AUTOMOBILE
out a moment's fear of accident or discom-
fort or danger or serious delay, may be bought
for $i,ooo, or even a little less. And if you
decide, after examination and reflection, to
choose steam, $250 may be economized
on the above price. Below S750 there
is at present no car fulfilling the above
conditions, except second-hand, and there
you must proceed very warily indeed or you
will take home a four-wheeled scrap-heap.
Finally, there is the motor-bicycle, but this
is so remarkable a production, and is destined
to play so great a role in our social life in the
near future, that it deserves a separate
article.
I have now shown that the price of a car
is no longer prohibitive, but that good cars
may be had to suit all purses. It is delightful,
of course, to own, and superlatively so to be
able to drive, one of the magnificent monsters,
but husband and wife may get great pleasure
and health and constant change, and vastly
enlarge their circle of friends and places to
visit, out of a Si, 000 car, and unless the man
of the pair is in the habit of hammering his
thumb, or drawing tin-tacks with a chisel,
there will be no need whatever for them
to keep a driver. The little car will cost
them less a year than a pony and trap, and
do five times the work. Indeed, there is not
the slightest reason why the intelligent
woman of today should not keep and manage
and drive such a car entirely by herself, hiring
the local boy to wash it occasionally in muddy
weather. There is nothing about it which
a woman who understands a sewing-machine
could not learn in a week.
What is the probable influence of the
automobile upon contemporary life ? The
privately owned car alone will enormously
affect this. Every car-owner has at once
a vastly increased radius of movement. The
owner of a pair of horses in the country may
be said to have a practical everyday radius
of about ten or twelve miles. Twenty or
twenty-five miles is a day's work for a good
horse or a pair, and though this can, of course,
be exceptionally much exceeded, it cannot
even be maintained as an average. The
horses that have done twenty-five miles on
Monday will not be expected to do much on
Tuesday. Moreover, a twenty-five-mile
drive is a tiring thing, and nobody cares to
do it two or three times a week. If this
estimate of the use of horse-flesh seems too
small, let the reader who lives in the country''
and keeps horses ask himself how often weeks
pass before he makes a call due at a house
a dozen miles away. And this keeping of
horses is an expensive business, with all
the concomitant and never-ceasing payments
for doctoring, shoeing, saddlery, brushes,
clothing, cleaning-pastes, etc. A carriage and
pair means $2,000 a 3^ear in town and more
than $1,500 in the country, as it involves
there at least one other carriage, alternative
horses, and two servants. "Moderate means"
in the country permits of only one horse and
carriage, and this, including a man in livery
but charging nothing for stabling, involves an
expenditure of $600 per annum, after an '
initial outla}^ of from $500 to $1,000, accord-
ing to the style of the turnout. Recent
exaggerated estimates of the cost of keeping an
automobile have misled opinion. It is well
within the mark, however, to say that a big
car should not cost less than a carriage and
pair, and a small car less than a horse and
carriage. A correspondent of the AiUomohile
Club Journal has just given exact figures of
the use and cost of his ten horse-power, four- '
seated car. He does not keep a man, and
nothing is allowed for depreciation. His
average number of passengers was three, his
average speed eighteen to twenty miles an
hour, his distance run in the year 4,975 iriiles,
and his total cost was little more than $575.
And this, be it remembered, is what the
ordinary man would call a "big car." Another
correspondent in the Motor-car Journal gives
his figures for five months of the ownership
of a five horse-power, three-wheeled tandem,
which would be little cheaper than a two-
seated car. He drove it 1,648 miles, and
his entire expenditure was about $22.50, or
a little more than a cent a mile. He describes
himself as a "man who conducts a small
country business."
My point in giving these figures is to show
that everybody who keeps a horse may keep
a car for less money, and that thousands of
people who have never felt that they could
afford a horse will certainly keep a small car
as soon as they learn the cheapness and
reliability of it. Now to return to the ques-
tion of radius, which for horse-keepers I have
put down at about twelve miles. For non-
horse-keepers it is, of course, much less,
unless they ride bicycles, and a man and his
wife cannot go out to dinner on bicycles, or,
THE COMING OF THE AUTOMOIULE
3307
indeed, go out regularly with comfort during
several months of the year. With a car
of ten or twelve horse-power the radius of a
family — the whole family — is comfortably
thirty miles, and, of course, much more
on occasion and if they like motoring. To
go to lunch thirty miles away and come
back is an easy performance; and a hundred
miles in the day, fifty out and back, can
often be done not only without undue fatigue,
but with great enjoyment and benefit. Now
the area of a circle whose radius is twelve
miles is 452 square miles, but the area of one
whose radius is thirty miles is 2,827 square
miles. Thus the car-owner has a sphere of
activity exceeding by no less than 2,375
square miles that of the horse-owner, with
all its additional opportunities of intercourse
with his fellows. In other words, the pos-
session of a car multiplies the contents and
the effective sphere of his life by more than
six — and by much more if he did not and
cannot keep a horse. Think of what it means.
Every friend within 3,000 square miles can
be visited, any place of worship or lecture or
concert attended, and business appointment
kept, the train met at any railway station,
every post and telegraph and telephone
office within reach, every physician accessible,
any place reached for golf or tennis or fishing
or shooting, and with it all fresh air inhaled
under exhilarating conditions. It is a revolu-
tion in daily life. With an automobile one
lives three times as much in the same span
of years, and one's life, therefore, becomes to
that extent wider and more interesting.
The influence upon the community will be
no less than upon the individual. Our
country districts will revive. The old coach-
ing roads and coaching inns will once more
be thronged with travelers. We shall know
the land we live in — its rural interests, its
beauties, its antiquities. Country residential
property will rise in value. The man who
has business in the town will no longer be
dependent upon a slow and rare service of
trains. His first-class carriage will await his
will in his own coach-house. Therefore thou-
sands of the town-dwellers of today will be
the country-dwellers of tomorrow. It will
no more be necessary for those who would
dwell in the country to stipulate that their
house shall not be more than so many miles
from a railway station. To the car-owner
it is virtually the same thing whether his
home is one mile or a dozen miles from his
nearest railway. This will bring into the
market at good prices a great numljcr of
country places unletable and unsalable
today. There will soon arise, in consequence,
an irresistible demand for better roads — in
all probability for a division of road-control
similar to that of France, the main arteries
under the direct management of the state,
the smaller roads under local control. It goes
without saying that the present absurd laws
regarding speed will soon be altered — by
abolishing all restriction upon speed, and
making every driver responsible, under heavy
penalties, for inconsiderate or dangerous
driving.
So much for the privately owned car and
its future influence. This, however, will be
but a minor factor in the coming development
of motor traffic. The motor vehicle for busi-
ness purposes will soon be universal. Already
the more enterprising tradesmen are using,
with greater efficiency ^pd economy, light
motor vans for the collection and delivery of
their goods. In New York heavy commercial
transport is being rapidly absorbed by the
motor. A few years hence we shall look
back with a smile to the practice of the rail-
ways and large firms in using horse-drawn
vans. Commercial travelers will take their
samples through the country in suitable
motor-cars.
Agriculture will be one of the chief indus-
tries to benefit by the coming revolution.
Already a company has been formed for
manufacturing an agricultural gasoline motor
which has proved its practicability. Most
of the important large farming tasks in the
United States are accomplished by some
kind of engine or motor. A motor lawn-
mower already makes it less costly to keep
up those stretches of glorious sward which
England alone can show. Groups of farmers
will combine to send their milk, eggs, butter,
fruit and vegetables to a town market if
within thirty miles, or if farther to a railway.
By the return journey the farmer will get his
supplies from town or rail at a fraction of
their present transport cost.
The coming of the motor means an abso-
lute change of the nature and conditions of
passenger traffic in cities. The cab horse and
the stage horse will soon be extinct as the
megatherium — to the satisfaction of every
lover of horses. The public motor phaeton
33o8
THE COMING OF THE AUTOMOBILE
for fine weather, with a closing body for wet
weather, has been long in coming, but it will
arrive with a rush. The luxurious electric
brougham, weighing a ton or more, devouring
costly electric energy and unfitted to go
outside city limits, does not touch this
problem, being merely for the pleasure of the
wealthy. But the neat, quiet, quick, com-
fortable little car, seating two besides the
driver and charging twelve cents a mile, will
sweep the awkward and dangerous hansoms
from the street. An excellent motor omnibus
has just made its appearance in London, and
from the moment that its speed, reliability
and comfort are proved, that utter abomina-
tion of locomotion, the 'bus, the despair of all
students of traffic probleras, is doomed.
For my own part, I am convinced that ten
years hence there will not be a horse left in
the streets of London or New York except
the few kept purely for pleasure and pride in
their beauty and strength and for police and
military purposes. •:■ Their disappearance will
have three results: first, twice as much traffic
can be accommodated in any area; second,
the streets, no longer subjected to the pound-
ing of their iron-shod hoofs, will be smooth
and quiet and will last incomparably longer
— to the saving of the taxpayers' money;
and third, there will not be 5,000 tons of
manure deposited in London every day, to be
collected and carted away, filling the air with
ammoniacal odors and the lungs with poison-
ous dust, and costing an enormous yearly
sum for. its final disposition.
I am even inclined to go a step further and
hazard the opinion that the motor will kill
the railway. Why should the community pay
a huge sum per raile for a special roadway for
electric cars and a huge generating station,
when self-propelled motor omnibuses of
equal speed, comfort, capacity and economy
can use the common road, and, by their
ability to be steered round obstacles, not
Interfere with the rest of the traffic ?
I am convinced that municipalities would
consult their own interests by carefully con-
sidering the introduction of motor omnibuses
before embarking upon the heavy initial cost
of an electric railway system which may
quite likely be obsolete before their deprecia-
tion fund has been charged a dozen times.
One great organization alone — the greatest
of all, the railways — will suffer from the
coming of the motor. The motor will rob
them of passenger traffic, of the transport of
mails except for long distances, of the carry-
ing of light goods and light agricultural prod-
uce, and will prevent them from opening up
new districts, which will be served by light
lines and motor vehicles as today in America
by the electric trolley. To some extent the
injury will be mitigated by the motor bringing
to them agricultural produce from wider
areas than can produce it profitably to cart
to the rail; and, of course, the motor-engine,
or rapid succession of motor carriages, as
already planned in France and Austria, will
replace the steam locomotive for suburban
and light fast traffic. But on the whole, the
stage-coach will be avenged upon the railway
by the motor.
There are several other aspects of the
development of motoring — such, for example,
as the motor on water, where also it will
effect great changes; and the stationary
gasoline motor for light manufacturing and
domestic purposes.^ One more matter, how-
ever, cannot be passed over, namely, the
colossal industry that the manufacture of
motor-cars and all that belongs to them
will become.
In 1902 Great Britian imported motors and
parts to the value of $5,512,310 and exported
only $657,405. The value of the American
output of motor vehicles for 1902 is officially
reckoned at $25,000,000. In the »ame year
France exported motor-cars to the value of
$5,310,200. Two firms manufacturing pneu-
matic tires in France turned out in 1902
$4,100,000 worth, and each of them has
$400,000 worth of goods in the charge of
agents. Seventy French firms manufacture
motor-cars, and their combined output last
year was 1 2 ,000 cars. The industry employed
180,000 workmen, earning on an average
$360 a year each.
That the coming of the automobile will be
a social and industrial revolution I have not
the slightest doubt; that it will add vastly
to the sum of human pleasure and health is
certain; that it will render what Mr. Hardy
calls "the doubtful honor of a brief transit
through a sorry world," a fuller and more
interesting experience, I feel sure. In fact, if
" 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
More life, and fuller, than we want,"
the motor-car, in one sense, bids fair to go a
good way toward supplying the deficiency.
TWENTY MILLIONS FOR PRACTICAL
CHURCH WORK
THE PERSONA!, STORY OF HOW THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY THANK-OFFERING OF THE METHODIST CHURtH
BROUGHT $20,ocx),ooo TO EDUCATION AND BENEVOLENCE
BY
EDMUND M. MILLS, PH.D., D.D.
SECRETARY AND EXECUTIVE HEAD UF THE THANK-OFFERING COMMISSION
THE culmination of any undertaking
that can point to "millions in it"
is interesting to the average
American. The story of a gold or silver
mine with a $20,000,000 output; of a lucky
speculation netting stock gamblers a score
of millions; of an invention enriching its
discoverer or promotors by that amount
anywhere would have eager readers. How
the Methodist Episcopal Church raised its
thank-offering of more than $20,000,000 is of
interest to others besides churchmen.
The thank-offering was the idea of a
Methodist layman in England who is the
son of a Methodist minister. Honorable
Robert W. Perks, a member of Parliament,
is the solicitor of a London railroad company.
He was impressed by the vast aggregate
resulting from railroad fares none greater
than a shilling. Why not fill the treasuries
of the institutions of the church by a thank-
offering of a million guineas from a million
persons? The aim must justify itself to the
cold judgment of the church and its adherents,
but sentiment must be kindled and enthusi-
asm roused. The fund was to be a thank-
oflfering to God for the most glorious century
in human history. Mr. Perks persuaded the
English Wesleyan Methodist Conference to
make the attempt. The complete success
of that thank-offering fund is known all
over the world.
Probably it will never be known who was
the first to propose that the American Metho-
dists should make a thank-offering. It is
likely that with the English example before
them the suggestion came to many. The
presidents of Methodist schools whose needs
had been only partially met by the churches
because of pressing local claims felt that this
was their opportunity. They sent a com-
mittee to petition the bishops of the Metho-
dist Episcopal Church at their meeting, held
in Trinity Church, Springfield, Mass., Novem-
ber I, 1898, to appeal to the church to make
a thank-offering to be devoted to church
educational institutions. They received a
cordial, sympathetic hearing. The bishops,
after long and earnest deliberation and
debate on what objects should be included
in the thank-offering, and how much should
be asked for, enlarged the proposed scope of
the movement, and appealed to the church
and its friends for a thank-offering of
$20,000,000 to be devoted to permanent
work or endowment for the following objects :
(a) " For education as represented either
by particular schools in this country
and in foreign lands, or by a general
educational fund for the aid of needy
schools.
(b) " For charitable or philanthropic
work as previously set forth.
(c) " For endowment for city evangeliza-
tion.
(d) " For invested funds for the support
of conference claimants.
(e) " For the payment of debts on our
various kinds of church property.
(f) " For any specific objects in foreign
fields."
This fund was to be above and beyond the
regular gifts of the churches for their own
support and the support of denominational
benevolences. Nothing used for current ex-
penses could count on the thank-offering.
It will thus be seen that in several important
particulars this thank-offering differs from
the English one. Here no specified gift was
asked from the individual. In England
33IO TWENTY MILLIONS FOR PRACTICAL CHURCH WORK
everything went into a central treasury,
from which each of the various objects
received a share, the size of which had been
determined and announced beforehand.
Here the giver had the right to determine to
what object his thank-offering should be
devoted. He was encouraged to give, know-
ing that the cause he was interested in was
to receive his entire gift. Again, the gift went
directly to the treasury of the cause for which
it was given. The share that any organiza-
tion or institution received was determined
by its promptness and perseverance in getting
and keeping its needs and worth before the
church. The presidents of some church
educational and philanthropic institutions
are greatly disappointed that a movement
they fondly dreamed would fill their coffers
without any effort on their part leaves them
discredited and less prepared to meet
competition, because their more active and
enterprising rivals have seized and improved
a great opporttmity.
The bishops appointed a Twentieth-
Century Thank-Offering Commission to give
direction to the movement. The commis-
sion consisted of seven bishops, eight clergv^-
men — either college presidents or identified
with the educational work of the church —
and fifteen representative laymen. Bishop
Edward G. Andrews, D.D., LL.D., who has
his official residence in New York city, was
subsequently elected President of the Thank-
Offering Commission, and Reverend Doctor
Frank A. Parkin, of Germantown, Pa.,
one of the most successful and popular
pastors of Methodism, was elected corre-
sponding secretary. Doctor Parkin has been
engaged with his people in the erection of
one of the most expensive and beautiful
church structures in the denomination. This,
added to his duties as a pastor and preacher,
left him run down nervously. His physician,
one of his parishioners, warned him that
he had reached his limit of work, that rest
would bring him restored health, but that
if he persevered in his resolution to superin-
tend this new enterprise he would break
down entirely. Doctor Parkin, thus warned,
reluctantly resigned. I was chosen to suc-
ceed him, and no one has more cordially
cooperated with me, or has rejoiced more
heartily over the success of the thank-offering,
than Doctor Parkin.
The work began March 20, 1899. We
sent our requests to many leaders of the
church for suggestions for organization.
More than a hundred replies were received.
The plan of organization finally proposed to
the commission and adopted by it provided
for a thank-offering commission in every
annual conference, presiding elder's dis-
trict and pastoral charge. The work was
not to be carried on by an army of salaried
agents, but by the bishops, presiding elders
and pastors enlisting the laymen and cooper-
ating with them. That the plan was suc-
cessful is seen by the fact that nearly
$21,000,000 have been secured, with the
expenses of the General Commission consid-
erably less than $20,000. It was not success-
ful everywhere. In some conferences it
was a lamentable failure. A few conferences
did nothing more than organize because of a
lack of leaders. To raise $20,000,000 required
an average gift of $9 from the white members
of the church. The Los Angeles (California)
district, through its presiding elder. Reverend
Doctor Bovard, reports $36 a member for
the thank-offering from its more than 6,000
members. Other districts as wealthy have
not contributed S5 per member. The colored
conferences were willing and generous, but
poor.
An educator declared to a congregation,
gathered to hear the thank-offering advo-
cated, that the addition of such a vast amount
to the resources of the church must be
fraught with great peril to her. His insti-
tution has not been imperiled to the amount
of a dollar. Many true friends of the church,
forgetting that the sowing must go before the
reaping, were greatly disquieted by such
prophecies and criticisms, but those who
wanted miracles — or immediate results —
predicted failure if torchlight and brass-
band methods were not added at once. It
must be admitted that it was not a small
task that the bishops had appealed to the
church to undertake. For $15,000,000 the
United States bought an empire in the
southwest from France. For a little more
than a third of the proposed thank-offering
we purchased Alaska from Russia. After pro-
viding the largest submarine navy in the
world for Spain she sold us the Philippines
for 820,000,000.
The very magnitude of the undertaking,
however, was inspiring. From unexpected
quarters came encouragement. The first
TWENTY MILLIONS FOR PRACTICAL CHURCH WORK 3311
I
gift reported to the secretary was a double
gold eagle from a day-laborer in the north-
west. The two women's missionary societies
each resolved to contribute $200,000 toward
the $20,000,000. One gave in the end
$409,000, besides increasing its regular con-
tributions for current expenses; the other
went far beyond its proposed thank-offering.
The conferences made up of foreigners were
among the first to respond. One German
conference, made up of people in moderate
circumstances, gave $20 per member to
the thank-offering, and a Norwegian confer-
ence surpassed it with $22 per member.
The Church Extension Society and the
Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education
Society wheeled into line. Twelve leaflets
bearing on various phases of the movement
were printed and sent to every pastor and
presiding elder in the church, and they were
urged to circulate them freely. The postage
bill for these samples alone was between
$200 and $300. The church newspapers
were furnished with items that would arouse
curiosity and create interest in the thank-
offering. The Secretary was constantly em-
ployed in addressing the annual conferences
where the pastors met, and twentieth-century
thank-offering conventions, and in carrying
on a correspondence that extended to every
part of the church. With Reverend Doctor
W. F. McDowell, Secretary of the Board of
Education, who has had a large share in
securing the $8,500,000 for church schools,
I went to Portland, Ore., and for thirty
days we spoke in the interests of Methodist
denominational schools, averaging more than
one address a day for that period, and closing
that campaign at Riverside, in southern Cali-
fornia. For a thousand miles down the coast
the claims of four Methodist colleges were
urged. Five weeks were spent in Iowa at
various times, and more than forty addresses
were made in that commonwealth alone. It is
doubtful whether the church ever witnessed
just such another campaign for education as
was carried on for one college in Iowa. The
college president, financial agent and college
quartette visited with me a dozen of the
cities and the principal villages of its patron-
izing territory. The meetings were thoroughly
advertised. The young people came out to
hear the quartette. The old people came
out because the young people had. After
the meetings young men and women who
wanted to go to college crowded around the
president to make arrangements. The men
and women who had money were not always
as eager to interview me. We sought them
out, and if they escaped without an offering
then they were reserved for future and
further treatment. This institution had a foot-
ball team that had won a series of brilliant
victories. One of its best players startled
me by seriously proposing that football games
be arranged for the afternoons with the
local teams where the evening meetings were
to be held. He was sure that the young
men in the places visited would then decide
without hesitation that there was only one
place where the right kind of a college educa-
tion could be secured. Although not opposed
to new schemes, I had to veto the idea.
In personally representing the thank-
offering I visited every state in the Union
and have traveled more than 170,000 miles.
The first year the payment of church debts
more than any other object claimed the atten-
tion of the church. When the thank-offering
began, January i, 1899, interest was being
paid on debts resting on churches and parson-
ages that amounted to $12,500,000. The
country was emerging from a period of great
financial depression. The debts that dis-
credited where they did not imperil the local
churches should be paid without delay. The
papers became filled with reports of Methodist
churches that had paid their debts. Mr.
Henry Benedict, a layman of New Haven,
Conn., proposed that the Methodist churches
of that city pool and pay all their debts.
The aggregate was only $70,000, but it
encouraged others.
When we went to a field, while we repre-
sented all the objects included in the thank-
offering, we emphasized the things the Metho-
dists of that place were intent on doing.
In one place the college had the right of
way, in another the local church debt, in a
third the Orphanage or Worn-Out Preachers'
Fund. The most remarkable thing about
the thank-offering movement is that with
six different objects entitled to enter any
church field and present its claims, there has
scarcely been any friction between them or
their representatives. When one college
received a large gift the friends of all the
other colleges rejoiced, for they knew it
would help their institutions. The -emphasis
has been placed on the endowment of church
3312 TWENTY MILLIONS FOR PRACTICAL CHURCH WORK
colleges and academies. "When the Metho-
dist Episcopal Church entered upon the thank-
offering movement she had $27,000,000
invested in her schools. She closes it with
$36,000,000 assured, and she will make it
at least $50,000,000 inside of the next five
years. Cornell College, Iowa, reported one
day that its thank-offering had reached
$350,000. The other Methodist colleges of
that commonwealth only took time to con-
gratulate her and then redoubled their efforts
to secure ample endowments. Mr. John D.
Archibald offered $400,000 to Syracuse Uni-
versity on condition that the conferences
raise a like amount. The Chancellor, Rev-
erend Doctor James R. Day, rallied the
churches with such good effect that its
thank-offering rose to $1,203,000. In seven
years its students have increased from 700
to more than 2,000. The $8,500,000 raised
on education for the thank-offering, and the
$500,000 that has come in through other
channels, have been used to equip and endow
institutions already in existence. After
Allegheny College had received a beautiful
chapel, science building and library, Mr.
F. A. Arter, of Cleveland, offered to give
S6o,ooo toward its endowment if $180,000
additional was contributed for the same
purpose. His proposition was promptly met.
In two other fields Mr. Arter made thank-
offering victories possible. He offered to
pay one-quarter of the debt of any j\Iethodist
church in Cleveland if it paid the rest. Cleve-
land Methodism is practically free from debt
except in one church. He then offered to
give $1 for every $9 raised for the
aged Methodist ministers of one of the Ohio
conferences. The Nebraska Wesley an Uni-
versity paid what seemed an overwhelming
debt. Hamline University added $250,000
to its endowment. Mr. John E. Andrus, of
Yonkers, offered $50,000 to the Worn-Out
Preachers' Fund of the New York Conference
if that body would raise $100,000.
All the time through the letters that poured
into the central office of the commission
the Secretary was enabled to keep his hand
on the pulse of the church. Every victory
was reported. The poor vied with the rich.
A little later the hospitals and orphanages
and old peoples' homes began to have their
turn. Thirty years ago the Methodist Episco-
pal Church did not have a single hospital.
During the thank-offering period she founded
two in one state. They have sprung up as
if by magic from Boston to Seattle. The
$2,500,000 raised for this purpose under the
thank-offering is but the beginning. Many
of the letters received were pathetic in the
extreme. Some experiences have been more
amusing than pathetic. A saloon-keeper
assured me that his mother, now dead, had
been a true Methodist, while his wife had no
use for Methodists, but belonged to the
Church. Said this man:
"If you will come round to my place I
will give you $10 for your thank-offering.
I want the Methodists to keep ahead of
the s. It will make my old woman
squirm when you get ^-our $20,000,000."
That $10 has not been called for yet !
The sons and daughters of Methodist
ministers have been much in evidence during
the thank-offering movement. The largest gift
ever made to a Methodist University was made
by a Methodist minister's son; the largest
gift ever made to a Methodist charitable
institution was made by another Methodist
minister's son ; and the largest gift ever made
to the support of aged Methodist ministers
was by another Methodist minister's son.
The bishops of the church, by their active,
hearty support, brought to the thank-offering,
many of its greatest successes. They not
only called the church to undertake the
work, but led them in it. Thousands of
humble ministers and laymen worked hard
and as effectively as the leaders. It was
a great partnership for success.
The result in four years is a thank-offering
of $20,800,000, and in addition $16,931,030
spent for new churches and parsonages and
improvements on churches and parsonages,
making a total of $37,731,030, besides in-
creasing the gifts for regular benevolences
and meeting the current expenses of their
churches. The church historian will say
that the thank-offering closed at midnight,
December 31, 1902, but the forces it set in
motion will last a thousand years. Prob-
ably without the thank-offering some of
these millions would have come into the
treasury of the church, but a harvest of far
more than $20,000,000 will come directly
from the seed-sowing of this period. Men,
as long as they think of the tlaank-offering,
will find a reply to rebuke and silence the
prophets of indecision, of selfishness and
of unbelief.
A DAY'S WORK OF A RAILROAD
PRESIDENT
BY
F. N. BARKSDALE
I WANT to see the president," said a
visitor with the dress and bearing of a
farmer, in the anteroom of the execu-
tive office of a railway corporation.
"Write your name, address and the
subject of your interview on this card."
"I don't want to write to him. .1 could
have done that at home. I want to see him
and talk to him. Tell him Hiram Horton, of
Whitestone Township, wants to see him on
very important business."
The message was delivered to the chief
clerk, who, with accustomed urbanity, greeted
Mr. Horton and inquired the nature of his
business.
" It seems strange that I should take the
trouble to come all the way here from my
place to do a great benefit to this company,
and then not be allowed to do my business
with the head man. I don't want to deal
with no understrappers, but I want to talk to
the boss himself. "
" But the president is exceedingly busy and
I may be able to act for him," retorted the
clerk.
"You're too fresh, young man — you can't
do this business; but, if you must know, I will
tell you that I want to sell him a gravel-pit at
my place. It's the "
" But, sir, the president cannot attend to
those little details. His time is too valuable. "
" Little details do you call 'em ! Why,
that's the finest gravel in Whitestone Town-
ship. I know you people want it. I have
samples of it here, and I want to explain to
the boss all about it and fix the price, and I
want some money on account today."
" It is simply impossible, Mr. Horton, for
the president to see you. The local superin-
tendent attends to such matters. Go home
and see him."
Hot on the heels of the retreating and
disappointed farmer came a delegation of
distinguished-looking men in high hats and
fur coats. They were evidently expected, for
they were ushered into the presence of the
president without intervening ceremony.
Their mission was to dispose of a controlling
interest in another great property, and even
the chief clerk did not overhear their propo-
sition.
A group of newspaper reporters trailed the
delegation to the outer office to ferret out the
object of the interview. Faihng in this, they
mounted guard in the hall to catch the visitors
as they emerged from the temporary security
of the private office. The chief clerk, being a
strategist, guided their departing footsteps
through another exit at the conclusion of the
conference, and the newspaper men continued
to cool their heels and to inflame their imagi-
nations in the corridor for hours after the
business was ended.
And so it goes throughout the day, and
day by day.
The president of a great railway corpora-
tion is not protected from working overtime
by the rules of labor-unions. He reaches his
desk at nine o'clock. The mail that he finds
represents an infinitesimal proportion of that
which has been delivered to his chief clerk
from the post-office as well as from the bags
which come in from all parts of the railway
system. This mass of correspondence includes
letters in various languages on almost every
conceivable subject. The mechanical world
sends suggestions for everything from track-
bolts to freak locomotives and mammoth
ships for ferrying trains across the ocean.
Applications for positions and for passes and
appeals for contributions and subscriptions
are as numerous as the stars in the firmament,
while letters of advice on financial and traffic
affairs form no inconsiderable percentage of
this daily harvest. Some of the letters signed
with fictitious names take the form of demands
for money, with threats; others are from
"cranks," and are simply the exploitations
of visionary schemes bred in badly balanced
brains. One wild dreamer outlines on quires
3314
A DAY'S WORK OF A RAILROAD PRESIDENT
of paper a scheme for the construction of a
transoceanic railway; another presents plans
and specifications for eqtiipping the front of
engines with pointed steel hoods to prevent
collisions. An esthetic individual describes
a plan for beautifying waste places along the
line, and as an antithesis to this proposition
comes a suggestion to utilize these same
wastes for advertising purposes. One corre-
spondent offers his discovery as a free gift in
the interest of hiunanity; another makes a
"touch" for a present in return for a simple
suggestion.
The clearing of his desk of the morning
mail may occupy the first hour of the day.
The next most important thing is a resume
of the commercial, financial, industrial and
railroad news of the preceding day collected
from the morning newspapers, clipped and
pasted upon cardboard sheets for easy han-
dling. A glance at these discloses not only
the accumulated news of the previous day,
but also the editorial comments of the principal
newspapers.
Now the real work of the day begins. This
includes the consideration of an endless array
of legal, engineering, financial, trafhc and
transportation questions. The adoption of
plans for some extensive improvements in
terminal facilities follows closely the deter-
mination of a question of general policy.
The development of traffic by the extension
of the main line and branches, questions
affecting the relations with connecting lines,
and matters relating to every phase of the
vast field of traffic and transportation come
up for settlement. The consideration of
these diverse matters touches at some point
almost every branch of human activity which
yields something to the demand of a great
system of transportation. The chief enlists
in his aid in the decisions of these multiplied
issues the thought and skill of his staff, who,
having worked out the details, bring before
him the results for final approval.
During the illness of a late President of the
United States, the caller at the office of a
president of one of the great railroads insisted
on seeing the chief. The persistent efforts
of the attendant to ascertain his mission
finally resulted in the statement that he had
a sure cure for the ills of the unfortunate man,
and needed a special train to convey himself
and his apparatus to his bedside. When he
was advised that the cost would be near a
thousand dollars, he expressed a harsh opinion
of the head of a soulless corporation for allow-
ing such a trifle to stand in the way of the
restoration to health of a great patriot. The
visit of the pass fiend is a frequent occtirrence
at the president's office. He never sees the
president, but he thinks he should see him.
The head of a great corporation generally
occupies a similar position in a number of
lesser and allied corporations. There are
stated and special meetings of these bodies and
committee meetings of the general board that
require his presence as presiding officer, and
these duties consume considerable time.
Even at luncheon he is not always freed from
business. The majority of the executive
offices are arranged in suites and include an
apartment where food may be served. Here
the chief gathers about his board officers of
his own corporation, visiting officials, or
business friends who may be present either
by chance or by appointment.
There is a popular delusion that the presi-
dent's private car is kept chiefly for pleasure
jaunts for himself and his friends. But it is
as much a workshop as his office, and it
frequently affords that privacy and exclu-
siveness for the transaction of business
which are not obtainable even in the private
office. An appointment is to be kept in a
distant place. The president's car is attached
to a regular train, or run "special" as the
case may be. The private secretary is directed
to report on the car with such mail and papers
as demand immediate attention, and the
president gets down to work just as if he were
sitting at his desk. The despatch of business
is uninterrupted. On the car consultations
are held and conferences occur between the
chief and his subordinates or invited guests.
Meals may intervene and social intercourse
may break for a moment the monotony of
work, but the spirit of business is ever
present. The paraphernalia of the workshop,
such as maps, reports and official papers, are
oftener in evidence on the private car than any
of the usual concomitants of a pleasure jaunt.
The hours of the president's afternoon are
filled with duties similar to those of the
morning. There is no cessation of the work
that confronts him as long as he remains at
his desk. The official hours end generally at
four, and the busy man seeks those social or
recreative diversions to which his disposition
inclines.
A RANCllKK AN1> MIS KAMII-V P1CKIN(; LEMONS
In six years this ranch increased in product more than tenfold without increase in acreage. 'I he trees increase in productivity an they
increase in size
GROWING AMERICAN LEMONS
WHY AMERICAN IMPORTS OF LEMONS HAVE DECREASED BY MORE THAN A
MILLION DOLLARS IN SIX YEARS— A TYPICAL CALIFORNIA RANCH— ITS NATURAL
ADVANTAGES— HOW IT GETS ITS W^ATER — THE STORY OF THE YEAR'S CROP
BY
W. S. HARWOOD
(Illustrated from photographs taken by the author)
NOT long ago Sicily monopolized the
American lemon market. Last year
California shipped out of the State
nearly 600.000 boxes of lemons in nearly
2,000 standard refrigerator cars. With one
bound the California ranches have gained
part of the home trade; with another they
will probably control the rest of it; and with
a third they may reach out for foreign markets
and, perhaps, sell lemons in southern Europe.
It is the natural growth of American industry.
Lemon trees must be free from frost , and in
the long strip of land between the mountains
and the sea bordering on Old Mexico, all
winters are summers. The difference between
summer and winter temperature is only about
five degrees. So constant is the summer,
indeed, that the lemons mature month bv
month, the year round. In January I picked
a branch from a tree in the largest lemon
ranch in the world; on the branch were the
delicately scented flowers, the tiny, half-
formed lemon, large green lemons and the
fresh, yellow, ripened fruit. Sunshine seems
perpetual, but it is the sunshine of a temperate
climate, not of the tropics, and the lemons
gain, therefore, their full measure of acidity.
There are already more than 400,000 lemon
trees here, fully one-half of which have not
yet reached bearing age. There is room for
millions of trees in the region.
A few years ago the surface of this great park
was a wretched waste of cacti, sage-brush and
stunted desert grou-ths — haunt of the tarantula
and the rattlesnake. "Warmth, equality of
climate, sunshine, absence of frost, a generous
33i6
GROWING AMERICAN LEMONS
A RESERVOIR OVERFLOWING DURING A HEAVY RAIN. WASTING MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF WATER
This resen'oir will supply its tributary ranches several years without refilling
pi), soil, all these the section had naturally, but
there must be water. The average rainfall
year by year in this region is slight and is
confined to a relatively few days in the winter
months. There must be at least twelve
inches of water in addition to the average
normal rainfall in order to keep a ranch in
prime condition. This extra water is held
in great reservoirs in the mountains hard by,
the sides of the mountains gathering up the
rains as they fall and sending them downward
in rushing torrents to the vast reservoirs held
in check by enonnous walls of masonry.
Sometimes the rains are so sudden and heavy
that the largest reservoirs quickly overflow.
From the reservoirs the water is piped down
the vallevs to the ranches. At the entrance
to every ranch stands a meter which measures
the quantity used. The pipes are opened
several times a year and the water is allowed
to flow in between the rows of lemon trees in
little rivulets. It enters the soil and gives
strensrth to the roots. Several hundreds of
O
thousands of dollars are now being expended
in this region in making still larger reservoirs
farther back in the mountains — some of them
will even gain moisture from the snows on
the higher peaks, for not many miles distant
PU
TTING THE IRON BANDS ABOUT THE WATER-
PIPE LEADING DOWN THE MOUNTAINS
The reservoir is far beyond the top, up another mountain
GROWING AMERICAN LKMUNS
33>7
from these warm, rich valleys lying in the
sunshine are the frost and snow.
But tlicre is still another essential, one
which has been too often overlooked in the
past, a dual essential, made up of common
sense and capital. All the rest may be here
and yet much money be wasted, as it has been
wasted in generous quantities. There have
been many lamentable failures solely because
people- entered thoughtlessly upon the work.
When to all the natural conditions are joined
skill, business capacity, capital, the lemons
form a very profitable crop. Not long ago I
met a man from an eastern state who invested
some $15,000 in a lemon ranch. Four years
ago he got out of it with less than $4,000 left.
This season from the same ranch a i)ractical
lemon growler is marketing ninety tons of
lemons, and the little patch of ground will
net him $2,000 for his year's work.
Many things conspired against the lemon
grower in this region a few years ago — lack
of sympathy on the part of shippers, apathy
of railroads, distrust of the California lemon
on the part of the public, a low import duty,
ignorance of the business. Today the lemons
of this region are in favor; they have passed
the test of high acidity; shipping conditions
are improved; intelligence is directing the
THE FINISHED WATER-PIPE
business. There is a duty now of one cent
per pound — about eighty-five cents per box.
Some idea of the competition which these
California lemon pioneers have had to face is
seen in the fact that, while they pay from
$1.25 up to $2.00 per day for pickers, the
Sicilian pickers receive from thirty to forty-
five cents per day, while the women pickers
are content with from six to twelve cents;
and in the further fact that a box of lemons
can be laid down in Chicago from Sicily, so
low are the ocean rates, at two-thirds the
A TV'PICAL DAM IN THE LEMON REGION
The resen'oir in the foreground is partly filled
3318
GROWING AMERICAN LEMONS
freight paid on a box from San Diego to
Chicago. Frequently now, so complete has
been the reversal of feeling in regard to the
Cahfomia lemon, it brings a higher price than
the Italian.
The by-products of the lemon are an im-
portant feature of the industry. One large
company owning some 30.000 acres in the
A SOUTHERN CALIFO!
How the storing of «3°
lemon valleys near the city of San Diego has
already begun the manufacture of these
by-products. Lemon extracts, lemon oil
used in the manufacture of extracts, citric
acid used in soda waters and as a dye in the
manufacture of calicoes, Komel, an unfer- '
mented drink, made from the lemon and also
from the grapefruit which grows with great
A LEMON LAND IN ITS NATIVE STATE, SHOWING THE GROWTH OF CACTI
The soil below is rich and arable when it is supplied with water
GROWING AMERICAN LEMONS
3319
)rmed the cactus-grown desert
success alongside the lemon, are now being
manufactured. The processes are largely
kept secret.
The picking of the lemons is done mainly by
1 men. Each picker wears a canvas sack
strapped to his chest. The sack is open at
both top and bottom, the bottom being held
in place by a wire. In one hand the picker
holds a clipping-knife, in the other a steel
ring two and five-sixteenths inches in diame-
ter. This ring is passed over the lemons
before picking. The object is to select only
such lemons as are of desirable merchantable
size, the medium size which the public
demands running from 360 to 420 to the box.
The public has a prejudice against large
A BOSS LEMON-PICKER
The measuring ring shows in his left hand above the sack
3320
GROWING AMERICAN LEMONS
A SUPERINTENDENT ON HIS ROUNDS OF THE
RANCHES ON A LARGE ESTABLISHMENT
lemons; so when a lemon fits the ring it is
picked, ripe or green. Of course, all ripe ones
are picked, whatever the size. The ripe ones
are ready for immediate market, while the
green ones are piled away in boxes in ware-
houses for curing or ripening. It ordinarily
requires from four to eight weeks to fit the
lemons for the market. As the lemon harvest
of this region is continuous, the market is
supplied at all seasons of the year.
When the lemons reach the warehouse they
are run through a washing-wheel and packed
in boxes for storage ; or. if ripe, placed directly
in the cars. The washing-wheel is about five
feet in diameter, with brushes five or six
inches long arranged on the outer rim. These
brushes pass down into a trough of water
as the wheel revolves, and into this trough are
fed the lemons. The brushes remove any
dirt or slight imperfections. Long strips of
wood hold the boxes in place in the cars when
ready for shipment, thus preventing any
movement in their long journey across the
American continent.
This new industry — new because it has
been only a few years since it started, while
centuries are behind the lemon growers of
Sicily — is a new proof of the flexibility, the
adaptability of our national resources. In
the year 1892 the United States imported,
chiefly from Italy, 84,548,263 worth of
lemons. In 1901 the foreign importation
fell to 83,412,308 — more than a million dollars'
decrease. In 1896 the foreign importation
rose to a little over 85.000,000, while for
the first ten months of the year just closed,
1902, the imports were only a trifle more than
83,000,000. In 1892, when the lemon imports
ran at least 81,000,000 higher than now. the
American lemon-growing was but beginning;
the shipment of nearly 600.000 boxes of
lemons from California in 1902, ten vears
later, suggests the cause for the falling otf.
It indicates that, with this new industry but in
its infancy, it has already reduced the foreign
importation by more than twenty-five per cent.
The American lemon-raising industry is
carried on amid delightfully picturesque
surroundings, rendering none the less at-
tractive this new and significant element in
the development of the Larger America.
The picturesqueness of this section sur-
passes that of any other lemon region on
the globe. From an elevation here you can
look down upon one of the most interesting
scenes in the world. In the distance, the
purple mountains; far to the left, the sweep
of the hills of Mexico; below you, the little
lemon ranches, their vivid deep-green accentu-
ated by the brilliant yellow of their fruit,
and the whole valley marked off in a great
chess-board, as if by the hedge lines of an
English landscape; beyond you the sweep of
the Pacific, and your eye catches the faint
puflf of smoke from a mighty battle-ship in
the far offing. Here and there below you are
the comfortable homes of the lemon ranchers,
standing amid the graceful palms, the
lofty eucalyptus and the feathery pepper
trees. It is like a great park in the warm
January sunshine, an ideal place for the
workers as well as for the work.
A GENERAL PANOR.AMIC VIEW OF A YOUNG LE.MON RANCH
A LEMON PICKER
In one hand he holds a clipper ; attached to the thumb of the other is a gage for measuring the size of the lemon
3322
GROWING AMERICAN LEMONS
WASHING THE LEMONS
The lemons are fed into the trough — below the wheel (at the left) — and come out at the right ; the brushes on the wheel clean them as they roll
along the trough in the water
The development of this particular industry
here is but another indication of American
resourcefulness — of the growing power of
Americans to produce within the national
limits of the United States nearly all the
necessities and luxuries of life. Already our
imports show^ that the country is actually
dependent on foreign countries for but very
few articles, and these very largely such as
traditionally cannot be produced in our
climate or under our labor system. Everv
diminution of the list of these articles means
added wealth to the nation and prosperous
communities where none existed before.
Even now in southern California are miles
on miles of hills and valleys near the coast
baking in the sun and bare but for cacti.
They need only water and the practical
wisdom of hard-headed men to teem w4th
fruitfulness. Such development is bound
to come. The gro'5\'th of the lemon industry
is an earnest of it.
•^
MAKING LEMON BOXES
Five hundred of these boxes are made in one day
LOADING LEMONS INTO CARS WHICH DRAW THEM
FROM THE FIELD TO THE PACKING AND
CURING WAREHOUSES
Sweden
Aiislri.i
A GROUP OK HOYS IN THE SCHOOL liOKN KN DIll'KKtNT COLNTRl KS
Greece (>ermany Russia China Scotland
Australia
Canada
KiiBlaiul
Il.ily
Kiiin.inia
NEW CITIZENS FOR THE REPUBLIC
SCHOOL NO. I IN NEW YORK, WHERE CHILDREN OF TWENTY-FIVE
NATIONALITIES LEARN AMERICANISM WITH THEIR DAILY LESSONS
BY
A. R. DUGMORE
AT the corner of Catharine and Henry
Streets in New York is a large white
building that overlooks and domi-
nates its neighborhood. Placed in the
middle of a region of tawdry flat -houses and
dirty streets, it stands out preeminent because
of its solid cleanliness and unpretentiousness.
It is the home of Public School No. i. In
it are centred all the hopes of the miserably
poor polyglot population of the surrounding
district — for its pupils the scene of their
greatest interest and endeavor, and for their
parents an earnest of the freedom they have
come far and worked hard to attain.
The child of American parentage is the
exception in this school. The pupils are
of the different nationalities or races that
have their separate quarters in the immediate
neighborhood. If they were to be divided
according to their parental nationality, there
would be twenty-five or more groups. The
majority of the pupils, however, are Swedes,
Austrians, Greeks, Russians, English, Irish,
Scotch, Welsh, Rumanians, Italians, Poles,
Hungarians, Canadians, Armenians, Germans
and Chinese. The Germans, Russians and
Polish predominate, for there are a very large
number of Jewish pupils.
The most noticeable thing in the school is
the perfectly friendly equality in which all
these races mix; no prejudice is noticeable.
The different races are so scattered that there
is no chance for organization and its attendant
cliques and small school politics. This is
particularly interesting in the face of the
fact that the one thing more than any other
which binds the boys together is their intense
common interest in party and city politics.
All political news is followed and every ques-
tion is heatedly debated in and out of class.
This interest in politics and the training in
argument and oratory it brings is probably
due in large measure to the parents. To
them this opportunity for political discussion
is an evidence of the freedom of the new
country which has replaced the tyranny of
the old. The lack of organization and the
lack of prejudice is shown by the fact that
3324
NEW CITIZENS FOR THE REPUBLIC
CHIN CHUNG, BORN IN CANTON, ENTERED SCHOOL
TWO YEARS AGO
He is now in 6A grade and is president of his class
the "captain" or elected leader of a class
composed with one exception of Jewish lads
is the solitary exception — an Irish boy. In
another class the "captain" is Chinese.
The interest in politics is only one of the
evidences of a great desire to "get along in
the world. " Another is the fact that many
of the boys are self-supporting. The number
of boys working their way through can only
be guessed. They are reluctant to tell any-
thing about their home life or conditions.
WOOD-WORK DESIGNED AND EXECUTED BV BOVS
TWELVE TO THIRTEEN YEARS OLD
Tlie decorations are in colors and are particularly noticeable
It is known, however, that about one hundred
and twenty of the six hundred odd boys in
the grammar department are self-supporting.
A little Italian boy was late one morning and
was asked for his excuse by the principal.
After much questioning he told this story :
His mother was dead, and his father, who
worked on the railways, and consequently
was away from home most of the time, could
send him only enough money to pay the rent
of the two small rooms in which he and a
smaller brother and sister lived. To pay for
their food and clothing he and his brother
sold papers after school hours, making abcut
A CLASS IN CARPENTRY
NEW CITIZENS FOR THE REPUBLIC
3325
AN UNGRXDKl) LLAii^j IN CALISIUKX
ICS
$4 a week. The sister did the cooking
and the housework. Tliis particular morn-
ing she had been ill and unable to leave
her bed, and it had taken him so long to care
for her and attend to her work that he had
been late. Thfs was told quietlv and quite
as a matter of course. The bov was fourteen
years old. He had no idea that his storv
seemed extraordinary. He had never thought
of trymg to get help of any kind. This earn-
estness is carried into all the school work
The boys, because of the sacrifices their
schooimg brings, realize more keenly how
valuable it is to them.
Although the school is democratic, and
although the public school has taught them
the English language and a certain feeling of
Americanism, their race shows itself often in
the classroom. For example, the Russian
and Polish Jews have a school standing far
out of i)roportion to their number, and the
Italians are unquestionably the most artistic
m the manual training shops, wliile, as we
have seen, the Irish talent for leadership and
organization is not impaired bv the public
school. Very often this grafting of Ameri-
canism on foundations of foreign family
tradition gives rise to very naive points of
view— such, for instance, as that of the little
Polish lad who gave the following definition
of spring: "Spring, which is the first season
of the year, is when flowers and business
bloom. "
The school course is similar to that in all
the other public schools. There is, however
one extra class called the "ungraded class."'
This class is divided into four subdivisions-
those for (i) special discipline cases, (2)
truants. (3) defective children— phvsically
mentally or morally, and that for (4) foreign
THE BASKET-BALL TKA.M AT PRACTICE
A game on the roof playground-the Brooklyn Bridge in the background
3326
NEW CITIZENS FOR THE REPUBLIC
bom children who do not speak EngHsh.
The work done with these boys is perhaps the
most valuable single service of the school.
Here the entire stress of the teacher's task is
given to remedy the individual defect. The
children are taught only those things which the
teacher believes are within the understanding
of each individual. Sand and clay modeling,
drawing lines with colored crayons, weaving
with colored splints, cutting, pasting and
It is a large task that schools of this kind
are doing, taking the raw, low-class foreign
boys of many nationalities and molding
them into self-supporting, self-respecting
citizens of the republic. The amount of this
work done by the public schools in New
York is indicated by the figures of the immi-
gration bureau, for of the great body of for-
eigners who come into this country, more
than two-thirds come through the port of New
AX UNGRADED CLASS
Pupils unfined for the ordinary classes
using peg-boards are some of the occupations
through which the minds are stimulated.
Gradually, as they develop, tool and other
work is given, and the results are remarkable.
Their defect may be of eyesight, hearing,
muscular control, speech, moral sense. Some
are afflicted with paralysis or epilepsy.
Whatever it is, all that can be done to
better their condition and to make them self-
supporting is being done by tactful teaching.
York, beyond which most of them rarely get.
The results shown by the public schools seem
little short of marvelous. There are many
things in which, as a rule, the public consider
that the public schools fail, but the one thing
that cannot be denied — and it is the great-
est— is that these boys and girls of foreign
parentage catch readily the simple American
ideas of independence and individual work
and, with them, social progress.
rilK ATTKNTtVK I.tSTKNERS AT A PtrBLIC LKCTItrF
HOW A GREAT FREE LECTURE
SYSTEM WORKS
HEARERS ENTERTAINED BY THE THOUSANDS IN PUBLIC LECTURES IN NEW
YORK— 117 LECTURE CENTRES IN THE CITY— YOUNG MEN INTERESTED IN
ELECTRICITY, YOUNG WOMEN IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY— DEYELOPING
THE SYSTEM AND MAKING SOCIAL CENTRES OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
BY
GEORGE ILES
ONE dreary night last January, in one
of the New York free pubhc lectures,
Mr. A. J. Talley presented views of
Florence in a public school m East Twenty-
seventh Street. To the fourth-story hall
had climbed a weatherbeaten old Italian whose
features kindled as scene after scene swept
the canvas. When the Baptistery was shown,
chief among the glories of the great city, the
old man whispered, "I batized dere," and
added with a sigh, "Ah, I no see Firenze
again!" Well-to-do New Yorkers who have
seen Niagara in summer, in winter, and in
the lovely garb of late October, live among
millions of people who owe to the camera
their sole acquaintance with the great
cataract. Pictures of Niagara are much the
most admired in the round of those which
illustrate Mr. L. H. Tasker's lecture on the
" Great Lakes. " One night at Cooper Union,
as Mr. Tasker threw on the screen a picture
of Sault Ste. Marie, he told us that a steamer
passes through its canal every seven minutes,
night and day, during the season of navigation.
On my row sat a burly chap grimy with coal
dust. His comment, loud as a stage "aside, "
was, " Hully gee ! " It is usual, when a lecture
suggests inquiry, to invite questions at the
close of the hour. I have known Mr. T. B.
Collins to be kept almost another sixty
minutes busily answering the queries of the
keen-witted Jewish lads who had seen his
experiments at the University Settlement
Hall, at Eldridge and Rivington Streets.
Apart from his Jewish auditors, the lecturer
that night had not more than three or four
hearers of other races. These incidents
show the spirit of the lecture audiences.
In this public lecture system arranged by
the Board of Education of New York, the
lecturers are men and women of mark, secured
on moderate terms because thev reside in the
3328
HOW A GREAT FREE LECTURE SYSTEM WORKS
city and can repeat their discourses in
different quarters. The audiences come to
be informed rather than to gratify their
curiosity by seeing an explorer, a novelist or
a humorist of world-wide fame. And while
the programmes give the place of honor to
teachers and scholars, there is a welcome for
anv one else with capacity to instruct, stimu-
late and refresh. Xobody begrudges the
people a good novel taken from a
free library; and it gives them just as
much delight to be escorted through the
palace of the Alhambra, or to hear a
capital tenor sing "La ^larseillaise"
and "Die Wacht am Rhein."" Lives divided
between the tenement house and the shop
or the factory need all the cheer they can get.
Twenty years ago some of the city libraries
charged fees of perhaps a dollar a year.
Mark what followed a change of policy. In
Springfield, Massachusetts, the charge was
abolished in 1885; the next year, with open
doors, the users of the library increased
sevenfold. So in St. Louis and elsewhere.
A dollar is a good deal of money to the average
American family. Today the public library
is supplementing the public school more and
more effectively ; the work of both is possible
because offered free. Side by side with free
libraries are subscription libraries which
flourish apace; but their constituency of the
well-to-do is a bagatelle in comparison with
the throngs at the free counters. In the
lecture field, Major Pond, let us say, engages
on liberal terms Henry ^I. Stanley, Ian
Maclaren or Mark Twain. He announces
a lecture at great cost in the newspapers,
sends out circulars by the thousand, and
placards the streets with advertising. The
tickets, at from one to two dollars, are sold
to just such well-to-do persons as take books
from subscription libraries. At an opposite
pole is the lecture system considered here.
Most of the courses are given in public-
school buildings; the great hall of the Cooper
Union is occupied without charge, and so
are several excellent halls connected with
churches; where rents are paid, the terms are
moderate. There are today in Greater Xew
York one hundred and seventeen lecture
centres, each as well known in the neighbor-
hood as the local sub-station of the post-office;
tliis publicity reduces the expense of adver-
tising. Pocket bulletins setting forth the
courses are distributed at the doors of the
lecture halls; placards in big type are posted
outside, and by friendly hands in shops and
factories near by. Newspapers announce
gratis the subjects every evening. Thus it
comes about that while the cost of a lecture
to a lyceum manager may be as much as a
dollar a seat, the cost to Xew York of
a public-school lecture this season is about
ten cents.
These lectures began in 1889, simply as an
experiment, their themes miscellaneous, and
only a few illustrated. In 1890, when Doctor
Henry ]\I. Leipziger was given charge, the
experiment became an assured success. The
lectures have steadily broadened in range
and constantly improved in quality. The
progress of the movement is due to the large-
minded men who, as members of the Board
of Education, have espoused the cause of adult
instruction, such as the Honorable Miles M.
O'Brien, late President of the Board, who was
the first champion of the lectures ; Honorable
Henry A. Rogers, Ex-President C. C. Bur-
lingham and General George "VV. Wingate.
During the present season the auditors at the
lectures will probably number a million and a
quarter, with a lecture staff of five hundred.
The stereopticon is always employed when
helpful, and experiments are also introduced.
Doctor- Leipziger plans to give each centre a
variety of courses every season, each course
consecutive and thorough. In Cooper Union
last January and February nine lectures were
given on Xorth American geography, five of
them on the Colorado River and its Indians,
by George Wharton James, the explorer;
with these were alternated eight lectures on
"Electricity," by Doctor E. R. von Xardroft",
accompanied by experiments worthy of a
college laboratory. At St. Bartholomew Hall
eight evenings were devoted to an exposition
of "Heat and Its Work," by Professor John
S. McKay, and eight to renditions of the best
songs of Europe and America, with apt intro-
duction and comment. Particular pains are
taken that all the advanced lectures shall lead
to study. For example, when Professor
William Hallock, of Columbia University,
delivers his course on " Light, " a neat pamph-
let is distributed presenting a summary of his
exposition, ending with a brief list of books
for study and reference. This aid is invari-
ably extended for lectures of this stamp,
whether scientific, literary or on themes of art.
So great is the demand at the public libraries
DR. HENRY M. LEIPZIGER
DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LECTURE SYSTEM
o
o
'■J
p
HOW A GREAT l-RKK LECTURE SYSTEM WORKS
3331
for recommended books that the supply there
fails, and the Board of Education provides
copies at each centre from what Doctor
Leipziger calls a "platform library." At a
single centre last winter two hundred copies
of a standard text-book on electricity were
thus lent or sold at cost. One of the Doctor's
dreams is that there shall be erected in New
York two or three temples of science where,
in addition to a fine auditorium, shall be found
amply equipped laboratories and workshops
for practical application of lecture lessons.
A capital series by Mr. Earl Barnes deals
with the "Care and Culture of Children."
Doctor Ida Welt gives an attractive account
of how foods may best be chosen and pre-
pared. The maintenance of health, the pre-
vention of disease and first aid to the injured
are topics always on the programmes.
What a voter should know, wisely to exercise
his franchise, is expounded in every ward of
New York. Courses just established impart
this instruction in Yiddish and Italian to
immigrants. By way of varying the interest,
the departments of the city government are
successively described and illustrated, and
the courses also treat questions of capital
and labor, the trusts and the trade-unions.
But, truth to tell, the audiences like enter-
tainment joined to instruction, and nothing
pleases them more than an excursion to
Rome, Constantinople, Venice, Paris or
London, especially if their guide is Professor
Hamlin, of Columbia University, who com-
ments acutely on the architecture they behold.
A parallel course, by Mr. A. T. Van Laer,
admits the audience to the art galleries of
Italy, Spain, France, Holland and England,
and shows them the canvases of such Ameri-
can painters as Copley, Stuart, Inness,
Hunt and La Farge. Music is as popular as
pictorial art. The course by Doctor H. G.
Hanchett discusses, with piano illustrations,
the materials, methods, merits and masters
of musical composition. One of Mr. T. W.
Surette's courses brings out with some detail
the characteristics of Bach, Handel, Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven, each composer repre-
sented by some famous pieces. For literary
programmes take two by Mr. Frederick H.
Sykes. The first series is Shaksperean,
beginning with a sketch of the poet's life
and proceeding to studies of "As You Like
It, " " The Merchant of Venice, " " Henry IV.,"
"Macbeth" and "Hamlet." The pamphlet
distributed at these lectures mentions tlie
chief biograjjhies of Shaksjjere and the best
editions of his works, and refers to the leading
commentaries, commencing with Dowdcn's
as indispensable. In his second course Mr.
Sykes takes up great writers of the la.st
century — Carlyle, Dickens, George Eliot,
Tennyson, Browning and Stevenson. In
fifteen closely printed pages he tells the
reader just what he wants to know about
these authors, their works, their principal
appreciators and critics. What more than
this can be done to redeem reading from being
desultory and unfruitful ? What better ally
can the free library count upon ?
Turning from the platform to the people,
we notice that young men predominate,
especially when the lecture touches some
practical art of electricity, photography or
lithography. If the subject is historical or
literary, the larger part of the audience will
be young women, many of whom doubtless
would attend the high schools if they could.
A lecture on the care and culture of children
of course draws a matronly group of hearers,
escorted by partners not always as attentive
as they might be. Naturally enough, the
majority of those who come are from the
neighborhood. Wealthy districts present
fashionable audiences : the hall of the Natural
History Museum, near Central Park, attracts
just such a gathering as might hear a lyceum
lecture. A lecture hall amid tenement houses
attracts mechanics, factory hands, clerks,
their wives or sweethearts, their mothers and
sisters. A hall connected with a church,
such as St. Peter's, on West Twentieth
Street, seems to have a goodly nucleus of
hearers from the parish. I have seen the
same listeners again and again at Columbus
Hall, adjoining the Church of St. Paul the
Apostle, on West Sixtieth Street. These
earnest, wistful faces are not borne by the
first five hundred men and women who might
pass along the street; they belong to church-
going people who want to know more than
they do and be better than they are. In
every lecture-room, wherever it may be, the
"tough" of Ninth Avenue or the Bowery,
the branded frequenter of the saloon, is
conspicuous by his absence. The door is
open to all, but as a matter of fact only the
thoughtful, the men and women bent on
improvement, cross its threshold.
Sometimes a lecture draws from all New
3332
HOW A GREAT FREE LECTURE SYSTEM WORKS
York. How else could pictures of Mont Blanc,
the Jungfrau, the Finsteraarhom keep all
eyes a-strain, prompt all hands to loud and
repeated applause ? Swiss from every ward
in the city here revisited together the old
home and renewed old memories.
At every lecture one sees the local superin-
tendent moving quietly about. His duties are
manifold: he sees to the hall's being properly
aired, warmed and lighted; he makes an-
nouncements and introduces the lecturer; he
reports the number present to headquarters ;
he maintains order. Once I saw a lad who sat
in the centre of an audience begin to make a
row. He was reproved in vain. The super-
intendent then requested the lecturer to
pause for a moment ; the disturber was taken
to the door and asked never to show his face
there again. On another occasion two little
girls near me persisted in loud talk; I pointed
them out to the superintendent, who, without
the slightest fuss, ejected them at once. My
impression is that these superintendents, who
are usually teachers, have duties more impor-
tant still — in reporting on the quality of the
lectures, on the interest or apathy of, the
listeners. In no other way can I account for
the increasing diversity of the programmes,
the constant rise in their standards. There
is evidently a ceaseless process of trial and
of sifting going on. Two years ago I heard
a teacher of mark speak in a large hall on the
West Side. His theme was important; his
presence, voice and matter were exceptionally
good. Yet his presentation was so lacking in
order that the man was tiresome: until he
masters the art of arrangement he is not
likely to be recalled. Another evening I heard
a speaker fluent to glibness, with all the
unction of a political spellbinder; but his
story was mere wish-wash, told at second-
hand, and without either the pictures or the
experiments we had a right to expect. He,
too, now stays at home. A third lecturer
among the failures was an ancient mariner;
his matter and manner were so redolent of
the forecastle and the smoking-room that he
was quietly dropped and will be no more
heard.
It is with such tireless vigilance as this that
in every field where the platform can give
instruction, inspiration and initiative Doctor
Leipziger has drawn up the programmes
with intent to do all the good he can, to do
nothing else, and to exercise a spirit of wise
and kind hospitality. He suggested long ago
that the schools be opened on Sundays as well
as week days, not only for lectures, but as the
social centres of their neighborhoods. This
suggestion is now taking effect in a few places,
and may be expected to spread throughout
the city. It will then be inevitable that the
school buildings be remodeled for their new
purposes; and the remodeling will redound to
the great benefit of the thousands beyond the
school age. Often the lecture audiences of
today must climb many narrow stairs to
reach a hall on the top story, and then sit on
benches made for children. There should be
commodious halls on the ground floor, with
comfortable seats for adults, and these halls
should be light and cheerful, adorned with
busts and pictures of merit. Some of the
newer school buildings are being fitted up
with such meeting places; New York, with
its vast corporate wealth, can make no wiser
investment. In silence a school gives some
of its best lessons when it is handsomely built,
when its furniture and decorations are in
good taste. This influence becomes more
important than ever as the public schools pass
to new breadths of usefulness. Already in
New York there are recreation centres, play
centres, and they offer instruction during the
months of summer which in years past found
them closed and idle. Only one American
boy or girl in sixteen carries education beyond
the sessions of the common school into the
high school, the college, the university. The
common school is now beginning to open its
doors for all the years of life. Let its archi-
tecture, surroundings and maintenance at
every point mirror the intelligence and
opulence of America.
LECTURES DIRECTED BY THE STATE OF
NEW YORK
For visual instruction at its best one
must go to the lecture hall of the American
Museum of Natural History on West Seventy-
ninth Street, near Central Park, a model
of what such a hall should be. Here are
given illustrated lectures under the auspices
of the State Superintendent of Public Instruc-
tion, with Professor A. S. Bickmore at the
Museum as director. He supervises in person
the taking of the photographs, which are
executed with a skill and delicacy which
eclipse ever}i;hing else of the kind in the
world. When necessary the slides are given
now A GREAT FREE LECTURE SYSTEM WORKS
3333
the hues of nature. The floral pictures,
tinted by Mrs. Cornelius Van Brunt, are of
matchless fidelity and beauty. The main
intent of the lectures is to inform the people
as to their own state, show them what is
best worth seeing in other states, in the new
possessions of the Union, and in foreign lands.
From the long list of lectures we note the
picturing of Manhattan Island and the
islands of the Hudson, the Catskills and the
Adirondacks, the lakes of central New York,
the Mississippi Valley, the Yellowstone Park,
California and the Yosemite Valley, Alaska,
the Philippines, and the Hawaiian Islands.
Each lecture begins with a map clearly
explained, on occasion followed by a geologi-
cal chart. A favorite lecture illustrates our
native birds; equally popular is a survey of
Paris in its various aspects.
When Professor Bickmore gives a new
lecture his first audiences are teachers solelj^;
afterward he invites the public, notably on
the holidays, which are often days of vacuity
and boredom. Faithfully copied, and accom-
panied by manuscripts for the reading-desk
prepared by Professor Bickmore, these lectures
are doing duty in forty-four cities and twenty-
seven villages of New York. And far beyond
New York their services extend. Fifteen
other states of the Union, Canada and India
are beneficiaries of the system. Each of
these commonwealths may buy one set only
of such slides as it chooses, at cost, which is
about $75 per lecture. Two rules are imposed :
the lectures must be given in connection with
the free common schools and without charge
for admission. The home demand for slides
is so great that applicants elsewhere are not
likely to be satisfied until 1904.
In 1900 a Bickmore lecture and its colored
pictures were exhibited at the Paris Exposi-
■ tion; they received the gold prize, and Pro-
fessor Bickmore was invited to take part in
the Conference for Nature-Study held in
London last year. There the County Council,
which directs the education of the British
metropolis, heard with interest Professor
Bickmore 's illustrated account of his work
in New York. Part of his exhibit was a
series of photographs of London; on these
the Council laid hands for a round of lectures
modeled on those of the Empire State. At
Berlin, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen,
the official head of education in Germany,
is to incorporate the Bickmore methods in
the popular instruction of the German
Empire. At home the Bickmore pictures
have suggested how the courses of the public
schools may be broadened and enriched.
In New York city the Board of Education
is giving every school a stereopticon for such
lessons as may be the better understood and
impressed by its pictures. The large array
of slides accumulated by Professor Bickmore
will form an important part of the material
for these school lanterns. One series of
colored slides, seventy-two in number, is for
kindergarten and primary instruction.
In 1898, through the hospitality of the
state of New York, its pictures, which include
several Canadian series, began going across
the border to Canada. From Montreal as the
centre, the lectures extended during the past
winter to no fewer than forty-eight places,
including seven mining and lumbering camps
in Ontario. The Montreal committee asks
nothing more of its correspondents than that
they shall pay the carriage of slides and
return them punctually in good order. Their
scheme is joined to a round of traveling
libraries, bringing redoubled light and cheer
to many an outlying camp and village.
FREE LECTURES AT THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE
Cooper Union, at the head of the Bowery,
since 1859 has stood as the centre of free edu-
cation in New York. Its classes in art, in
applied science, in literature, have instructed
thousands of men and women who owe to
this foundation the chief debt of their lives.
The great hall, with its sixteen hundred seats,
has always been a forum for the people.
From its platform, in i860, Abraham Lincoln
declared his convictions regarding the exten-
sion of slavery, and outlined his policy. To
name the statesmen, agitators and reformers
who since have spoken here would be to
catalogue the men who have swayed and
molded public opinion in America for the
past forty-three years. In 1897 a group of
leading citizens decided that this hall should
become more than ever a popular forum for
the discussion of problems economic, social
and ethical. They accordingly founded the
People's Institute, with Professor Charles
Sprague Smith, who held the chair of modern
languages and foreign literature at Columbia,
as director and mainspring of the work. He
chooses themes of prime current interest
and has them treated by men of the first rank.
3334 THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR
During the past winter the long and varied
programme offered such themes as " Remedies
for Trusts," presented by Professor J. W.
Jenks, of Cornell University; and "Impe-
rialistic Democracy," by Henry D. Lloyd.
When a debate took place on Socialism between
Professor E. R. A. Seligman, of Columbia, and
H. Gaylord Wilshire, more than three thou-
sand hearers were present, packing the hall
as it never was packed before. Another
debate, attracting a vast audience, considered
the pros and cons of the "Single Tax,"
Professor John B. Clark, of Columbia, and
Louis F. Post, editor of the Public, Chicago,
facing each other in courteous combat.
Following every lecture and debate the
auditors are invited to ask questions. They
do so freely and candidly, with the effect of
bringing out facts and arguments which
academic persons seldom hear, and of showing
how common is the lack of elementary
information regarding economic facts. In
some of their features these assemblies recall
the old-time town-meeting. Votes are taken
on important questions of reform, and these
are duly brought before the lawmakers
concerned, and not without effect. The
Tenement House Commission had the unani-
mous support of the People's Institute, and
so has the movement for the abolition of the
labor of children in New York. On Sunday
evenings crowded houses listen to ethical dis-
courses, always followed by free discussions.
Some other distinctive features of the
Institute are worth noting. It gives sym-
phony concerts, rendered by a capital orches-
tra of fifty performers. The cheapest tickets
are but five cents each, if bought for a series
of six concerts. A club, with rooms in East
Fourteenth Street, numbers nearly four
hundred men and women; the monthly dues
are forty cents: its classes are maintained the
year round. In the heat of summer, when
"everybody" is supposed to be out of town,
there are more than three millions left in
the dwellings of New York, about half of
them in tenements at that. The Cooper
Union courses of lectures include many apart
from those of an economic or social type;
systematic programmes deal with art, science
and literature on approved lines. Excursions
are arranged to places in New York of historic
interest and to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. The Institute has a flourishing branch
at Harlem, founded in 1901, and directed by
Mr. John Martin. The total expenses of the
Institute for the past fiscal year were about
$11,000, defrayed by subscription.
THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
AND LABOR
THE IMMENSE MACHINERY OF MR. CORTELYOU'S NEW
DEPARTMENT— SYNTHESIZING SCATTERED BUT ASSOCIATED
BUREAUS — THE BUREAU OF CORPORATIONS AND ITS
"TRUST" INVESTIGATION— PROMOTING OUR FOREIGN TRADE
BY
FREDERIC EMORY
CHIEF OF THE BUREAU OF FOREIGN COMMERCE, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
FEW persons, probably, realize the
magnitude of the machinery and
personnel of the national Depart-
ment of Commerce and Labor which is being
organized under the recent act of Congress.
It is estimated that, when it is in full working
order, the new Department will have a staff
of some fifteen hundred employees at its
headquarters in Washington, and about ten
thousand, including both permanent and
temporary appointees, chiefly in the Light-
house Establishment, outside of the Federal
capital. Great as is this force, the number
of places to be filled will be relatively small,
for the reason that but two new bureaus —
the Bureau of Corporations and the Bureau
of Manufactures — have been created, and
it is understood that, for the immediate
THE NEW DEPARTMENT OE COMMERCE AND LA1U)R 3335
future, at any rate, the needs of these bureaus
will not involve many appointments. Some
time will probably be occupied mainly with
the work of organization and the development
of plans of action. The great bulk of the
force, therefore, will be made up of clerks,
messengers, etc., already on the Government
rolls, who will be transferred from other
departments, as part of existing bureaus to
be included, on the first of July next, in the
new organization.
It is fortunate for Mr. Cortelyou that, as
the first head of the Department of Commerce
and Labor, he will be relieved at the outset
of the task of making a large number of
appointments. He will have enough to do
in rearranging and adjusting the working
parts of the vast machine he is to control,
and setting in motion and giving the proper
direction to the new apparatus. He is
fortunate, also, in the fact that he is not
compelled to burden himself with the opera-
tion of the bureaus to be transferred, until the
first of July. By this he has four months of
comparative freedom in which to mature his
plans. But his resources will be heavily
taxed, for the problem before him in the mere
work of preparation is complicated and
delicate. He will be called upon to coordinate
and harmonize a great variety of interests
and to bring into line with his general scheme
of administration a number of important
bureaus which have heretofore had a more
or less independent existence and power of
initiative. The discretion, tact and ready
spirit of accommodation which he has shown
in the discharge of his duties in the White
House would seem to fit him especially for
doing this work. Happily, he will have the
cooperation of a number of trained and able
officials, as well as of new men, who will
doubtless be selected for their special aptitude
and fitness.
THE WORK OF THE DEPARTMENT
It is hardly necessary to enumerate the
functions of the Department of Commerce
and Labor. They are indicated broadly by-
its name, and may be said to include almost
every important agency of the Government
which has to deal with industry and trade.
The Department of Agriculture, which has
some divisions more or less related to these
subjects, is the only Department that will not
transfer part of its work. The exception was
made, no doubt, because many of its functions
are more natural parts of the Department of
Agriculture. It was proposed to include
the Interstate Commerce Commission, but
Congress finally decided to maintain it as an
independent body. The State Department
contributes its only commercial bureau —
that engaged in the jjublication of the Consular
reports — and from the Treasury everything
is taken that could well be utilized in the
new Department, including the Bureau of
Statistics, which compiles the figures of
exports and imports and a variety of other
commercial data; the Bureau of Navigation,
dealing with our merchant marine; the
Steamboat Inspection Service; the Light-
house Establishment; the Alaskan fisheries;
the Bureau of Immigration; the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, and the Bureau of Standards.
The Treasury is practically relieved of nearly
all its extraneous duties. It reverts to its
original and proper functions with the
exception of the Life-Saving and Marine
Hospital Services, which it will continue to
control. The Interior Department contrib-
utes the Census Ofhce; and the hitherto
unattached Department of Labor and the
Fish Commission are also brought into the
new Department.
Owing to the recent agitation of the trust
question, public interest has naturally cen-
tred in the new Bureau of Corporations,
which is charged with the duty of investigat-
ing the organization and management of
corporations, joint stock companies and
corporate combinations, except common
carriers, subject to existing law, that are
engaged in commerce among the several
states and with foreign nations, and of making
public the results. There has been some
criticism of this provision by advocates of
trust legislation on the ground that it does
not go far enough, confining itself, as it does,
to securing publicity as to the operations and
methods of "combines. " On the other hand,
there would doubtless have been strong
opposition on the part of many who have
no love for great corporations to giving a
Federal bureau large discretionary or restrain-
ing powers. It will probably be found that
more real progress will have been made by
first collecting the facts indispensable to
wholesome legislation than if the bureau itself
had been charged with the duty of providing
remedies.
3336 THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR
ITS EFFECT ON FOREIGN' TRADE
So far as the ordinary currents of our
commerce and industry are concerned, the
new Department will probably be most
helpful in giving a fresh impetus and, what
is needed most of all, an intelligent and
systematic direction to the expansion of
foreign markets for our manufactured goods.
Our exports of food supplies and raw materials
need little aid or stimulus, since they are
■prime necessities which industrial nations
must obtain from us, according to their
requirements at any given time. Those
requirements depend upon conditions be-
yond our control, such as the abundance
or failure of crops or the extent of a nation's
purchasing power determined by the degree
of prosperity or of business depression it may
be experiencing. The usefulness of govern-
ment machinery, therefore, must be limited
to removing purely artificial obstructions to
the extension of our sales or to pointing out
new channels of demand or the special needs
of different fields of consumption. It is
doubtful, too, whether the new Department
can add much to the sum of knowledge of
our domestic trade or industry which will
be of practical benefit to the average business
man, but it can and doubtless will collate
this information in a more convenient form.
When we consider the capabilities of a well-
organized Department of Commerce as an
agency for increasing our exports of manu-
factures, however, its probable usefulness is
at once seen to be broad and far-reaching.
Our manufactured goods, it is true, like our
food-stuffs, are selling themselves because of
inherent qualities which commend them to
foreign consumers, but they cannot be regarded
as necessities to foreigners, and they are,
moreover, subject to a competition on the
part of other industrial nations which is
likely to become much keener. The Depart-
ment of Commerce will therefore have a
double part to play. On the one hand, it
will be its province to keep our manufac-
turers and exporters informed as to condi-
tions abroad and the special requisites for
obtaining the largest possible share of the
world's trade; and on the other hand, it will
be able t9 direct and give full effect to an
intelligent propaganda in foreign countries
for making known the distinctive merits of
our wares. Its main reliance for some time
to come will be our consvdar service, which,
notwithstanding its alleged shortcomings, is
now generally conceded to be doing valuable
work in both directions.
Under the new organization, the consular
officers will continue to be subject to the
direction of the Department of State, but the
latter is to cooperate with the Department
of Commerce and Labor in utilizing them as
agents for obtaining industrial and trade
information. The new Department is to
publish and distribute their reports, and
with its larger facilities will doubtless be able
still further to extend and improve a service
which has practically reached the limit of
its development with the resources at the
command of the Department of State. In
course of time, perhaps, the labors of the
Consuls, wiio are even now overburdened in
many instances with inquiries from our
business interests, wiU be supplemented by
the employment of special agents in foreign
countries similar to those appointed by the
British Foreign Office, but possibly with
larger powers. There may be, also, com-
mercial attaches at the principal embassies
and legations.
A VAST FIELD FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
The results already accomplished, with but
little systematic effort, in extending the sales
of our goods even in countries where, at one
time, the prospect w'as least encouraging,
would seem to indicate that we have before
us a vast field of development, if the proper
means are taken thoroughly to cultivate it.
To individual enterprise, of course, must be
left the actual work of cultivation, but the
Federal Government is now provided, for
the first time, with efficient machinery for
fully doing its part as an auxiliary. How
great that part may be is appreciated only by
those who have become familiar, through the
consular reports, with the great w^aste of
effort due to ignorance or misdirected energy
on the part of our business men seeking
foreign markets for their goods, knd with
the golden opportunities which are so often
neglected because we have no one great
central repository' of the information required.
There has been no lack of such information
in the past. The great trouble is that it is
distributed among so many bureaus that it
is obtainable only by piecemeal; so that, for
example, if one wished to learn a group of
facts more or less closely related, he might
GEORGE in<uc:i': cortklyou
3337
have to apply to the Bureau of Statistics of
the Treasury, the Bureau of Foreign Com-
merce of the State Department, the Census
Office, the Dciiarttnent of Labor, and so on,
and would, pcrhaixs, have to sift and analyze
a mass of data furnished from these different
sources before he could arrive at general
results. It has often happened, moreover,
that the work of different bureaus has over-
lapped, producing confusion and waste in
the duplication of matter.
With all work of this kind combined and
properly classified in a single depiirtment,
as will now be done, it should be possible to
answer inquiries of the most comprehensive
character promptly and with full details.
If to this faculty of judicious concentration
the Department of Commerce and Labor
adds, as it probably will, a diligent cooperation
with organized bodies, such as boards of trade,
commercial expositions and museums, manu-
facturers' and export associations, etc. — in
other words, all the rapidly multiplying
representatives of our industrial interests
generally — it may easily become all that its
projectors have hoped for it as an engine of
commercial progress and expansion. This
may be done, too, without its necessarily
developing those paternalistic tendencies
which in some ([uarters have been regarded
as likely to make of it an incubus upon private
enterprise and initiative. At any rate, it
will supply, almost immediately, the pressing
need of the hour in bringing to a focus the
manifold energies, now more or less divergent
or undeveloped, which have been groping
for the key to concerted action in promoting
our foreign trade. It is to foreign trade that
we must look for a safe and profitable vent
for our rapidly augmenting industrial output.
Prosperous as we now are, we may soon be
face to face again with a heavy excess of
production, and if we would not then see
many of our factories idle and our labor only
partly employed, we must in the mean-
time make wider and deeper the export
channels which alone can relieve us of the
surplusage. Our endeavors to do this, so far,
are almost wholly parochial and inconclusive,
for the reason that we have had no common
rallying point, no national pivot of action.
With a department of the Federal Govern-
ment specially equipped for guiding our
export activities, and setting the example,
in itself, of concentration and directness of
efifort, we ought now to be able to exert the
full force of our undoubted capabilities in
international competition.
GEORGE BRUCE CORTELYOU
THE HEAD OF THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, WHO,
OUTSIDE OF POLITICS, HAS RISEN TO HIGH OFFICIAL POSITION
BY CLEAR-HEADED METHOD AND CAPACITY FOR MUCH WORK
BY
DAVID S. BARRY.
A GROUP of senators and newspaper
correspondents were chatting in a
committee room at the Capitol the
other day about the Secretary of the new
Department of Commerce and Labor, when
one of the senators remarked, "In my
experience in public life I have never known
of any man except George B. Cortelyou who,
without political experience or influence,
representing nobody but himself, without a
political, social or financial 'pull,' without
ever being asked whether he was a Republican
or Democrat, had reached a high political
office on his merits alone."
Mr. Cortelyou has not held many offices in
Washington. When he was a stenographer
in the Post-Office Department he did not
dream of ever becoming secretary to a
President. When he was appointed secre-
tary he had no thought of becoming a
member of the Cabinet. During the McKinley
administration, when Charles Emory Smith
talked of resigning, Henry B. F. Macfarland,
President of the Board of Commissioners of
3338
GEORGE BRUCE CORTELYOU
the District of Columbia, sent a despatch to
his paper one night stating that Mr. Cortelyou,
then President McKinley's secretary, might
be offered the Postmaster- Generalship. The
uninformed who read the despatch laughed
at it, and it was soon forgotten. A few
persons, however, who had heard President
McKinley talk about Cortelyou, saw nothing
improbable in Macfarland's despatch. Noth-
ing more was heard of the matter until one
day last spring two newspaper correspondents
went to the White House to ask President
Roosevelt about the probable success of the
group of western speculators who were trying
to get Secretary Hitchcock out of the Interior
Department. The President said that Mr.
Hitchcock was an honest man and would
remain; but when he was asked who would
succeed him if the influences at work against
him should ultimately succeed, Mr. Roosevelt
turned on his heel in his impulsive, character-
istic fashion and said:
"Cortelyou, step here a moment." Draw-
ing the three friends about him — for the room
was filled with people — the President said:
"Whenever a vacancy shall occur in the
Cabinet it is my purpose to appoint Mr.
Cortelyou if he will accept, and I want
that distinctly understood. " Mr. Cortelyou
smiled and went back to his desk. The cor-
respondents published what the President
had said, but very few people believed it.
When the Senate passed the bill creating the
Department of Commerce and Labor, it was
held up in the House for some time because
of the opposition of a number of Congressmen
who wished to have it arranged in advance
that one of their number should get the new
Cabinet place. It took a long time to make
them believe that the President really
intended to appoint Cortelyou.
Mr. Cortelyou — not Cor-f^/-you, although
that was President ^IcKinley's pronunciation
of the name — was bom in New York city on
July 26, 1862. His father was a well-to-do
business man, who sent his boy to the Normal
School at Westfield, Massachusetts, to pre-
pare for Harvard, after he had passed through
the grades of the public schools in Brooklyn.
Young Cortelyou took up the study of music,
and after that stenography. Then he became
Supreme Court reporter. In 1889 he was
appointed a stenographer to the Post-Office
Inspector for New York city, and two years
later confidential stenographer to the Surveyor
of the Port of New York. In the same year
he came to Washington as stenographer in
the office of the Fourth Assistant Postmaster-
General. Just before he went to Washington
Thomas C. Piatt offered to make him his
private secretary, an offer which, on consider-
ation, Mr. Cortelyou declined. In 1895
President Cleveland wanted a good stenog-
rapher at the White House to take the place
of Robert Lincoln O'Brien. Casting about
to find one, Postmaster-General Bissell spoke
of Cortelyou as just the man for the place.
It was found that he was a Republican hold-
over who had been appointed under the
Harrison administration. Cleveland said he
did not care an^^thing about that, and Cor-
telyou went to work as stenographer and
assistant to Henry T. Thurber, then the
President's private secretary. He was pro-
moted along with other clerks until he came
to be assistant secretary under John Addison
Porter, secretary to President McKinley.
The newspaper correspondents were the first
persons outside of the White House to dis-
cover that Cortelyou was gradually becoming
the real secretary. Mr. Porter's health was
not good, and after awhile he broke down
and was forced to resign. From that time
began the rise of Mr. Cortelyou in the esteem
of the important men who had an opportunity
to discover his merits.
A gentleman who sat next to Mr. Cortelyou
at a Gridiron Club dinner a few years ago
said the next morning:
"That man Cortelyou is about the most
solemn proposition I ever ran up against. "
It was a very natural estimate. Cortelyou
looks solemn and he never laughs aloud.
He is a good-looking man, but he might
easily fie taken for a minister or a college
professor. He is well built and as straight
and supple and graceful as an Indian.
His head is very round and covered with
thick, black hair, fast turning gray, brushed
straight up from his forehead in pompadour
style. The real secret of Mr. Cortelyou's
power lies perhaps in the fact that he listens
to ever\^hing that is said to him and forgets •
nothing. In addition, he has a well -trained ;^-
mind. He has so systematized the things
he has learned that it is like pigeon-holed
material — always ready for use. Although
he laughs little and never heartily, Cortelyou
has a very attractive smile. When he talks
he looks one square in the eye and answers
1
GEORGE liRUCE CURTELYOU 3339
in a low voice, but directly to the point. Cortclyou was eyes and cars for President
His solemnity is easily ])enctrated by a good McKinley in those days, as he has been for
story or a joke, and no President's secretary President Roosevelt since. He saw every man,
ever appreciated the humorous features of woman and child who entered the President's
life in the White House more than Cortelyou. office and knew what they came for and what
He can say yes or no with equal firmness and they got. He read every message that came
good nature; and in his faithful devotion to and went by wire, post or messenger, and kcjjt
McKinley and Roosevelt, the two Presidents the whole great game in his head as a player
whom he has served, he never forgot that at chess does. Where McKinley went he
they were human after all. His admiration went, always by the President's side, acting
for them never grew into worship. as an intermediary between him and the
One of Cortelyou 's most valuable assets is people,
and always has been his remarkable ability On that September day in 1901 when
to work and work hard twelve or fifteen hours McKinley was shot down by the hand of an
out of twenty-four and come up smiling after assassin, it was Cortelyou, strong, cool and
a few hours' sleep. His habits of life outside clear-headed, who gave the prompt orders
his office are just as regular and abstemious that took the stricken President to the
as when he is in it. He eats, drinks, smokes, hospital and placed him under the surgeon's
talks, laughs and does everything else in the knife within an incredibly short space of
same quiet, temperate, contained way. He time after the shot had been fired; and it was
has so schooled himself to conceal what is he who so thoughtfully arranged for the
going on in his mind that there is not the interview between the wounded President
slightest doubt in the world that if he were at and his wife that called forth the sympathy
his desk and the report should come to of the world. From that day until McKinley
him that President Roosevelt had fallen from was laid to rest in the flower-strewn cemetery
the top of the Washington Monument he at Canton there was practically no rest, day
would with mechanical calmness order the or night, for Mr. Cortelyou. The terrible
proper person to send an ambulance. anxiety, the mental worry, the actual work
Mr. Cortelyou 's ability to withstand hard, performed by him will never be known except
continuous physical and mental work and by those who were within the circle at Buffalo,
to subject his mind and his body to wearying Returning to Washington after the funeral,
strain was first put to the test during the Mr. Cortelyou said to a friend that he was
Spanish-American War in 1898. He was tired in mind and body almost to the breaking
even then the real secretary to President point. But he did not show it. He was as
McKinley, and during all of that long hot calm and suave and neat and self-contained
summer he performed an enormous daily as if upon a pleasure trip. The Canton train
and nightly task. In those days when the reached Washington early in the morning,
telegraph office at the White House was a and an hour later Theodore Roosevelt was
war chamber, when there were hourly meet- sitting in the President's chair as self-reliant
ings of the Cabinet day and night, and when as though there had not been a tragedy at
every act performed by the Government had Buffalo. He took up the work that the
a world-wide interest, Cortelyou was President murdered President had laid down, and there
McKinley's right hand. He was at the White by his chair was Cortelyou, who from that
House at nine o'clock or shortly after every moment became the central figure of a pro-
morning; he left it between six and seven in gramme of executive strenuousness perhaps
the evening; he was back about half -past never before known to the American people,
nine and did not depart much before one in President Roosevelt does not spend as
the morning. In 1899 the Philippines war many hours a day at work as President
made conditions similar; in 1900 it was the McKinley did, but he works more rapidly.
Chinese war that made the doings at the Mr. Roosevelt has no systematic regularity
White House the important things of the about his methods either at work or at play,
world. During all this time the mental and He is likely to do the unexpected thing,
physical strain upon President McKinley and Cortelyou is just the opposite of Mr. Roose-
Mr. Cortelyou, who had been made his secre- velt. He never hurries and he never is
tary in the spring of 1900, was prodigious, excited. He keeps himself in perfect physical
■
3340
GEORGE BRUCE CORTELYOU
I
trim without taking any systematic exercise.
Mr. Cortelyou does not ride horseback, or
take long cross-country walks, or fence or
box, or play single-stick or chop down trees.
He "saws wood" all the time, it is true, but
he never swings the ax. He rides to his
modest little home over on Capitol Hill in
the unfashionable part of "Washington, and
he has probably spent less time in the open
air during the last five years than any other
man in the city of Washington. He has
never had a real vacation since McKinley
became President, and has done none of the
things that the doctors say one must do to be
well except that he is temperate and regular
in all his habits.
Mr. Cortelyou has a charming wife and
four children, two boys and two girls. All of
his time not devoted to his public duties he
spends in their company. He belongs to no
clubs except the New York Press Club, and to
no secret societies. He takes no part in the
social life of Washington except to participate
in such official functions as fall to his lot in his
official capacity. He attends the Presbyterian
Church, and the children go to the public
schools. Mr. Cortelyou will receive $8,000
as a Cabinet officer instead of $5,000 as
secretary to the President, and he may find
it necessary to move from Capitol Hill into
a more accessible part of Washington.
In no respect has ]\Ir. Cortelyou been more
valuable to the late President McKinley and
to President Roosevelt than in his relations
with the newspaper men in Washington.
He has accomplished a great deal in the way
of creating and maintaining a good feeling
between them and the Administration. He
never slaps them on the back or calls them
"old man," but he always treats them fairly
and squarely. It was under Mr. Cortelyou
that the practice was inaugurated of having
the President talk frankly with newspaper
correspondents about public affairs. This
was President McKinley "s policy, and it has
been followed by !Mr. Roosevelt very liberally.
President McKinley was not as accessible
to the newspaper men as President Roosevelt
is. He did not let them see him off-hand so
frequently, but he was always ready to
receive a reputable newspaper correspondent
if the nature of his visit was important enough
for him to demand an interview. But
President Roosevelt talks to the newspaper
reporters with nearly as much freedom as he
does to the members of his Cabinet. It is his
way, he says, of keeping things secret. Like
President McKinley, and unlike President
Roosevelt, Mr. Cortelyou never replies to a
statement put to him until he has listened to
everything the person making it has to say.
He listens as patiently and good-naturedly
as if he really enjoyed it. His replies are
always to the point.
It was during Mr. McKinley 's term of
office that Mr. Cortelyou inaugurated the
practice of turning a railroad train into an
executive office during a presidential trip,
and handing to the newspaper men on the
train, with a very few minutes' delay, a type-
written report of ever}i;hing said and done
at each stopping place, recording not only
the speech-making, but the human inci-
dents. This is a great convenience to the
reporters and it is very important to the
President. It puts before the country sys-
tematically and completely a correct report
of all he says and all that is said to him.
One of the President's friends expressed
surprise the other day that he should appoint
as a member of his Cabinet a man who is not
a politician. But a senator who was present
said that Cortelyou was the best politician
he ever knew. Cortelyou is a consummate
master of the science of politics, he said.
However that may be, it is certain that Mr.
Cortelyou is a good judge of human nature,
and he generally values a man at his worth.
The manner in which he intends to conduct
his new department was well illustrated the
other day. A friend said to him that he
supposed a good place would be given to a
mutual friend of theirs. "No," said Mr.
Cortelyou, "I doubt if he has the kind of
ability the thing needs." He went on to
say that the employees must be able to do
intelligent, painstaking work or he would not
have them.
Political influence will, of course, have
some weight with Mr. Cortelyou, but he will
have no idlers and no incompetents. Since
the breaking out of the Spanish-American
war the clerical work of the White House
has greatly increased and expanded, but
frequent visitors to the White House see
nothing of it as they transact business with
the calm, quiet, level-headed man who
manages it all. The public may hear more
of him in the future as one of the twentieth-
century captains of industry.
A VAST MACHINE FOR SOCIAL
BETTERMENT
AN IMPARTIAL INVESTIC'.ATION OF THE VOUNCl MEN'S CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATION— THE QUAI.ITV OK ITS MEMHERSH IP— HOW IT EDU-
CATES FOR THE POLICE AND FIRE SERVICE AND HENEFITS THE
SAILORS— RELIGIOSITY SUPERSEDED BY PRACTICAL HELPFULNESS
PY
RAYMOND STEVENS
AT a recent civil-service examination for
positions on the New York police
force a candidate was asked, to test
his ability to answer the questions of the
public, how he would go from City Hall to
the Metropolitan Museum. He said, "I'd
ask some cop what car to take." Similar
incidents served most of those who heard of
them merely as jokes, but it occurred to
officers of a certain organization of which
President Roosevelt lately remarked, "It
combines decency with efficiency," that in
the training of men for police and fire depart-
ment places lay a field of very appreciable
usefulness. Young men were invited, accord-
ingly, to join classes to study elementary civil-
service subjects and to gain the physical
strength required. And now in a commodious
building on the Bowery in New York such a
class is at work every evening, and of the 125
men on the last police force civil-service
list in New York city, fourteen came
from this single little group. Such a
manifestation of practical helpfulness, com-
bined with successful effort in a hundred
siinilar fields, emphasizes the expansion
of the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion, the organization that is carrying on
this work in New York and elsewhere,
far beyond the narrow conceptions of its
founders.
An organization whose sole business is the
making of men better, and which has, ac-
cording to its last report, property worth
$30,000,000 and a membership_ of 300,000
3''oung men and boys, deserves an investiga-
tion of its methods, personnel and results.
Greater New York has thirty-three branches
of the Association, covering its most impor-
tant fields of activity; here such an investi-
gation was made.
The West Side branch has one of the best
equijjped buildings in the city, and is typical.
This branch has more than 3,500 mem-
bers, whose average age is twenty-three
years. Most are clerks and office employees
and are fairly representative of their cla.ss.
Some are the typical Sunday-school youth,
vapid and lacking in virility, but these
are not so numerous as to color the Asso-
ciation. The many practical advantages
attract also men of more manly stamp. The
Young Men's Christian Association, partly
supported by benevolence, is evidently for
men of moderate means and the less
fortunate in early advantages or home
environment, yet many men in no need
of its help do association work from philan-
thropic motives, as college men go into settle-
ment work. Any respectable young man
may join. About 1,500 men at the West
Side branch are not church members, and
of the rest one-half are Catholics.
Twelve hundred men belong to the physical
department and take regular exercise.
Besides the usual class-work, boxing, wrest-
ling and fencing are taught. Last year 11 1
entertainments and lectures were given
with a total attendance of 21,000, also 210
religious meetings with an attendance of
30,000. Such eminent churchmen and
laymen as Doctor Lyman Abbott, Doctor
Rainsford, Jacob Riis and Colonel Leonard
Wood were among the speakers. Some of
the Sunday meetings in Carnegie Hall were
the largest meetings for men alone ever held
in New York city. The Association runs a
free employment bureau. The West Side,
the Bowery and the Twenty-third Street
branches last year secured 3,766 situations.
The West Side branch has 650 men in its
night-schools. Since most of its members
3342
A VAST MACHINE FOR SOCIAL BETTERMENT
are young men who had to go to work
early and without special training, the
courses are usually very practical, commercial
and technical courses predominating. There
are seventy-five college graduates in this one
night-school, even from such institutions as
Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia,
studying commercial courses that the colleges
do not teach. Here is a typical case of what
the Association aims to do. A clerk working
in a dry goods store at $5 a week, after
taking a course in mechanical drawing,
secured a position through the Association
Employment Bureau in an engineer's office
with a salary to begin with of $8 a week,
and also the chance to do all the extra work
he wished to at $1 an hour.
The Twenty-third Street branch not long
ago opened a successful day-school which will
probably be imitated in other branches. It
has nearly one hundred students, and is really
a thorough business college open to members
at a merely nominal cost — for S3. 50 is about
the average fee for all Association courses.
A standard examination is held in all
Association schools so rigid that more than a
hundred universities, colleges and technical
schools, including the State universities of
Maine, Indiana, Oregon, Washington, Colo-
rado, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana,
accept the Association certificates in lieu of
entrance examinations.
The Naval Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion has a different problem to meet.
"Jackies" have no need of g\'mnasiums,
no opportunity for study and, generally
speaking, no religious interests. They
are not more given to dissipation than
the average man, in spite of a rather common
opinion to the contrary. After months of
strict discipline and careful living, very
naturally many turn their liberty into a spree,
and thus their misdeeds are emphasized.
There are, of course, some men with fixed
habits of dissipation, but more are led to
saloons and cheap "joints" chiefly from the
lack of any better places to go to.
The Brooklyn Naval Building, opened last
May through the generosity of Miss Helen
Gould, is probably the finest inexpensive
club in the world. Besides the usual facilities,
it has a rifle-range, pool and billiard tables, a
barber shop, a camera -room and a large
number of storage lockers. Asked how he
liked the place, one sailor said, "My clothes
fit me better here than in any other place I
go to." Another said, "I didn't come here
for months — I thought it was one of these
d d missions, but this place is all right."
These remarks indicate two reasons why the
Young ]\Ien's Christian Association has
attracted sailors. Here they are made
to feel at home, while in most places,
even in our democratic community,
they are not wanted — a fact that leads
many, against the rules, to wear citizen
dress on shore. They object to charity and
hate attempts to save their sovds. They
pay a large part of the running expenses
themselves, and they do not have religion
thrust upon them. '
Last Christmas twenty-five men from
Newport and a few from Norfolk came to the
Brooklyn branch to spend the day, just as
they might have gone home if home had been
accessible. In the first six months the
average daily attendance at the building has
been 365 and the average number of lodgers
125. Most of this time only a receiving-ship
and a gunboat or two were in port. But while
the Atlantic Squadron was at Brooklyn last '
August, some nights nearly a hundred men
slept on the hall floors, and even more were
turned away. One saloon close to the Navy
Yard has closed since the Young ]\Ien's
Christian Association opened its build-
ing; and one Raines hotel-keeper told the
hotel inspector on his last trip that he was
going out of business. " I haven't let a bed
to a sailor since that Young Men's Chris-
tian Association got in," he said.
A Brooklyn policeman takes an intoxicated
sailor, not to the station house, but to the
Association bmlding, where he is cared for.
One sailor, who had been robbed of his money
and left unconscious on the street, was found
by a secretary and taken to the Naval build-
ing, sobered off and hurried back to ship in
time to keep his liberty leave unbroken.
The next day he wrote: "This has taught
me a lesson. I promise you never to taste
of intoxicating liquor again. Also, I shall
leave an allotment with you to help me save,
as I cannot, do it without help."
The "allotment" refers to an arrangement
whereby a sailor can assign a part of his
wages to the Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, which encourages saving by putting ,
the money on interest with trust com-
panies. In this way the Brooklyn branch
A VAST MACHINE FOR SOCIAL HKTTEKMENT
3343
receives more than $5,000 a month.
It even acts as general business agent.
Letters come every day from all over
the world with a great variety of requests.
"I want $50 at once. I got into trouble
ashore," wrote a sailor from Hongkong.
Another was more explicit: "Send me $20
— our boat lost the race." Another asked
the secretary to subscribe and pay for a
half-dozen leading monthly magazines. One
sailor wanted the secretary to buy him a
farm in Michigan — location and choice left
to the judgment of the secretary.
The men seen about the naval building are
' older, hardier, and, if rougher, also more virile
than the usual Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation man. They look as if they could
fight better than they could pray. The
religious work is mostly done by indi-
vidual efforts, rather than by general exhor-
tation. Any sailor may become a member,
irrespective of religion or lack of it. More-
over, the building with all its advantages is
open to any enlisted man, whether a member
or not.
Most college associations run an employ-
ment bureau for the benefit of students work-
ing their way. At Columbia, which has no
dormitories, the association found last
year boarding places for more than 400
men. But their chief work is to interest
and train men for philanthropic work. Said
J. C. McCracken, the famous University of
Pennsylvania football player, now secretary
of the Columbia branch : " I do not believe
any man can come out of college a better man
morally than when he entered if he does not
associate himself with some religious organi-
zation and do active work in it. That is
what the college Young Men's Christian
Association is for." At Harvard more than
100 men are engaged in settlement work
among the poor in Cambridge and Boston.
The railroad branches in New York do
little educational and religious work, as
the members are practically all transients.
The men who drop into the buildings for a
few minutes' loaf, or a dinner, or for a bath
and a sleep, represent the rank and file of
railroad men, and not the few religiously
inclined. From sixty to seventy-five per
cent, of the men available join. More than
half are Roman Catholics. " We don't preach
men away," said a railroad branch secretary.
"There have been Young Men's Christian
Associations that ran their religious work
so far into the ground that not only the
Catholics but every self-rcsj)ccting man got
out. But here I never knew a man to keep
away on account of the religious part. Two
left because we were ' too worldly. ' We
have many earnest Christians, and we do
our best work quietly and by personal touch. "
Recently the Association has begun to
establish industrial branches. It is able
to do what the men would not do by them-
selves and the employers could not if they
would. There are five industrial branches
now actually running: one in the iron mills
at Lorain, Ohio; one at Stamps, Ark., in
a lumber mill; one at Atlanta, Ga., also in
a lumber mill; one at Wilmerding, Pa.,
in the Westinghouse Electric Works, and
one at Proctor, Vt., for the marble workers.
Here 217 men joined the first week without
solicitation; and a night-class contains forty
Hungarians. Since January ist the committee
in charge of the industrial department has re-
ceived applications either from the men or the
employers in fourteen plants, some the largest
in the country, representing eight industries.
The Association secretary or agent goes
directly to the men, and if he can get enough
to agree to form a branch to insure its success
from the point of view of numbers, he
raises what money he can from the men before
he calls on the company to subscribe. In
this field lies perhaps the greatest opportunity
of the Young Men's Christian Association,
and it has begun vigorously to cultivate it.
Even from an examination of the Associa-
tion in the one city of New York it is difhcult
to generalize. Its work varies greatly accord-
ing to different conditions. Some secretaries
are broad-minded, some narrow; some are
men who would be hard put to it to win a
livelihood in other callings, while others are
efficient men who have given up more lucra-
tive work to devote themselves to helping
the less fortunate. It is distinctly an associa-
tion for mutual helpfulness, and not a chari-
table institution. It is democratic in its
management and in its underlying idea that
the real way to help men is to give them
opportunities to help themselves. "Pious"
it has certainly ceased to be. It represents
today the strongest, largest manifestation of
enlightened practical, strenuous Christianity
in the United States, and probably in the
world.
THE MODEL AMERICAN RESIDENCE
THE EQUIPMENT OF THE MODEL HOUSE — CLEAN CELLARS,
SANITARY KITCHENS AND WHOLESOME PANTRIES— AUTOMATIC
ELEVATORS— A COMPLETE LAUNDRY AT HOME— NEW DEVICES
FOR WINDOWS AND DOORS— A HOSPITAL ROOM AND SUN PARLOR
BY
KATHARINE C BUDD
CUSTOM has made us familiar with the
many devices invented to increase
the comfort of our houses. We do
not realize how fortunate we are until we
compare our lot with that of our friends in
England and France. We would not tolerate
in the meanest houses here sanitary equip-
ments in daily use in good quarters of Paris.
Bathtubs, regarded there as a luxury, are
here a necessity too common to be discussed.
The French fashion of having a copper tub on
wheels brought, through the streets, to
one's bedroom when a hot bath is desired,
wotdd not appeal to our sense of comfort.
The tub, lined with fair white sheets and
laboriously filled with water, may seem invit-
ing to a Frenchman; to us it seems a relic of
feudal life.
In planning our houses all is carefully
studied in order to reduce the amount of
service required. Trained servants are
difficult to find, and we are obliged to
simplify their tasks and to adopt the latest
labor-saving inventions.
In considering the appliances used in our
homes, the best place to start is the cellar.
The first thing we notice is the freshness of
the air. Even though direct sunlight can-
not penetrate here, the current of well-
sunned air, constantly drawn through from
openings in the front to the windows in the
rear, keeps the air wholesome. The smoothly
concreted floor, the shiny white walls and
ceiling, reflect light into dim comers. Electric
light is no friend to heaps of rubbish. A
modem furnace is self-regulating, requir-
ing little attention after the shaking- down
and replenishing in the morning. The ideal
system is one where hot water is carried in
tubes throughout the house. With this
system the temperature of the rooms may
be kept at the same degree of heat in the
spring and fall. For this reason, in spite of
the expense involved, hot- water heating is
growing more popular.
Here in the cellar is the meter which
measures the quantity of gas consumed.
In some places there is also a water-meter to
prevent wanton waste of water. And here
are the drain-pipes and their connections,
deemed ugly and uninteresting by the uniniti-
ated. The weight of cast-iron pipes has in-
creased because we learned that the rust and
various gases in time rot the pipe, eating
great holes in it. Much time has been
spent in the perfection of traps and fresh-
air inlets of different kinds.
One recent invention is coming into com-
mon use, especially in isolated country
houses — acetylene gas. Within a very
short time radical improvements have been
made which render the manufacture of it
perfectly safe. The carbide, in powder,
falling into water, cannot explode. The little
machine in the cellar provides a gas five
times as powerful as the ordinary illuminating
gas. A special tip for the burners is necessary,
but otherwise the piping and other apparatus
are the same as for the old-fashioned gas.
The carbide, made in great quantities by
the power of Niagara, is very cheap. It has
within a few weeks been discovered that the
waste carbide formerly thrown away will
bum with an intense heat in the furnace if
mixed with clinkers.
THE MODERN KITCHEN
The modem kitchen is of moderate size; a
large kitchen means added steps for weary
feet. The floor is covered with a patent
composition of pale yellow, warmer than
tiles, although equally non-absorbent and
easy to clean. A six-inch border of white
glazed tiles wainscots the walls. This wain-
scoting of tiles, six feet high, joins the glossy
plaster above without a break, the ceiling
THE MODEL AMERICAN RESIDENCE
3345
being finished with a curve. There are no
l)rojections, no angles not readily dusted
out with a cloth. In fact, although the ease
with which the room may be kept clean does
not often warrant the operation, the hose
may be turned on here without injuring
anything.
The wrought-iron range has many labor-
saving attachments. A wide iron hood ])ro-
jecting out from the wall catches all the
odors and much of the heated air, drawing
them up through a register into a venti-
lating rtue in the chimney. A porcelain
sink opposite, tables with marble tops built
into the wall and supported in front on nickel-
plated legs, cupboards with sliding glass
doors built into the wall, a block of oak for
meats, are among the fittings of this kitchen.
Many ranges are made with "complete gas
attachment," as the catalogues call it. This
is very convenient in summer. It is arranged
over the range proper and includes a bake
oven, boiler and extended top. It can be
used at the same time as the coal range if
more capacity is needed. The broiler and
' all the ovens are ventilated. In all coal
ranges some form of revolving grate is used
which quickly disposes of clinkers and ashes.
The old-time cook with her ineffective little
poker would look at these with awe and
amazement. Cooking by electricity will soon
become common. We use electric plate-
warmers and various small devices, but the
main part of the cooking is carried on in the
old-fashioned way. Electricity is still too
expensive for everyday use in the range.
THE NEW STOREROOM
The storeroom, opening off the kitchen,
is a model of convenience. Tiled and wain-
scoted like the kitchen, with non-absorbent
shelves graduated in width according to the
articles to be kept on them, with flour and
sugar in patent metal bins which tip back
or slide in or in other ways are cleverly con-
trived to fit the space allotted to them.
There is a sunny window in the storeroom
which insures perfect ventilation.
The daintily kept cold-room is a pleasant
place to inspect.
The inner surfaces are of glazed white
tiles. In receptacles within the double walls
ice is put from the outside. In country
houses where it is necessary to keep meat
for several days this cold-room is large. Jt
is often built in as part of the regular ice-
house. The regular sup])ly f)f fc^rty or fifty
tons serves to keej) this njom cold all summer.
THE MODEL LAUNDRY
It would take a volume to describe the
wonderful inventions used in the laundry.
Some of them are expensive and not suitable
for use in private houses. In the future the
laundry will be as completely eliminated
from our houses as it is in France, but at
present the careless way in which our linen
is handled in the great laundries makes us
anxious to have it washed at home. The line
of porcelain tubs, well supplied with hot and
cold water and the convenient wringer, seem so
much a matter of oburse that we forget the
amount of lifting a woman was obliged to do
in the days of portable tubs. At the side is a
drying-room, with rows of movable racks,
easily pulled out and filled with clothes and
then rolled back into the hot, dry air of the
steam-chamber.
A very simple form of steam washer,
which cleans the clothes perfectly without
rubbing, is used in the boiler. This is
sometimes an elaborate affair in larger
laundries, but the principle is the same —
a current of steam and hot water constantly
passing through the meshes, removing all
stains.
An electric iron, a heavy affair connected
by a covered wire with the nearest electric
fixture, is used for ironing fine pieces. A
mangle for straight coarse goods takes the
folded sheets or towels rapidly between
heated rollers.
HOW THE PANTRY IS PLANNED
The fittings in a modern pantry are arranged
to avoid waste of space and to afford the utmost
convenience. Shelves are as carefully studied
as are the mahogany bookcases in the library.
The height of the sink, the lighting of the
room, the placing of refrigerator, plate-
warmer and all such details are considered.
The result is so simple that the ow^ner takes
it all as a matter of course, or perhaps regards
it as a happy accident. There are two
pantries when, as is usually the case, the
kitchen is in the basement. The one next
the dining-room is connected by a noiseless
dumb-waiter so accurately balanced that a
touch will set it in motion.
The upper part of the walls is covered
3346
THE MODEL AMERICAN RESIDENCE
with dressers enclosed with sHding glass
doors. The shelves are cleverly planned to
contain without waste space all the china and
glass necessary for the tables. These shelves
are sometimes made of heavy plate glass.
Under the dressers runs a wide counter-shelf.
On one side of the room are two pantry
sinks, with open plumbing. A rack under
one of the dressers holds the trays. Places
are provided for fresh linen, cloths for
cleaning, cups and bottles of all kinds.
Under the counter-shelf opposite the sinks is
a small refrigerator lined with tiles. This is
large enough for desserts, etc. A plate-
warmer, heated by gas or electricity, is set
in the wall near the dumb-waiter.
This enumeration of the fittings of the
pantry does not convey an idea of its attrac-
tive appearance; its white-tiled walls, the
leaded sash in the window, the glossy, immacu-
late floor, the nickel-plated trimmings of the
refrigerator, the hot-closet, the hardware and
supports for the shelves must be seen to be
appreciated. The door connecting with the
dining-room swings on spring hinges which
permit it to open into either room, closing
immediately after.
From the first floor a " lift " is provided for
the use of persons unable or unwilling to
climb the stairs. This is run by electric
power. By a push button on a dial inside
the car is started when both doors are closed.
The elevator , stops automatically when it
reaches the desired floor. The doors can-
not be opened until that floor is reached,
thus preventing possible accidents. An at-
tendant is not needed for this elevator. It
can be opened only when opposite a floor. It
will not start until both doors are locked.
Very often a smaller lift is provided for
freight, such as coal or linen. This, also, is
automatic.
LUXURIOUS BATHROOMS
The ordinary bathroom of a private house
is finished in a style that twenty years ago
would have been considered luxurious. The
floor is covered with small unglazed white
tiles or inch-square marble blocks with a
pretty border. The walls, wainscoted with
large white tiles, have a coved tiling where the
floors join. No dust can accumulate any-
where. All plumbing is open. The large
tub is of porcelain or perhaps of iron enameled
white, with lines of gold outside. It has
been found that many people have been
injured by stepping on the soapy tub and
striking the faucets. Therefore the handles
are outside the tub.
SPECIAL ROOMS FOR COMFORT AND HEALTH
In many houses, especially where there
are children, a hospital-room is fitted up on
the top floor, isolated from the rest of the
house. The walls are painted in a cheerful
color; the floor is covered with some patent
preparation like lignolette or asbestolette.
An open fireplace assists in the ventilation.
A tiny but complete arrangement for cooking
the invalid's food is connected with the
chimney which carries off all odors. It is
here that the electric equipment for cooking
and sterilizing food finds its true value.
On the roof we sometimes find a sun-parlor
of heavy plate glass. This is heated as
easily as is the rest of the house. A row
of boxes at the sides is filled with plants,
turning it into a miniature conservatory.
Here the children spend much of their time
in winter. The best way to arrange this is
on the roof of the extension in the yard if
there is no elevator in the house, for in America
we are beginning to object to an undue
number of stairs to climb.
For increasing the light at the end of long
rooms there is a number of inventions.
The commonest diverts the light through
prisms of molded glass until the rays enter
the room horizontally. Window cleaning,
also, has been simplified. Windows may be
arranged to swing on a pivot into a room as
well as up and down.
The attitude of the educated, cultivated
woman toward manual labor is changing
rapidly. At one time she regarded the time
spent in her kitchen or sewing-room as lost.
Now it is this very woman who is most capable
of instructing and governing her servants . She
fully appreciates the value of machinery and
the various "Yankee methods" devised to
aid her in simplifying the work in her house-
hold. She seizes the latest idea. When
the comfort and health of those dearest to
her are concerned her patience is endless.
In building the new home, it is generally the
mistress who investigates and suggests, and
realizes from experience the important bear-
ing these details have on the future welfare.
If the house is a success, it is largely due
to her influence.
FORKST. FISH ANO C.AMK COMMISSION AT WORK PI.ANTINC. AN OLD I'INK "BURNING"
THE RAILROADS AND FORESTRY
THE GOVERNMENT GRANTS TO RAILROADS— THE CARE-
LESSNESS THAT WASTES TIMBERLANDS BY FOREST FIRES
—SCIENTIFIC FORESTRY AS A HELP TO FURNISH THE
GREATEST AMOUNT OF RAW MATERIAL. TO MINIMIZE
WASTE AND TO BEAUTIFY THE RAILROAD LINES
BY
JOHN GIFFORD
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF FORESTRY IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY
MANY people have thought that the
wide use of steel, stone and coal
would reduce the deniand for wood.
But they forgot, among other things, that rail-
roads are being built, mile upon mile daily,
the world over.
Many said that wood would become very
scarce and expensive and steel and stone
would entirely take its place. Wood is
strong in proportion to its weight; it is easy
to work, and easy to hold in place by nails
and glue; it is a non-conductor of heat
and electricity, and possesses beauty of grain,
color and other qualities which fit it for a
greater variety of uses than metal. It can be
grown over a vast territory of land. ]\Ietals
are local and exhaustible; wood is almost
everywhere, and a forest, if properly tended,
is a living, perpetual resource.
We have in this country at least 250.000
miles of trackage, excluding electric rail-
roads. About 2.500 ties are used per mile.
The average life of a tie, without the use of
preservatives, is about six or seven years.
There is, then, a constant annual demand for
more than 100,000,000 ties. A tree which
will yield three good ties, under forest
conditions, in this climate, is at least fifty
years old, and it is an exceptional acre which
produces more than three hundred such trees.
An acre of tended forest ought, therefore, to
yield about eighteen or twenty ties each year.
The annual demand for each mile is about
400 ties. Twenty-five acres of forest are
necessary, therefore, for every mile of track.
A railroad with a trackage of 5,000 miles
would need about 125,000 acres of tended
forest to supply itself perpetually with
ties. For a large corporation this is a slight
task. It spends $1,000,000 frequently for
a single bridge. The intermediate yield
from thinnings would supply fence-posts,
which are also used in large quantities. It is
of interest to note that the United States
Government donated to the Union Pacific
1,655,586.3 acres and to the Northern
Pacific 1,518,007.91 acres during the year
which ended June 30, igo2.
3348
THE RAILROADS AND FORESTRY
WHERE A SERIES OF FIRES HAVE MADE A DESOLATE WASTE
Scenery along many wesiera railroads
The pinch of want has never been seriously
felt by railroads. ]\lany pass through regions
rich in virgin timber. The Federal Govern-
ment not only presented them with land
grants of immense areas of timber, but gave
them as well carte blanche to all timber needed
for "constructive"' purposes on Government
land "adjacent" to their lines. Few rail-
roads would consider it urgent to care for
forests while they can help themselves on
United States public domain.
It is dangerous to be lavish with natural
resources. It would be wise to care
for everv acre of public non-agricultural
forest land in our West, and to require corpo-
rations of all kinds to pay for wood, just as
other people do in other parts of the world.
The public domain belongs to the people and
not to a few western settlers and corporations.
The old system was wise in the beginning,
but it cannot, with fairness to all, continue
forever. The amount of good land which has
been granted to railroads during the last fifty
years approximates 100,000,000 acres. This
is a territory three times the size of the
State of New York and almost ten times the
size of the Swiss Republic. During the last
year, ending June 30, 1902, 4,848,845.7 acres
were granted to railroads. This is an area
almost as large as the State of New Jersey.
The general governmental policy is turning in
the proper direction in reserving more than
60,000,000 acres of forest land. A national
forestry policy is forming. The next step
in line should come from the railroads.
Railroad forestry, which is just beginning,
is something new and truly American.
Few persons would recommend the plant-
ing of rights-of-way for timber production,
because the lines are too narrow and are
generally not suitable. Trees which have
been planted along rights-of-way, in the
plains and prairies, have never prospered.
Thev are of little use for timber, although
TIIK RAll.R()\nS AND 1"()R1-:STRY
3349
WHITE OAK. KAll.ROAl) C'KOSS-TIK DKCAVIJ) l!V A
lUNGUS
CROSS-SKCTION OK A CATALPA TIE
they have helped in checking winds and
snow. The widest right-of-way is seldom
more than 200 feet on each side, and
usually it is much less. Timber cannot
be successfully produced in long, thin
strips. Every railroad should own and
properly care for large blocks of forest land
for timber production. Timber culture by
railroads is just as practicable as mining
coal or manufacturing iron.
Railroads, as a matter of fact, can produce
timber to better advantage than any other
proprietors. They are long-lived, they must
have timber, and they can transport it at a
minimum cost. The ties, ])oles, fuel- wood
and posts which they consume in immense
quantities do not need large manufactur-
ing establishments to make them ready
for use, as do coal and iron. They
can be prepared in the woods, ready for
use, with an ax. Well-established roads are
willing to sacrifice high gains to reduce the
THE FIRST FIRE KILLS THE GREEN TIMBER, LEAVING THE GROUND COVERED WITH HIGHLV
CO.MBUSTIBLE MATERIAL
3350
THE RAILROADS AND FORESTRY
A RAILROAD IN EUROPE, SHOWING WATTLEWORK
ON THE EMBANKMENT
HARVESTING EUCALYPTUS IN SOUTHERN CALI-
FORNIA
future cost of maintenance,
business proposition.
The only extensive single block of
timber planted by a railroad in this coun-
It is a plain try is near the village of Parlington, Kansas.
Its 400 acres, planted between 1877 and
A EUROPEAN HILLSIDE WHERE LANDSLIDES
ENTED BY BOTH MASONRY AND PINE GROWTH
TllK RAILROADS AM) I'ORKS'IRV
3351
1884, by the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Planting' and ivniVma; has cost $124.51 per
Memphis Railroad Company for purely com- acre; the gross value is at present $^90. 21
mercial purposes, consist of hartly catalpa, per acre; allowing six per cent, compound
for posts, poles and ties. This forest interest there is still left a clear profit of
has been carefully studied l)y the Bureau $138.19 per acre,
of Forestry, with the following results: In this way a railroad can j)reparc for tlie
CATALPA PLANTATION BELONGING TO THE KANSAS CITY. FORT SCOTT & MEMPHIS RAILROAD
COMPANY AT FARLINGTON, KANSAS
3352
THE RAILROADS AND FORESTRY
future, during prosperous times, by converting
the forests along its lines into a perpetual
resource. Beginning with fairly well-stocked
timberland, such as exists in many parts of
this countrv, a corporation could secure at
once good interest on the amount invested.
And it could cut its crop in such a way that
the forest would actually improve in quality.
There are many incongruities in this coun-
trv. The "big trees" of California are cut into
grapevine props; shingles from the Pacific
coast may be bought in eastern markets at
reasonable prices; corn is burnt in Kansas
when grain is cheap and fuel dear; while one-
third of the State of Xew Jersey and a large
part of Long Island, within thirty miles of
A FOREST IN FRANCE WHICH HAS YIELDED GOOD TIMBER AM' A riluH K.^ i h^ uK INTEREST
FOR CENTURIES AND HAS CONSTANTLY IMPROVED IN QUALITY
THE RA1I.K(^A1)S AND !• () K I-.ST K V
3353
A YELLOW PINE FOREST 61iOU ING A GKULNlJ KIKE IN Till. DISTANCE
the largest population centre of the United the fact that hundreds of thousands of cords
States, both by rail and water, is periodically of wood are wastefully consumed by forest
burnt over by wasteful forest fires. In these fires, and that fifty per cent, of these confla-
days of dear coal we should not lose sight of grations are set by locomotives.
HARVESTING TIMBER IX A SOUTHERN PINERY
3354
THE RAILROADS AND FORESTRY
Miles of blackened wastes border the rail-
road lines. In building a big railroad all
efforts and funds are concentrated on
getting it through, putting it into running
order and up to standard. By that time
the fires have done their fatal work.
Damages are sometimes paid, but they
are never adequate. In time, public
opinion develops and legislation follows.
In Europe
where both the railroads and
forest culture are old, and where the state
owns both railroad and forest, the railroad
officials and foresters are forced to cooperate
in preventing fire, and they are usually suc-
cessful. Lanes along the track are kept clear
of litter, the edges are plowed, and in
swamps ditches are dug to mineral soil.
Sometimes a row of evergreen trees is planted
close to the track to serve as a screen to arrest
the sparks. Often the lane is sown with cera-
1
THE LIVE-OAK OF THE SOUTH
One of our best tie timbers
i
CONFESSIONS OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
335S
della, a Spanish vetch which keeps green even
in times of drought. With well-kept fire lanes,
spark arresters on locomotives, care in drop-
ping hot ashes, and constant vigilance on the
part of employees during times of danger,
locomotive fires can be prevented. Owners
of woodland along railroads should cooperate
by not allowing slash to accumulate close to
the line, and by encouraging the growth, close
to the railroad, of locust and other trees
that are not easily burnt.
The planting of trees along railroads is,
however, objectionable for several reasons.
They obscure the track, crossings and signals,
they blow over on the track and on the
wires, and, if close to the windows, cause a
constant and annoying whir. If trees are
necessary as a protection against wind and
snow, they should be planted in wide belts
of evergreens some distance from the track.
A dense growth of low but deep-rooted
coppice on embankments would be excellent
to prevent landslips and washouts. The locust
is used for this purpose in Europe. Engineers
I in this country, however, are apt to work
' with stone and other constructive material
rather than with shrubs and trees.
A meeting of railroad men was held at
Cumberland, Maryland, on November 22
and 23, 1901. Two hundred of the lead-
ing otlicials of the Haltimore & Ohio
Railroad listened attentively for two days
to lectures on forestry, and the Bureau of
Forestry has since been requested to prepare
working plans for one hundred and fifty
thousand acres belonging to this company
in West Virginia. This is uncjuestionably
merely the beginning of a general movement.
The railroad will profit in the transportation
of materials and in the general betterment of
country which would otherwise remain waste.
Were Germany recklessly to cut her forests,
a large proportion of her people would be
paupers, and it would ruin many small indus-
tries dependent upon a constant supply of
raw material. By depleting our forests we
are driving a large number of our people
indoors to the factories of the cities. It
seems unjust to the taxpayers of town and
farm for a corporation or an individual to
cut in a few days a forest which has been
centuries growing, and then to leave it, a
desolate waste, to the State. The produc-
tivity of the land is the thing to consider,
and we are constantly consuming more of
essentials. The proper policy is to spend
the interest and conserve the principle.
This is the aim of scientific forestry.
CONFESSIONS OF A FOREIGN NEWS-
PAPER CORRESPONDENT
SIDE-LIGHTS ON GERMAN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL METHODS
BY
WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND
AUTHOR OF "GERMANY: THE WELDING OF A WORLD-POWER," AND FORMERLY CORRESPONDENT OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AT BERLIN
CONDITIONS under which a news-
paper correspondent has to live in
continental Europe vary radically
from those either in England or in America.
The difference is the more startling to a cor-
respondent trained according to American
newspaper methods.
Take, for example, the habit of quoting
names. The American newspaper thinks
it essential to make clear the source of impor-
tant statements. An interview with a name-
less statesman whose identity cannot even
be guessed from the context is put down in
American newspaper parlance as "a fake."
But the opposite method is the method in
the continental countries of Europe. There
it is an unpardonable offense to name your
informant.
This knowledge I purchased, at rather
an inconvenient price, when I had been but
three months in Berlin as correspondent
of the American Associated Press. It was
in the early autumn of 1894. Bismarck's
successor in the unsafe chair of the imperial
3356
CONFESSIONS OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
chancellor, General Count Caprivi, had re-
signed early in the evening, after a stormy
meeting with the Kaiser. At ten o'clock
that night Caprivi accorded me an interview.
He did not request that his name be withheld.
In my ignorance I quoted him in my cable-
gram that night. His talk to me had been
brief but to the point. He had told me of
the causes that had led to his loss of favor
with the Kaiser and to his retirement.
But I had unwittingly violated one of the
first principles in the code of German journal-
istic ethics. And I reaped a whirlwind of
abuse for it. "That news is bogus — must
be bogus, you know," said the German news-
papers and their correspondents, "for, don't
you see, he has quoted Caprivi?"
For years the reputation thus earned made
my work doubly hard. Whenever I happened
into one of the departments a whisper ran
round, "That's the man who names names!"
I never quite got over this during my long
stay in Berlin.
During the Samoan troubles, when Commo-
dore Kautz had been shelling villages near
Apia, and a detachment of German marines
had been waylaid and slaughtered by
Malietoa's men, I obtained a very interesting
talk with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
Its value, however, chiefly consisted in the
fact that it came from this official's own
lips. I asked him to let me quote him, but
he refused point-blank. The matter then,
being cabled as from an anonymous source,
fell fiat on this side the ocean. The very
purpose my informant had had in view in
talking to me naturally miscarried as well.
On another occasion, when I had succeeded
in getting from the American Ambassador
exclusive and accurate information about
the tripartite agreement between England,
Germany and the United States (the agree-
ment being in the nature of a preliminary
settlement of the whole Samoan trouble,
and substantially as it was ratified at the
capitals of these three powers), I had another
illustration of the difference between conti-
nental and American newspaper methods.
The hour being then about noon in Berlin
(i. e., 6 A. M. at New York), I had time to
verify the news and to secure additional
details. So I strolled into the Foreign
Office. My first question had an unexpected
effect. It changed the staid and solemn
official in a jiffy. He grew pale.
"What!" he almost screamed, "you know
that?" I bowed in affirmation.
"Why, I thought," he went on, breath-
lessly, "it was understood in Washington
and London that the first information to the
public about this settlement was to come
from Berlin. I don't see how it can have
leaked out. Who told you?"
I said I couldn't think of betraying my
informant.
"Hm, hm" — in a quandary — "and what
did you come here for?"
I told him my object.
The puzzled expression was intensified.
Then he suddenly looked up. A ray of hope
was glimmering in his fishy eye. "Please,
would you mind waiting here a minute while
I inquire of the chief?" he asked, and left
me standing there. He was back in a trice.
"Well," he remarked, and his smile was
triumphant, "you mustn't use that informa-
tion today."
He must have noticed my astonishment.
"No, you mustn't use it today. You see,
the three cabinets of Berlin, London and
Washington agreed that the information was
to come from Count Bulow first, and he
will impart it tomorrow — probably in the
Reichstag. It's too late to make arrange-
ments for that today." The Reichstag
usually meets at twelve, and was in session
while he spoke.
"But what," I ventured to interrupt,
"has all that got to do with me ? M}'' business
is to furnish the news, as soon as I have it,
to the American press."
The official stared at me in blank amaze-
ment. "But, don't you understand, sir,"
he replied, rather nettled. "Count Bulow
doesn't wish premature publication of these
facts."
"I am sorry, genuinely sorry," I began,
"but "
"You surely must appreciate the situation,"
the official insisted. "I need not point out
to you that we shall not forget this favor.
And what possible difference can it make to
you whether you send this news today or,
like the remainder of the correspondents,
tomorrow?"
What difference, indeed ! Well, the up-
shot was I left the Foreign Office, having,
of course, made no pledge to hold this impor-
tant piece of news in abeyance. Thirty
minutes later the wires flashed it across the
CONFESSIONS OF A FOREIGN CO RRESl'O N DENT 3357
water, and the afternoon papers in the United pendence and freedom of the press l;cing
States pubUshed it that day in full. The unknown in Germany, and every editor
news was not cabled back to Berlin in time there having constantly the fear of the jail
to spoil Count Billow's programme. That before him, both German Government and
suave statesman promulgated the informa- press were unable to see how I, representing
tion next noon in the Reichstag as though a press governed by no such fear, could dare
it had reached him that very moment. He publish news unwelcf)me to them.
made an impressive scene of it. In the other countries of continental
During the Spanish-American war I became Euroi)e the condition of the press is not much
painfully aware of other difficulties that beset better, and in Russia much worse. In France,
the path of an American correspondent on during the Dreyfus affair, a number of foreign
the Continent. My instructions at that time correspondents were expelled. I recall simi-
were: "Send the news, no matter how or lar cases in Rome and Vienna during times
whom it may hit!" of heated public opinion.
A large part of my work, from April to As a result, writers on the Continent —
November of that year, was reporting the editors, contributors, reporters — never speak
actual state of feelings prevalent throughout out in bold and manly fashion. They dare
Germany in respect to that war. That the not. Not everybody likes martyrdom, even
pen pictures I drew during that period were for so good a cause as a free press. Under
not likely to increase American affection for the stress of necessity they have originated
our German cousins is true. But that was and cultivated a style of diction which may
not my fault. I did not exaggerate. The fitly be called the "read-between-the-lines"
German people during that war were as style. They express their meaning by innu-
intensely hostile to Americans as they were endo, rather than directly, avoiding in this
to the English cause during the Boer war. way the many pitfalls which courts and
My plain duty was to describe things as I press laws have dug for their undoing. The
found them, and this I did. I did not omit reading public are accustomed to this. They
mitigating circumstances. I seized upon do read between the lines, and gather, as
and cabled every fragment of news calculated a rule, quite correctly the meaning which
to exonerate official or unofficial Germany, the cautious writer meant to convey. The
But I sent all the facts I could get. In all American or English correspondent, unused
this I simply obeyed instructions and felt to these ways, requires years to become an
free from bias. In fact, other American adept in them.
correspondents then in Germany found fault I recall the case of Mr. Valentine Chirol,
with me for my lack of "Americanism." a very able man who represented for a period
But my activity for the Associated Press the London Times in Berlin. After the
was nevertheless looked upon as nefarious incident which created such deep indigna-
by the German Government, and I was tion in England, viz., the Kaiser's despatch
made to suffer. I was approached, time and to Kruger on the occasion of the Jameson
again, both at the Foreign Office and outside, raid, he was expelled for plain speaking. My
with hints, veiled threats, or direct requests own case, brought about by the same offense,
to color my reports so as to give the impres- is likewise an illustration. For I, too, more
sion that there was no ill-feeling for America recently shared Mr. Chirol 's fate and that
on the part of the German people. When I of a number of correspondents in Berlin for
did not heed these requests, the Government having dared write the truth about one of
began a regular campaign against me, assail- the many extravagant acts the Kaiser was
ing me and impugning my motives in that guilty of during my stay at his capital city,
part of the German press subservient to its I was caught napping. I ought to have
interests and in all the other sheets it could known better.
influence or control. I became a proscribed Another difficulty under which the Ameri-
man for a time. Two of the chief Govern- can correspondent labors is the difficulty of
ment organs, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine securing news. No such methods would
Zeitung and Die Post, went even the lengths accomplish the purpose on the Continent as
of threatening me with expulsion. are used here. Personal influence and a
This must be said in explanation: Inde- wide acquaintance are, of course, indis-
3358
CONFESSIONS OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
pensable to every successful newspaper man
anywhere on the globe. But in Germany
and on the Continent generally it requires
much more than that. To become a success-
ful correspondent there for any length of time
one must cultivate a number of other things.
He must be in the social swim, and dine and
wine his patrons as well as hobnob with them
at their own firesides. He must show a
certain amount of style, and must conform
in his life to the demands of fashion. He
must distribute "tips" liberally and regularly
among the many underlings, who in turn
supply him with "tips" of news. He must
be a bright and amusing conversationalist,
full of good humor and racy anecdotes. He
must pretend to hold the same views politically
and socially which his informants hold. He
must be extremely discreet. He must write
his news with great care, so that its source
cannot be traced. He must — but I might
go on with the list until the picture would
be that of a Chesterfield and a Machiavelli
rolled in one.
To speak more in detail. American vis-
itors in Paris, Berlin or Vienna often wonder
how and where correspondents do their work.
The truth is, a large part of their work is
done at these very social gatherings where
you have met them. Important news is
usually there obtainable only. Statesmen
and diplomats, generals and admirals, leaders
of thought and action, the foremost men of
business and the indefatigable promoters
of great new ventures — all the men and
women, in fact, who make the news and who
are the fountain-head of it, the correspondent
will meet there. It depends on his indi-
vidual exertions and on his tact and gifts
of persuasion, what use he makes of his
opportunities. Being treated as a social
equal, it devolves, of course, on the corre-
spondent to reciprocate favors shown — not
in quantity, perhaps, but at least in quality.
The leading correspondents must have homes
of comfort and must throw them open to the
official and unofficial world at stated intervals,
say three or four times per season. Their
private fortunes or their incomes must be
large enough to admit that. Their annual
expenditures cannot be less than $5,000 and
may exceed $15,000. The London Times,
for instance, pays its correspondents on a
liberal scale, salaries of $5,000 to $10,000
being the rule. Yet the majority of them
find it necessar}^ to make up regtdar defi-
ciencies in their exchequer out of their own-
private funds. Money in the capitals on the
Continent goes furthest in Paris and Rome,
Berlin being next, and Vienna and St.
Petersburg being the most expensive places.
The peripatetic American correspondent
on the Continent, of course, is exempt from
these conditions or from most of them.
But he will not be able to obtain much news —
I mean real, honest, reliable news. There is,
for instance, one such "Wandering Jew"
of a correspondent on the Continent. He
is forever flitting between extreme points of
the compass — in Sofia today and in Copen-
hagen next w^eek. The prestige of his paper
helps him. A purse liberally supplied by his
employer in New York helps him likewise.
And indiscretions he may be guilty of today
are forgotten within the two or three years
it takes him to return to the same spot. But
his news is, despite these advantages, unre-
liable as a rule. In every one of these conti-
nental countries it takes years of quiet,
persistent study to fathom political, social
and economic conditions, and without such
intimate knowledge the correspondent will
constantly commit egregious blunders.
The life of the American correspondent
on the continent of Europe is a life interesting
and fascinating enough in its way, and it
broadens the mental horizon as, perhaps,
no other occupation does. But it is a nerve-
destroying life, a life in which there is scarcely
a minute he can call his very own. Every
day in the year it spurs its slave on to utmost
exertion. It barely pays expenses, and it
necessitates constant outlays in time and
money w^hich cannot be put down in the
"expense account" and which are a drain on
health and purse alike. Even under the
most favorable circumstances the game is
hardly worth the candle. To go to bed at
two or three, fagged out with never-ending
excitement and toil; to be waked out of a
sound sleep an hour later by a ring at the
telephone or by inopportune cable inquiries
from the home office; to dress hurriedly,
take a cab to the nearest telegraph office, and
there wire a hasty reply; then to return and
seek a few more hours of fitful sleep, and to
rise, morning after morning, unrefreshed,
with never repose for body and soul — all this
is neither conducive to longevity nor to a
quiet and contented mind.
JOHN FISKE AS A POPULAR HISTORIAN
HIS PLACE AMONC; IIISTORRAL WRITERS AND MEN OK I.E'ITKRS—
A REVIEW OF HIS WORK AND AN EXPLANATION OF HIS METHOD
PY
H. MORSE STEPHENS
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THU UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
IN an article published in The World's
Work for July, 1902, upon "Some
Living American Historians," an effort
was made to point out the distinctive char-
acteristics of the writing of history as at
present held and practised by the chief
exponents of the scientific historical school
in the United States. The ideal of the
writers of this school is the discovery and
narration of the truth, their method is that
of scientific investigation, and both ideal and
method have begun to be followed on this
side of the Atlantic Ocean. But such scien-
tific histories cannot appeal directly to the
great body of readers ; their very impartiality
repulses a generation that thinks history
should be made as fascinating as romantic
fiction; their accurate perspective includes
many things that do not interest the general
public; and the reaction from history which
should be all style and no facts has induced
some of the most illustrious representatives
of the scientific school, especially in Germany,
to go to the other extreme of compiling
history which is all facts, set forth with
studious disregard for the niceties of literary
style. There has therefore come into exist-
ence a class of historical writers who aim
to show forth after a fashion attractive to
the general public the results of the labors
of more serious and carefully trained his-
torical students. The productions of these
popular writers are as much controlled by
regular laws as the work of the scientific
historians themselves; the}" also have to
understand the mental attitude of their
readers; they have to proportion their nar-
rative along different but as well-defined
lines as their carefully trained contempo-
raries ; and they have to realize that success
can only come to those who rightly gage the
receptivity of their particular public. The
late John Fiske was the most brilliant and
successful of the popular writers of history in
the United States in the last decade of the
nineteenth century, and it is intended here
to try to analyze those qualities as liistorian
and man of letters which set him at the
head of his class as a popular American
historian.
Mr. W. S. Gilbert once said of the comic
operas, "There are some men who seek to
win the applause of the private boxes; there
are others who cater to the taste of the gallery ;
but I always keep my eye fixed on the dress-
circle." Just so yie scientific historians
cater to the private boxes and write for the
appreciation of minds trained in scientific
research and able to criticize its results, while
the vulgar historian who seeks the applause
of the gallery rouses their fervid enthusiasm
by wild generalizations and clap-trap patri- •
otism. Mr. John Fiske, like Mr. Gilbert,
won his triumph by skilfully pleasing the
taste of the educated classes of the dress-
circle. The difficulty of his task is attested
by the rarity of its accomplishment. A
scientific historian can be trained in scientific
method, and the vulgar historian needs only
to share the ignorance and the gullibility of
his readers ; but the writer for the dress-circle
must be born with an instinctive feeling for
the width and the limitations of the education,
the experience and the sentiment of his
audience. It is true that it is the scientific
historian who adds to the knowledge of the
human race and clears away the old legends
and traditions which make the men and
women of past ages a set of impossible mon-
sters; he it is who by the ardent pursuit of
truth makes the dark places of history clear,
and shows how things really happened and
how institutions took root and grew; and it
is his accuracy of perspective and sense of
proportion that enable us to grasp the
meaning of the lessons of the past. But the
336o
JOHN FISKE AS A POPULAR HISTORIAN
very form, depth and nature of his work
make it necessary that it should be trans-
mitted into more readable shape for the
instruction of the majority.
It is impossible not to recognize that there
must be more than accident in the fact that
John Fiske was not only the most successful
popular historian, but also the most successful
platform lecturer on history of his generation.
The same qualities that commended his
books commended his lectures. Practically
all his historical works were based upon
lectures delivered to cultivated and educated
general audiences from Maine to California.
In the preface to his "The Beginnings of
New England" he mentions no less than
twenty-three places in which lectures had
been delivered by him, containing the sub-
stance of that book, between May, 1887, and
its publication in April, 1889. This practice
of trying his books from the lecture plat-
form in all parts of the country gave Mr. Fiske
an admirable means for testing their effective-
ness. Though popular m form, his lectures,
like his books, were not designed for the
uneducated; and the crowds which attended
them consisted of cultivated people of all
classes and professions, and not simply of
young students. It would be vain to specu-
late whether j\Ir. Fiske learned his power
• of writing popular history from delivering
popular lectures, or whether it was the
temperament in the man that made him
acceptable to a broad general audience both
as a lecturer and as a writer. His unrivaled
gift for hitting the popular taste was certainly
heightened by the steady intermingling of
lecturing and writing. He learned on the
lecture platform what interested his hearers
and faithfully followed their indications when
he sent his books to press. In his case the
lecture platform was more than an advertise-
ment; it was a rehearsal. His greatest
merits — simplicity of style, charm of manner
and delicate interpretation of the past by
use of modern phrases and modem instances
— were seen to equal advantage in lectures
and in books. His chief defects — a certain
carelessness about details, a lack of true
perspective and a readiness to digress from
the subject in hand and to give vent to his
own personal views on ethics or politics —
were faults encouraged by these platform
rehearsals. But it was to them that he owed
his exact perception of his readers' demands
and learned how to satisfy them. Incident- 11
ally, the familiar acquaintance made with '
the personality of the man upon the plat-
form gave to thousands of readers of his *
books an opportunity to read between the
lines and to interpret the written pages by |
the voice and gesture of the living man. It has
only to be remembered that John Fiske was
a famous popular lecturer on history, that he
was neither a hard -worked college professor
on the one hand nor a political stump-
speaker on the other, to understand why
his books are more wideh^ read than those
of any other historian of this generation by
the educated and cultivated section of the
American people.
One of the first things that strike any
critic in comparing the works of a pot)ular
historian with those of a scientific historian
is the difference of historical perspective — or
perhaps it would be better to say, of pro-
portion. The scientific historian endeavors
with all his might to give such a correct
balance to his treatment that the reader
should grasp the true relations of the points
of the narrative to each other. The popular
historian, on the other hand, who thoroughly
knows the intellectual make-up of his audi-
ence, adopts proportions suited to their
attitude of mind. An admirable instance!
of this can be found in the proportions of]
Mr. Fiske's last volume, "New France and]
New England." In that volume he devotes
sixty-four pages out of a total of 359 to the!
episode of the trials for witchcraft at Salem.
When it is considered that he gives only thirty- 1
four pages to the campaign of Louisburg,
Fort Duquesne and the fall of Quebec, and I
only sixty-four pages, including these, to thej
whole of the important events of the Sevenj
Years' War on the North American continent,!
the startling difference between scientific anc
popular proportion in weighing historic events
can be clearly seen. That Mr. Fiske ws
absolutely right in gaging the interest oi
his readers there can be no doubt. Th(
weird genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne hi
cast a glamour over the witch persecution a^
Salem that fascinates a majority of Americai
readers, while the military details of the greal
movement which ended the power of France
in North America and paved the way for tm
American Revolution would be utterly disj
tasteful to them. This instance, it is truej
taken from Mr. Fiske's latest bookj
IS
JOHN FISKE AS A POPULAR HISTORIAN 3361
which had not the advantage of the author's with the absence of tiresome foot-notes in the
revision before his lamented death, but popular histories. Count the number of
similar instances of the great difference proper names in a page of Gibbon and a
between the proportions given by scientific page of Green; compare the description of a
and popular historians to different historical debate or a negotiation in a chapter of Henry
events, owing to the contrast between the Adams and a chapter of Fiske, and the
points of view of the readers they were writing characteristic differences in this respect
for, could be multiplied out of Mr. Fiske's between the scientific historian and the
earlier volumes. But what would be a gross popular will at once become manifest,
instance of malproportion in a scientific Another characteristic of the popular his-
writer, writing for a special and an almost torian may be summed up as his modernity,
professional audience, is no offense at all in a A general audience listening to a lecture, or a
book intended for a popular audience. general reader reading a volume for amuse-
The second great difference to be perceived ment rather than instruction, loves to have
between scientific and popular history is his understanding quickened by allusions to
with regard to the treatment of detail. The contemporary ideas and events well within
scientific historian has not only to master his knowledge.
details accurately, since the slightest flaw The scientific writer, realizing the false
would spoil the whole picture, but has also impressions generally given by compari-
to illustrate every generalization that he sons between past and present, avoids
makes with a sufficient wealth of detail to misleading serious students by tempting
illustrate his general conclusion. The popular analogies. But the popular writer revels
historian, on the other hand, must be wary in allusions which, if not precisely ac-
of wearying his audience by too many details ; curate, are yet stimulating to the imagina-
those which he introduces must be amusing tion. Mr. Fiske was a past master in the
or interesting in themselves, and he must not art of modern allusion. When dealing with
run the risk of over-illustration. Few his- the history of the beginnings of the American
torical writers have recognized this secret Revolution he found it expedient to write a
of widespread popularity better than Mr. page of praise for Mr. Gladstone's policy
Fiske. A happy instinct, either derived with regard to the Boer War of 1881, thus
from experience on the platform or account- creating a misleading analogy that has been
ing for his success upon the platform, guided popular in these latter days. This sort of
him in his selection of detail. If he mentions thing is common to all popular writers of
a proper name, it has generally some interest history, who occasionally abuse their posi-
either explained or known to be understood, tion as recorders of the history of the past
which at once appeals to the hearer or reader, to advocate their own political and economic
Picturesqueness rather than special fitness and literary ideas with regard to the present,
controls the choice of detail of the poptdar Mr. J'iske was a convinced free-trader, and
writer of history. dozens of allusions can be found, some-
Compare, for instance, the mass of detail times in the most unlikely places, in all his
and the citations of actual texts and sources books, in which he takes a fling at the policy
in such a writer as Fustel de Coulanges of protection. Wherever a pretext can be
with the airy grace of J. R. Green or found he was ready to appeal to the past for
John Fiske in dealing with an institutional the condemnation of this particular present
topic. The popular historian makes his policy that offended his political and economic
generalizations boldly in the knowledge ideas. He was equally ready to vent his
chat his readers are ready to accept his con- literary likes and dislikes. A sincere lover
elusions upon his word, while the scientific of the novels of Charles Dickens, he took
historian has to prove his generalizations up every opportunity to bring in citations from
to the hilt with accurate citations and care- his books, and sometimes with a most curious
ful illustrations. Consider the mass of foot- effect, as where he described Augustine
notes that disfigures the pages of the great Herman of the Bohemia Manor as suffering
scientific historians, where these foot-notes from "matrimonial infelicities like those of
often occupy a larger share of the space on Socrates and the elder Mr. Weller," or
each page than the text itself, as contrasted where in a note on the Mexican drink, pulque,
3362
JOHN FISKE AS A POPULAR HISTORIAN
a reference is made to the plant which stood
by the front doorsteps of George Nupkins,
magistrate in Ipswich, England, who figures
conspicuously in an episode in the "Pickwick
Papers." This wealth of modern allusion,
political, economic and literary, is characteris-
tic of all successful poptilar historians. Under-
standing thoroughly the feelings and the
favorite books of their readers, they know
exactly how to place an allusion; and when
the writer knows exactly, as Fiske did, the
mental make-up of his chosen audience, he
brings in references that startle the serious
student by their ludicrous inappropriateness,
but which keep the readers aimed at in per-
fect good temper from a knowledge of their
particular limits and their precise point of
view. One of the things that prevents a
scientific historian from appealing to the
majority of readers is the sense of remoteness,
produced either by the entire absence of any
evidence of being upon the same plane as
themselves, or by such a perpetual reminder
of things unfamiliar that it produces a sense
of shamed ignorance. The more modern
the allusions, the more certainly can the writer
of history get in touch with a whole generation
of readers; but time has its revenges, and
some of the most popular histories written
in the past are now mainly of value in that
they show by their allusions the state of mind
and plane of knowledge of an average general
reader at the time when they were written.
Another quality always to be looked for in
a popular historian may be designated the
power of being up to date. In this character-
istic, Mr. Fiske was easily first among modern
American historians. In every one of his his-
torical books he showed himself in touch with
the most recent literature and expounded
the most recent views. His philosophy, as
he showed in his philosophical writings, was
of the most recent t^^pe. As the exponent
of evolutionary ideas he did something of the
same sort in philosophy as he did in history.
Both Darwin and Herbert Spencer acknowl-
edged that John Fiske was the most effective
and popular exponent of the great series of
ideas which are lumped together as the
philosophy of evolution. Equally effective
was he as the exponent of the latest views of
historical criticism. Take, for instance, one
of the most skilful chapters he ever wrote, the
first chapter of his "Discovery of America."
In this chapter he summed up the views of
Mr. Lewis Morgan in the most fascinating
style and made accessible to a vast body of
readers views that would otherwise have
remained perhaps for generations theories of
primitive life to be fought over by specialists
but never brought within the ken of general
readers. Fiske 's extraordinary knack of
knowing what to leave out was never better
illustrated than in this chapter. Great
thinkers and discoverers have to prove their
points, and are therefore confusing and
repellant to untrained minds by excess of
detail and the necessity of controversy; but
the popular exponent has the art to assume
the truth of the theory expounded and can
handle the subject with an interesting sim-
plicity. Even where the popular historian
feels it necessary to take up a position upon
some controversy he can put forth his view
without the wealth of detail needed to con-
vince well-armed critics. An instance of this
can be found in Fiske 's defense of John Smith
in the third chapter of his "Old Virginia and
Her Neighbors." The story of Pocahontas
and her rescue of John Smith is one that
American readers would be loath to discredit.
Fortunately there are some good arguments
in its favor, and John Fiske, with his accus-
tomed skill, takes the reader into his confi-
dence without excess of technical detail,
and while doing his duty as a faithful historian
in stating existing doubts of the truth of that
romantic tale, yet leaves a pleasant and
convincing impression of its perfect correct-
ness. As might be expected, he defends the
popular view of the character of Christopher
Columbus, and throughout his writings is
kind to all popular heroes. He is sufficiently
touched with the modern spirit of impartiality
not to fall into the snare of the Carlyle theory
and practice of hero-worship. His heroes
are as thoroughly human as modern critics
could desire; he admits that Columbus was
not married to Donna Beatriz Enriquez de
Arana, and that his son Ferdinand was
illegitimate; he admits that General Grant
in his memoirs is not fair to the splendid
conduct of General Thomas in the matter of
the battle of Nashville; and his portrait of
George Washington is that of a noble gentle-
man and not of a prig. The same sweet
reasonableness, with a full acknowledgment
of the value of modern research, is shown
in his attitude toward other problems than
those of individual character, and a good
JOHN MSKK AS A I'OrULAR IIIS'IOKIAN
3363
specimen of his kindly treatment of con-
troversies is to be seen in his accounts of the
voyages of the Northmen to Markland and
to Vinland. Tliroughout his writings j)roof
is given of his desire to give to his readers
the very latest and most scientific views, and
he combines a readiness to expound these
views with a full command of the bibliography
of his subject to the most recently published
pamphlet. It may be said, then, that Mr.
Fiske, like other historians who have known
how to reach the heart of the great educated
public, was thoroughly up to date, both in
his knowledge and in his allusions, and gave
forth with the extraordinary skill due to his
sympathy with his audience the very latest
results of modern scientific historical research.
The point is worth discussing here as to
whether it is possible for the same man to be
at one and the same time both a scientific
and a popular historian. Do the qualities
that make the former exclude the qualities
that make the latter? Can a writer be a
master of the scholarship and of the critical
training needed for scientific research without
losing the broad sympathies that must
underlie an appeal to the larger public ?
Must a sense of what the educated public
demands blind a writer to the necessity of
scientific precision? The question cannot
be answered positively, but the study of the
whole historical work of John Fiske is exceed-
ingly suggestive. Like the late Professor
Edward A. Freeman, whom he much admired
and to whom he dedicated his "Discovery of
America," John Fiske was not what the
French term an erudit. He was not learned in
the lore of manuscripts; he did not care for
the niceties of textual criticism; he had no
love for details or training in the comparison
of material. But at the same time he had a
wide knowledge of historical literature and,
like Mr. Freeman, was fond of striking general-
izations. Some of these generalizations were
his own and some were borrowed from others,
but in all of them he was guided by the
instinct of the popular rather than of the
scientific spirit. His most striking contri-
bution to historical literature was his "Critical
Period of American History." In this his
first volume of history he gave no proof of
original research, but his keen perception of
the circumstances which threatened American
unity between 1783 and 1789 made his treat-
ment of that period almost an event in Amer-
ican historiography. Others before him had
seen the importance of the Federal Conven-
tion and had realized that a new period
was opened in the history of government
by the drawing up of the American Constitu-
tion, but the exclusive devotion of generations
to the history of the more romantic events
of the Revolution had obscured their api)recia-
tion of the period of danger that followed.
It was John Fiske's merit to have realized
what was really the critical period in American
history and thereV)y to have changed the
perspective of all thinking ui)on American his-
tory since the time of the publication of his
book. His "Critical Period of American
History" owes its importance to his real gift
of historical insight and compares favorably
in this respect with his "The American
Revolution," which is as conventional in
treatment as the former book was uncon-
ventional. Like his friend Freeman, he could
see .clearly and generalize forcibly, but the
subjects he chose for his later historical
works did not give him the opportunity to
make as striking contributions to the general
perspective of history as he did in his first
volume. In his later books he frankly used
the work and adopted the generalizations of
other men, and it must be remembered that
in so doing he always gave the most generous
appreciation to the scholars whose labors
he placed under contribution. His lavish
acknowledgments of indebtedness to others,
often accompanied with the most gracious
words of personal obligation, are evidences
of the best type of literary honesty. The
praise given to his predecessors is ungrudging ;
and even where he differed from their con-
clusions he had always a pleasant word to
say of some quality they had shown or of
some discovery they had made. There
have been popular historians who have made
their reputations by battening on the labors
of other men; the very quality of their work
places them under obligations to their fore-
runners; it is in their power to ignore those
obligations; but John Fiske stands forth
from among the crowd of popular historians
as one who never stole but rather augmented
the glory of others. His definite contribution
to history was in the new perspective he gave
to a certain phase of American histor>', and
for the rest he gave to the world of his
numerous readers a summary of the sanest
work of other men.
3364
JOHN FISKE AS A POPULAR HISTORIAN
It is hardly necessary to add any testimony
to the charm of John Fiske's literary style,
for without it he never could have been a
popular historian. He added to perfect
lucidity of statement the art of graceful
narrative. His language is always simple
and direct; his sentences are never involved;
he never sacrificed to the temptation of
elaborate antithesis, and he kept the intelli-
gence of his readers clearly before his mind.
Mention has already been made of his skilful
avoidance of detail, and he rarely broke the
law of good historical writing which forbids
the accumulation of lists of proper names
that have no meaning without proper intro-
duction or connotation. If he seldom rose
to eloquence, he never descended into mere
verbosity, and he rarely failed to remember
that his first task was to interest his readers.
No one ever succeeded better than John
Fiske in attaining the aim of a popular
historian. His instinct for what w^ould inter-
est his great public was unfailing, and his
perfect knowledge of his constituency was
the secret of his success. A scientific historian
can be trained, but the popular historian
is born and not made. What in the scientific
historian would be mistakes in proportion
arise from the keen perception in the popular
writer of the nature of the interest of his
readers; what might be criticized in others
as slipshod or daring generalizations are
stimulating to the reason and the imagination
of general readers ; allusions that seem inap-
propriate and sometimes ludicrous to the
serious mind are exactly suited to a larger
class of the greater public; and the note of
personality which irritates the highly trained
specialist is delightful to the wider audience.
Popular writers of history of the type of Mr.
Fiske are much more rare than scientific
historians, for they need a special power of
arousing interest in a general audience that
is not found more than once or twice in a
generation. This power can be recognized,
but it cannot be analyzed; it can be felt, but
it cannot be taught. And the reason of this
is, that the popular writer, in order to be a
popular writer, must be, hke the popular
lecturer, a man of broad human sympathies,
interested in the things that interest the
majority of the cultured class to which he
speaks, and able to set forth the things that
arouse his interest in the way to arouse theirs.
Such men are far more rare than scholars or
than critics. Such a man was the late
John Fiske. He knew his public thoroughly
and they responded generously. He brought
out what was best in them by giving to them
the best that was in himself. The things
in modern American life that appeal to the
best educated men and women appealed
to him. The literature and the art and the
music that they love he loved also, and with
a more perfect understanding. The political
ideals that they cherish he cherished, and he
could show them whv he and thev alike cared
for these things. Their chosen moral eleva-
tion was his also; their national heroes were
to him models to be imitated and beings to
be loved; and the emotions that they felt
in the domains both of thought and of feeling
he abundantly fostered and enjoyed. It was
because he saw and felt like one of them-
selves, and was possessed further of the
power of explaining to them why they saw
and felt thus, that John Fiske became to
thousands of his countrymen the interpreter
of their own thoughts and feelings in the
spheres both of history and of philosophy.
A personal affection follows the great sub-
jective, popular historian that cannot be
felt for the colder and more impartial searcher
after scientific truth; for the man who gives
himself to the public in his lectures and his
writings wins back from them a confidence
that can spring from sympathy alone. To
those who knew John Fiske personally his
death brought a sense of crushing personal
loss; to those who had heard him speak and
had read his books the sense of personal
loss was but little less; and any attempt
made to anal^^ze the sources of success of a
popular historian, using John Fiske's his-
torical work as a text, must end with the
recognition of the truth that there are two
codes of law for historical writers, the one
defining the methods of search after and state-
ment of truth so as to promote the progress
of mankind and to widen the field of knowl-
edge; and the other, which John Fiske so
splendidly illustrated, having as its leading
feature a broad human sympathy with the
art of so freely and winningly revealing that
sympathy as to hold the interest and stimu-
late the imagination of that large portion
of educated humanity which forms the ' 'dress-
circle" of the cultivated public as much in
the general world of art and letters as in the
smaller mimic world of stage and theatre.
A/AOMG
TME WORLD'S
WORKERS
ANOTHER LARGEST SHIP AFLOAT
IT'S not the record-breaker any more,"
said a prominent steamship man the
other day. "The dividend-payer is the
thing. "
The immense Cedric, which made its maiden
trip a few weeks ago, is a "dividend-payer."
This new steamship is the result of growing
international trade and travel, the demand
for the biggest, safest and easiest ocean
carrying possible. It combines in large
measure the convenience and luxury of the
faster boats with the cargo facilities of the
freight carriers. There are many people who
prefer a steady seven-day boat to one of the
lighter, speedier ships. This has been proved
already with the Oceanic and the Celtic. The
Cedric is the largest, and therefore probably
the steadiest, ship afloat, with good speed,
with splendid accommodations for 2,600
passengers, with comparatively cheap rates,
and the cargo capacity of a warehouse.
The Cedric carries a crew of 335 men, 350
first-class passengers, 250 second-class, and
2,000 people in the steerage; her capacity is
18,400 tons cargo, and she is fast enough to
carry all mails.
Externally the Cedric's measurements are
identical with those of the Celtic, but inside
the gross tonnage is larger, reaching 21,000
tons. The Campania has a gross tonnage of
12,950 tons, the Kaiser Wilhelm 14,349 tons,
the Oceanic 17,274 tons, the Deutschland
16,502. The Cedric displaces 38,200 tons,
the Celtic 36,700. The propelling machinery
of the Cedric, two sets of quadruple ex-
pansion engines with twin screws, will send
her along at a rate of seventeen knots an
hour. She has eight double-ended boilers,
and, notwithstanding her size, she will not use
as much coal as any of the fast boats. She
has nine decks, four masts and two funnels,
the last twelve feet in diameter and reaching
131 feet high above her keel. The Cedric is
probably the strongest vessel ever built.
Some of her plates weigh three tons apiece,
and the frames are the heaviest ever fitted
on a steamship.
No care has been spared to make this big
ship luxuriously comfortable. Among the
novelties of her passenger accommodations
are single-berth staterooms. The first-cabin
dining-room, on the upper deck, extends over
the entire width of the vessel, seventy-five
feet, and will seat 340 passengers. All the
apartments are roomy and the decoration
and general equipment are exceedingly hand-
some. Externally, her graceful lines conceal
her size.
The Cedric is not an experiment. These
large ships are as natural a development as
the record-breaking passenger ships were.
Shrewd steamship men feel, however, that,
for the present, at least, the limit of size has
been reached. The Cedric and the twin
ships now building for the Great Northern
Company will probably not be surpassed
soon in tonnage.
HARNESSING THE HUDSON
AT Spier Falls, on the Hudson River, the
greatest dam ever built for power
production is advancing rapidly toward com-
pletion. It is of granite, 1,800 feet long.
The cross-section at the base measures 115 feet
and its greatest height is 1 56 feet. It is built in
three sections. On the south shore is the
canal, 430 feet long. This will lead the water
into ten steel tubes, each twelve feet in
diameter, which bring it, in turn, to the
ten 54-inch turbines. The water-wheels are
directly coupled to ten 5,000 horse-power
generators. The work will give 50,000 horse-
power at a constructive cost of $2,000,000.
Mere figures scarcely suggest the immensity
of the work. The lake formed by the dam
is five and a half miles long and covers 770
acres. A whole township has been covered
by it. The dam itself is as long as three city
blocks. To complete the task in the two
years allotted, a new community of upwards
of 2,000 people was created in the wilderness,
with complete systems of water- works, sewers
and telephones; a hotel, a laundry, a bakery,
schools, a department store — in fact, every-
thing necessary in a well-ordered town.
3366
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
The Hudson River furnishes practically
constant power. For four months in a year
this may be reduced to less than 50,000 horse-
power, but with the storage dams which are
being built the flow will be equalized. Up-
wards of half a million people live within a short
distance of the various plants of the system.
Already one plant at ]\Iechanicsville generates
7,000 horse-power and runs the street cars of
Albany and Tray and the electric works at
Schenectady. !■*: is not impossible that New
York City itself may be included in the
circuit.
This dam is only a beginning. The Sacan-
daga River, the Hudson's chief tributary,
will be dammed at Conklingsville, and an area
larger than Lake George will be flooded. And
the plan is to make this Sacandaga dam one
of a long series of storage dams. If the plans
which are being made succeed, the rivers
of New York, with the Hudson in the east
and Niagara in the west, will put their
almost limitless power at the disposal of
even.' community, every factory and every
householder in the State.
A GERMAN ELECTRICAL FARM
IX the application of electricity to every-
day work, Germany has, perhaps,
gone further than any other nation. Elec-
trically heated and operated cooking and
laundn.- apparatus is in common use there,
but the most striking single development is
the electrical farm. Take, for example,
Professor Backhaus's estate near Quednau in
eastern Prussia, which is only one of a large
ntunber of German estates run by electricity.
The Quednau farm covers 450 acres and
its dairy handles 1,000 gallons of milk
daily. Every part of the farm is lighted
by electricity and is in telephone communi-
cation with ever\' other part. The dairy
has an electrical chum; the bam con-
tains electrically operated feed and carrot-
cutting machines, and even the grindstone
is turned by a small belt from the shaft
connected with the bam motor. The water-
pumping apparatus is run by electricity; all
the buildings are lighted by incandescent
lamps, and there is an electrical pipe-lighter
at the doors of all the houses. This farm
has, also, its own threshing and grist mill,
the machinery of which is turned by a current
from the miniature central station, and
finally there is a small sawmill which gets its
power from the same station. On the
farm are all kinds of electrical agricultural
machines, including an automobile plow,
all run by batteries charged from sub-
stations in the fields.
The power for all these various operations —
lighting, heating, telephones, churning, cut-
ting, grinding, pumping, threshing and saw-
ing— comes from a fifty horse-power sta-
tionary engine moving two dynamos.
From this station the power is distributed
to the parts of the farm, and the switchboard
is so plainly marked that the commonest
farm-hand can regulate the supply to fit the
need. At Crottorf a number of small farms
have grouped to support one station and
have their work done by it.
Such plants as these do more than merely
lighten farm labor ; fewer workmen are needed
and greater profits are possible, and the whole
business of farming is made more attractive.
The barnyard is lighted by an arc light;
night-work in the fields is possible when it is
necessar}-; the stables are warmed in winter
and ventilated in summer by the turning of a
switch; indeed, the entire farm runs like a
machine at the call of the electric current.
TRADE APPRENTICES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
SEVERAL rooms in one of the public school
buildings of Chicago are given up during
three months of the school year to the edu-
cation of 123 young men, who spend the
other nine months as apprentices to the brick-
layers' trades. During the morning hours
thev study the ordinary- English branches,
while the afternoons are given up to engineer-
ing, principles of construction, architecture,
elementary- mechanics, and other studies
having a direct bearing on their work. For
each day's work at school each of these 123
students is paid the regular wage of the
bricklayers' union to which he belongs.
This school was established by the Board
of Education on the joint petition of the
tinion and of the Masons' and Builders'
Association, which includes practically all
the employers of this class of skilled labor
in the city. The management of the school
is practically left to the joint arbitration
committee of the union and the employers"
association. All fines assessed by the com-
mittee for the breaking of joint rules go
toward the purchase of text-books for the
school pupils. Before an apprentice can
secure a union card he must satisfy this com-
mittee both of his skill and of his good deport-
ment and proficiency at the school. If one
of the students should stay away from school
without a good excuse, the principal, who is
appointed by the Board of Education, reports
the absence to the joint arbitration committee,
and the time lost is added to the time he
must serve as an apprentice to his trade.
Almost without exception, these young
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
3367
men, who range from sixteen to twenty years
old, sliow jijrcat caj:;erncss to take advantage
of these opportunities. They recently peti-
tioned for an additional hour in school each
day than the other public school pupils.
The unique petition was promptly granted.
The association of employers say that the
trade-unions liave come to stay and that
employers must help to make the future
members of the unions men of both technical
and general education. The plan is com-
pletely successful. The National Association
of Masons and Builders voted at its last
meeting to urge its adoption everywhere.
In Chicago the Carpenters' Union, includ-
ing thousands of members, has proposed a
petition to the public school board asking
that similar schools be established for its
apprentices during the slack months. The
machinists and other trades are likely to
follow. The best months for the schooling
are not the same in all the trades. The same
schoolrooms and the same teachers, therefore,
might be utilized; the apprentices to the
building trades, say, coming in the winter
months, the plumbers and steamfitters in
the spring, the machinists in the fall.
The Chicago innovation should interest
the people who wish to see a broadening
public school system and more intelligent
labor.
THE CONTINUED PROGRESS OF A GREAT
AMERICAN RAILROAD
IT is a surprising faJt that, though the
freight rates on the Pennsylvania
Railroad on its main line between Pittsburg
and Philadelphia are among the lowest in the
world, the gross earnings on that line last
year reached $150,000 a mile — at least
eighteen times the average gross earnings of
American railroads. The last annual report
of President Cassatt shows not only how this
result was reached, but how the Pennsylvania
and other railroads employing similar methods
are constantly raising the standard of Ameri-
can railroading in efficiency. By the use of
heavy locomotives and long freight trains,
the Pennsylvania was able to move the
maximum traffic the road under present
conditions could handle, averaging 32,000
tons of freight each way every day. An
unprecedented business offset the low rates.
Provisions were made, moreover, for greatly
increased facilities by the application of new
methods.
The management arranged for financing
four new undertakings. Of last year's twelve
per cent, net earnings, half, or $12,500,000,
was diverted to betterments instead of being
paid in dividends. A plan was set on foot to
secure new cai)ital of $f)7,ooo,ooo by the i.'^sue
of stock, and another to permit the holders
of the $50,000,000 bonds issued to ]jay for the
New York City tunnel to exchange those
bonds for stock, allowing one $5o-share of
stock for every $70 in bonds. Thus a vast
sum was provided for, in addition to the
$12,500,000 already earned, to remodel the
railroad.
Mr. Cassatt recommends that the equip-
ment of the railroad be kept at the point
required by the greatest possible business.
It is better, he believes, to store rolling-stock
in times of slackness than to suffer from a
shortage when business is brisk. Work is
already under way — much has been already
completed — to grade and straighten the line.
When the work is finished, the Pennsylvania,
though it crosses the Alleghany Mountains,
will have, except for one short stretch, no
heavier grades than those of railroads in fiat
States. The yards are to be rearranged.
Despite what was called the "freight-car
shortage" which choked up Pittsburg in the
fall, Mr. Cassatt declares that the Pennsyl-
vania had locomotives and cars enough, if
tracks and yards had been available. More
tracks and yards will, therefore, be provided.
Some yards, he says, are too large to handle
trains effectively. Miscellaneous commodi-
ties all handled in one place produce confusion.
The division-of-labor principle will therefore
be employed. The crowded Altoona and
Harrisburg yards, for example, will be
restricted to general merchandise: coal, coke
and limestone .will be handled exclusively at
two new yards to be built. By such division
of the functions of different yards the man-
agement hopes to save annually something
like $1,000,000, the sum paid last year in
"shifting" expenses and overtime pay to
train crews.
A RAILROAD'S PROVISIONS FOR ITS EMPLOYEES
NOR does the Pennsylvania Railroad
lose sight of its employees. It has
three departments covering three phases of
its activity in this particular.
On the lines east of Pittsburg and Erie last
year 10,637 men joined the voluntary relief
association which, through all its 70,307
members, contributed more than $1,060,000
to pay for sickness, death and accidents. The
company paid nearly $165,000 for the associa-
tion's operating expenses.
Nearly 8,000 employees now take advan-
tage of the employees' saving fund, a gain
of 942 in a year. These are drawing 3^^ per
cent, interest on $3,300,000.
3368
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
The new pension department grew to such
an extent that an increased appropriation
had to be made for it. Two hundred and
twenty-seven superannuated employees were
added to the pension list, and allowances of
$265,113 were paid. There are now 1,200
men enjoying benefits under the system.
IMPROVEMENTS IN LOCOMOTIVES
WHILE electricians are prophesying that
electric locomotives will soon take
the place of those driven by steam, constant
advance is made in the construction of the
steam engines. The American locomotive
has become "obsolete" a number of times, so
completely has the building of them been
revolutionized. Details are continually
changing. The boUer, nowada^^s, is raised
higher above the six- or seven-foot drivers to
permit an increase in its diameter. An
express engine often carries a pair of small
trailers behind the drive-wheels to gain a
wider fire-box and grate. For suburban
service, where great pull at starting is needed,
the weight of the locomotive has been con-
centrated on the smaller drivers.
The modem American locomotives are com-
pound engines, getting thereby added power
and economy. The Vanderbilt boiler, while
it does not impress a layman by any spectacu-
lar advantages, gives increased grate area,
increased heating surface, and lessens the
internal strain on the engine. It is built to
wear under the enormous pressure our fast
schedules put upon an engine. Fuel oil is
being tried in Texas and elsewhere, and there
are reports of unquestioned success, although
it is said that means of getting rid of the odor
of btuning oil must be foimd before its
entire practicability is proved.
There are a number of ways in which the
steam engine has the electric motor at a dis-
advantage. The tying-up of aU business
around Niagara recently by a sudden accident
in the great power-house suggests one
difficulty. A bolt of lightning might stop
one steam train, but it could never block
every wheel of an entire division. Trolle}'-
car fires are not uncommon, and the
third rails have caused many fatal accidents.
The burst of fire and molten metal and
the explosive force of a short-circuited
power-house switchboard are only hints of
the dangerous force which is handled.
The American builders of steam locomotives
cannot yet fill all their orders, which come
from every part of the world. And, with
each order filled, they build better the loco-
motives which have become the standard
of wide use and efficiency.
A NEGRO COMMUNITY RULED BY
PRIMITIVE METHODS
THE colored male citizens in the neigh-
borhood of Providence Church, near
Dublin, Laurens County, Ga., organized
not long ago a unique "Good Government
Club," and being curious to learn something
of it. Reverend Silas Xavier Floyd, of Augusta,
called on the secretar\\ He found that the
secretary was the principal of the village
school, and that he was graduated from one
of the colored southern universities. The
secretar}^ explained the club to Mr. Floyd as
follows :
"Our society is a voluntary organiza-
tion, and has for its object the betterment of
the race. It doesn't cost anything to join,
and any male citizen upward of twenty -one
years old may become a member by taking an
oath to be governed by our constitution and
by-laws. There are no monthly dues. Now
and then we make up a purse to help a needy
brother. Our plan is to inquire into the
mode of living of our members and correct,
if possible, any faults, if a member fails or
refuses to correct a fault complained of, he is
then tried by a sort of court-martial. The
man under charge is allowed to have counsel
from among the members of the organization.
If he is found guilty, the punishment is
usually a flogging given in the presence of
the other members. We whip a man for a
number of things : getting drunk, wife-beating,
vagrancy, selling his vote, failure to provide
for his family, failure to make an honest
effort to pay his debts, using profane language,
and so on.
"It was reported to the society," he went
on, "that one man's wife was badly in need
of a wash-pot. The man was cited to show
cause why he had not provided his wife with
the article. He failed to buy one before the
trial came off, and, when tried, failed to show
how his wife could get along without one and
still be put to no great inconvenience. Con-
viction followed. He was whipped, and
ordered to get a pot within thirty days.
. . . In riding past the home of another
man it was seen by one of our members that
the front gate had fallen down. From
appearances he had made no effort to put it
up. At the trial it was proved that the gate
had been down for several weeks, and that
his wife had tried many times to get him to
take more pride in the care of his home.
Conviction followed, and the husband will
remember a long time the flogging he got
that night. . . . We had a man before
us once charged with kissing a girl on the
street. The girl did not appear against him;
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
33^39
we could not get her to do so; and the man
stoutly denied the charge. He told our
judge that he had never kissed a woman in
his life. The Judge asked him if he wasn't
married. 'No, sah,' he said, 'mah wife's
dead. I'm de daddy uv nine chillun, an' I
nevah kissed a woman in mah life.' In the
midst of much laughter, the Judge asked,
'Did you never kiss your wife?' Without a
moment's hesitation the man said, 'No. sah;
no, sah.' Then the Judge said, 'Jim, you're
the biggest liar in town, and I sentence you
to be given forty-nine lashes, but I'll suspend
the sentence if you'll agree to leave town
within the next five hours.' 'Judge,' said
Jim, 'I don't want no five hours: I'll be gone
in five minutes.' . . . The strangest
case I remember was the case of a man
charged with beating his wife. His wife
was a hard-working washerwoman. She had
complained to us three or four times, but
always repented before the time for trial, and
would not appear against her husband.
When she did come to our meeting, she said,
'Now, Judge, I's a-gwineter tell you evaht'ing.'
And she told how her husband would get
drunk and corae home and curse and beat her
unmercifully. She gave a graphic account
of the last whipping she had received. The
Judge said, 'I sentence this man to be given
one hundred and one lashes — the maximum
of the law.' 'Dar, now!' exclaimed the
woman. 'Dar, now ! I's done fixed you at
las' ! I tol' you 'bout beatin' on me lak I
wuz a dawg !' Turning to the Judge, she
said, 'Judge, I'll tek de whuppin' fur him
ef you'll lemme; I 'spec' he'll be good after
dis.'"
It is said that the society is doing a world of
good in the community where it is organized.
It is making better citizens and better hus-
bands of the blacks who are members, and
even those who have not joined, it is said,
have caught the spirit of the thing and are
benefited by it. Not one-half as many
colored people gather now in the village on
Saturdays and spend their time in gossip
and their wages for candy, red lemonade,
whisky and tobacco.
OUT-OF-DOOR TREATMENT FOR POOR
CONSUMPTIVES
AT a recent meeting of the New York
State Conference of Charities and Cor-
rections, Doctor Alfred Meyer, of New York,
advocated the more general use of the fire-
escape in the treatment of tuberculosis when
better facilities seemed impossible. He illus-
trated the idea by a case in his own practice.
A consumptive girl, fourteen years old, took
her out-of-door rest cure daily on the fire-
escape of the third floor of a tenement-house
near First Avenue and Eighth Street, New
York. On the shortest day of the year, with
the temperature twenty-four degrees above
zero, she spent four hours and a half outdoors.
Her case was a bad one when the treatment
began. After tlie winter she spent daily
more time on the fire-escape, bundled up to
meet the weatlier conditions. She rapidly
gained appetite and strength and weight;
her fever and cough lessened and all com-
plications disapi^eared.
There is a gradual but steady reduction in
the death rate from tuberculosis. The per-
centage in New York last year, for example,
was ten per cent, less than the year preceeding.
There are not sanatoriums enough, and most of
the existing ones are not v/itliin the means
of the poor. Perhaps, Doctor Meyer sug-
gests, there has been an overestimation of
the value of altitudes and an underestima-
tion of pure air per sc; perhaps there has
been too much medicine used and too little
attention given to light, food, baths and care-
ful medical supervision. Wherever physicians
are finding ways of lessening fatality without
sending patients away, they are doing so. And
especially is this necessary among the poor.
Fire-escapes are practically universal on
tenement-houses; they are accessible even to
the very weak; they are large enough for a
reclining chair or couch; and they are con-
venient for the necessary supervision and
attendance. Fire-escapes are not open to
the objection of chimney smoke and gas
which is raised against out-of-door treat-
ment on roofs. They are sheltered in many
directions from the wind, and are easily
covered, when it is necessary, from wind,
rain or snow by simple screens or bits of
awning. It seems as if Doctor Meyer's idea
of making use of fire-escapes to save lives in
other ways than that for which they were
built is admirable practical medicine.
THE MAN WHO FOUND HIMSELF AND
HIS WORK
THE son of an immensely wealthy
American, having graduated from
college, went to Paris to study art. He
worked hard in the Paris studios for three
years. One day he made up his mind that
he would never be a great artist, and that he
would rather be a successful farmer than
a fairly successful painter. Now — although
still a young man — he has a model farm
covering 10,000 acres in Illinois. He knows
every foot of it, what it should produce, and
he sees that it produces everything it should.
3370
AMONG THE WORLD'S WORKERS
He has built a magnificent house, in which
not an ornament jars the finest taste. He
goes to Europe every winter and studies
European methods of scientific farming and
cattle-raising. He is developing the land as
his fathers did before him. He employs
scores of men; he helps the smaller farmers
about him; he is Kkely to be a great factor in
the development of the State during the next
few years. And this is the story of a young
American who works for the love of it and who
is a great success because, anxious to do things,
he knew when he had not "found his work. "
THE ART OF CASTING BRONZES
IT is one of the most interesting processes in
the w^orld, the taking of the plaster figure
which the art of the sculptor has wrought
and duplicating it in bronze. It is something
of an art itself, so delicately perfect must be
the reproduction.
The founder begins by laying the sculptor's
plaster pattern face down in the dirt and
burying it about half way — the dirt being
enclosed in a shallow iron box or tray. On
the back of the figure left exposed the
molders lay on a firm, close coating of the
reddish-brown earth — earth dug out of a
certain red-brown hill near Paris. As the
process of fitting on the earthen armor
proceeds, each piece becomes a thick block
neatly joined to its neighbors, and each
having a wire skeleton or core run through it
for greater strength and a loop to lift it by.
When the whole figure is covered, a second
iron box is fitted over the first just as the two
parts of a waffie-iron go together; and when
this has been filled with sand it forms a bed to
hold all the little blocks in place. The whole
mass is then turned over, and the half in which
the figure was first laid temporarily is
removed, the loose sand is shoveled away,
and the front of the figure is exposed lying
in a bed of jointed earthen armor.
The front must now be covered piece by
piece like the back, but the parts are much
more numerous and irregular. A single eye
is often a matter of two or three tiny blocks
neatly internotched. Two men will work on
opposite sides of the same face, shaking their
white powder-bags over it that the earth may
draw away from it freely, shaping the parts
with slender spatulas, lifting the tiny pieces
on sharp, two-pronged forks, spraying them
with water; yet, when they finish, each has
followed his own idea, and the jointings for
one side are entirely different from those on
the other.
The figure is completely blocked in. The
first half of the waffle-iron is again laid upon
the second, filled snugly with sand and all is
bound firmly together. Then the figure itself
comes out, leaving a hollow in the centre.
Now, if the bronze were poured into this
hollow we should have a solid bronze figure,
very hea\y and very costly. So they fill the
cavity with soft earth until it forms an earthen
image instead of a bronze one. This they
also lift out bodily, and with their sharp little
tools cut off a layer from its entire surface
about a quarter of an inch thick, so that when
it is returned to the cavity there remains
this narrow space all around it to be filled by
the molten bronze. Now the mold must be
dried. Into the great oven it goes and stays
for many consecutive hours, kept hot day
and night until it is almost as hard and
dry as a brick.
Then this many -jointed sarcophagus, bound
and clamped within its waffle-iron frame
(which is technically spoken of as a "flask"),
appears tilted up on one comer so the metal
will run from the entrance at the top down
through the many little channels cut for it
to the several parts of the statue. The men
stand ready with sacks tied about their feet
and legs to protect them from the splashing,
overflowing metal. The livid crucibles are
drawn forth, the metals are poured like
many-tinted quicksilver into the great "ladle"
— often a full ton at once — and mixed in the
proportion of ninety parts copper, ten parts
tin and three of zinc, or thereabouts, accord-
ing to the judgment of the caster. The crane
swings around, slowly lifting the heavy mass
over the opening in the mold, and the men
take their positions at the ladle handles with
skimming-rods. The signal is given, the ladle
tips slowly on its trunions and, with a shower
of fine sparks, the molten stream descends.
After the pouring, when the metal has
hardened, the mold is broken open, the neat,
patiently fitted blocks, now cnunbling and
blackened, are shoveled aside, and water is
thrown hissing upon the still hot metal to
anneal it. When finally the statue stands
swept clean of its earthen chrysalis many
days' work are yet to be done on it. It is
filed smooth and bright, it is gone over
patiently with hammer and chisel, and if
it has been cast in several pieces the
pieces are to be neatly riveted together. The
finishing touch is the coloring. The real
color of statuary bronze is yellow like that of
brass. The rich brown tint of the statues we
see is made by treating the metal with acids.
Then all that remains is for the drays to
carry it away, for the derricks to lift it to its
high pedestal, for the veil to be drawn from it,
and it becomes an established statue.
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