SS.N,- \ > V -^ IX: CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY .. 3 1924 031 489 432 olin.anx Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031489432 AMONG THE AMERICANS AHD A STRANGER IN AMERICA. By George Jacob Holyoake. ''He ties np hands Who locks up lands: The lands which can't be sold and bought Bring- men and StH.tes to worse than nong-htt The lands which can be freely sold Are worth a world of barren gold. " — Ebenezer Elliott. CHICAGO : BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. i8Si. CONTENTS, Chapter I. Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI.. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII.- Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. Chapter XII. Chapter XIIL Chapter XIV.- Chapter XV.- —Sea Ways and Sea Society 17 —Courtesies of New York 31 —The Republican Convention at Saratoga.. . . 47 -Propagandist Uses of Interviewing 55 -Men of Action in Boston 69 -City of Holyolce — Discourses in Free Ciiurches 87 -Wanderings in Five Great Cities 95 -American Orators — Wendell Phillips, Col. R. G. Ingersoll, and George W. Curtis.. . Ill —Famous Preachers — -Henry Ward Beecher, Robert CoUyer, and Prof Felix Adler 131 —Co-operation in the New World 133 —State Socialism in America 143 —Co-operative Emigration — Visits to the Pre- mier of Canada and President of America. 158 —Wayside Incidents 163 -Manners and Opinions in America 183 -Emigrant Education 195 A Stranger in America, from the " Nine- teenth Century." 309 Preface to the American Edition. The portion of these pages entitled " Among the Americans," was written for the Manchester " Co-operative News.'' Messrs. Belford, Clarke & Co. do me the honor to reprint these papers here, together with the article contributed to the " Nineteenth Qgntury,'' entitled, "A Stranger in America," and they have generously and voluntarily agreed to give me a fair share of the profits that may accrue therefrom. Asl they are pleased to think the papers will interest the . American people, among whom I spent happy months, I should feel indebted to them did no advantage come to me thereby. I will not conceal that their honorable offer does not decrease my satisfaction ; and I have to acknowledge that the " New York Tribune" and the " Index," of Boston, which has published passages from these Chapters, have treated me in the same handsome manner. John Bull, in his solid, bovine way, does make steady progress after his kind. But his dietary, consisting of precedents, is not very stimu- lating, and he takes a long time chewing the cud of progress. Like the oxen of Cuyp, he stands meditating over the hedge of his verdant little island, looking as though he was going to think: but he is so long about it that the spectator never feels sure that he does it. If anybody in England proposes to do a new thing, everybody exclaims, like Lord Melbourne, " Can you not let it alone .' If you do xiv Preface, it everybody will do it," But everybody does not do it. England is a country where nothing leads to anything, and anything leads to nothing. Three centuries ago the Reformation broke out, when it was pre- dicted that everybody would come to have ideas of his own. A few new creeds flew into the air and alighted upon ledges in the old rocks of opinion, where they have nestled in inad venturous content, and the groves of thought have seldom since been enlivened by new brightness of plumage or cheered by varieties of song. The republican equality and the republican freedom of America, with their infinite incentives and fertility of aspirations, were to me as a land of new color and new notes, where the minds of the people, like keyless watches, wind them- selves up and always keep going. I should have been glad to live there for years, so as to write about it ; as it is, I content myself with relating a few of the things which I noticed. It is not intended that these papers, now collected into a book form, should be regarded as a " book upon America." That would be a very absurd pretension. These pages are the story of nearly four months travel, and if I had been in America four years I should not think myself competent to write a " book about America." Only an ex-Piesident could write thatin a complete way. When I returned home my friends naturally asked me what I thought of a country I had never seen before. What I have written is what I told them. It is a mere fireside story of what interested me. G.J. H. Newcasti-e Chambers, ) Essex St., Temple Bar. J London^ April, 1881. AMONG THE AMERICANS. CHAPTER I. SEA WAYS AND SEA SOCIETY. IN England we have sea-side books. My friend, the late George Henry Lewes, who wrote upon most things better than many men of mark write upon any one, wrote a charming sea-side book. But I never remember to have seen a sea-book. A man who has made many voyages in different vessels to the chief countries of the vi^orld, might supply a very useful and popular book, teaching the voyager what to expect and what to avoid. All I knew was that mathematically the least motion occurred in midship. That even sickness must have its conditions — that temperance in eating and drinking was likely to answer upon sea as well as upon land; and that resting horizontally after meals had its advantages, and that lemon and biscuit (if hunger oc- curred in the early morning) were useful. Sickness did not occur to me, although we had head-winds outward and homeward each voyage, which delayed us nearly two days each way. I spent an idle week in Liverpool before setting l8 AMONG THE AMERICANS. out, and another in New York before returning, as being perfectly rested before a voyage sickness itself would be less fatiguing. I could write a little manual about ship ex- perience as far as I acquired it; but it would be absurd and misleading to many without further knowledge of different kinds of ships, varying seas, and vicissitude of storm, climate, and shipwreck — the last I have not tried. Only one rule may be mentioned here, w^hich I observed in America as well as on the sea. Being in new climates and in new cities, of whose sanitary condition I knew nothing', I trusted to temperance, in eating, to temperance in fatigue and in exposure, for security in health, and found it. I have ob- served that excitement, worry, or fatigue, whether of pain or pleasure, alike pave the way to illness. I selected the Cunard line because I knew less of the habits of other vessels. This line has lost two ships, but during forty years it is reputed not to have lost a passenger. This furnishes a sense of security which is very profitable to the line, and diminishes the sickness among many voy- agers. Travellers, however, have assured me that more space and comfort are to be found in the ships of some other lines. The Cunards travel in a presci-ibed path, and have the merit of not caring to outrace other vessels, and will even take a day or two longer rather than incur risk. They act upon the principle that it is better for passengers to be late than be lost. Good Imagination is a powerful quality at sea. Many passengers become sick by suffering their eyes to rest upon the waves, as the sea appears to mount and fall around them. I was surprised to find that the officers and sailors of the Cunard ships, to whose skill and AMONG THE AMERICANS. I9 watchfulness passengers owe much of their security, do not receive higher wages than men in other vessels. On the second Sunday of a voyage a collection is made for the widows and orphans of seamen. These ought to be pro- vided for otherwise, after the manner of the Bill lately passed in Parliament for the compensation of workmen who suffer injury or loss of life in their employment, and the subscription made on board should be given to the com- mon sailors there and th-jn, to whose good seamanship it is mainly owing that you are alive to subscribe at all. Sailing, as a rule, is attended with no more risk to life than railway travelling, and since the facilities for sailing in- crease every year, the time is not far dis ant when every- body will sail somewhere. A good booi^, therefore, upon the "Art of being a Sea Passenger" would be as useful as one on the Art of Swimming. Out at sea some persons prefer a rolling motion to the heaving; some can sleep over the screw (which I could do myself, although it seemed to be grinding under my pillow). A ship has such a variety of motion and sound that the passenger can take a choice. The stoutest disciple of Dr. Darwin is generally content with the fertility of evolution on the ocean. So many people have got to go to sea that the nature of the going ought to be explained. In the steerage, where the heaving is greatest — that part of the ship often rises out of the water and, of course, goes dow^n again — sickness is prevalent; yet children recover from sickness much sooner than their parents, probably because they know less about it and do not make themselves miserable by gratuitous imagination. While their parents are pale and apprehensive, I saw the AMONG THE AMERICANS. children delighted at being rolled about the deck and nobody doing it. The drollery of that diverted them greatly. In the saloon, when passengers first see the storm fences on the table, they lose their appetite for the repast; the children think it very droll, and eat w^ith a newr sense of pleasure. A voyage is indeed a source of recreation and diversion of mind beyond vi^hat any who have never made a voyage imagine. Ideas are often absolutely suspended. " Dirty " weather comes and discolors them ; " nasty " weather per- turbs them; " fresh " weather gives them quite a new turn; a rain " squall " coines and softens them ; a " gale " disperses them ; a " storm " dashes them against each other, bending them or breaking them ; a " cyclone " gives a rotary motion to the most fixed ideas ; a " hurricane " seems to blow them all finally away, and it is some time before the most diligent shepherd of his thoughts gets them into the old fold again. The machinery of the mind is unlimbered, and only the best fitting parts are ever got into position again. It is thus that the ocean is entertaining and recreative The fresh wind blows through your mind. Cries of sailors, straining of cordage and planks, creaking of the stubborn masts, beatings of the " steely sea," the roar of the revenge- ful blast, the clanking of the iron slaves within — I regarded as companions of the voyage. All the while the brave en- gines are driving you through the turbulent and disappoint- ed waves. Three hundred and fifty miles in every day and night. The pulses of their iron hearts Go beating through the storm. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 21 The passage between England and Ireland, 1 was told, would prove unpleasant, but that when we got into the Atlantic, the sailing would improve. When we reached Queenstown, the more experienced passengers observed that we should know how to appreciate the serenity of the Irish passage, when we had a taste of the " roll of the Atlantic," which was very encouraging. Every day brought some promise of novelty. Until I was on the Atlantic, I had never seen the sea alive. I had heard of " seas as smooth as glass." What I saw was a sea as smooth as mountains. The Atlantic is a genuine American ocean; it is never still. The white crests of the waves appeared to me like white birds coming over the distant waters. It was quite a new experience to see dark clouds a great distance before us, where rain and squall were raging, and know that we had to sail through them; and when in a squall which appeared at first as though it would last always, we could soon see the sun and blue sky a long way off, and it was pleasant to discover that we should ride into the bright sea under them. If a storm did not extend over an area of sixty miles, we were through it in four hours, unless head winds blew. The screw of the vessel was then half out of the water. Albeit the head winds generally did blow with us. In consequence of what was said in the " Pall Mall Ga- zette " concerning the treatment of poor steerage passen- gers of the Cunard Line, I went over the steerage quarters, both in the " Bothnia " and the " Gallia." It was admitted by the writer of the complaints in the " Pall Mall " that the passengers in the Cunard fared better, as to quarters and 22 AMONG THE AMERICANS. diet, than in other vessels. I went round the ship with Dr. Johnson, the medical officer of the " Bothnia." The occu- pants of the steerage include many rough unmanageable people, whose habits often justify some coercion for the sake of the comfort of others. But I ascertained from those who knew, that the general comfort for the steerage passengers is not what it ought to be, or what it might be. Either Parliament or the press should compel improvements in the arrangement of the steerage. When reporters visit a new vessel to report upon its equipment, they should look into the steerage arrangements. If our naval architects who seek distinction in rendering vessels shot-proof, would give attention to rendering them discomfort-proof for the emi- grants who crowd the steerage, it would be a great bless- ing. Mr. Vera Foster and Mrs. Chisholm secured many attentions to poor passengers; but the attention wanted is a different construction of the ship. In parts of the ship where comfort abounds there is eccentricity of contrivances. For instance, the name-plates on Cunard doors were so low that it was only by going down upon your knees that a pas- senger could read them. Only a passenger who had broken his leg could find out the doctor's door. Recurring to the steerage. Dr. Johnson said he commonly found poor women who came on board with families, and with one suckling at the breast, were generally in such a state of weakness as to be quite unable to bear the strain of rough weather; and I saw myself orders given for dozens of porter and gallons of milk, whereby the poorer women and children were strength- ened. This was additional to the supply ordered by law, and were given at disci'etion by the kind-hearted doctor, AMONG THE AMERICANS. 23 who said the company never interfered with him in these things, and that in many cas3s, in the ships of this line, em- igrants lived better than t'ley had been accustomed to at home, which may be true of other lines also. If American ships took as many steerag e passengers to Great Britain as Great Britain takes to Aiaerica, there would soon be new devices in the arrangement of ships. As a rule the solitude of the sea is less than a stranger would think. A large ship is a moving community, and generally affords great variety of good society. It was only at night, when most persons had gone below, and the deck was silent, that — leaning among the cordage and lis- tening to the beating of the dark sea against the sides of the resolute and defiant vessel as it drove through the bafHed waves — you could realize the loneliness of the ocean. It was like thinking in another world, as I contemplated the dark desert of water, afar from any land — the busy world, familiar to me for sixty years, far behind — all before strange- ness and untried existence. At other times I gave some thought as to what I should do in case it fell to me to speak in public in America. Like the Scotch, many Americans pride themselves on speaking English better than the English do themselves, although they have some peculiarities of their own which sometimes attract our attention. Clearness of expression and precision of idea I knew were qualities of Americsln speech: -w^hether I could fulfil these conditions were disturbing considerations with me. However, a small American book which I bought to read on the voyage out was reassuring to me. It 24 AMONG THE AMERICANS. was published by a popular house, and was one of a popular series. The book opened with this passage : — " The people of the United States have now fairly entered upon the discussion of economic problems of the gravest importance — prob lems upon the right settlement of which both the immediate material and moral welfare of the community will greatly depend. These questions are — First, the Money Question : what is good money and what is bad? Second, the Legal Tender Question: what shall be the standard or unit of value by which contracts shall be enforced? Third, the Tariff Question : in what manner and for what purposes shall the revenue derived from taxes upon foreign imports be col- lected? Fourth, the National Excise System: how shall internal taxes be assessed, and what shall be the subjects of national taxation ? Fifth, the Bank Question: how shall those persons who desire to gain profit to themselves, by rendering the exchange of products aad of services among the people most rapid and least costly, be permitted to organize the work? Finally, and beside all these great national fiscal problems, come all the vexed questions respecting State, city, and town taxation and expenditure, and the yet greater problem of national or State interference or non-interference in the pursuits of the citizens, either for shortening the hours of work, promoting edu- cation, or attempting to compass the material and moral welfare of special classes by means of legislation. What is called civil service reform, or the question whether corruption or purity shall rule in civil service, waits largely on the determination of these questions before it can he fully accomplished, because it is a well-established fact that an attempt to impose a tax beyond certain limits will pro- mote dishonesty in the revenue service somewhere, under whatever party name appointments may have been made. To these we might add the Railway Question ; or, how shall the owners of large or small portions of capital be permitted to combine, for the joint service of themselves and of the community, in the work now developed into such gigantic proportions, of transporting passengers and goods over the continent?" AMONG THE AMERICANS. 25 If America had all these things to settle, I thought it might be glad to hear of something simpler by way of pre- lude. If this complex series of propositions could be put for- ward without bewildering the popular reader, nothing I could say would be likely to confuse them. I remember the saying of General Ludlow — " It is not enough to mean well, you must know well what you mean." If the popular reader believed that the writer above indicated knew all the answers to his multitudinous questions, any stranger might hope for liberal attention. As I was never likely to wander into the social infinites in this way, I took heart and thought I could tell, if called upon, a simple story of industrial devices, which would be tolerated. The work which I have alluded to was not witliout passages of merit and ideas of value, but it remained evident that a people who would make their way through its stupendous series of topics would bear with me. I might annoy them or dis- appoint them. I could never lead them headlong into a wilderness so vast as this. My cabin companion passenger was the Rev. James J. Good, of Philadelphia, a young preacher, who had been travelling in Europe, visiting the Holy Land among other places. Not knowing that even numbers in a ship repre- sented the lower berth in the cabin, an upper one fell to me. Mr. Good, seeing I was the elder, very civilly volunteered to take the upper berth himself, leaving the lower to me, as being more convenient. He was quiet, well-informed, and studious, and his pleasant courtesies were constant during the voyage. One morning a gentleman nearer my age, of very animated expression, came down to my cabin, and 26 AMONG THE AMERICANS. asked permission to introduce himself. It ■was the Rev. Dr. Prime. He was a preacher of great repute in New York, the most evangelical of the Evangelicals. I never quite knew how evangelical he was; but I was told it was very much beyond what I could expect to understand; but this did not prevent him being a very bright-mannered and in- telligent gentleman, with whom I had several conversations which interested me very much. He introduced me to another minister, who had a wonderful theory of uniting monarchy with American democracy. But as I had no in- nate faculty for appreciating either thing, I made no pro- gress in that way of thinking. This minister was evidently a man of strong thought, and had some original views. There were twelve clergymen on board, which was pleas- ant to me to think of, for if thei^ was anything wrong in me, I doubted not that they would use friendly intercession in the quarter where they had influence — and get it all put right. There is an offensive rule on board ships that the service on Sunday shall be that of the Church of England, and that the preacher selected shall be of that persuasion. Sev- eral of the twelve ministers of religion among the passen- gers of the " Botlinia " were distinguished preachers, where- as the clergyman selected to preach to us was not at all dis- tinguished, and made a sermon which I, as an Englishman, was rather ashamed to hear delivered before an audience composed almost entirely of intelligent Americans. The preacher told a woeful story of loss of trade and distress in England, which gave the audience the idea that John Bull was " up a tree." If the old gentleman who personifies us AMONG THE AMERICANS. 2'J had been very high up I would not have published it in a sermon. The preacher said, after the manner of his class, that this wa'i owing to our sins — that is the sins of English- men. The devotion of the American hearers was varied with a smil-j at this announcement. It was their surpassing ingenuity and rivalry in trade which had affected our ex • ports for X time. Our chief " sins " were uninventiveness and commercial incapacity, and the greater wit and inge- nuity of the audience were the actual punishment the preacher was pleading and praying against. He was preaching this before the punishers, and praying them to be contrite on account of their own success. The minister described bad trade as a punishment from God, as though God had made the rascally merchants who took out shoddy calico and ruined the markets. It has been political oppres- sion, and not God, that has driven the best French and Ger- man artists into America, where they have enriched its manufactures with their skill and industry, and enabled that country to compete w^ith us. The preacher's text was as wide of any mark as his ser- mon. It asked the question, " How can we sing in a strange land ?" When we arrived there there were hardly a dozen of us in the vessel who w^ould be in a strange land; the great majority were going home. They were mostly com- mercial reapers of an English harvest who were returning home rejoicing, bearing their golden sheaves with them. Neither the sea nor the land was strange to them. Many of them were as familiar with the Atlantic as with the prairie. I sat at table by a Toronto dealer who had crossed the ocean twenty-nine times. The congregation at sea 28 AMONG THE AMERICANS. formed a very poor opinion of the discernment of the Estab- lished Church. Thei-e were wise and bold things which other preachers on board could have said, and a good sermon would have been a great pleasure mid-ocean. On the I'eturn voyage in the " Gallia " we had another " burning," but not " a shining light " of the Church of England, to discourse to us. He had the merit of reading what he had to say with confidence and evident sincerity. He was a young man, and it required some assurance to look into the eyes of intelligent Christians around him, who had three times his years, experience, and knowledge, and lecture them upon matters of which he was himself abso- lutely ignorant. This clergyman dwelt on and enforced the old doctrine — severity of parental discipline of the young, and on the wisdom of compelling children to unquestioning obedience ; and argued that submission to a higher will was good for men during life. At least two-thirds of the congregation were Americans, who regard parental severity as cruelty to the young, and utterly uninstructive; and unquestioning obedience they held to be calamitous and demoralizing edu- cation. They expect reasonable obedience, and seek to obtain it by reason. Submission to a " higher will," as applied to man, is mere submission to authority, against which the whole polity of American life is a magnificent protest. The only higher will they recognize in worldly affairs is the will of the people, intelligently formed, im- partially gathered, and constitutionally recorded — facts of which the speaker had not the remotest idea. Everyone felt that the preacher himself had been trained in " unques- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 29 tioning obedience," since lie was evidently without the power of inquiring into or acquiring the commonest inter- national facts of his time. I observed that the steerage passengers were not invited into the saloon to hear the service. Probably the souls of the poorer passengers did not need saving, and the service was only necessary for the sinners of the saloon. In this the ship authorities were probably right. CHAPTER II. COURTESIES OF NEW YORK. A STRANGER in America is very much like the Tan- gier oysters, which but partly fill the large shell in which they are incased. Before being sold, they are sent to ixside for a short time in another water, when they are found to have grown double their former. size, and entirely fill the copious shells in which they were born. A brief residence in America in like manner enlarges the ideas of an insular Briton. At the Gloucester Co-operative Con- gress the Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company exhib- ited two handsome rugs. One was presented to Professor Stewart, and the other I had the honor to receive. I took it with me to America, thinking to astonish New York with the beauty of co-operative manufacture. I had it hanging on my arm as I entered the city alone. I soon found that the rug had fascination for other eyes as well as my own, for when I next thought of it it was gone, in what way I had no idea. So the discernment or envy of New York prevented me from displaying my choice example of co-operative industry. If any " smart " foreign trader brings rugs of that pattern into the English market, Mr. Crabtree will understand how the design got abroad. 32 AMONG THE AMERICANS. My friend, Dr. Hollick, gave me the use of his rooms in the Broadway for the purpose of business and seclusion. One Saturday afternoon when I was alone in that many- roomed building, all other occupants having left, a creature with quiet manner, a pretty auburn beard, and sharp, useful eyes, of about thii'ty years of age, walked noiselessly into the middle of the inner chamber, I having left both doors unlocked. He was what was known in the city as a " sneak thief." He pressed me to buy pencils of him. I observed that he took an inventory of two open trunks which I kept there, and that he meant to come again. When I was in Kansas City he did. As I had taken the precaution of throwing newspapers over the trunks he appeared not to have observed them, and carried away only some articles of clothing which I had left out, and a large illustrated work of my friend's, entitled the " Origin of Life." The clever police captured the pencil seller, but as I was far away at the trial and could not claim my clothing, it fell to the police, at which I was glad — as I suppose they were — for the articles were English, new and good. I lost nothing- else during my sojourn in the land. Once, when I was a guest of Mr. Alderman Samuelson, brother of the member for Danbury, at a Boston hotel, an umbrella, which I had bought of a London Jew, because it was unlike any other, disappeared from the place where I had placed it. My host spoke to a shrewd black waiter and said in his emphatic way that it was necessary that the um- brella should reappear, as it belonged to his guest. When I came to leave the hotel I found it where I had placed it. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 33 The impetuosity of New York was in everything and everybody. The painted signboards relating to the tele- graph offices contained animated figures of men and juve- nile messengers, racing as though a fire engine or Milton's Satan was after them. The mahogany tables of the West- ern Union Telegraph Office, on which the public write messages, ai'e covered with great sheets of plate glass, which gave them a cleanness and brilliancy very striking. As there are several of these, the appearance of the office is that of a drawing-room. The public in England have no accommodation of this kind. Sitting there alone and late one Saturday evening, while a friend was arranging some messages upstairs, I passed from meditation to sleep. Im- mediately my eyes were closed, a sharp youth, from some unseen room, awakened me. I assured him I had no inten- tion of passing the night there ; but three times, when sleep overtook me in the large and deserted room, he promptly issued from his recess and desired me to look about. I con- cluded that nobody was allowed to go to sleep in New York under any colorable pretext. Occasionally I went down to the Astor House, because I liked to lunch at the great, broad, circular table, with the waiters inside, who serve you so promptly; and also to watch business men eating, though I cannot say I ever saw it done. " What do yoi| think of it?" said Mr. Barnum, as we came out. My answer was, " All I observed was that a gentleman enters, reads the bill of fare, speaks to the waiter, pays the cashier, and departs. He has, doubtless, taken his dinner; but the operation is so rapid that I cannot say properly that I witnessed it." Yet in the clubs and 34 AMONG THE AMERICANS. private houses, where I was at times a guest, I found that the dinner was eaten as dilatorily and as daintily as in an English mansion — besides including a greater number of delicacies. Americans, as a rule, know how to dine like gentlemen. In " Appleton's Guide," as I construed it. No. i, Broad- way, was the Old Kennedy House, and that Fulton (the in- ventor of steamships, whom Robert Owen aided in Man- chester) died in one of its rooms; that General Sir Henry Clinton (grandfather of my friend Colonel H. Clinton, who has never forgiven the Americans for defeating his famous ancestor) once resided there; as afterwards General Wash- ington and Talleyrand (the " lame fiend " who tempted Cobbett to teach him English). On my first night in New York I engaged a room at No. I, now the Washington Hotel. There are spacious rooms in it, where a cohort of generals and diplomatists might con- fer. The hotel looks out on the Bowery in front and Castle Gardens on the right. The associations of the place were very pleasant to me, but as the hotel was full of old ship captains — whose talk was of cargoes, storms, shipwreck, and blockade running, and in every language but English — I did not find a human being to converse with on any topic. I understood my room was on the fifth tier, quite re- moved from the lower part of the hotel. There was no speedy communication below, and nobody to be met with above. I felt utterly solitary and lost. Notices told me that certain passages led to the fire escape. Being so far above the ground it occurred to me to study them. I pur- sued them through as many coi-ridors as Mrs. RadclifFe AMONG THE AMERICANS. _ 35 found in the Castle of Otranto. After ascending narrow stairs I suddenly entered a long room, where six statwart Irish women w^ere engaged at washing tubs. As they all looked at me at once, wondering what brought me there, I retreated, well confused, saying I " thought they were the fire-escapes." I pi-eferred the fire to going any further. My room was one, no doubt, once occupied by the Hes- sians when the Duke of York was there. The bell-rope had, I concluded, been broken by those valiant troopers ringing for beer, and had not been repaired. So desolate was that chamber that I should have been glad to invite their ghosts in, had any been about the deserted corridors. Once I hoped it might be the room where poor Fenton died, and had Spiritualism been true I might have had con- versation with that clever inventor. In the early morning I heard strange noises under my ,'indow, which at first I thought must be some Hessian or ^'ulton visitation. Upon looking out I found the elevated railway almost running through my bedroom, and a stoker stood by his engine turning off his steam. His engine was No. 99, and I was told that the other (98) would probably be by before breakfast. The elevated railway is a wonderful contrivance of iron architecture ; nevertheless beautiful streets are disfigured by it, just as we have cut the view of St. Paul's Cathedral in London in two by the railway crossing Ludgate Hill. Had the people of New York possessed St., Paul's they would never have tolerated a railway before it. I was some weeks before venturing upon a journey through the air on it; when I did, I watched for the open bedroom windows on the way, 36 AMONG THE AMERICANS. to see which I could best leap into, in case the dubious thing gave way altogether. The New York " Tribune " office is the noblest news- paper building I had seen. Its lofty tower, where the edi- torial and type rooms are, overlooks the great post-office, a small sea, and all the great buildings around. Printers may live longer there than in any office I know. The spacious and high chambei's, with abounding ventilation, insures the health of the men. Every telegraphic, telephonic, and pneumatic convenience perfected, is in operation there. Clocks around show the time in distant parts of the United States, and in the chief capitals of Europe. Everything shows the taste and resources of Mr. Whitelaw Reid, the editor, who devised the arrangements. The " Ledger " offices of Philadelphia, and other cities are distinguished also in their ways, but I had not the opportunity of examin- ing them. The plan of travel I had made for myself was simply to see New York, Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia. I knew it was impossible to see every place in America, and I did not intend to try. To see a few of the chief things in any town, or a few of the chief places in any country, and see them well, easily, and without fatigue, is my idea of travelling. Men must travel as they read books. No one could read all the books in the world, however interesting they are, and he who attempted it would die discontented through not having accomplished it. So I select a few of the objects and places I most care for, and have perfect enjoyment therein. AjrONG TI-IE AMERICANS. 37 When my intention became known in New Yoric some friends put it into a paragraph, and the Associative Press telegraplied it, I was told, to one liundred and twenty pa- pers. When I expi-essed my surpi-ise at tliis, a friend said, " As you are going up the country we wish to give j'ou a good send offP I liad never lieard tlie plirase before. It was some time before I got reconciled to it. It had such a strange sound to me. It would never enter into the mind of any Englishman to use it. It w^as merely the American way. It is their habit to look clean into a thing, estimate what it amounts to, and if an act of service or friendship to a stranger to " put it through." The " Mail " said that " old anti-slavery citizens would not forget a criticism of mine in the " Leader" (185 1) of the Garrlsonian agitation, which called forth a reply from Wen- dell Phillips, the most ai'gumentative and brilliant of his great anti-slavery orations." The New York " Tribune " had at times made mention of my name, in connection with some English affairs it thought of interest to its readers, in terms which were of the nature of a letter of recommendation to me everywhere, as I afterwards found. The New York " Herald," though democratic, and of the opposite politics to the " Tribune," recorded proceed- ings in which I was concerned, as did other journals. One morning the " Tribune " mentioned that I was stay- ing at the Hoffmann House, whereby it came to pass that I saw many distinguished citizens. Introductions were sent ine to the great clubs — the Union, the Century, and the 38 AMONG THE AMERICANS. Lotos, -where I spent enchanted days amid the pictures, books, and stately chambers. One afternoon I met the members of the Press Club and was invited to address them. Journalists, men of lettei's, men of science, travellers and thinkers of many lands, as well as of America, were there. The proceedings, I was told afterwards, were a " reception," but I did not know at the time what it was. It was well I did not, for I should have been confused at the disproportion of so much courtesy to any merit on my part to justify it. In New York I had the pleasure to meet again with Garibaldi's well-known naval ofBcer, William de Rohan, who took out the British Legion in the Italian war of freedom. He had lost nothing of the high spirit and vivacity which characterized him in that undertaking. I found him engaged in promoting colonization in Virginia, of which he published the best account for the information of emigrants I saw in the States. It was my intention to sail in the " Scythia " early in August, as Mr. Potter, M. P., was going out at the same time. His sailing becoming uncertain, I changed my vessel for the " Bothnia," which sailed mid-August, in order to arrive after the August storm, which breaks over New York at the end of August, had cooled the air. I was willing to go earlier and be roasted in company, but felt no call of patriotism to be roasted alone. Mr. Potter and I never met until we were on board the " Gallia," on the return voyage. Mr. Potter, and Mrs. Potter who accom- panied him, were received with honor in America, to which he was known to have rendered great services. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 39 Mr. Evarts, the Secretary of State, made one of his most brilliant speeches at the dinner given to Mr. Potter in New York, where Mr. Evarts sent the memorable message to Mr. Bright that " the people of the United States hoped he would not die until he had seen America." Mr. Potter made wise and excellent speeches during his visit, saying, with gi-eat judiciousness,, very little about free trade, which it was known he was desirous of promoting. For myself, though a partisan of free trade, I elected never to allude to it, having discerned before I went, that tlie best advocacy of free trade in America is to say nothing about it, Ameri- cans being apt to believe that when an Englishman recom- mends it to them, he does so because it is a national interest of his own. They do not understand that we see free trade to be as much to their interest as to ours. The South being unfortunately in favor of free trade, the North regard it as a sort of Copperhead policy, and are prejudiced against it. As South and North become one again in sentiment and fraternity, w^hich increases every year, it being, their common interest to be united, the wonderful business discernment of America will lead them to see, eventually, that free trade is the profit of their country. And they will see it sooner if they find we do not solicitously intrude it upon them. On the day of my arrival in New York I walked out in- to the city ailone. Not having mentioned to any friend the name of the second vessel I had taken a berth in, there was no one I knew on the shore, and I went peering amongst the Rotterdam-looking 'houses which I first encountered, and saw the strange city for the first time for myself, and by 40 AMONG THE AMERICANS. myself. I knew of no address save that of my early friend and fellow-student, Dr. Hollick. When I reached him he handed me a letter, which was an invitation to the office of the " Worker," 1455 Broadway. It was from Mr. E. E. Barnum, Secretary of the Colony Aid Association, who be- came my friend, and was my friend always. He was a man of singular modesty, with an entirely honest voice, of quiet, unobtrusive ways. Though he was much trusted, he left nothing on trust, but presented a clear record of all transac- tions passing through his hands. He had been a minister of religion, and retained the agreeable self-respecting manners of one of the better sort. He was taken by his father in early life into the prairie, where the hardships he shared made him a wise and practi- cal counsellor of emigrants. He accompanied me to Sara- toga, as I was new to American railroads. By day or by night he would accompany me about New Yoi-k. When I returned to the city he would meet the early boat when I arrived in the morning. If I returned by late train, he would come over the river to tmeet me, lest my being un- able to see in the dark should cause me to take the wrong boat. It was with real sorrow that I received not long a^o a letter from Mrs. Barnum — who also had shown me atten- tions of genuine courtesy — a letter in which she said: " It is very hard for me to tell you that the busy feet that ran for you, and the bright eyes that looked for 3'ou are still and closed. 'He regarded you with so much love and tenderness. He was only ill for two weeks, and passed away like a child going to sleep. He had been looking forward with so much pleasure for your return. As you knew him so he always was — as gentle and kind to every one; and AMONG THE AMERICANS. 41 we were such friends and comrades. I realize that all the -world and myself could die, but not him ; and lutil he had passed away it never entered mj mind he could die. He was the only one I had, and now I am indeed desolate." Mr. Bamum cared for co-operation for the sake of its moral influences, and he had the capacity, w^hich does not always go with right feeling — the capacity of giving effect to principles by material organization. The Co-operative Colony Aid Association have objects wise, practical, and unpretending, expressed with modera- tion and good sense, -which 1 never knew exceeded in Eng- land. The qualities are much more common in America than Englishmen know^. In England, journalists teU us much of points in -which America differs from us, or falls belo-w us, and too little of the points in which its people equal or excel us. The association I mentioned in-vited me to deliver an ad- dress in the Cooper Union. It is not possible to collect in LfOndon an audience such as I met there — men of thought and action of all nations, representatives of all the insurg- ency of progress in Europe are found in Xe^v York, as well as the men of mark who arise in that mighty land. I met there for the first time the Rev. Robert Collyer, the &mous preacher of Chicago, and Mr. Peter Cooper, who was then in his eighty -ninth year. He gave to New York the great Institute in -which -we meL He is a man of fine patriarchial appearance. He made a bright, argumentative, freshly-spoken speech. Professor Adler, a Jewish orator of great repute, the Rev. Heber Newton, an Episcopal clergy- man, a man of fine enthusiasm, and the Rev. Dr. Rylance, 42 AMONG THE AMERICANS. who knew me in London many years ago, spoke after the lecture. The platform of the hall is very wide and projects into the middle of it. The hall is so spacious that it is like speaking into a town, and the lecturer is as a voice speaking in the midst of the people. Everybody can hear him. American architects have a mastery of space unknown in England, and in their halls and theatres, everybody can see everything, and the speaker meets the eye of all whom he addresses. When I went down to Liverpool to embark for America I was invited by a committee of journalists, and other gen- tlemen, to a public dinner there, at which Dr. Thomas Car- son presided, and Mr. E. R. Russell, editor of the Liver- pool " Post," and other gentlemen, made friendly speeches to me, but it never occurred to me that this would happen to me in America. Yet it came to pass before I left New York. A public breakfast was given me in St. James' Hotel, Broadway, eighty persons were present, though the tickets were fourteen shillings each. He should be very reticent who writes of himself, yet entire silence would be an ungrateful or contemptuous return to make to those to whom he becomes indebted. Mr. Peter Cooper was present at the St. James' Hall, as well as the gentlemen who spoke at the lecture at the Cooper Union. Mr. Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the New York " Tribune," sat on the left of the chairman. Here I met for the first time Mr. Parke Goodwin, son-in- law of Bryant the poet, himself the editor of the " Evening Post," and Mr. E. L. Godkin, editor of the "Nation," a journal which resembles our " Saturday Review." Mrs. AMO^fG THE AMERICANS. 43 Elizabeth Thompson, a lady distinguished for countless and discerning acts of national munificence, and other ladies were present. The Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin, whose im- passioned eloquence I often heard spoken of in America, and the Rev. Dr. E. A. Washburne, had travelled far to be there. I have presei'ved the many letters which were received from heads of departments at Washington — from Wendell Phillips, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, George Wm. Curtis, and others. One was from Mr. R. B. Hayes, President of the United States, who, though engaged all day at a military fair, and under a public obligation to return to Washington that night, took time to write, saying : " It would give me pleasure to accept the committee's invitation to join in break- fasting with Mr. Holyoake, and thereby show my apprecia- tion of the work in which he is engaged, and I regret that imperative engagements to return to Washington immedi- ately prevented me attending the breakfast." It never entered into my mind that anything I had done could be known or could interest persons so numerous and so eminent, in a country so remote from my own. All my days I have been among those w^ho wrote and spoke in defence of the Republic from instinct. The New York " Tribune," in a graceful expression, ascribed the proceed- ings " to my earnest and fruitful friendship for America." The utter unpreparedness with which I was called upon to do things in schools, churches, or public meetings, at first perplexed me. In England, when any one is entertained, the chairman makes a speech and some proposition is spoken to, after which the guest speaks. By this time he under- 44 AMONG THE AMERICANS. stands something of the sentiments of the assembly, and what ideas had been formed of him. At the New York breakfast I expected the same course would be followed, and was sitting with perfect unconcern, expecting to hear the Rev. Dr. Newton, who acted as secretary, read the let- ters received, when the Rev. Dr. H. W. Bellows, the chair- man, who had spoken with gaiety and humor, and with a felicity of expression which I was envying and admiring, suddenly " presented " me to the meeting, and said I could address them, I knew not what to say, not having had time to consider what there was available in the chairman's speech. I thought again of the curate who, when Arch- bishop Whateley asked him if he had prepared his trial ser- mon, said he had not, as he trusted to the promise that in that hour in which he had to speak it should be given unto him what he had to say. " But you forget," said the Arch- bishop, "that that promise w^as made to an apostle, and un- less you are sure of being one, the promise may not hold good in 3'our case." As my apostolate was one thing of which I was doubtful, I had to speak and take my chance of the " promise." The speeches which followed mine were so admirable that they seemed to have the aid I lacked. It was impossible not to be sensible of the things said to me, seeing that I had neither rank, nor office, nor riches, nor even ecclesiastical repute ; nor could I bring to the coun- try any distinction, nor confer upon it any advantage. All the while it was known that when the first volume of my " History of Co-operation in England " was sent to the press by Messrs. Lippincott, the American publishers, the review- ers, with three exceptions, reviewed me and not my book, AMONG THE AJIERICANS. 45 and gave it to be understood, that I was not known to be- lieve half as much as a " well-conducted " person should. Nevertheless, during my whole stay in the country, not a single journalist ever alluded to any opinions of mine, other than those I myself chose to express. When I think of all that occurred to me, I feel upon returning to my own countrymen — who know me better — that I ought to offer some apology for having received attentions so much be- yond any discernible merit of mine. CHAPTER III, THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION AT SARATOGA. THE pleasantest way to Saratoga from New York is up the broad waters of the Hudson River in one of the great steamers, large enough to carry a town. On the road you see the majestic and dreamy Catsldll Mountains, where Rip Van Winkle met the Dutchman playing at nine- pins. Saratoga, being called a " watering place," I expected to find lake or sea there; but found instead mineral springs, which are situated in a picturesque vale, where fountains, foliage, statues, and shaded walks prevail. Cheltenham and Harrogate together are not so alluring, but there is not much of Saratoga. The principal street has lofty trees, of a torrid fruitfulness of leaves and branches. The vastness of the hotels was bewildering. That of the United States Hotel, where I stayed, enclosed three sides of an immense quadrangle, as large as a park, abounding in foliage. I was told 2,000 persons were residing in it when I arrived, A thousand additional visitors, who came the same evening to attend the convention, seemed to make no sensible addition to those who conversed in corridors and saloons. The colored attendants were ready and unconfused. In a few 48 AMONG THE AMERICANS. minutes you were in possession of bedrooms as lofty as those of the Amstel Hotel, Amsterdam, where the bed curtains appeared to descend from the clouds. The object of the convention, called by the Republican leaders, was to choose a candidate for governor of New York and other State officers. My wish was to see not merely what was done, but how it was done, and where it was done. A public meeting in London is, except in the Society of Arts, a mere proceeding, hardly ever a spectacle. There is nothing imposing about it, save the grand throng of eager faces, if many are present, and the mighty roar when a great speaker interests the assembly. The hall of the So- ciety of Arts, with Barry's great paintings around its walls, on which are depicted the great historic actors of the world, who are, as it were, listening to the speakers ; the broad dais at the upper end of the hall, its three table-desks, two being independent tribunes, where speakers right and left of the president can take their stand — the open side room where auditors can arrive, survey the meeting, and choose the vacant place they prefer, or see and hear where they are — constitute the one scenic hall of London. The Saratoga Convention of 1S79 was held in the Town Hall; not a bad interior, but the stage had the ramshackle arrangements common in England. There was more space than we reserve for speakers to deploy in ; but in the centre stood a mean, narrow desk, upon the hollow top of which the president struck, ^vith a pitiful wooden hammer, awaken- ing dilapidated echoes within. Nobody had thought that the grandest use of a public hall is a public meeting, and AMONG THE AMERICANS. 49 that the mechanical accessories of oratory should be pic- turesque, and yet have simplicity, but the simplicity should be scenic. Tammany Hall I did not see; but Faneuil Hall, Boston, has quaint grace and fitness as a hall of oratory, worthy of the famous speakers who have given it a place in history. No arrangement had been made for delegates at Saratoga occupying the floor of the hall, and for preventing any other persons eiitering that area. Ten dollars cost, and two carpenters, would have done the work in two hours. This not being done, the hall was one compact political mixture; and as the delegates wore no flower, cross, medal, or badge, nobody knew each other, nor who was which. This cost an hour's fruitless discussion, and confusion all day. Twice over, at long intervals, a wild motion was made that all who were not delegates should rise and stand in the sides of the hall, and allow the delegates to be seated in the centre. This proposition proceeded on the assumption that 600 per- sons who had arrived early, and struggled their way into good seats, would rise by natural impulse of disinterested virtue and disclose themselves, the consequence being that they would lose their seats and be condemned to stand all day if they were not ejected from the hall. This extra- ordinary virtue did not appear to be prevalent, for no one rose. By sitting still they were secure, for nobody knew them not to be delegates, and they had the wit not to dis- cover themselves. Indeed, if they had, the hall was so densely packed that nobody could move to another part, and the confusion of attempting to change places would have been ten times worse than that which existed. I was 50 AMONG THE AMERICANS. surprised to hear the impossible proposition made to an American audience. When Mr. George WilHam Curtis pointed out that it was an incoherent proposal, everybody laughed at it. I had heard in England a good deal about American political organization. It did not appear in the arrange- ments of the meeting, though it was well manifest in the proceedings. The names of the candidates for the chief office in the gift of the day were read over. The popular name was that of "Alonzo B. Cornell," the son of the founder of the Cornell University. Mr. Cornell received the nomination of Governor of New York State. That day I heard his name pronounced a thousand times. Each delegate was called upon to say aloud for which candidate he voted. There was only one Cornell, yet nobody an- swered as we should do in England—" Cornell " — but each said, with scrupulous precision, "Alonzo B. Cornell," or "Jehosophat P. Squattles," or whatever was the name of the rival candidate. Alonzo was pronounced clearly; the B. separately and distinctly, and Cor-nell with the accent on the " nell " as decidedly as that knell which " Macbeth " thought might awaken " Duncan." The name of "Alonzo B. Cornell" emerged from under the platform in a musical accent, as though it proceeded from a pianoforte. " Alonzo B. Cornell " was next heard in the rough voice of a miner. " Alonzo B. Cornell " came in meek tones from a delegate appointed for the first time. " Alonzo B. Cornell " cried an old sea captain, with a voice like a fog-horn. " Alonzo B. Cornell " came quick from the teeth of a sharp man of busi- ness, who meant to put that affair through at once. " Alonzo AMONG THE AMERICANS. 51 B. Cornell" said a decided caucus leader, in a tone which said, "Yes, we have settled that before we came here," "Alonzo B. Cornell" chirped a small political sparrow in a remote corner of the room. Then Mr. Conkling, raising himself to his full height (which is considerable,) in the cen- tre of the platform, pronounced, in tones of a deliberate trumpet, "Alonzo B. Cornell." An hour was spent over that new governor's name, yet if "Alonzo B." had been eliminated, the business had been got through in a third of the time. Mr. Cornell was a modest, pleasant gentleman, with a business-like method of speech. From the interest which was attached to the course Mr. George William Cur- tis took, I wished to speak with him, but could conceive no sufficient pretext for doing it. One result of this v, as that afterwards a friend liad to give me an introduction to Mr, Curtis, which ran thus: " Dear Curtis : — This is George J. Holyoake, whose works on Labor and Co-operation you know. * * * He saw you at Sara- toga. With English diffidence he did not introduce himself. I tell him he must learn American manners. Till he does, let me make you two acquaint. Yours cordially, Wendell Phillips." The character of every people, like that of every indi- vidual, is made up of flat contradictions. The Americans, as a rule, have a prompt apprehensiveness ; their conversa- tion is clear, bright, and precise; their penetration direct; their narrative swift, characterized by brilliant abbrevia- tions; yet these quick-witted hearers will tolerate speakers in the Senate and on the platform with whom redundancy and indirectness are incurable diseases ; and will sit and listen to them just as they would- watch the descent of a cataract, 52 AMONG THE AMERICANS until a change of season shall diy up the falling waters. At the Saratoga Convention " a programme of princi- ples" was read — called a "platform." No discernment could make sure what was meant, and a professor of mem- ory could not retain half of what was written. All I recol- lect was that the platform ended with some miscellaneous platitudes on things in general, but yet there were parts of it which showed capacity of statement — if only the writer had known when to Stop. It was with regret I was unable to go to the Syracuse Convention, and witness a Democratic nomination, and, perhaps, furnish my friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer, with materials for a chapter on " Comparative Caucusism." The Saratoga Convention was characterized by great order and attention to whoever desired to speak. If any one put a question, the answer was, " The Chair takes a contrary view; the Chair decides against you." The chairman spoke of himself as an institution, or as a court of authority. This I found to be a rule in America. I was told the Democratic conventions v^^ere marked by comparative turbulence and irregularity. The New York "Tribune" said that "large heads" would abound at Syra- cuse. I wanted to see " large heads," as I had no idea what a political " large head " was. I was told that the Democrats are more boisterous and peremptory in their proceedings than Republicans. The Democrats seem to resemble our Tories at home — indignant at any dissent at their meetings, but persistent in interrupting the meetings of others. At the Saratoga Convention the immediate attention given to any auditor claiming to speak by the chair, and, what was more, by the audience, was greater than in England. In AMONG THE AMERICANS, 53 England the theory of a public meeting is that any one of the persons present may address It, but we never let them do it. If the chairman is willing the audience is not. At several public meetings at which I was present the right of a person on the floor seemed equal to that of those on the platform. Citizens seemed to recognize the equality of each other. In England there is no public sense of equality. Somebody is supposed to be better than anybody. While I was at Saratoga, one of the New York papers said that " Mr. Conkling (who made the chief speech of the day), had two attentive listeners upon the platform, to whom the proceedings were evidently of great interest. One was Professor Porter, of Yale College, the other, to whom the entire convention was an absolute novelty, was George Jacob Holyoake, the English writer upon co opera- tion and reform questions in general. Mr. Holyoake had come to Saratoga with the sole purpose of seeing the con- vention, and seemed greatly interested in its methods of procedure, and all its many aspects. He remarked to a friend that he had been defending American democracy for forty years, and had now come to observe for himself some of its practical manifestations. He compared Mr. Conk- ling's manner of speech-making to Mr. John Bright's." In what respects I afterwards explained in a letter to the " Tribune," saying : — " I am a connoisseur in eloquence, as some men are in art. I have heard oft many renowned orators. But though I have lived near the rose, it is not to be inferred that I have caught the scent myself. It only means that I am sensible of it when I come near it. That is what I meant 54 AMONG THE AMERir;A.NS. by the remark of mine you quoted the other day, concern- ing Mr. Conkling's speech at Saratoga. "A good presence is but an accident of oratory. Mr. Conkling lias the art to make it a condition and a grace. His singular and sustained deliberateness, which never de- layed, had a charm for me, that quality of sustainment being one of the difficulties — as it is one of the marks of mastery — in eloquence. "Mr. Conkling ended sentences at times with a simple brevity, where other men would have lost power in expan- sion, which they mistake for force. Mr. Conkling's com- pression was completeness. These were the respects in which his speech at Saratoga reminded me of Mr. Bright." The favorite water of Saratoga bears the name of" Con- gress water," and it was the first natural mineral water I found agreeable to drink. If Congress politics are as re- freshing as " Congress water," America is not badly off in the quality of its public affairs. CHAPTER IV. PROPAGANDIST USES OF INTERVIEWING. IF electricity be the source of life, the press of America may be compared to a vast machine for the production of intellectual electricity, which vibrates through the na- tion, quickening the life of the people. One of its original devices for this purpose is the invention of interviewing. American newspapers send very able men to Europe, who report upon features and politics in society with great fidelity to facts. To catch the humors of classes, and man- ner of thought of strange peoples, is a rare acquirement — more an instinct than an acquisition. It is one thing to satisfy readers in the country for which you write, who have no means of testing the accuracy of what is said, it is quite a different thing to satisfy the people whom you describe. At a time when it was a matter of political necessity to me to understand the way in which the " intelligent foreigner " would be impressed by English public affairs, and the opinions formed by them of the chief acts of English legis- lation, I used to find the New York " Tribune " of the first order of service. The letters sent from London, signed " G. W. S.," though they were not received from America until tweaty days after they were written, frequently con- 56 AMONG THE AMERICANS. tained an estimate of English political questions quite fresh and instructive then — as I said elsewhere years ago. A stranger in a country, who is a competent observer, will see many things which will not strike an observer at home at all, nor at any time, early or late. The gods have often been asked, but they never have given us the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us. Many persons do not take well to interviewers, who, cer- tainly, are troublesome persons to one who has no definite notions. It is not pleasant to be asked what you mean if ypu do not know yourself. It is often a very perplexing thing, even for a public speaker, to be asked what is the purport of what he intends to say. It frequently transpires that he has not thought of it himself. Indeed, I have many times heard very popular speeches made, of which nobody knew what they were about. Sometimes I have heard ser- mons which left the congregation in this doubt. As a jour- nalist, I have seen leading articles in English newspapers which gave the reader a great deal of trouble to discover their object. Indeed, I will not disclaim having written such myself. Lord Westbury used to say that many per- sons assumed the possession of an endowment which " they are pleased to call their minds,'' which is not at all apparent to others. Persons who have a talent for not knowing what they mean should keep out of the way of American interviewers. The interviewer is an inquirer, and he visits you partly from courtesy, partly for the sake of news. He asks you questions upon subjects which he thinks may interest the readers of the journal he represents; he uses his own judg- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 57 ment as to what he will report of what you say. If he in- qmres where you are going and what your object may be in visiting certain places, and reports the particulars, per- sons likely to promote your object communicate with you; and people in the towns mentioned become aware of your visit, and bestow attentions and courtesy which otherwise could never be rendered. If you have special ideas you want to propagate the interviewer is your best friend. Your views are spread all over the country. Sometimes by accident, and sometimes by intention, he gives a provoking turn to your ideas; the object is that you should write to his paper and correct them, that is if he thinks a letter from you would be of interest to his journal. You then have the opportunity of expressing yourself exactly as you wish to be understood. An ill-tempered or unskilful writer will charge the interviewer with unpardonable inaccuracy. It is fairer, as well as more prudent, to assume that the error arose in your own unskilfulness in giving impromptu an- swers to unexpected questions. This is likely to be the case. If time admits of it, and you can go to the office at the proper hour, you may revise yourself the proof of what you have said. A little skill will enable anyone to do this by a change of word here and there, so as not to cause what printers call " overrunning," which would delay the office too much at a late hour. If a newspaper is disposed to regard your views as interesting to the country, it will even permit you to interview yourself. In that case you ask yourself the questions you want to answer, and give your own replies; and if you produce an interrogatory 58 AMONG THE AMERICANS. paper which is not absolutely dull, you may have the pleas- ure of seeing it inserted. Interviewers, like reporters, are of two kinds. I remem- ber on one occasion a Cabinet Minister, who, intending to address his constituency in the country, was desirous to pro- vide for an accurate report appearing in the London papers. He inquired whether he had better take a reporter down. I answered that it all depended upon what kind of report he wanted to appear of his speech. If he wanted an exact report of what he said, he must provide a shorthand writer who could follow him word for vvord. Such a reporter he might find connected with a good local journal. But if he wanted an abridgment of his speech, or a condensed report of it, he must take some one from London — one who could perfectly understand what he wanted to say and what he ought to say, and who could present a statement of a speech which would be coherent and effective — a statement that the speaker might not be ashamed of whether he said it or not. A verbatim reporter is best if you are perfectly sure of what you intend to say and perfectly sure of expressing it accur- ately and without repetition. A verbatim reporter reports exactly what you say — errors and all, if there be errors — but as a rule he is utterly incapable of condensing except by omitting and making connections in his own language, which would commonly be slipshod, incoherent, feeble; often expressing the very opposite of what was intended. In condensing, a reporter is thrown upon his own mind, and if he has no mind the result is commonly commensurate therewith. An abridged report can only be done by a man of political discernment, who can catch the style and man- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 59 ner of a speaker, and reproduce his idiomatic turn of thought. A reporter of this capacity is seldom retained about a prov- incial paper, except in the larger towns, where papers are conducted with metropolitan ability; or where the editor will undertake to condense the speech for you from a literal report. Among the intei-viewers I met in America, some were quite capable of doing this ; but when they were otherwise I seldom knew what to expect until I read it. Sometimes I read reports of interviews I did not know again, until I reread the heading and found they related to me. I ex- pressed myself in a colloquial, spontaneous way, using ex- pressions never intended to be reproduced — supplying a variety to be selected from, inerely to give the interviewer a complete idea of what I had in my mind ; and I often found that the oddest phrases had alone made an impression upon the intei"viewer, who gave the illustrations and left the ideas out. When I wished to avoid this I had to express myself with deliberate consideration. Then an interview is quite a useful exercise. On one occasion, when travelling in Massachusetts, on my way to Boston, a gentleman who had met me at the Narragansett Hotel, Fall River, joined the train at a wayside station. Having calculated that I should be in that train he di'opped in quite "promiscuously." In the most casual manner he found an opportunity of entering into conversa- tion with me, and incidentally asked me about my early re- ligious life, and then concerning social and political affairs in which I had been engaged. His inquiries were in no way obtrusive, nor were they one-sided, as I, glad at falling 6o AMONG THE AMERICANS. in with a communicative passenger, asked many questions myself. The novelty of Boston city, which I saw that night for the first time, soon erased all memory of the con- versation. The next morning I read in the Boston " Herald " an article beginning — " There arrived last night at the Adams House an English visitor;" and then followed a description of my career and views, and what the writer was pleased to consider my public services, remarkably well expressed. The character of the article laid me under obligation to the writer, who was clearly a master in the art of interviewing. His materials were retained in a trained memory; he re- spected what might be counted as private particulars of an unguarded and friendly conversation, and presented to the public exactlv what a gentleman might relate, and what a visitor concerned might even find gratification in seeing told. One example of interviewing may explain its character, uses, and vicissitudes, than further description. I retain the first paragraph of the following passage from the New York " Tribune," because it admits that at least I had paid the country in which I was a stranger the compliment of endeavoring to understand its public affairs : " Mr. Holyoake is remarkably well versed in American politics, and is as ardent a Republican as if he had lived all his life here, and had taken part in the great struggles against slavery and rebellion. The Democratic party he likens to the Tory party in England. It will take England, he says, a generation to make good the mischief the Tories have done during the seven years they have been in power, and he predicts a like misfortune if the party of reaction should be allowed to get possession of this Government. The other day, a re- cent convert from Republicanism to Democracy was defanding his AMONG THE AMERICANS. 6l change by arguing that the country would never be at peace until the South was fully reincorporated into the Union, and that that could only be done by giving it the responsibility of power in the Govern ment. Mr. Holyoake listened attentively to the argument, and re- plied : ' That is as if the crew of a good ship which had made a prosperous voyage and beaten oif a gang of pirates, should sa}', ' the only way to get on with these fellows is to invite them on board and ask them to run the vessel.' The first thing the pirates would dc on coming on board would be to cut the throats of the crew.' " Mr. Holyoake says Lord Beaconsfield has been filibustering in a shameful manner in Afghanistan and Africa. ' The average Eng- lishman was attached to the monarchy,' he said to a ' Tribune ' reporter the other day, while discussing this subject. ' We regarded the crown as a graceful ornament of the State, occupying the ambi- tion of the aristocracy, and quite harmless to the liberties of the peo- ple.' Now we discover this is false. ' When the English people killed Charles I. they did not kill the prerogatives of the crown. They only frightened his successors from using these prerogatives. Beaconsfield has shown us that treaties can be made, wars waged, and the country committed to any infamy, without parliament knowing anything about it. Beaconsfield iiattered the Queen with the title of Empress, jeopardizing the succession of her son. Gladstone served the crown faithfully, and made it respected. In return the Queen said to Beaconsfield that Gladstone was neither mentally nor morally fitted to govern, thus intimating that he was insane and dishonest — he, the truest, clearest-headed man in all England. If there were no other escape from an irresponsible government, I would drown the royal family in the Thames, yet no man has more respect for the Queen than I, and I have a much better opinion of the Prince of Wales than many have." One passage in this paragraph was erroneously rendered. As it includes an unfair charge against Lord Beaconsfield, which I would no more make abroad than I would at home, I wrote to the editor, saying: 62 AMONG THE AMERICANS. " Were it customary, I should desire to express my obligations to tlie ' Tribune ' reporter for the trouble he has taken to render in your impression of Monday, November lo, the general purport of the con- versations I had the pleasure to have with him. Yet, either from my habitual rapidity of speech on subjects which interest me, or from misplacement of some note, an error of statement occurs which it is my duty to ask your permission to correct. " It was not her Majesty the Queen who said to Lord Beaconsfield that ' Mr. Gladstone was not either mentally or morally iitted to govern.' It was Lord Beaconsfield who said this of the Queen. I well remember it was not long before his accession to power; and that the remark was the wonder of the week as to what he could mean by it. It was the remembrance of this which occasioned so much astonish- ment among all classes in England that her Majesty should pay a personal visit to one who had thus spoken of her. The English peo- ple, who have political gratitude, were jealous that her Majesty should accord a distinction to Lord Beaconsfield which she was not known to have paid to Mr. Gladstone — a real friend of the crown, and who had served the nation with splendid disinterestedness and tireless devotion. Besides, if such a remark as the one in question had been made by the Queen to Lord Beaconsfield, his lordship must be inferred to be the reporter of it. That is impossible; because a minister of the crown in England never reports words of the Queen without her permission. No one among us can conceive of the Queen as having made such a remark as that cited, of a minister so eminent as Mr. Gladstone. Indeed, the delicacy, womanly considera- tion, and graciousness of her Majesty's language, in whatever she is known to have said, is matter of household admiration in England. Indeed, the best Republicans I know have, as I have, a sort of rever- ence for the personal character of the Queen, and at the same time an increasing disbelief in the efficacy or usefulness of the political functions which the Queen has inherited. " It is our pride to keep these things quite distinct in England. Great as is my dislike of the rule of Lord Beaconsiield, greater is therefore the obligation upon me not to use any phrase which im- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 63 plies personal injustice to him. Doubtless he believes he is promoting the rightful interests of England ; but my difficulty in perceiving it is, I believe, incurable. ' A change of phrase or mistake in a term may lend an air of ferocity to your language which was never in your mind. When I wrote the above letter I had not observed that I was committed to " drowning the royal family in the Thames." It was the crown and iiot the " royal family " which I proposed conditionally to sink in the London Bos- phorus. There was no intention of desire to misrepresent anything I had said, and the explanation sent was promptly and prominently inserted in the " Tribune," in which the in- terview appeared. The singular speech about the queen was made by Mr. Disraeli at a Tory dinner at Aylesbury. The reporters were so astonished at it that they hesitated to transcribe it, and I have since been informed that one of them went to Mr. Disraeli and asked permission to read it to him, to be sure of its correctness. He assented to its accuracy. This statement of Lord Beaconsfield seemed, when read in America, quite astounding; and incredulity arose as to whether he really said it. It was thought that I was under some erroneous impression. When I returned to England I mentioned it to some " well-informed " politicians, who did not recollect having heard of it. It was not pleasant to leave it to be supposed that I had made abroad a statement that could not be verified at home. As looking up the newspapers of nine years ago involved some trouble, I mentioned the matter to a "better informed politician," who said the fact was recorded in Irving's "Annals of Our 64 AMOXG THE AMERICANS. Time." Lord Beaconsfield's speech was made thirteen days before the great fire of Chicago. To save me trouble my friend looked up the facts and sent me this information: The text of the speech, as reported in the " Standard " and the "Daily Telegraph " of September 27th, 1871, runs thus: " The health of the queen has for several years been the subject of anxiety to those about her I do not think we can conceal from ourselves that a still longer time must elapse before Her Majesty will be able to re- sume the performance of those public and active duties which it was once her pride and pleasure to fulfil. . . . The fact is that we can- not conceal from ourselves that Her Majesty is fhysically and morally incapacitated from performing those duties." The " Times " and the " Daily News " omit the words " and morally." Mr. Joseph Irving, in the Supplement to h's " Annals of Our Time," gives a paragraph that contains the phrase in full. The " Times " omitted the strange word " morally," prob- ably doubting that it could be said. The " Daily News " omitted it, probably believing it would be offensive to the Queen, as well it might be. Not long since Lord Sherbrooke, then the Rt. Hon. Robert Lowe, M. P., was required to make a public apology for a mere incidental reference to Her Majesty — a trifle compared to this outrage by Lord Beaconsfield. Had language such as he used been spoken by a political leader in America of the lady who is at the head of the State, our aristocratic journalists would have written very instructive comments on American political comments. In Washington the one inquiry of the interviewer of the " Daily Post " was, " How long would the Beaconsfield Government last?" They had learned in Washington AMONG THE AMERICANS. 65 from the English Jingo journals that the Tories believed that the nation was impatient to renew their lease of power. My answer was that the people did not look upon the Bea- consfield Government as English. The Zulu and Afghan invasions they regarded as the last wars of the Pentateuch, and that at the next election Mr. Gladstone would be pre- mier again if he chose. He was disliked by Tories, and by a minority of Liberals, for his sincerity — a quality new and unmanageable by politicians — but a great majority of the people absolutely revered him for that reason. These re- marks were published in the Washington " Daily Post," October 37, 1879, nearly six months before the fall of Lord Beaconsfield, and when very few persons believed its end was near. What is the state of Republican sentiment in England ? was another question of the interviewer. My reply was that we had always been told that the Premier was virtually King, and that as he was responsible to Parliament, we had a virtual Republic. But Lord Beaconsfield had discovered to us that there were sleeping powers of the Crown which might be ignited like a torpedo and blow up the virtual Re- public any morning — sleeping powers which any traitor or theorist who happened to be Premier could constitutionally advise the revival of. During his administration, therefore, he created fifty Republicans from conviction for one that existed before from sentiment. Our great political parties in England are as interesting to an American as theirs are to Englishmen. Being asked for definitions of political parties in England, my answer was this: The Conservatives keep from the people all they 66 AMONG THE AMERICANS. can ; the Liberals give all they think practicable : the Radi- cals demand all they think right. At Kansas City I had to give my opinion of Mr. Parnell, and Irish Home Rule, and to explain w^hether I thought him sincere. I answered that I knew no reason why he should not be, seeing that Home Rule in local affairs is not an unreasonable demand. The difficulty of giving up Ire- land entirely, was the belief that it would be handed over to the occupation of the French, as many of the leaders were spiteful to the English; and that would put England to the trouble of fighting both nations. For a long time past we had treated the Irish better than they would treat us if we were in their hands. We had relieved them from an Established Church, and given them a better land law than we -had ourselves. In England, now, we regarded Ireland as the Land of the Free, and thought of emigrating to it ourselves, instead of coming to America. Events since prove that Ireland is entitled to further and substantial improvement in her land laws, and will get it. But interviewing did not all turn on politics. Industrial, and especially co-operative questions were still more fre- quent. It was in this way, and by the ability' and generous trouble of interviewers, that the facts concerning co-opera- tion and its progress in England came to be, for the first time, generally diffused over the United States. I did not know then what Lord Beaconsfield had written in his " En- dymion," or it would have confirmed all and more than all I ventured to say of the future of the great movement. I mean where Lord Beaconsfield represents his new hero, "Endymion," as conversing with one of Mr. Cobden's AMONG THE AMERICANS. 67 workmen at his print works in Manchester, when the worlt- man said that there was something better tlian Free Trade, that would one day carry all before it, and that was " Co- operation." This is a very remarkable statement from so competent an observer of the advancing forces of society. The only time when I took advantage of the facilities of interviewing to say anything personal to myself was when I was asked concerning the writings of mine on Co-opera- tion. The questions and answers as they appeared were as follows . " Is your book on Co-operation to be had in this country? " " My first book, called the ' History of the Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale,' published In 1857, was brought out in this country by the ' Tribune.' I presume it is out of print now. It was said to have caused the establishment of over two hundred co-operative stores in England within two years after its appearance. With many other English authors of far more consequence than myself, I have pro- moted a law of international copyright; but I for one have something to say in favor of pirating. My 'History of Co-operation in England from 1812 to 1878' is published by Lippincott. It took me ten years to write it and cost £1,000 (|5,ooo), counting what I might have earned otherwise in the time, and the cost for printing it. I never expect to see my money again. Gain by it never entered my mind. Now if some enterprising American house will pirate it, I will gladly relinquish my copyright. Possibly I might gain repute, and certainly it might do good ; for the critics who said it was not instructive said it was amusing, and those who said it was not amusing said it was in- structive. If any one had written the history of the past sixty years of the working class after serfdom was abolished and hired service commenced, how the book would be valued now ! My calculation was that two hundred years hence, when co-operation has superseded hired labor by self-employment, some one will find my book in the 68 AMONG THE AMERICANS. British Museum and reprint it, as an utterly unknown work. A friendly pirate might cause the book to be read a little earlier." If these details have not wearied the reader, before reach- ing tlie end of them, he may see reason to share my opinion as to the propagandist uses of interviewing, and the gener- ous facilities of publicity it affords to strangers. CHAPTER V. MEN OF ACTION IN BOSTON. THERE are men of thought and action in most cities. They abound in New York, in Chicago, in Cincin- nati; but it is a different kind of thought from that which excites the interest of a stranger in Boston. In Bayard Taylor's translation of " Faust," the lines occur — When the crowd sways, unbelieving, Show the daring will that warms, He is crowned with all achieving Who perceives and then performs. But the merit of this discernment altogether depends upon the quality of the thought which is converted into social force. The people who perceive what is right and do not do it, are more numerous than is supposed. Next to the knaves, those philosophers are the most contemptible who, seeing the errors of the multitude, keep their wisdom to themselves. It is more respectable to be a fool than to have knowledge and be indifferent to the duty it imposes of gen- erously diffusing it, and raising the level of social and pub- lic life thereby. The only philosophers worth honoring are they who, like Petrarch, have a passion " for setting forth the law of their own minds, and employ their understand- 70 AMONG THE AMERICANS. ings and acquirements in that mode and direction in which they may most benefit the largest number possible of their fellow-creatures." The greatest of modern Italians, Mazzini, had a favorite phrase, " Thought and Action." In public affairs thought which does not imply action, or lead to it, or incite it and mean it, is not to be counted in the forces of opinion. The distinction of Boston is that its thought seems always meant for political or moral action. It is this purpose which, more than its general intellectual brightness, has given this city dignity and influence beyond that of any other in America. It led the war of independence; it led the war against sla- very. Its philosophers think, and even its minstrels sing, heroic ballads of improvement. Other cities carry palms of great achievements which make their names memorable, but Boston is a city of inspiration. If I had a personal object in visiting America, it was to meet Mr. Wendell Phillips, whose intrepid eloquence, con- fronting dangerous majorities, and animating forlorn hopes, has ever been generously, exerted on behalf of the slave, black or white, in bondage to planter or capitalist. As the only oration he had delivered against any one, out of his own land, was a reply to certain " Ion " letters of mine, in 1854, on "Methods of Anti-slavery Advocacy," I presented myself at his door, as his ancient and alien adversary; and the historic sights of Boston were made more memorable in my eyes, because they were shown me by him. Men who had heard Mr. Phillips and the most famous orators of Europe, regarded him as excelling in the mighty career of speech, which resembles the torrent rather than the volcano, AMONG THE AMERICANS. 71 in its inherent impetus and splendid rush. While I was in Boston, he was engaged by the Church of the Sacred Heart to deliver an oration on " Daniel O'Connell." I desired it to be communicated to the authorities concerned, that if they would arrange a time for the oration when I could be pres- ent, I would become a votary of the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately they did not attach sufficient im- portance to my adhesion, and it never fell to my lot to hear him. In many cities, from English as well as Americans among all classes, I was told that I " ought not to leave the country without hearing Phillips." This was never said to me of any other speaker. Stories I oft heard told of his perils and triumphs on the platform, exceed anything I know in the annals of oratory. One of his refartees has lately appeared in English papers. It occuiTed in the days when all the churches preached in favor of slavery. One day a minister met Mr. Phillips, and, thinking to be smart and unpleasant, said to him, " If your business is to promote the freedom of slaves, why do you not go South and attend to your busi- ness ? " '' May I ask what is your business ? " said Mr. Phillips. " Oh, my business is to preach the gospel, and save souls from hell." " Then, why do you not go to hell and attend to your business ? " was Mr. Phillips' answer ; and the point of the reply was that it was about as pleasant and quite as safe to go down South at that time pleading for slaves among planters, as visiting the Satanic kingdom would be ; and the preacher knew it. It may be said of Wendell Phillips as was said of Luther, " God honored him by making all the worst men his enemies." 72 AMONG THE AMERICANS. As my business in America was idleness, and tlie only exercise I intended to take was sleep — never having had a season of recreation before — I did not see half the men of mark I might have met in Boston. One morning, after taking me to Bunker's Hill, and repeating a passage from Webster's splendid oration there when the monument on it was completed, Mr. Phillips showed me the Auburn Cemetery, where I was surprised to see the tomb of Spurzheim, he said, " Hard by lives Mr. Longfellow, in an old English mansion, formerly occupied for a time by General Washington," and there I had the pleasure to converse for a short time with the poet, whose works are in many co-operative libraries, and whose poems of inspiration I had oft heard recited on their platforms. Longfellow's bearded and august face gives him the appear- ance now of a Jupiter of poetry. Mr. Lowell's house lies not far away among the trees of Cambridge, but he was in Europe then. We are all glad he is the American Minister in London now. The diffidence Mr. Phillips reproached me with of not visiting persons I wished to see without some colorable pre- text, was nearly fatal to my seeing Mr. Emerson. Several mornings Mr. Phillips went with me to the libraries and book stores, where Mr. Emerson was sure to be found when he came up to Boston from Concord, but without meeting with him. One day at the library, Mr. Phillips introduced me to a banker, saying, " This is my friend, Mr. Holyoake, from London. He has never said a word about it, but I suspect he is a believer in ' hard money,' which is the one virtue which you will have to save you." " Yes, I AMONG THE AMERICANS. 73 may escape by that," replied the banker, addressing me; "but your friend, Mr. Phillips, has so many virtues, which we all recognize, that his future is secure, despite his one sin of believing in ' paper currency.' " It came to pass that Mr. Stevens, of Cambridge, gave me a letter to Dr. Allcot, of Concord, asking him to take me to see Mr. Emerson. So, in company with my friend, Mr. Verity, formerly of Lancashire, I, not knowing the way, set out to Concord. The way thereto, and the place itself, were as bright as the historical associations of the town. If ever Concord made up its mind to be content, it would be in that pleasant spot where water and wood, spa- cious plains, quiet villas, and fairy roads abound. Mr. Emer- son's daughter being from home, the philosopher received us himself. Pictures and works of art, which it was good to look upon, were just numerous enough to be part of the household. Touching, like an enchanter, a panel, which was not noticeable, it slid away, and we entered the study, which no one could see without interest. Though tall, Mr. Emerson is still erect, and has the bright eye and calm grace of manner we knew when he was in England long years ago. In European eyes, his position among men of letters in America is as that of Carlyle among English writers ; with the added quality, as I think, of greater brave- ness of thought and clearness of sympathy. The impres- sion among many, to whom I spoke in America, I found to be that while Carlyle inspires you to do something, not clearly defined, when you have read Emerson you know what you have to do. However, Mr. Emerson would ad- mit nothing that would challenge the completer merits of 74 AMONG THE AMERICANS. his illustrious friend at Chelsea. He showed me the later and earlier portraits of Carlyle which he most cherished; made affectionate inquiries concerning him personally, and as to whether I knew of anything that had proceeded from his pen which he had not in his library. Friends had told me that age seemed now a little to impair Mr. Emerson's memory, but I found his recollection of England accurate and full of detail. A fine portrait of him, which Mr. Wen- dell Phillips presented to me, has been generally thought by those who have not seen Emerson to be a portrait of Mr. Gladstone, whom he certainly very much resembles now. Englishmen told me with pride that in the dark days of the war, when American audiences were indignant at England, Emerson would put in his lectures some generous passage concerning this country, and raising himself erect, pronounce it in a defiant tone, as though he threw the words at his audience. More than any other writer Emerson gives me the impression of one who sees facts alive and knows their ways and who writes nothing that is mean or poor. One morning there appeared in the New York " Tribune " the following paragraph : A day or two ago there met in State Street, Boston — on the spot -where the famous massacre took place— Mr. Wendell Phillips, Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, and the son of Mr. John Bright. Mr. Phil- lips, who was showing Mr. Holyoake the historic spots of Boston, had stopped his carriage there, when Mr. Bright came up with a friend. On being introduced to Mr. Phillips, a very cordial greeting took place. "I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Bright," Mr. Phillips said, " but I would rather meet your father." " My father is better worth meeting,'' modestly answered Mr. Bright. " I wish you could per- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 75 suade your father to visit us," said Mr. Phillips. " I am afraid he does not like, or fears the sea," was the reply, " We should be content if he would come and make us just one speech," added Mr. Phillips '• Ah," said Mr. Bright, " I think my father fears that more." Mr. Bright is taller than his illustrious father, but has his massiveness and force of carriage. The expression of his features is that of bis mother. In a speech he made a year ago in his native town, he dis- played quite his father's vigor and fire. Mr. Phillips asked me afterwards who wrote the para- graph, saying he did not. Mr. Bright, he said, plainly did not, nor did his friend. I answered that being a stranger in America, I could not he expected to be able to throw light upon the ways of their native journalism so soon. One thing the writer might have added which struck me at the time. I observed that Mr. Phillips stood with his hat off all the time of the conversation. Not Mr. Evarts' message to Mr. Bright from the American people, gave me a deeper sense of the sincerity of the regard felt for him, than this fine act of courtesy in a man so eminent as Mr. Phillips, a man of noble presence and Roman head standing uncovered in a public square, expressing thereby his respect for young Mr. Bright, for his own and his father's sake. The man and the act were national. Parker House, Boston, which Dickens thought in his day the most comfortable he found in the States, is frequented by English visitors still. An improved " elevator " put up here, was talked of when I was in the city, and I wished to try it. Luckily I was absent when it was first tested, as it came down with some adventurous reporters in it, who were battered and bruised as much as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were on the night on which they slept at the inn- 76 AMONG THE AMERICANS. keeper's, after the affair with the Yangusians. Had I been in the Parker House that day, I should certainly have shared in that peremptory descent. This reminds me that, when at Kansas City, I desired to enter a sugar bakery there, partly to see if I could learn anything to the advantage of the co-operative manager of the Crumpsall Works at home, and partly to escape from the heat of the sun, the ovens of the bakery being cool compared with the street that day. However, being in- vited to take a drive through a suburban road, bearing then, or formerly, the pleasant name of " Murderer's Lane," where, I was assured, some one had been assassinated at every twenty-five yards, I went, and before I returned next day the sugar bakery had fallen down, burying five per- sons, including visitors, in its ruins. But it is not my intention to relate either curious escapes ■which occur to all who travel, nor yet the adventures into which the disability of blindness inevitably leads. They are not amusing — they are not even credible to those who see. So little are men sensible of the blessing of sight — which is a blessing because a protection — that they have an ignorant, not to say brutal, incredulity of the dangers which pursue the unseeing. Such a one, crossing a street, flees from a sound of wheels far off, and runs under noiseless wheels near. I have seen Lord Palmerston, at seventy-six, cheerily evade the cabs of Palace-yard where a youth with dim sight had surely been run down. You go in a cab by night — a collision occurs. He who can see, opens the door and leaps out, and takes another when the one he was in is AMONG THE AMERICANS. 77 smashed up, while he who cannot see must sit there, since the danger of moving is the same as that of remaining. A person with half-sight takes the mist or the shadow in the roadway at night to be real vehicles, and has to stand still until help comes, although there is nothing in the way. When living on the Marine Parade at Brighton, if I returned home after dark I would creep by the houses, or railings, or walls, until I arrived at the terrace where I dwelt. Only a narrow roadway lay between me and the door. Listening along the ground to be sure that no foot- steps or wheel was in motion, I would dart across the road. Immediately a cab was upon me; it seemed as though it started from the ground. The fact was, the cabmen were lying still, and seeing me suddenly in the road, moved for- ward, believing I wanted one. Thus the most commonplace incident to those who can see, becomes a terror to those who cannot. When I count my beads I never forget a prayer for the wise oculist who saves lives by his skill. In America and in Canada, I had watchful friends near me to whom I owed my safety. Of what occurred at other times I relate no more, as it could only interest the few who are exposed to like peril. Only one thing I shall say, that the blindness has taught me, as nothing else ever did, how much w^e are under the dominion of the senses where we least expect it. To this hour I cannot believe in the dark that any persons can see me, because I cannot perceive them. Though my reason tells me the contrary, I cannot shake off the im- pression. I know a statesman who incurred years of dislike and contempt from persons who had served him, and whom he ']S AMONG THE AMERICANS. passed on public occasions as though he disowned them. I shared the feeling of dislike myself. I, years afterwards, discovered that he was simply near-sighted, and never saw those whom he was thought to shun. Alas! what friend- ships are severed by mere misconception or ignorance as to the conditions under which others live and move and have their being. On the other hand, I never felt myself so deep a sense of the kindness of unknown people in every condi- tion of life as when I found that I never made an appeal in any land to a gentleman or lady, to crossing sweeper or cab- man, to boy or girl, to thief or harlot, or any one I took to be a ruffian, to take me across a thoroughfare in the dark who did not do it in the promptest and kindest manner. The Mayor of Boston, with what I thought very great courtesy, volunteered to give me a day to drive me about the city, when I should have seen many places which I hope at another time to visit; but the men who make the value of Boston interested me mainly then. One day Mr. Phillips took me to see General Butler — who appeared to me to reside everywhere — who had a great deal to tell relating to the industrial relations of the people. The burly and animated General, of wayward reputation, took his seat upon a stool in his office, and told me things of great interest for the space of an hour. On leaving, a friend asked me " what I said to General Butler." I an- swered, " You ought to ask me what he said to me; I never had the opportunity of saying a word." The person to ■whom I spoke laughed, as though he thought he ought to have foreseen that. AMONG THE AMERICANS. >]€) I had a desire to see Dr. O. Wendell Holmes, who has delighted us so long in England by his charming stories. Besides being a physician, he is a man of genius and vi-s'acity. On attaining his seventieth year a dinner of con- gratulation was given him at Boston. He made his ac- knowledgments in a series of verses, which proved to be a new and graceful version of " Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man." Of com-se the verses had touches of tenderness and fancy, which are never absent from Dr. Holmes' poetry. All his resources of physiological knowledge, as a physi- cian, were brought into requisition in describing the tremors, discomforts, and bending feebleness of threescore years and ten. Admirers of Dr. Holmes in England, know with what agitation and sympathy they read of what they must have thought the last appearance in this world of the pathetic and venerable poet. Being with a friend who met Dr. Holmes in the street, I put an anxious question to him as to the appearance and condition of that sorrowful songster, when the welcome assurance was given that he was perfectly upright, and as lithe and active a gentleman as one would wish to meet ; and there is no doubt that the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " will be found diffusing wisdom and laughter from his morning chair for many years to come. The doctor's seventieth birthday verses certainly show that the spirit of poesy is as strong in him as ever, and that the description of his own feebleness was a part of his art, employed to heighten the sentiment of his verse, and as a contrast between his burthen of pitiful words, and his own radiancy of health and song. It is true that the people of America do not, as a rule, live as long as people in England, So AJION'G THE AMERICANS. but that is owing to causes quite within their control. They have pursuits wliich interest them more tlian longevity. Among the pleasant Sundays in Boston was one I spent with Colonel T. W. Higginson, who took me to the house of a lady at Cambridge, where a large number of guests assembled to hear the hostess read a paper on " An Ancient French Poet." I never understood till then what I had heard Mr. Moncure Conway say, that Colonel Higginson, besides being a man of letters, excelled as an interpreter of an assembly. At intervals, when deference, or delicacy, or inaptness of thought, caused vacuity in the criticisms of those present, he spoke as though the occasion was created for him. I thought of what he says of his hero in his novel of " Malbone " : " Manhood is never commonplace, and he was a person to whom one could anchor. When he came into the room, you felt as if a good many people had been added to the company." In Boston I met the Hon. Josiah Quincy, whose name we are now familiar with in England as that of a real advocate of co-operation, and under whose influence a co-operative store has been established in Boston. While I was there a statue of his father was erected before the State House in the city — the Quincys being a family of historic celebrity in those parts. A meeting being held of a great building so- ciety on the Philadelphian plan, which Mr. Quincy had in- troduced into Boston, he being chairman, asked me to speak to the assembly on co-operation. It was my first speech on the subject in America. The place was the Stacy Hall. The platform was the one from which Lloyd Garrison had been dragged to be hanged, in the evil anti-slavery days. AMONG THE AMERICANS, SI The door is built up now through which he was taken, but I could see it from the platform where I stood. To save Garrison, the Mayor ordered him to be taken to jail, and Mr. Quincy, being on the spot in his carriage, took Garri- son into it and conveyed him to prison. Garrison's clothes were nearly torn from his body, and the rope was put around his neck ready to hang him. In stature and features Mr. Quincy resembles very much George Thompson, the English anti-slavery advocate, whom we all knew. Afterwards, I delivered my first American lecture on co- operation in that room. Nobody asked me : it was done of my own wilfulness. If the story of co-operation was to be told in America for the first time by an Englishman, who was at the beginning of it, I preferred telling it in Stacy Hall. When I saw some persons present, besides Mr. Quincy, who presided, I was astonished, and by that time I understood the rage and enthusiasm of the old slave owners, who climbed up those narrow and never-ending stairs in search of Mr. Garrison. Had I been he, I should have thought myself perfectly safe at that inaccessible ele- vation. It will be long before I forget the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Theodore Parker, the wife of the great preacher. I had not before met in America so bright and gentle a lady. She showed me her husband's study, with everything as he last sat in it and the last entry he made in his diary in Flor- ence, where he died. From his writing-room window, in the house where he lived when he preached his famous ser- mons, he could see the room where Lloyd Garrison set up his anti-slavery press. The room where — S2 AMONG THE AMERICANS. Unfriended and unseen Toiled o'er his types a poor unlearned young man ; The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean. Yet there the freedom of a race began. After Theodore Parker's death his biographer found let- ters of mine addressed to him some years before the slave war broke out, in which I had apologized to him for having objected to the vehemence of his language against slave- holders, as I knew that he intended war. As Mr. Parker was not known to entertain at that time the idea of war, his biographer wished to see what reply he made to me. He had not written to me that such was his intention. The language he employed I foresaw must lead to war. I con- cluded that he intended it, and on that ground regarded his language as consistent with that end and no longer to be questioned. The Rev. Francis Ellingwood Abbott, the editor of the " Index," interested me greatly. He displayed great ca- pacity, and a Puritan force and pride in the integrity of the principles he represented. I know no one in England who has his fine enthusiasm for liberal and religious progress. As he was the leader in a contest with great forces opposed to him, I knew, through him, other persons whose conver- sation gave me the impression that higher thought and ac- tion are still characteristics of Boston. In that insurgent city I met the most animated little clergy- man I ever knew, the Rev. Photius Fisk, formerly a chap- lain in the American navy, and a generous friend of slaves, who puts up monuments to those who suffered for them. One was to Captain Jonathan Walker, of the Branded AMONG THE AMERICANS. 83 Hand. He had helped some slaves to escape. Heavy chains were riveted upon him, his cell was without bed or table : a slave had cut his throat to avoid a tvorse death, and Captain Walker had to sleep on the bloody floor. His sen- tence was twelve months' imprisonment for each of the seven slaves he had tried to free. His hands were branded with a double S, made red hot. One blacksmith refused to make it; another, who made it, refused his forge to heat it. In Missouri three men were sentenced to twelve years' im- prisonment each for the same oflFences. Photius Fisk was a brave chaplain, who would bury them when none others would and put up monuments to their memories. I never knew what paternal slavery was so vividly as when I heard him describe it. The Rev. Charles Tory, a Congregational minister, died in his cell in the same cause. His beautiful wife prayed that he might be liberated to die. His dead body was sent to her. Salem, where they hanged the witches, is not far from Boston, and is the prettiest town of verdure and water which superstition ever made terrible. Dr. Oliver took me down to see his father. General Oliver, who was Mayor of Salem, and who showed me the witch houses, in which the rooms are still unchanged, where the poor creatures were brought in for trial. There is preserved in Salem the first church built by Puritans. It is a small wooden structure, which might hold one hundred people. It has a gallery without any entrance or staircase to it. How the active Puritan Fathers climbed into it does not appear. The mount where they hanged the poor witches is being encir- cled now with streets and houses ; but the spot itself should 84 AMONG THE AMERICANS. be preserved as atonement ground. It is impossible to con- ceive that any human being could sleep on that melancholy mound. General R. K. Oliver was a name I had known in Eng- land in connection with questions of international industry. The social wisdom of his conversation, now that I had the pleasure to be his guest, impressed me very distinctly. He explained to me that when he had charge of the Bureau of Labor of Massachusetts, he counselled workmen to provide themselves with competence in declining years, defining " competence " as that sum which, if invested in days of health and work, would procure an income at a given age, equal to their average income, and sufficient to maintain them in the station in which they have moved. This is what I mean by wise talk — conversation which moves steadily to new issues, and in which material terms are ren- dered definite. " Competence " is a term on many tongues. General Oliver was the first person whom I heard define it as he used it. Two letters which I addressed to the public papers in Boston I venture to cite, because the misconception which could arise in so intelligent a city may arise elsewhere. One was upon the " Rights of Minorities and the limits of Tol- eration." It appeared in the Boston " Herald " as follows : In the report you did me the honor to make of my address at the Parker Memorial, on Sunday last, occur the words " Lord John Rus- sell has declared that the minority has no rights." No doubt the fault was my own, not speaking distinctly at that point. What I intended to convey was a meaning the very opposite of this. I said we were all grateful to Lord John for being the first nobleman of AMOXG THE AMERICANS. 83 influence to maintain that the minority had rights. Earl Russell ■well knew that I was one who did him honor for his action in this matter, and I would not like that Lady Russell, who takes interest in public affairs as her illustrious husband did, should read those words and suppose that I had forgotten the obligations we were all under to Earl Russell in this matter — obligations which I had personally acknowledged during his lifetime. I see it stated in your journal that " Mr. Holyoake would have obscene books treated with contemptuous toleration." On the contrary, I maintained the right and duty of the State to suppress them, whereas (as respects books of opinion, occupy- ing the borderland between science and repulsiveness, which the imbecility of their authors has so confused that an equal fanaticism grows up to suppress them and maintain them), the Lord Chief Justice of England lately declared that such publications were best left alone, as prosecution increased their noisomeness. I defined as contemptuous toleration, non-interference with these polecat opinions, which was justifiable only as the lesser of the two evils. For myself I regard the authors of these questionable books, whatever inay be their intentions, as the traitors of free thought, who obscure what should be kept jealously clear — the line of demarcation between liberty and license. The other letter was upon " Useful and Useless Truth." It appeared in the Boston " Transcript," saying : In the comment you made upon an expression I am supposed to have used in my address at the Parker Memorial, on Sunday, you express wonder at its purport. I do not wonder that you wonder at it. You regard me as saying that one of the nuisances of the plat- form was a inan who spoke from belief in the truth of what he was saj'ing. Of course a man ought to have belief in the truth of what he says. What I pointed out was that he ought to have more. He ought to have knowledge of the truth ; what he speaks ought to be well ascertained truth — vital truth — relevant truth. It ought to be as Grote used to express it — " reasoned truth." There is important 86 AMONG THE AMERICANS. truth and unimportant truth ; there is wise truth and silly truth ; there is truth relevant to the question at issue, and a foolish truth relative to nothing. What I said was, that persons were nuisances of the platform who did not know this, and who thought that their honest but crude impression of truth was a sufficient justification of public speech. CHAPTER VI. CITY OF HOLYOKE — DISCOURSES. MY visiting the City of Holyoke was quite accidental. I was unaware there was a city of that name till I rode through it on my way to Florence with my friend Mr. Seth Hunt, the treasurer of the Connecticut City Railroad, ■whose offices in Springfield were in the building in which John Brown was in business, some years before the affair at Harper's Ferry for which he was hanged. Springfield is as pretty as its name. There was a company in the city which proposed to supply all the houses with heat — to lay on warm air just as we lay on gas and water in Great Brit- ain. I sent word to them to come over and warm Eng- land. They would establish depots of warm air in Bir- mingham, or other midland towns in our country, and make all our cities comfortable for a consideration. They have perfected" the art of house comfort in America to a degree to which we are strangers. They not only warm the rail- way cars in America, they warm the railway depots. In Philadelphia I found a great railway hall, where hundreds of people could wait for cars, -warm in every part, even when the great doors were open. At a junction station in Canada, where I arrived once at midnight, every room I SS AMONG THE AMERICANS, entered was warm. All about it people could lie down ai;d sleep in comfort. On returning to England I experienced more discomfort from cold in a midday journey from Liver- pool to London, than I encountered day or night in the re- motest parts I wandered into in America and Canada, dur- ing months of travel. Holyoke stands on the banks of the Connecticut River. It is a young city, which grows faster than Jonah's gourd. My invitation to deliver the first lecture on co-operation in it came from some citizens; but the arrangements were finally made by countrymen of my own, Mr. Goodenough and others; but the mayor, who is owner of the theatre, as- sured me he would have given it free for the lecture had it not been engaged that night. The city stands in sight of Mount Holyoke, which over- looks the splendid and fertile valleys through which the silver snake-like river winds 400 miles. The early Puritans who had the sagacity to settle there, had like the old monks at home, a fine eye for settlements of profitable beauty. Moses saw not a finer sight from Pisgar, than Elizur Hol- yoke from the mount from which he looked. Being told that probably the town was named after some ancestor of mine I said if that was so I should be glad to collect the rents, as I had never been that way before. The variation in our names I said might be accounted for. The early settler, whose name the mountain and town bear, probably lost the " a " out of his name in the long voyage over the Atlantic in those days, or had it shot by the Indi- ans when he arrived. My branch of the family was plainly Druidical, as the name implies, and as the pedigree might AMONG THE AMERICANS. 89 show — had it been preserved. The American brancli may have been plionetic in taste, and liave eliminated the "a" on principle. Edw^ard, the son of Elizur Holyoke, became president of the Harvard University, He was born in 1689, and died in 1769, living eighty years. His son, Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, who was born in 173S, lived until 1829. He began to practice medicine at Salem in 1749, continuing in that profession more than seventy years. He was an acute and learned physician and a good surgeon. He performed a surgical operation at the age of ninetj'-two. Even after he had attained his hun- dredth year, he was interested in the investigation of medi- cal subjects, and wrote letters which show that his under- standing was still clear and strong. On his hundredth birth- day about fifty of his medical brethren of Boston and Salem gave him a public dinner, when he appeared at the table with a firm step, smoked his pipe, and proposed a charac- teristic toast to the assembly. It is clear that the climate did not kill these early settlers prematurely in those days, or it was not so vicious then as it is supposed to be now. In the old church at the foot of Mount Holyoke one of the regicides of Charles the First's time was buried. He was sheltered by the clergyman, an old college friend of his in England. He remained concealed in the rectory. The country being then held by the English, it was unsafe for him to go abroad, and his existence was unknown in the village. One day, when everybody was at church, the old military King-killer, looking out from his eyrie, espied In- dians advancing at some distant point, with a view to attack the settlement. He seized his sword, ran down, mounted a go AMONG THE AMERICANS. horse, rode right away to the church, rushed in, and an- nounced to the congregation their danger. Worshippers in those days went arnned to cliurch. The old hero remounted his horse and marshalled the plan of defence not a moment too soon, for the Indians were upon them. His white hair and beard streaming in the wind, he fought in the front. The moment victory was secured he rode straight away — only the clergyman knew where. As he had never been seen before, and was never seen afterwards, the honest wor- shippers deemed him a prophet sent by the Lord for their deliverance. There are many good miracles of earlier days not so well attested as this. I relate the tradition as I heard it on the banks of the Connecticut River. The first time I spoke to a congregation was at the Free Church, Florence, Massachusetts. It was delivered in the Cosmian Hall, a pretty name coined out of the word Cosmos. The student of the order of nature in England would be called a Cosmist — ^Cosmian is a much more euphonious derivation. The hall is very large, and the most imposing in the city. It stands on a plain at the lower end of Florence. The Cosmian Hall having bells, and the Wesleyan Chapel not having any, the Cosmian bells ring for the Wesleyan woi^shippers. I was asked in the morning to meet the teachers of the Sunday School, and make a lit- tle speech to them. Afterwards I was asked to attend the Sunday Schools and make another speech to the pupils. This constantly occuned to me in other churches; the ob- ject was to enable the children to hear and see the stranger who had come amongst them. In the afternoon, I addressed a congregation in the large and handsome hall devoted to AMONG THE AMKRICAJJS. 9 1 that purpose. At inght, I met for the fourth time an as- sembly which was considered a reception, in one of the rooms of the hall where, for two hours, w« talked over the practical and ethical side of co-<^eration, about which many intelligent inquiries were made. Americans are merdfid critics. They judge that a stranger does not know all at once where he is, in that spa- dotts and unaccustomed country, and pardon unattached ideas in his speech. My eyes and my mind alike -wandered in my speeches that day. Mr. Charlton had come down more than 1,000 miles to meet me at Springfield, to hear me lec- ture, as he said, once again. Notice of his arrival lay at a depot, which was not communicated to me until I had left for Florence, where, howe^^r, he would also come. Every knock at Mr. HilFs door (the house of my iKtst) I w^ent out to answer; on e\-ery tramcar stopjang before it I Ustened for the creaking of the gate; e\-eTy carriage driving to the Cos- mian Hall on Sunday reawakened my expectation; even- tall stranger who entered the church while I was speaking attracted my attention. It w^as thirty years since we had met, and I knew not into Avhat form and appearance America had converted my former Tyneade liriend in that time. After arriving at Springfield he was snnunoned to a railwav convioiticm at Chicago, -which I could not know. It was some weeks later, and hundreds of miles away, before w« met. OiM night I was feeling my way in alarm amid walls of railway carriages at Rochester, neither knowing where I was going nor how to return, w^hen a lofiy figure accosted me in tones which I knew again. A confluence of trains fcad arrived that hoar, and my fiiend had h^ my 92 AMONG THE AMERICANS. name proclaimed in each, but as no such creature had ever been heard of in those 23arts, no response could be had, un- til I was discovered in the railway ravine through which the last passengers must pass. The verdant gaiety of Florence still lingers in my inemory no less than the hospitality accorded me there. The negligence of scenery in the city charmed me. In England Nature has its hair in curl papers. In America its locks wave wild. It was, I believe, in Florence where I first entered an American school house. It had broad floors and bay windows, from which the children could see the beauty of the scenery around them. The teachers to whom I spoke expressed astonishment at hearing that in England we built dead walls round our gardens lest the passers by should see the verdure, and built them round even little children's schools lest they should see from their playg"round a flower-girl pass, or a green thing on a market gardener's barrow. I visited Mr. Seth Hunt at his house, where he entertained George Thompson under shadow^ of the Holyoke Moun- tains, in the evil days of the anti-slavery cause when his life was in peril. It was not far from Mr. Hunt's house to where the Rev. Jonathan Edwards dwelt. In a spot of wondrous calmness and beauty in those days, with wood, river, and mountain before him, he fabricated the iron-bound doctrines which have cast a halo of horror round his name, and makes the stranger tread the streets for the flrst time with terror. The Rev. Mr. Haynes of Providence invited me to speak in his church. My subject there was " Unregarded Aspects AMONG THE AMERICANS. 93 of Human Nature." In the evening there met at the house of Mr. Frost, a member of the church, whose guest I was, a considerable number of the congregation, to whom I was requested to explain the character and proceedings of our co-operative societies. In America, they seem to number the churches as they do the streets. The Memorial Hall, in Boston, where I spoke twice, bore the name of the 28tli or 3Sth Congrega- tional Church. Some Churches are called Free Churches, to denote, as I understood, that in America, even Churches, free nowhere else, may be free there. In Florence, in Bos- ton, in Providence, in Chicago, in Cincinnati, the piety of the worshippers, was simple, manly, and fearless. They did not, as we do in England, pay any attention to what people thought of them. There was a sense of reverence, truth, conscience, and duty. They thought that saints were more wholesome when clean, more acceptable to Heaven when intelligent, more happy for being free, and their hopes hereafter were strong in proportion to their efforts to pro- mote human welfare here. In no instance was I asked what I should say. At no time was any condition suggested even as to the form of service I should adopt. They did me the honor to believe that it was impossible that I could abuse their trust by speaking on controversial points, while the whole field of secular morality lay before me, upon which, if any new light can be thrown, it is the interest of every Church to know it. The singular thing was, that believing that co-operation had some moral and therefore religious element in it, they were wishful to hear of that. CHAPTER VII. WANDERING IN FIVE GREAT CITIES. AWAKENING one night in a railway car, and looking through my bed window and thinking the scenery rather stationary, I learned that we were on the Alleghanv Mountains, and that the train had got off 'he track. As I promised at home not to take this route, I betook myself to sleep again, not wishing to be killed awake in violation of my compact. The next evening, while gazing at Harper's Ferry in the moonlight, which had great interest for me, I heard my name called out in the car, which — since I had seen no one for nearly two days that I knew — surprised me. It was a telegram from Colonel Ingersoll, apprising me I should be five hours late at Washington, and that on arriv- ing there I should find his carriage and two colored servants at the station, who would wait until I came, and take me to his house in Lafayette Square. How he should find out where I was, and how late I should be, which I did not know myself, excited my curiosity as much as this thought- fulness gave me pleasure. He had sent me a letter telling me I was not to leave America until I had seen some of the famous politicians of Washington, and that if I would come and stay with him, he and Mrs. Ingersoll would make me 96 AMONG THE AMERICANS. " real happy," all of which came true. It was midnight when I reached Washington, where I found the carriage and the pleasant Ethiopian attendants of whom I had re- ceived information five hours before. That was a pleasant day when I went down the sleepy Potomac to visit Mount Vernon, the former home of Gen- eral Washington. On the one end is dreamy, quiet Mary- land; on the other lies the rival coast of bright Virginia. Mount Vernon was utterly unlike what I expected. Near the entrance of the Washington Estate is the tomb of the great, crownless king. Beyond, is a modest, picturesque countiy house, with various quaint structures, built of Eng- lish brick, standing on an elevated plateau, commanding many views of the winding Potomac and open views of country. The cosy, pleasant rooms where the General lived, the chamber where he died, the chamber where Gen- eral Lafayette slept, remained as they were in their days. In one of the kitchens where the repasts were cooked for the General's guests he used to give a dinner to his slaves on Christmas Day, and their feasting lasted as long into the night as their log fire took to burn out. The artful slaves had an ingenious device for prolonging the time of their entertainment. They provided a solid chunk of wood for the Christmas log, and put it to soak in water a week or two before the festive day, so that it took unknown hours to burn out, during which time they were their own mas- ters. No doubt they kept it pretty damp when it gave signs of burning out too soon. At the death of the General, Mrs. Washington went into the uppermost rooms of the house, and there she lived until her death. There is still AMONG THE AMERICANS. 97 the aperture in the lower part of the door which she had cut for her favorite cats to pass through. Tlie custodian, who showed us the rooms, said he was sorry he could not show us the cats. The pleasantry was not said for the first time ; but it was said so well, and so freshly spoken, as were all the descriptions he gave us, that they seemed made new for the occasion. A light, well-built gateway, through which Washington used to drive as he entered his farm, needed some years ago to be replaced, and a few boys in Wisconsin collected money for the purpose, and brought it all the waj' themselves. One of them, I remember, was named Merrill. They ex- hibited the greatest delight on beholding the new gateway, when erected. Their names ought to be written on the lintel in honor of their bright and auspicious enthusiasm. Lineal Americans are mostly as quick as four- eyed people, and seem to see at the back of their heads. We are apt to think ourselves railroad driven, they regard us as very de- liberate in business; but their activity, like their morals and religions, is a good deal geographical. Washington seems to be a lotus land. I went into one of the coiffeur rooms of an hotel to have my hair cut. It was growing long, and I was afraid of being mistaken for a poet, which, unless you happen to be the real thing, leads to social difficulties at edi- torial offices which it is always my custom to frequent. The sun was shining brightly in mid-afternoon when I entered the hair-dresser's hall. By the time I emerged, the shades of evening were setting in. Delilah was not half so long, in her wanton treachery, in cutting off Sampson's locks as the Washington haii^-cutter was in shearing mine. In New 98 AMONG THE AMERICANS. York they had cut my head off in less time. The Wash- ington operator seemed, like Gerard Dhow when he painted a brush, to work upon a single hair at a time. Now and then he went away to drink ice water to refresh his minute energies. When at length I returned home, Mrs. Ingersoll told me that the silk mercers sold ribbons at the same rate, and that it sometimes required a morning to buy a yard. All this is very pleasant when you give your mind to it. Washington is the lotus land of business. Shaving cer- tainly is a fine art in America. I wondered at first how so rapid a people contrived to lie so still upon the barber's cushion so long a time, in the Northern hotels where I watched them. The reason I discovered to be that Amer- ican shaving is as pleasant as a Turkish bath. I spent time, which seemed far too short, with the Sover- eigns of Industry. At the request of their district council, made at the suggestion of General Mussey and Major Ford, I spoke one night in a very handsome hall upon the " Eng- lish Features of Co-operation," and met many distinguished oersons. My visit to the White House, where I saw the President, Mrs. Hayes, and General Sherman, I have related elsewhere.* The Museum of Patents, of Education, and many other places had features of interest, which I should describe had I found opportunity of making myself sure concerning them. Washington is full of wonders. General Eaton, who, if I remember rightly, is at the head of the museum, showed me treasures of instruction. I thought that if he was at South Kensington he would find some * In the "Nineteenth Century." AMONG THE AMERICANS. 99 means of recovering those earlier relics of educational appa- ratus which lie at New Lanark. The story of their condi- tion, George Eliot told me, in the last letter she wrote to me, had to her mind " a tragic impressiveness." Mr. George W. Child (everybody in America seems to have three names; the first and last, as I think I have ob- served before, are always put in full; the second is repre- sented by its initial letter only) I saw but for a short time, and was surprised to find him young and fresh looking. His chief office in the " Ledger " buildings presented features of substantial grace and of European art which refreshed the eye to see. What was to me proof of yet nobler taste was that lofty ceilings, spacious rooms, light, air, and baths were provided for the work-people; that he had omitted to re- duce the printers' wages when their own union had sanc- tioned it. Two weeks' vacation are allowed, and the full wages paid in advance, and a liberal present of money made besides. On Christmas Day, also, every man, woman, and boy receives a further present. Our co-operative stores and manufacturing societies do not do better than this. This was done by one who, as a Baltimore boy at fourteen, got himself a place in a book store, beginning life in that self-reliant way. It is rarely that workmen who have be- come masters themselves treat their own workmen in the spirit of gentlemen. When Mr. Child bought the "Ledger" of Philadelphia he excluded from its columns all reports which could not be read in a family, or that poison and inflame the passions of young men, and all scandal, slang, and immoral advertise- ments. He doubled the price of the paper, and increased lOO AMONG THE AMERTr A.KS. the rates of advertising. The paper was at a low ebb when he took it; it sank lower now. His friends warned him that this would never do; that popularity meant sensation; that common people would not buy common sense, nor would advertisers prefer a journal of good taste. Nevertheless, Mr, Child went on. He engaged good writers, paid good wages, and made a great paying paper. People in Eng- land would not expect this could be done in America. 1 know nothing in journalism more honorable than Mr. Child's sagacity and courage herein, or to the good sense of the people of Philadelphia who gave their support to this unwonted and unexpected enterprise. In that city the co-operators were to make arrangements for my lecture, but it fell to my unfailing friends, Mr. Worsley and Mr. T. Stevenson (both formerly of England) to do it. As I wished to go to Reading, in Pennsylvania, the directors of the railway offered me a special engine to take me there, and gave me introductions in Reading, to secure me seeing objects of interest. I said I intended to stay all night, my object being to be present at one of Col. Ingersoll's lectures before my return. The answer was: " The engine shall stay for you and bring you back next day." If I could recall it, I should mention the name of a Philadelphia gentleman, who, quite unknown to me pre- viously, showed me costly courtesies, who appeared to know everybody, who introduced me to the Mayor, and took me to see the famous halls where the historic relics of American liberty are deposited, and where the Declaration of Independence was signed. In one of them I saw an oil painting of Thomas Payne. How it came there, or why it AMONG THE AMERICANS, lOI remained there, nobody knew. It was more intellectual than Romney's poilrait of him, which we cherish in Eng- land. It was the only State memorial of the great Eng- lishman I saw in America. While at Philadelphia I paid a visit to the Maple Spring Hotel of Wissahickon, occupied until his death by Joseph Smith, the " sheepmaker," described in my " History of Co- operation," and who died a few days after having had read to him (to his great satisfaction, as I was glad to learn) my account of his career in England. Mrs. Smith and her family still occupy the hotel. It was midnight when I en- tered it. Though anxious to see his museum it was not un- til next morning that I cared to do it. The objects in it were carved by his own hand, ovit of laurel roots, which abound on the banks of the sparkling Wissahickon, before which his hotel stands. In 1839 I saw the Social Hall he built at Salford, which showed conventional prettiness in the use of colored glass, and I believed Mr. Smith had no orig- inality, except that of humorous audacity on the platform. I expected to find his museum common-place and preten- tious. Whereas, I found the various rooms bearing the ap- pearance of a forest of ingenuity, which a day's study would not exhaust. There was nothing tricky about it. Its objects wei'e as unexpected as the scenes in the Garden of Eden must have been to Adam. Noah's ark never con- tained such creatures. Dore never produced a wandering Jew so weird as the laurel Hebrew who strode through these mimic woods. Scenes from the Old Testament, groups of American orators, statesmen, and railway directors started up in the strange underwood, or held forth in the I03 AMONG THE AMERICANS. branches of trees. Dr. Darwin would require a new theory of evolution to account for the wonderful creatures — beasts, birds, and insects — which confront you everywhere. An American Dante, if there be such a one, might find ample material for a new poem in this wooden inferno. The mind of man never conceived such grotesque creatures before; yet this was the work of an old agitator, executed between his seventieth and eightieth year, with no material but roots of trees, with no instrument but his pocket-knife and a pot of paint, and no resource but his marvellous im- agination. There were snakes that would fill you with ter- ror; stump orators that would convulse you with laughter. His Satanic Majesty strode on horseback; Mi's. Beelzebub is the quaintest old lady conceivable. The foreign devils all had a special individuality. There was the Moham- medan devil, the Indian devil practicing the Grecian bend, the Russian devil eating a broiled Turk, the Irish devil bound tor Donnybrook fair, the French devil practicing a polka, the Dutch devil calling for more beer, the Chinese devil delivering a Fourth of July oration. I observed no American devil — let us hope they have not one. Mr. Smith's description of his creations endowed every creature with living attributes. He illustrated his favorite doctrine of man being the creature of circumstances, by saying it was coming to live in the Schuylkill County which first de- veloped in him the latent, slumbering organ of Rootology. The Wissahickon Museum was the most original thing- I saw in America. I never felt so much the value of a man of energy, as when I missed his animated face as I entered the spacious Hall of St. George to speak, and saw it scarcely AMONG THE AMERICANS. I03 half full. Had he been living he would have had it crowded. He had the contagious enthusiasm of a hundred men in him. It w^as the Hall of the Sons of St. George, a powerful as- sociation, composed, I understand, wholly or mainly of Eng- lishmen, having lodges after the manner of the Odd Fel- lows. Their hall is the handsomest I spoke in in America. A fine, full-length painting of the Queen of England hangs in the centre of the platform. Philadelphia is enviable for many things, and especially for having two mighty rivers running through it — the Delaware and the Schuylkill. No wonder they extorted from the Irishman who first saw them the exclamation — " They were wonderful rivers for so young a country." An " open letter " was addressed to me in a Philadel- phian paper by Mr. Thomas Stephenson, characterized by those qualities of frankness and kindness w^hich made inter- esting his communications to the press in the old country. It related to topics upon which I was told people in Phila- delphia would like to hear my opinions. In my answer • published in " The Trades," I said " I regarded advocacy as an art by which truth is presented with clearness and fair- ness. Conciliation simply means intellectual justice to those who differ from you, and this should be observed towards all opponents, whether they observe it towards us or not. As to speaking in Philadelphia, I shall only have time to treat of co-operation. My rule is always to speak on what I un- dertake to speak, and not on any other subject. As to other opinions of mine, I am too dainty and too proud to indulge any one with a word upon them unless it is desired to hear I04 AMONG THE AMERICANS. them. I am not a hawker of opinions. 1 regard new truth as a treasure to be displayed only as a privilege." When my letter, appeared in the journal to which it was addressed, I was amused to observe that it was two-thirds longer than when I w^rote it. The editor had come to the conclusion that I had made it short from want of time on my travels, and had kindly enlarged it for me. It no doubt gave the readers a better idea of my versatility and origin- ality, for it contained two styles and two kinds of thought, and dealt with topics of which I had no knowledge. Cincinnati is certainly an allui-ing city. Its enterprising motto is '•'• Uaudace toujours PaudaceP Let us hope it will have the audacity to get rid of the smoke, which is accu- mulating in it. On looking down upon it from the hills, it reminded me of Sheffield. Away out of the town there is an elevated cemetery of surpassing beauty, a perfect park of the dead. My object there was to visit the grave of a young man, the son of a valued friend of my student days in Birmingham. The youth had won real friends in Cin- cinnati, who, together with his comrades, had put up a, handsome memorial of him. A railway line runs through the cenjetery. But so great and umbrageous is the place that the railway scarcely mars its beauty. My lost friend desired his grave to be within sound of the passing car- riages, which, with a touch of Pagan poetry, he associated with the return journey home, of which he thought he should be conscious as he slept. I went also to a grave in Hamilton, Canada, with Mr. Charlton, to lay flowers on the last resting place of his daughter; and was surprised to find there also that the grave plot purchased by a family was AMONG THE AMERICANS. IO5 large, like the field of Machpelah, purchased by Abraham. In Cincinnati, I had the pleasure to meet with the family of my old friend and coadjutor in London, Mr. Robert Leblond. One inorning I went to hear the Rev. Charles W. Wendte, the Unitarian minister, a man of fine parts and devotional inspiration. It was the harvest festival of the church. All around the altar was a splendid affluence of the rich fruits of the season, some of which were given to me. The discourse was upon the cheerful character of Jewish festivals, which I knew not before were so alluring. In the afternoon Mr. Wendte occupied the chair at Pike's Opera House, where I delivered the first address of the sea- son to the Unity Club, a society which gives ten-cent lec- tures to the people on Sunday afternoon. I was given £1^ for a discourse of one hour, the largest sum I ever received for an address. I generally spoke in America for the pleasure of speaking, but the churches always volunteered ine what was called the " pulpit fee," which varied accord- ing to the resources of the congregation. The Cincinnati " Commercial," which permitted me to explain in its columns practical details of co-operation, recorded that I " advised those who would help in the pro- gress of society, to stand close to truth. It has been said that truth will take care of itself if let alone. Still, in view of misadventure, we had better keep near to her." In Cincinnati, where I was the guest of Mrs. Wilder, I observed that, in directing me to places I had to visit, she said, " Go east, go west," from this point or that. I told her that such directions did not assist me in the least. In Scotland, this peculiar language was common, but in Eng- I06 AMONG THE AMERICANS. land it was never heard. " Then, how do you go about," she inquired, " if not by the compass? " I replied, England was, as she had heard, a small countrj', and we had no room for the points of the compass. " Then, what do you do when you ask your way?" she said. I answered, "We ask for the place we want to go to." If we asked a police- man in the streets whether we should turn east or west, he would inquire of his superintendent if he knew such a place. We ask for Chelsea, or Islington, or Whitechapel. We have in London an East End and a West End, but they are names of districts, not of a geographical quarter. We have no North End, no South End, and nobody conceives that Southwark is in the south. If Board Schools were to teach such things, we should have Lord Sandon, or some other Tory, make a motion in Parliament to lower the standard of education, lest the common people should know too much, and be discontented with that station to which God had called them. Mrs. Wilder said, in a kindly and pity- ing way. " The English are a strange people." Writing to Mrs. Wilder, afterwards, I dated my letter " West of Somewhere," saying she would know where I was though I did not. Good Americans are said to go to Paris when they die; but it appears to depend upon whether they have been to Chicago first. I like the pleasant egotism of its citizens. All towns are not fortunate in their names. The syllables in New York come together like a nut-cracker, and Boston is quite a mouthful, almost beyond management; but Chi- cago is the most musical, full-spoken name a great city ever bore. A place with such a name could not be poor or mean. AMONG THE AMERICANS. lO'J The Chicago " Tribune " had an amusing paper entitled "A Bamboozled Reformer," founded upon an interview with me, furnished by its own reporter. It did not mean that the reporter had set me on wrong tracks, but that mem- b'^rs of the State Socialist party had, who happened not to have been near me. With the customary fairness of the American press, the next day the editor printed a letter from me, which he put under the title " Mr. Holyoake Ex- plains." What I explained was, that while his observations were clever and just upon what I was reported to have said, I never said it. By some fault of expression on my part the interviewer misconceived iny meaning. The fairness and ability with which his report was made left no doubt that the fault must have been mine. Address- ing the editor, I added: " My impressions agree with yours, that employers in America recognize in their work-people claims of equality beyond that of any other country, but upon that I know too little to express an opinion, and ex- pressed none. What I said was that in England strikes were often produced by acts of contempt of the claims of men, and prolonged and embittered by words of outrage which impute dishonoring motives and intentions to them. I have neither met nor have any knowledge of the Socialist leaders whom you name. If their objects and methods are such as you describe, they know well that they are not mine. At the same time, if their objects are, as I should suppose them to be, to improve the condition of labor and secure it a fair and permanent proportion of its fruits, I should approve of those objects. Co-operation, in which lo8 AMONG THE AMERICANS. I am interested, seeks the same ends, but by self-help, by reason; not by violence, but by creating new wealth — not confiscating any which exists, which would be fatal to the security of the property of workmen when they acquire it. The policy of co-operation, which has met with the approval of the great leaders of the two great parties in England — Mr. Gladstone and Earl Derby — is not likely to be one of confiscation, or unfair or unfriendly to the rightful interest of employers. You are quite wrong in thinking that I come here to promote the emigration of the idle to this country. The idle are they with whom I have no sympathy, and they are precisely the people who never think of emigrating. While I think there are better methods open to industry than that of strikes, I pray you to permit me to state that many of those who have engaged in strikes have been the rnost honest and industrious men I have known." This and other incidental quotations serve to preserve in these pages a substantial record of what was said on co- operation during my visit. In Chicago I had the pleasure of receiving an invitation from the Rev. Brooke Herford, whose name is widely known and regarded in Manchester, and whom I found distinguished in Chicago for the usefulness we have recog- nized in England. I was surprised to find his church so large, handsome, and cathedral-like in the interior, without the coldness of aspect common to cathedrals. The Chicago *' Tribune," the day after my visit, contained the following passage : AMONG THE AMERICANS. I09 The pulpit of the Church of the Messiah (the Rev. Broolce Her- ford's church),'at the corner of Michigan avenue and Twenty-third street, was occvipied on last evening by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, of London, England, who delivered a lecture on " Co-operation." In introducing him the pastor stated that Mr. Holyoake had been a friend of his of thirty years' standing. As he (the pastor) had, in the days of their early acquaintance, been accorded the privilege of preaching from secular pulpits, so, now, he was glad of the opportunity to have a secular subject presented by Mr. Holyoake from his pulpit. Ithaca is not a great city, except in the distinction of be- ing the seat of the Cornell University, the most perfectly secular university that I have known. They there teach the arts of usefulness as well as learning, and rear the stu- dents to be citizens as well as scholars. Professor White, the President of the Cornell University, was absent in Europe, he being appointed United States Minister to a foreign court. The acting president is the Rev. Dr. Russell. His daughter, the wife of the Rev. Mr. Sharmann of Plymouth (England), had given me a letter of introduction to her father. The train which brings you to Ithaca travels round and round a mountain, so that I saw the stars shining over the valley of Ithaca three times before arriving at the station. Professor Russell met me, and drove me to the pretty and learned eminence on which the president's house stands, and around which the University buildings are spread. After dinner we fell to discoursing on co-operation, the Professor having long years ago taken an interest in it. He asked me if I would address the students upon it. It never occurred to me to speak at the University, and I no AMONG THE AMERICANS. asked naturally what I could say. " Say what you have been saying to me," was the answer. Next morning at lo o'clock a written notice affixed on the chapel door told the students that Mr. Holyoake would address them there at 12 o'clock. Including fifty ladies who graduate there, four hundred and fifty students were present. Every seat w^as filled as the president entered, who was received with what resounded against the roof like a hailstorm of cheers. I never heard anything so distinct and consentaneous elsewhere. I was about to join in the cheers when I remembered what befell Mark Twain, when he was one of the guests at a Mansion House dinner in London, who relates that a gentleman at his side was dis- coursing to him on the religious prospects of Great Britain in the future, when he heard a loud clapping of hands at the name of some guest being announced. The applause swept Mr. Twain into its vortex and he arose and clapped his hands. "Who is it I am cheering?" he asked of his friend. " It is yourself," was the reply. The students were not specially cheering, but some of their applause was prob- ably intended as an expression of their hospitality to ^their visitor. As my address in the University Church was upon the *' Moral Effects of Co-operation upon Industrial and Com- mercial Society," from fifty to sixty members of the Social Science Club met at the president's house by his invitation in the evening, when, during a conversation of three hours, the policy and practice of co-operation were discussed. CHAPTER VIII. AMERICAN ORATORS. THERE are many persons who have no very bright idea of American oratory. The splendid roll of Webster's eloquence is known but to few. The popular idea of an American orator is of a vivacious speaker who smells a rat, sees it floating in the air, and nips it in the bud. Yet there is speaking in America which is not volubility — speaking which presents that swift compression of words, that newness and force of thought, that freshness of facts and display of imminent consequences by a luminous imag- ination, compelling the hearer to action — which all men agree to call oratory. The public speaker is clear, full, ready, and exact. His province is to instruct and satisfy the understanding. The orator inspires the passions. When the speaker ceases the hearer sees what has to be done; when the orator ceases they do it. On the day I had the honor of an interview with Presi- dent Hayes, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Seventh Regi- ment held a fair in its new armory. Speeches were made by Mayor Cooper and George William Curtis. President Hayes was escorted by the regiment from the Fifth Avenu3 no AMONG THE AMERICANS. asked naturally what I could say. " Say what you have been saying to me," was the answer. Next morning at lo o'clock a written notice affixed on the chapel door told the students that Mr. Holyoake would address them there at 12 o'clock. Including fifty ladies who graduate there, four hundred and fifty students were present. Every seat was filled as the president entered, who was received with what resounded against the roof like a hailstorm of cheers. I never heard anything so distinct and consentaneous elsewhere. I was about to join in the cheers when I remembered what befell Mark Twain, when he was one of the guests at a Mansion House dinner in London, who relates that a gentleman at his side was dis- coursing to him on the religious prospects of Great Britain in the future, when he heard a loud clapping of hands at the name of some guest being announced. The applause swept Mr. Twain into its vortex and he arose and clapped his hands. "Who is it I am cheering?" he asked of his friend. " It is yourself," v/as the reply. The students were not specially cheering, but some of their applause was prob- ably intended as an expression of their hospitality to ^their visitor. As my address in the University Church was upon the " Moral Effects of Co-operation upon Industrial and Com- mercial Society," from fifty to sixty members of the Social Science Club met at the president's house by his invitation in the evening, when, during a conversation of three hours, the policy and practice of co-operation were discussed. CHAPTER VIII. AMERICAN ORATORS. THERE are many persons who have no very bright idea of American oratory. The splendid roll of Webster's eloquence is knovi^n but to few. The popular idea of an American orator is of a vivacious speaker who smells a rat, sees it floating in the air, and nips it in the bud. Yet there is speaking in America which is not volubility — speaking which presents that swift compression of words, that newness and force of thought, that freshness of facts and display of imminent consequences by a luminous imag- ination, compelling the hearer to action — which all men agree to call oratory. The public speaker is clear, full, ready, and exact. His province is to instruct and satisfy the understanding. The orator inspires the passions. When the speaker ceases the hearer sees what has to be done; when the orator ceases they do it. On the day I had the honor of an interview with Presi- dent Hayes, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Seventh Regi- ment held a fair in its new armory. Speeches w^ere made by Mayor Cooper and George William Curtis. President Hayes was escorted by the regiment from the Fifth Avenu2 112 AMONG THE AMERICANS. Hotel to the armory. Mr. Curtis I everywhere heard spoken of as a pohtician of principle and integrity. Being unable to accept his invitation to visit him at his seat, at Ash- field, I have no personal knowledge of his manner of speak- ing, save from the few w^ords he spoke at the Saratoga Con- vention. The following are the passages from his oration at the Armory Fair. No volunteer can read it without pride. We have no such speech made to soldiers in Eng- land. There is no " bunkum " in its chaste and vigorous words. The New York papers reported that Mr. Curtis was welcomed with great cheering, and his voice rang out clear and strong, arresting the attention of the crowd that had become restless under its inability to hear the Mayor. Mr. Curtis said: " This brilliant presence and the splendid spectacle of- to-day's parade recall another scene. Through the proud music of pealing bugles and beating drums that filled the air as we came hither, I heard other drums and other bugles marking another march. Under a waving canopy of red, white, and blue, through " a tempest of cheers two miles long," as Theodore Winthrop said, amid fervent prayers, exulting hopes, and passionate farewells, the Seventh Regi- ment marched down Broadway, on the 19th of April, eighteen years ago. When you marched, New York went to the war. Its patriotism, its loyalty, its unquailing heart, its imperial will, moved in your glit- tering ranks. As you went you carried the flag of national union, but when you and your comrades of the army and navy returned, the stars and stripes shone not only with the greatness of a nation, but with the glory of its universal liberty. These are traditions that will long be cherished in this noble hall. In great and sudden emergencies the State militia is the nucleus and vanguard of the volunteer army. Properly organized, it furnishes the trained skill, the military habit and knowledge, without which AMONG THE AMERICANS. II3 patriotic zeal is but wind blowing upon the sails of a ship without a rudder. No public money is more economically spent, no private aid is more worthily given, than that for supporting the militia amply, generously, and in the highest discipline. Other countries maintain enormous armies by enormous taxation. The citizen suffers that the soldier may live. Our kinder fate enables us, at an insignificant cost, to provide in the National Guard not only the material of an army, but a school of officers to command it. A regiment like the Seventh, and the other renowned regiments of the city, is not only in its de- gree the model of an admirable army, but it is a military normal school. It teaches the teacher. Six hundred and six members of this regiment received commissions as officers in the volunteer army; three rose to be major-generals, nineteen to be brigadiers, twenty- nine to be colonels, and forty-five lieutenant-colonels. Mr. Commander, on this happy day every circumstance is auspi- cious. The Mayor of the city in which your immediate duties lie, presides over the vast and brilliant assembly which throngs these beautiful bazaars. The Chief Magistrate of the Union, who may, in a sudden danger, call you into the national service, leaving the Na- tional Capital, gladly dignifies the occasion with his presence. Great officers of the United States and of the State are here to attest their grateful interest in the prosperity of the New York Militia and Na- tional Guard. So should it be, for in the hands of this gallant regi- ment the flag of the Union and the flag of the State are intertwined. Their honor and their glory are inseparable. The welfare of the States is the happiness of tlie Union. The power of the Union is the security of the States. God save the State of New York ! God save the United States of America! I have twice abridged this speech and twice restored it. I give it now as it was spoken. Soldiers in England will read it with interest for its fine animation, and civilians for its instruction as respects the military policy of a republic. Last year Mr. Curtis made an oration on unveiling a statue 114 AMONG THE AMERICANS. of Robert Burns in the Central Park at New York. No oration that I read at the time of the Centenary of Burns equalled this in splendor of expression and discrimination between what was unwise in the poet's life and imperish- able in his genius. The next example I quote is also inspired by military memories. The orator is Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. Some orators have argument without wit ; some have wit without humor; some have humor without pathos; some have pathos without passion; some have passion without imagination. Ingersoll has all these qualities. Everybody knows this in America. Mr. James White, formerly M. P. for Brighton, who traveled in America when Ingersoll made campaign speeches for Hayes, told me that no ora- . tions at that time had the character and originality of Inger- soll's, whose late campaign speeches for President Garfield displayed yet greater qualities. During the nights that we sat up together in Washington, telling stories of propa- gandist adventure, I heard the Colonel relate things which others present had heard before. Yet every one was as much moved to indignation and laughter as I was, who heard them for the first time. The following speech was rnade at the great banquet given to General Grant in Chi- cago, on his return from Europe. Sherman and Sheridan also sat at the table. The speech is in the Colonel's graver mood, the subject being in memory of the soldiers who fell in the great war for the freedom of the colored race. Col. Ingersoll said : When slavery in the savagery of the lash, and the insanity of se- cession confronted the civilization of our country, the question, "Will AMONG THE AMERICANS. II5 the great Republic defend itself? " was asked by every lover of man- kind. The soldiers of the Republic were not seekers for vulgar glory, neither were they animated by the hope of plunder or love of conquest. They were the defenders of humanity, the destroyers of prejudice, the breakers of chains, and, in the name of the future, slew the monster of their time. They blotted out from our statute books the laws passed by hypocrites at the instigation of robbers, and tore with brave and indignant hands from the Constitution of the tJnited States, that infamous clause that made men the catchers of their fel- low men. They made it possible forjudges to be just, for statesmen to be humane, and for politicians to be honest. They broke the shackles from the limbs of slaves, from the souls of masters, and from the Northern brain. They kept our country on the map of the world and our flag in Heaven. They rolled the stone from the sepul- chre of progress, and found therein two angels clad in shining gar- ments — nationality and liberty. The soldiers were the saviors of the Republic; they were the liberators of men. In writing the Proclamation of Emancipation, Lincoln, greatest of our mighty dead, whose memory is as gentle as a summer air when reapers sing amid gathered sheaves, copied v/Kh the pen what the grand hands of brave comrades had written with their swords. Grander than the Greek, nobler than the Roman, the soldiers of the Republic, with patriotism as careless as the air, fouglit for the rights of others, for the nobility of labor, and battled that a mother should own her child, that arrogant idleness might not scar the back of patient toil, and that our country should not be a many- headed monster, made of warring states, but a nation, sovereign, grand, and free. Blood was as water, money was as leaves, and life was only common air, until one flag floated over one Republic, with- out a master and without a slave There is another question still. Will all the wounds of war be healed.' I answer, yes. The Southern people must submit, not to the dictation of the North, but to a na- tion's Avill and the verdict of mankind. Freedom conquered them, and freedom will cultivate their fields, will educate their children, will weave robes of wealth, will execute the laws, and fill their land Il6 AMONG THE AMERICANS. with happy homes. The soldiers of the Union saved tlie South as well as the North. They gave us a nation. They gave us liberty here, and their grand victories have made tyranny the world over as insecure as snow upon the lips of volcanos. And now let us drink to the volunteers, to those who sleep in un- known and sunken graves, whose names are known only to the hearts they loved and left — of those who oft in happy dreams can see the footsteps of return. Let us drink to those who died where lifeless famine mocked at want. Let us drink to the maimed, whose scars give to modesty a tongue. Let us drink to those who dared and gave to chance the care and keeping of their lives. Let us drink to all the living and to all the dead — to Sherman, and to Sheridan, and to Grant, the laureled soldiers of this world, and last to Lincoln, whose life, like a bow of peace, spans and arches all the clouds of war. Only one volume of the orations of Wendell Phillips has been published. In 1875 he presented to me the last copy which remained. A new edition is now spoken of, which, if annotated, would certainly greatly interest English read- ers. The passages I quote are from subsequent orations, which appeared in occasional pamphlets at the time. The qualities of Mr. Phillips' speaking, I have already described. The quality of thought in these passages is so unlike what Englishmen expect in "an American speech, that, on read- ing them, I sent copies to a great orator at home, who was not likely to have seen them. In Washington Street, Bos- ton, stands the Old South Church, which, in its day, was probably the finest church, or one of the finest in the United States. The owners proposed to sell it, as its site had become valuable for commercial purposes. The price they put upon it was $450,000. Many patriotic ladies in Boston were desirous of saving it, and Mr. Phillips was asked to AMONG THE AMERICANS. II7 deliver orations with a view to obtain the necessary funds. He made one oration in the State House, with a view to induce the State to buy it, and another in the church itself, commonly spoken of as the Old South. The funds came to hand eventually, and the church was saved. The passage first following is from the speech in the Old South Meeting House. The statement of the terrors excited by the idea of universal suffrage, the nature of the courage which took the risk of it, has never been put so vividly by any other oratoi'. Mr. Phillips said: I think that the State, on the broadest consideration of duty, is bound to give its citizens something more than the knowledge of arithmetic and geography. It does well to supplement the common school and the university with that monument at Concord. I passed through your hall as I came up. For what has the State set up the bust of Lincoln there? A fortnight ago I looked in the face of Sam Adams in the Rotunda at Washington. What did the State send that statue there for.? It was only a sentiment! For what did she spend ten thousand dollars in setting up a brand new piece of marble, commemorating the man who spoke those words under the roof of the Old South.' It will take a hundred years to make it venerable. It will take one hundred years to make that monument on Boston Common venerable. You have got the hundred years funded in the Old South, which you cannot duplicate, which you cannot create. A package was found among the papers of Dean Swift, that old fierce hater, his soul full of gall, who faced England in her maddest hour, and defeated her with his pen, charged with a lightning hotter than Junius. Wrapped up amid his choicest treasures was found a lock of hair. " Only a woman's hair," was the motto. Deep down in that heart, full of strength, fury, and passion, there lay this fountain of sentiment; undoubtedly it colored and gave strength to all that char- acter. When they flung the heart of Wallace ahead in the battle, and said, " Lead, as you have always done ! " what was the sentiment that Il8 AMONG THE AMERICANS. made a hundred Scotchmen fall dead over it to protect it from cap- ture? When Nelson, on the broad sea, a thousand miles olf, tele- graphed, "England expects every man to do his duty," what made every sailor a hero? If you had given him a brand new tlag of yes- terday, would it hav ; stirred the blood like that which had faced the battle and the breeze a thousand years? No, indeed ! Nothing but a sentiment, but it made every sailor a Nelson. They say the Old South is ugly. I should be ashamed to know whether it is ugly or handsome. Does a man love his mother be- cause she is handsome? Could any man see that his mother was ugly? Must we remodel Sam' Adams on a Chesterfield pattern? Would you scuttle the " Mayflower," if you found her Dutch in her build? But they say the Old South is not the Old South. Dr. Ellis told us how few of tlie old bricks remained, which was the original cor- ner, and which really heard Warren. They say the human body changes in seven years. Half a million of men gathered in London streets to look at Grant. The hero of Appomattox was not there; that body had changed twice, it was only the soul. The soul of the Old South is there, no matter how many or few of the original bricks remain. It does not change faster than the human body ; and yet all the science in the world could not have prevented London from hur- rahing for Grant, or from being nobler when it had done so. Once in his life the most brutal had felt the distant and the unseen, and done homage to the ideal. The next passage is from his oration in the State House, with the object of inducing the Government of Massachu- setts to save the historic old church. Mr. Phillips reasoned thus: The times which President Eliot has so eloquently described were hours of great courage. When Sam Adams and Warren stood under that old roof, knowing that, with a little town behind them, and thir- teen sparse colonies, they were defying the strongest Government, AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 19 and the most obstinate race in Europe, it was a very brave hour. When they set troops in rank against Great Britain, a few years later, it was reckless daring. History and poetry have done full justice to that element in the character of our fathers, nothing more than jus- tice. We can hardly appreciate the courage with which a man in or- dinary life steps out of the ranks, makes a crisis, while no opinion has 3'et been ripened to protect him, not knowing whether the mass will rise to that level which shall make it safe — make a revolution in- stead of a mere revolt. But there was a much bolder element in our fathers' career than the courage which set an army in the field — than even the courage which faced arrest and imprisonment, and a trial be- fore a London jury. That, as I think, was the daring which rested this Government, after the battle was gained, on the character of the masses — on the suffrage of every individual man. That was an in- finitely higher and serener courage. You must remember, Mr. Chair- man, no State had ever risked it. There never had been a practical statesman who advised it. No previous experiment threw any light on that untried and desperate venture. Greece had her republics — they were narrowed to a race, and rested on slaves. Switzerland had her republics — they were the republics of families. Holland had her republic — it was a republic of land-owners. Our fathers were to cut loose from property, from the anchorage of landed estates; they were to risk what no State had ever risked before, what all human experience and all statesmanship considered stark madness. Jefferson and Sam Adams, representing two leading States, may be supposed to have looked out on their future, and contemplated cutting loose from all that the world had re- garded as safe — property, privileged classes, a muzzled press. It was a pathless sea. But they had that serene faith in God, that it was safe to trust a man with the rights He gave him. These forty millions of people have at last achieved what no race, no nation, no age, hitherto has succeeded in doing. We have founded a Republic on the unlim- ited suffrage of the millions. We have actually Avorked out the prob- lem that man, as God created him, may be trusted with self-govern- 130 AMONG THE AMERICANS. ment. We have shown the world that a Church without a bishop, and a State without a king is an actual, real, everyday possibility. A hundred years ago our fathers announced this sublime, and as it seemed then, foolhardy declaration, that God intended all men to be free and equal — all men, without restriction, without qualification, without limit. A hundred years have rolled away since that ventur- ous declaration, and to-day, with a territory that joins ocean to ocean, with forty millions of people, with two wars behind her, with the grand achievement of having grappled with the fearful disease that threatened her central life, and broken four millions of her fetters, the great Republic, stronger than ever, launches into the second cen- tury of her existence. The history of the world has no such chap- ter, in its breadth, its depth, its significance, or its bearing on future history. France has proved, and it has been proved in a viiriety of cases, that the sort of education that makes a State safe is the education, the training that results in character. It is the education that is mixed up with this much abused element which you call " senti- ment." It is the education that is rooted in emotions, of slow growth, the result of a variety, an infinite variety of causes; the influence of books, of example, of a devout love of truth, reverence for great men, and sympathy for their unselfish lives ; the influence of a living faith, the study of nature, keeping the heart fresh by the sight of human suf- fering and efforts to relieve it ; surrendering one's self to the emotions which link us to the past and interest us in the future, and thus lift us above the narrowness of petty and present cases; using ourselves to remember that there is something better than gain and more sacred than life. Never before was "sentiment," which "practical" men are accustomed to contemn, so brilliantly vindicated, or its place and influence on national character so discerningly and vividly described. CHAPTER IX. FAMOUS PREACHERS. THE pulpits in the places of worship I visited were not like the English preaching barrels, but were rather altars, with space around them, so that the preacher had full freedom of motion: and like the Precenter's desk in Scotch churches, the American pulpits are lower than ours, so that the minister is among the people. Over the reading desk in Mr. Herford's pulpit, in Chicago, a gas jet is made to burn. The light is concealed from the spectator so that the coun- tenance of the preacher can be seen unconfused by a blaze of light. At the same time its strong rays fall on the pages before him, so that he sees with certainty. This contriv- ance, I observed, is a common appendage to an American pulpit, though unknown in England. When I was in Hamilton, the first city in Canada you reach after leaving Niagara, the Mayor had kindly come down to the Grand Hotel to take me to visit the Fair. As I stepped into his carriage, he said, " That is the Rev. Mr. Beecher sitting in the shade at your door." Thereupon I said, " I must go and speak to him." In the angle of the portico sat a gentleman reading a newspaper: he was dressed in black, and wearing a wide-brimmed white felt hat 122 AMONG THE AMERICANS. that served to intercept the stray rays of the fierce sun on the letterpress. Approaching him I said, " Mr. Beecher, eighteen years ago you told me that when I was next near to you, I was to come to you, and not write to you. This is the first time since, that I have had the opportunity of seeing you— how do you do? " He rose, looked at me with his dark,. bright eyes, and shaking hands with me very cordially said, " I am delighted to see you — but who are you?" I answered, "Mr. Holyoake, of London." "Are you," he said, " George Jacob Holyoake ?" Upon answer- ing " yes," I found I had no i eason to regi-et the abrupt- ness with which I had introduced myself. He desired me, when next I returned to New York, to let him know my address, as he wished to have a morning conversation with me. Some weeks later, being again in New York, I sent him the information, but no reply or visit followed. One Sunday morning I went over the water to hear him preach in his church at Brooklyn. The church was very crowded, and when my friend who accompanied me, mentioned to one of the officers of the church that I was a stranger from London, and desirous of hearing the famous preacher, a con- venient seat was found or made for me. While we were singing I looked over the hymn, in which were the following lines : Let Heaven begin the solemn word, And send it dreadful down to hell. It was a hymn of Dr. Watts's. If I remember rightly these were amotig the lines we sang. I wondered how a man of Mr. Beecher's cultivated taste could admit lines so painful AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 23 and discordant to appear in a hymn book of his church. The solemn words of religion ought not to be " dreadful," and if they were " dreadful " there must be enough of misery in hell without sending them there. Mr. Beecher's discourse, like all he delivers, was very remarkable. With the greater part I could entirely coincide. It contained a vivid description of the scantiness of the general records of Christianity so far as it w^as promulgated by the scriptural founder. Christ had written nothing himself. Those who professed to record what he said were themselves mostly il- literate. No stenography existed in Judea. Though we are told the world would not contain all the 'books if his sayings were fully reported, we have but a comparatively brief record of them; we cannot, therefore, fully judge of their beauty, completeness, nor variety. Through whose hands the apostolic records have passed, what changes they sustained, what interpolations they have suffered, no man can tell. It was impossible not to be impressed in favor of Christianity "preached with this manly candor. The discourse was founded upon a text where Chi'ist takes leave of his disciples, promising to communicate with them on another occasion fuller particulars of his mission. His crucifixion following, a fuller communication was never made. Hence, argued the preacher, we know not all that really was in the mind of Christ. After mentioning two cardinal subjects upon which Christ would have undoubtedly spoken, had his life been prolonged, the preacher came to the third. All along, he had spoken in an undertone, low and clear, which penetrated to every part of the chapel, then breaking into his familiar loudness and finished emphasis of 124 AMONG THE AMERICANS. tone, and looking down to where I sat, he said, " The thiul subject upon which Christ would have spoken, foreseeing, as he must have done, the future needs of society — would have been Co-operation." I was startled at the communication. I had heard that Mi". Beecher had a quick eye to perceive and identify strangers in his congregation. He certainly could not have known that I should be there, and if his introduction of co-operation was a coincidence, it was re- markable, and if designed after becoming aware of my being there, it was a masterpiece of facility of resource. What he said was expressed as an inseparable part of narration, which was delivered throughout with unerring, unhesitating pre- cision. His language, manner, and action were more finished than when I heard him in Exeter Halt, in the days of the civil war. His preaching is entirely that of a gentle- man as well as an orator; and from what I read of lectures of his delivered elsewhere, while I was in the States, I judge that his reputation depended, not only upon his excellence as a speaker, but upon the boldness and originality of idea found more or less in every address. There are other preachers in America who preach with perhaps equal brilliance, but I heard of no one who speaks so frequently with such sustained newness of thought. What he said upon co-operation, as a new element promis- ing to instil more morality into commercial life, showed a complete comprehension of its character. The sacrament followed the morning service on that day, and as I could not be a communicant I left, as my presence there could only have implied a curiosity inconsistent with the spirit of the ceremony. As a hearer in the church I was, as it were, AMONG THE AMERICANS. 125 a natural guest of the congregation, while only those of a common conviction could be properly present at a conT- munion service. Otherwfise I should have remained, for the sake of speaking with Mr. Beecher again at the close. Anyhow, I caused information to reach him that day of the hours I should be happy to see him at the Hoffmann House, or when I could call upon him at Brooklyn Heights, if that was more convenient to him, but Mr. Beecher made no sign. A few weeks later, being again in Boston, I mentioned to Wendell Phillips the circumstance. " O," he said, " that is just like Beecher. A friend of his, who had been to Europe, met with some choice ecclesiastical engravings, which he believed it would give Mr. Beecher great pleasure to possess. They were of some value, and after he had had them mounted he sent them to him. Months elapsed, and he had no acknowledgment of them. At length he sent a note saying he did not desire to trouble Mr. Beecher to write a letter to him, but he should be glad of just a word by which he might know that the parcel had not mis- carried. No answer arrived. One day, some three months later, the presenter of the engravings was passing down the Lexington Avenue, at a point where the streets cross at right angles: a gentleman, rapidly walking, came in colli- sion with him, and who, prodding him on the breast, said, ' I got your parcel,' and darted on. It was Mr. Beecher, and that was his acknowledgment." Mr. Phillips said Mr. Beecher was a busy man, upon whom so many public and private duties were pressed, that his desire to serve the many often deprived him of the opportunity, which would 126 AMONG THE AMERICANS. be very pleasant to him, of showing courtesy to individuals. Though we never met more, Mr. Beecher sent me a very genial letter on my leaving America, which, being charac- teristic of the w^riter, I may cite here : Brooklyn, N. Y., 124 Columbia Heights. Vear Sir: I did want to see you, and set several days to call, but the pressure of home duties obliterated every arrangement I had made, and you will go home leaving me only two snatches of a sight of you. You will leave a good impression behind you. I admire your pru- dence and your good spirit, and am deeply interested, in the cause that you have so much at heart. The egg once hatched can never get back to egg again. The working men of the world can never get back to what are called the " good old days.'' They must go forward. In finding the path the pioneers will make many circuits and track back again a good many times. While my mind naturally has led me to think more of the intellectual and inoral elevation of the com- mon people than of their commercial and industrial necessities, I have not been unmindful of these other things, and have rejoiced to see such experiments made as those which you narrate. In every feasible plan for the enlargement of the great under mass of men I am with you heart and hand. I hope the sea may deal gently with you. May He " who hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, who sitteth King upon the iiood," preserve you and let you see prosperity for all the rest ot your clays. Very cordially yours, Henry Ward Beecher. It is clear from this letter that Mr. Beecher remembered seeing me at Hamilton, Ontario, and in Brooklyn Church. The " prudence " referred to was merely that of keeping the subject of co-operation clear of other things. This was simply my duty. It is a main condition of advocacy not to AMONG THE AMERICANS. I27 let the subject get confused in the public mind with any other subject. For a new idea to be distinctly apprehended it must be seen many times, always seen distinctly, and seen by itself. A short quotation from an address by Mr. Beecher on the " New Profession," meaning that of the teacher, I take from a Montreal report in the " Daily Witness." It is an example of his oratory on the platform : Governments abroad were largely engaged in protecting them- selves ; the citizen was respected and feared abroad ; the public feeling was that men were chiefly valuable as the stuff with which to build the State. In America the theory was reversed ; here the individual man was the central figure, the nation his servant. In Europe the emphasis was put on the Government of a nation ; in this country on the man. The great forces now woi-king in this country were those which tended to elevate man and make him better and nobler. We were developing the manhood of intelligerice among the people. The emigrants had been eggs in Europe, thej- were hatched here. He held that the school was the stomach of the Republic. The schools of America were that stomach by which all nations were digested and assimilated into Americans. Education should be compulsory. The free common schools should be the best in every community. It was a burning shame when pub- lic schools were not as good as private ones. It was the foundation of the American idea of the development of manhood that the public school and all its appendages should be better than can be found any- where else. Its architecture ought to be better than that of the church ; its rooms ought to be better than the best in our houses. It was the duty of every commonwealth to make its school houses gems of art. He believed that democratic simplicity in this respect was absurd. He had hated the school house where lie had attended, and had never learned anything, and he abhorred it to this hour. We should not permit the injustice of instructing children in theologies. 128 AMONG THE AMERICANS. It had been said that would be godless, but it was not so. Was a car- penter's shop godless? The churches and the households should teach theology. It was not at all the work of the public schools. It did not follow that we should let the child go without any religious education. Let us teach him honesty, frugality, uprightness, and obedience to God and His law. Our schools should have the full force of professional instruction. They could not do their work while they were the mere stopping-places for non-professional men and women. In law and medicine we require experience and profes- sional talent, and it ought to be the same in teaching. The profession of teaching should rise in dignity. Its members should have larger pay. Of all parsimony none was more contemptible than that which asked who was the cheapest teacher. The Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer, well regarded in England as in America, is of commanding stature, and has what in an Englishman is always to be admired — when found — confi- dence without arrogance. Dr. Bartol, in describing Dr. Channing, the famous Boston preacher, stated his weight to be about one hundred pounds. If oratory goes by weight, Dr. Collyer holds no mean rank. When Dr. Channing, the slender, gave out the line of the hymn : Angel, roll that stone away, the congregation thought they heard it rumbling on its way. If Dr. Collyer gave out the line they would really have heard it move — there is such genial authority in his voice. When the deputation from a spacious church in New York came to Chicago, to invite Dr. Collyer to be their minister, they had but one misgiving — " would his voice fill the place." " If that is all," said the Doctor, " I shall do, for my voice is cramped in Chicago." His voice would reach across a prairie. If John the Baptist spoke with his AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 29 pleasant power, I do not wonder that the desert was crowded with hearers. Strong sense borne on a strong voice is influential speaking. When weighty sense sets out on a weak voice, it falls to the ground before it reaches half the hearers. At Dr. Collyer's church, in New York, I met the Poughkeepsie Seer, Andrew Jackson Davis. I never met a Seer in the flesh, before, and was surprised to find that he was graceful, pleasant and human. I congratulated him on the advantage he had over all of us, in having the secrets of two worlds at his disposal. The Rev. Robert Collyer was one of the few ministers who felt that it was his duty to protest against slavery, come what might. He told the deacons of his congrega- tion of his intent, who prayed him to reconsider it, as he would " burst up the church." He answered like an Anglo- American, " Then it has got to burst." He entered his pulpit in Chicago, and began his protesting sermon. The war was coming then, but had not broken out. He had not spoken long before he observed a commotion at the end of the church. The hearers were conversing from pew to pew ; the buzzing voices travelled near to him. He thought the church was about to " burst up " before he had made his protest, when, seeing that he was ignorant of the cause of the commotion, a hearer leaped up and called out that the " Southerners had fired upon Fort Sumter." That was the news that had set the worshippers on fire. All the church leaped up with inconceivable emotion. " Then," said the brave preacher, " I shall take a new text — ' Let him who has no sword sell his garment and buy one.'" Then all the church went mad — Mr. Collyer said he was as 130 AMONG THE AMERICANS. mad as any of them — and the choir sang " Yankee Doodle." The church witnessed a similar scene for several Sundays. The churches were freed in a night from the yoke of slavery, and religion has been sweeter in America ever since. Not only the almighty dollar was forgotten, but every family in the North, in the highest class as well as the humblest, gave a father or a son to die in the noblest war ever waged for freedom. Englishmen must have an imperishable respect for America, which made these sacrifices for a generous senti- ment. They fought for the freedom of a race which could not requite them, whom they did not like, and whose man- agement would bring untold trouble upon them for years to come. But they would no longer bear the shame of hold- ing human beings in slavery. One of the remarkable preachers of New York is the Rev. Dr. Felix Adler, who was some time professor- at Cornell University. His father was an eminent Rabbi, but his son, Dr. Felix, while retaining all the passion and fervor of the Jewish faith, no longer insists upon its ceremonials, but rather upon the moral holiness of life. He is the founder of a Church of Ethical Culture, which meets in the Chickering Hall, New York. The congregation includes a large proportion of Jews, and at the morning service, at which I was present, there were 1,000 to 1,500 persons as- sembled. The platform had no assistance from art, which it wanted. But the preacher soon caused you to forget that. Professor Adler is a slender, middle-statured gentleman, ap- parently thirty or thirty -five years of age, with a glistening eye and sleepy features, denoting rather latent passion than AMONG THE AMERICANS. I3I langor. His voice is pleasant, with a sincere tone. Stepping towards the front, but not in the centre of the copious stage of Chicliering Hall, without altar, book, or note, he spoke for an hour with eloquence and enthusiasm, which held everybody in attention. I never heard a discourse anywhere like his as to ideas. His argument set forth that the Church believed in morality, not because God required it, but because humanity needed it; not because it might be rewarded hereafter, but because the reward of right-doing was here, and because the neglect of it followed every man like the shadow of an evil spirit, from which there was no escape. The love of God and the hope of future life were graces of conviction. God has not set his bow in the clouds more palpably than he has set the sign of morality in every house, in every street. Men may disbelieve the priests, but they cannot disbelieve their own daily experience. The gods had not left morality de- pendent upon the rise and fall of Churches. The philoso- pher was a greater teacher of morality than the theologian. Since the death of my friend, the Rev. Thomas Binney, w^ho taught men " How to make the best of both worlds," I have heard from no pulpit arguments like those of the Rev. Dr. Adler. The Church of culture and morality proves itself to be one of charity and enthusiasm. One of the congregation, Mr. Joseph Seligman, had given $10,000 for promoting the kinder-garden schools of the Church, which had great repute. CHAPTER X. CO-OPERATION IN THE NEW WORLD, THE reader has already seen some description of the meeting at Cooper Institute, New York, which was the most important meeting on co-operation in whicli I was concerned. It was there I first met Dr. Robert Collyer, who presided. The address I delivered was reprinted in many papers, and in the " Worker," in which it occupied nine columns. Professor Raymond stated they had com- menced the Cooper Union Lectures for the year, earlier than usual, as I was about to return to England, and they wished to commence with an address on co-operation. Mr. Thomas Ainge Devyr, of the " Irish World," who was on the platform, was the first to advocate in Ireland that doc- trine of Land Reform which has since occupied so much public attention. About 1858, three years before the slave war broke out in America, he sent me from New York a printed statement of the causes whose operations would end in war. It was a perfect political prophecy. Mr Devyr raised some question at the Cooper Union as to its adminis- tration, when Mr. Peter Cooper, the founder, arose, handed to me his overcoat, and advancing to the front, spoke in a clear, frank voice, and without digression, vindicating his 134 AMONG THE AMERICANS. management by statistical facts which showed an accurate memory. " We educate," he said, " 3,000 people here, and now I am building a new story for the purpose of affording education to 1,000 more. But I am glad," he added, "to hear suggestions which may enable me to make the place more useful. As I grow older I hope to profit by sound advice (if I get it). I am only now in my eighty-ninth year." Thus pleasantly the practical patriarch of New York closed the discussion. He bears a striking resemblance to Sir Josiah Mason, of Birmingham, who is but five years his junior, and who has equally distinguished himself by discerning educational munificence. Mr. Cooper told me that his mother's house in her earlier years was barricaded against the attack of Indians in New York, which carries the memory a long way back. The author of " Our Visit toHindostan," relates that at Ulwar, the political agent wished to plant an avenue of trees on either side of the road in front of the shops, for the purpose of giving shade, and had decided to put in peepul trees, which are considered sacred by the Hindoos ; but the bunnniahs, or native shopkeepers, one and all declared that if this were done they would not take the shops, and, when pressed for a reason, replied it was because they could not tell untruths or swear falsely under their shade, adding, " And how can we carry on business otherwise .'' " The force of this argument seems to have been acknowledged, as the point was yielded, and other trees were planted instead. This was the moral of my lecture. I contended that co-operators could permit the peepul to be planted before their stores, as they could do business under their AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 35 shade, having no taste and no interest in telling " untruths," or "swearing falsely" in business. Co-operative inspiration is that which Wendell Phillips has defined in his oration on Garrison — it is character. Co-operation is not merely a search for dollars — it is a search for honesty and equity in trade. How can a man worship the good God of honest]' in his church who has been cheating all the week over his counter or in his counting-house? Next I endeavored to make clear the distinction between co-operation and State Socialism. The adventures which befel me in consequence will be found in another chapter. One passage in the intefview recorded in the " Tribune " was the following : " Have you a purchasing agency in New York?" "Yes. The English co-operators have been doing business in New York for five years. Mr. Gledhill, the trusted agent of the great Co-operative Whole- sale Society of Manchester, has occupied oflices at No. 14 Broadway, since 1874. During the past year we have made iCio,ocHD or $50,000 of profit upon cheese alone bought in the New York market. I find that since May last Mr. Gledhill has shipped from this city 60,000 boxes of cheese to Liverpool for the consumption of the co-operators of England, and, as the cheese no doubt has a good repub- lican flavor, American principles are being rapidly assimilat- ed into the British constitution. " This was the first intimation the citizens of New York had of the residence in their midst of an official representative of the Co-opera- tive Wholesale Society of Manchester, in England. The Oneida community no entreaty induced me to go near. My main reason was that a visit from me would 136 AMONG THE AMERICANS. have been in the papers, and it would have been thought at once that co-operation was some form of communism. It was my duty to take care that co-operation should be seen as a distinct thing. The communist may be a co-operator, but the co-operator may not be a communist. Of all forms of communism in America, I least liked Oneidaism, with its special sexual theory which nobody can explain. While I was there, Mr. J. H. Noyes, the leader of this society, announced what he called a "change of platform." He had given up, he said, the practice of " complex marriages" in deference to the public sentiment " evidently rising against it." Public sentiment always rose against it. He stated that their society would in future take Paul's platform, which permits marriage, but allows celibacy. It was stated, privately, that Mr. Noyes's son, who was a physician, refused to subject his wife to " complex m.arriage," and that this was the cause of its abandonment. If the devisor of Oneidaism was convinced that complex marriage was wrong, it was manly to relinquish it. Since, however, he admitted that he did not renounce the belief in his principle, the abandonment of it was therefore indefensible. The Mormons behaved with more courage and consistency, and refused to follow Mr. Noyes's example, saying, " Why should we abandon our position unless we are convinced we are in error? " Since leaving America I have received many reports of public meetings, held in New York and elsewhere, to intro- duce co-operation on the English plan. There appears no prejudice against any scheme which is good, whatever country it may originate in. There would be more English AMONG THE AMERICAN'S. I37 features introduced into both America -and Canada than there are, "were it not," as an intelligent observer told me in Ottawa, "that manj- Englishmen come over there filled with bitterness towards their o^vn country, which tends to dis- courage the introduction of improvements on the English plan. Nevertheless, co-operation has cert.-unly won many friends. Articles upon it, or reports concerning it, continu- ally appear in the American papers. The idea of a Whole- sale Agency suppl}"ing genuine articles to the stores seemed to most persons one worth realizing. Mr. A. R. Foote and the Rev. Dr. Rylance, of New York, have commenced to create a Wholesale Agency there. Everything in America seems to be adulterated — the certainty that it will be, if it can be, seems to be taken for granted. If co-operation takes root and changes this it will amount to the commercial re- education of the people. Rouglily speaking, no commodity can be trusted. Quinine pills .are not real, candles are short of ^veight, and silk short of the j-ard. Indeed, if stores \vere opened on the English plan — of genuineness of quantity- and qualitv — thev would be distrusted. The public would suspect an^■ store \vhich proposed to treat them honestly. They would think that somewhere the snake of interest lay concealed. Yet there is reason to think that this distrust ^\-ill be overcome, for there is no difficulty- which discourages an American when he has fairly made up his tnind that the thing he has in hand ought to be " put through." If the people do resolve upon ;issociation thev mean it, and one or more of the active associates bear the name of '' organizing members." This temi has been introduced into England no^v, but in Amer- 138 AMONG THE AMERICANS. ica they have long had the actual person. In New York the gentleman who is one of the foremost in co-operative advocacy, Mr. Allan R. Foote, has a genius for organization. He has written and published a scheme of a wholesale society and of co-operative stores, and written co-operative pamphlets which are interesting, brief and wise in expres- sion, as well as business-like. The follovvfing are some of the sentences he pi'ints as mottoes in his small books of " Co-operative Laws " : " I. To grow rich, earn money fairly. 2. Spend less than you earn. 3. Hold on to the difference. The first re- quires muscle ; the second, self-denial; the third, brains." " The competition of the individual system is for every man to see how much money he can divert into his own pocket from the jDockets of those who labor for him. The only competition possible in commercial co-operation is to see which store will put and keep the most money into the pockets of those who support it." " If any man counsels you that you can gain wealth any other way except by working and saving, he is your enemy." " If a man owns a sovereign, he is a sovereign to that ex- tent. If a man owes a sovereign, he is a slave to that ex- tent." These are maxims worthy of consideration elsewhere than in America, and the ideas expressed have never been put better anywhere. " Lectures on Social Questions," in- cluding Competition, Communism, Co-operation, and the Relation of Christianity to Socialism, are a series of the luminous discourses delivered by the Rev. Dr. J. H. Rylance AMONG TUB AMERICANS. I39 in St. Mark's Church, New York, which would be read with great interest in England. The custom of a store is called the " patronage " of it. It is odd that independent self-helping Americans should re- tain a word which is so distasteful and disused under our " effete monarchy." In Mr. Foote's rules it is provided that "21/^ per cent, of the surplus accruing shall be ex- pended by the dii-ectors in such manner as in their judgment shall best serve the purpose of recreation and education of members." Before this clause was drawn you had to look all about America to find a single society which made pro- vision for education. This arises partly because Americans have more education about their cities than any other coun- try, and partly because they do not know that of the social education necessary for industrial concert — they have none, Mr. Charles H. White invited me to New Harmony, Indiana. He told me that the old co-operators, who first formed a library there forty-two years ago, which was com- menced with less than 100 volumes, has now 4,000. The land and the old library were given by Mr. William Mac- guire. The library tenement has been rebuilt, at a cost of more than 6,000 dollars. A community, founded by Rapp, residing at Economy, near Pittsburg, assisted them by a contribution of 3,000 dollars. Dr. Richard Owen arranged a collection of minerals and objects in natural history in the large room of the society devoted to lectures and discussions. At the close of a night's yoyage from New York I arrived at Watuppa, at the east of Quequechan. Watuppa is the Indian name for " the place of boats," and Queque- chan signifies "falling water." Its modern name is Fall 140 AMONG THE AMEBIC A.NS. River, the largest cotton manufacturing centre in America, running nearly a million and a half of spindles. I spoke twice at Fall River, and at the Narragansett Hotel I met for the first time a real Russian Nihilist — a lady, wondrously restless and vehement. On returning to the city I vv^as the guest of Dr. D wight Snow, the homoepathic physician, who printed outside his envelopes a scheme of the metric system, and with it a recommendation of its adoption, published by the Post-office, which showed a wise, practical interest in metric calculation. Mr. King (editor of the " Fall River Herald,") we formerly knew in Londoa as a man of varied information. He spoke at one of the lectures, and gave accounts of them in his paper, which were far more effective than reports, since they combined criticism and fact stated as only a journalist can state them. I owe many acknowl- edgments to the English as well as the Americans at Fall River. The Fall River Working Men's Co-operative Associa- tion occupies an entire block, consisting of several shop fronts. Very few stores in England look more imposing. Stores in America seem mostly to have been begun by two or three enterprising persons, who find the money to build the place and trust to the public coming to deal there. Beginning, as we do in England, with a few small share- holders, and increasing the premises and business as new members are induced to join, and looking forward to the education of the neighborhood around it for increase of members and purchasing success, is a plan quite unknown in America. Wondering whether this arose from the im- petuosity of the people, I found it was partly due to this; AMONG THE AMERICANS, I4I but mainly to the laws affecting co-operation, which prevent the formation of stores on our plan. Yet -in a country so unfettered as America no one would expect industrial im- pediments. On the contrary, there are complications in the air. The Act passed in 1867 for the purpose of legalizing co-operative and industrial unions, prescribed that a capital of £1,000 must be found before commencing. I pointed out that this law rendered co-operation impossible on the English plan, since poor men, who most needed co-opera- tion, could never commence it. However, when I pointed out that co-operation was legally impossible there as we conducted it, steps were at once taken to obtain a new law. Mr. Strahan, a very able counsellor of New York, and a brother of the editor of the " Contemporary Review " in England, kindly undertook to make a draft of the Act re- quired. The one thing wanted in America to insure the success of co-operation is the art of " making haste slowly," which the new law will enable them to do. CHAPTER XI. STATE SOCIALISM IN AMERICA. THE " Worker," which was published in New York when I arrived tliere, I found to be a species of American " Co-operative News," written witli sense and taste. Its object was to apply co-operative principles to emigration and village life. In the first article I wrote in New York I said " there was no inflation in its language — the " Worker " proposes no new system — it does not under- take to clear the world, or recast the world, or begin all things anew. It does not call upon the State to coddle the community and do everything for the people, but to assist the people to do something for themselves. In England we do not want the State to overspread us like a universal mosquito, and suck all independence out of our working men. Our great co-operative organizations have grown by being let alone. Our aim always w^as to set up co-operative colonies which should be self-provided, self- directed and self-supported." Before I wrote these words in New York, I had flattering dffers of v^elcome from the Socialist Labor Party thei-e, and at Fall River, at Chicago, at Cincinnati, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Afterwards the welcomers came not. The Socialist Labor Parties were 144 AMONG THE AMERICANS. absent from every meeting at which I spoke, as thougli they existed not. There was no need for this suspicious absten- tion. I was what I had always been — an advocate of the " republic democratic and social." Nevertheless, in their absence, I defended the objects of the socialist party without accepting its methods of realizing them. One who had given me proof of great friendliness, wrote to me concern- ing his colleagues in New York, saying: " Immediately after our interview last evening I called upon the president of the New Club, and he promised to send you a card giving you the freedom of the Club during your stay in America. I also saw the editor of the " New Yorker Volks-Zeitung," our daily German Socialistic paper, and he (Mr. Alexander Jonas), together with Mr. S. E. Shevitch, of that journal, and the distinguished Russian Nihilist of whom I spoke, will call upon you at the Hoff- man House some time to-morrow. " I enclose a page of the Chicago " Socialist," which, 1 think, will answer the query you made to me last evening- as to the condition of Socialism in the United States. In addition to the gentleman of the "Volks-Zeitung" who will visit you, the special committee of the Central Committee of the Socialistic Labor Party of New York City, will, I am confident, furnish you with the most satisfactory reports of how many thousands of earnest men in the United States are endeavoring to solve the great effort of your life — the success of co-operative industry." This friend gave me the first portrait of Lassalle I had seen, and promised me an introduction to the famous lady who became the chieftainess of a Lassalle party. AMONG THE AMERICANS. I45 Adherents such as that described in my friend's letter — numerous, influential, and organized in the name of Social- ism and Labor — had great interest for me, and were well w^orth addressing. It would have been a pleasure to know them. The deputation referred to came. It was my fault we did not meet. I was at Coney Island the night they called. The Council of Trades and Labor Union of Chi- cago, instructed Mr. C. M'AulifF, their secretary, to invite me to lecture on co-operation to the workmen of that city. It was Mr. M'AulifF's fault we never met when I was there. My answers to his letters were uncollected at his address. It matters very little to me what other people say with whom I am associated, so long as they concede to me reasonable opportunity for expressing my own opinions, and do not force upon me the responsibility for those they hold and I do not. I am not like the late M. Blanqui, who ex- pected a perfect government to be carried out by perfect men, and arranged to kill all of them who did not come up to his standard at once. In the " Trades" of Philadelphia, in which I myself wrote, appeared the following article, headed by the disturbing words, — " Make Ready for Revo- lution :" The present order of things will go down in revolution and blood. The accumulated corruptions, wrongs, and mistakes of two thousand years are near the bursting point. The world does not know its dan- ger. A peaceable solution of the discords in the world is impossible. Property has no rights which humanity is bound to respect. The wealth of the world belongs to labor. The present possessors of the bulk of it are the possessors of stolen property stolen by themse Ives. 146 AMONG THE AMERICANS. We must seize and run all the great trunk lines of railroads and all the telegraph lines, and pay their owners a fair value in legal tender money redeemable in the wealth of the country. And much more to the same effect. Friends who found me contributing to this furious journal must have thought I had turned into a Socialistic Comanche. Those who made these peremptory proposals meant honestly in their way. Though their terrific scheme of improvement is as appall- ing as oppression itself. I have said I met a real Nihilist lady at Fall River. Many of these refugees meet with sj^mpathy, on account of the oppression from which they have fled. At the same time it would be to their advantage if their language was a little less disturbing among a free people. Mr. 'P. Popoff, Russian Nihilist Secretary in New York, sent word that " Nihilism in Russia joined hands with the spinners on strike at Fall River." The "Labor Standard" announced that the news, that Miss Le Compte was to be the Russian Nihi- list delegate " flashed like lightning through the city." The Spinners' Hall, in which she was to speak, " was packed to overflowing, hundreds being unable to find even standing room." When she entered the hall, " escorted by a number of prominent labor men, it was a signal for an outburst of ♦he wildest applause." The Chairman then inti'oduced Miss Le Compte, who said : Comrades of Fall River — I am sensible of the honor you do me in asking me to deliver 3'our Fourth of July address. The Russian Nihilists are a terrible sort of people, most absurdly prepossessed in favor of public duty, and with no sympathy at all for the little human feelings of comfort or cowardice. I went through your city, saw AMONG THE AMERICANS. I47 your mills like palaces and your houses like barns and pigsties, and I wondered at the effrontery of a corporation which provides such places of abode for the people who build and run such mills. (Hear, hear.) When the mill-owners, toadying as they do to the press, sent their agents to me soon after my arrival, to explain to me the " situa- tion," as they called the strike, I told them I had seen the situation — I saw it on Six-and-a-half-street — and that if there should not be a strike on this particular point of wages, there should be a strike against homes that are hog-pens. (Applause.) While awaiting your return, and hearing of the hardness and heartlessness of the manu- facturers, and seeing everywhere the damning evidences of their rapacity and shamefulness, I realized that this was Fall River, and the black flag of starvation was floating over the city ! and I wondered that the operatives could have the heart to celebrate the Fourth of July.* This was pretty free language' from a stranger to the chief citizens of a town which gave her security. If the " mill-owners " did, as she says, " send their agents to her to explain the situation," it was an act of great courtesy. To represent this as " toadying " was an outrage which imper- ialism might not excel. The oratress continues : Take the situation in Fall River to-day. One would think that for the sake of human decency the manufacturer would not pursue liis victim beyond the threshold of the poor hovel which he calls his own. But do they do it.? Men of Fall River, answer! Are your homes any refuge from the lords of the long chimneys.'' Do they not confront you even there.' You beat them in your trade unions, but they foil you on your own hearth-stones. They set the wives of your bosoms and the children of your loins against you ; they prove to you that the operative has no rights which the manufacturer is bound to respect, and now their latest declaration is that " The mules * " Labor Standard," Extra, Fall River, July 10, 1879. 148 AMONG THE AMERICANS. will be taken out, and the men will be discharged and their women and children shall run the ring-frames." (Voice from a spinner: "And we will take in washing.") No; spinners of Fall River, you will not take in washing, the Chinese will do the washing, you will rock the cradles of the brats of the lords of the long chimneys. (Tremendous excitement of the audience.) Miss Le Compte is not only fervid, she has a brilliant readiness of invective. When riding through the town with the Mayor of the city, he being a large manufacturer, I asked him what he thought of these furious speeches, and whether he was called upon to take official action upon it. " Oh, no," he answered, " if anybody actually breaks the law we interfere then, but in America we don't care about a little hot talking." One day I asked Mr. Wendell Phillips whether the cry of " State Socialism," with its talk, loud and tall, was really a matter of political apprehension. " We cannot look upon it," he answered, " as a thing of any danger, if we can be said to recognize it in any sense which implies looking at it at all. If any party is numerous amongst us it can get its claims accredited at the ballot box. If it has strength in the State it can command redress that way. If not numerous enough to make an impression on the ballot box it is not numerous enough to fight the question otherwise." In San Francisco one Denis Kearney, an Irishman, who, complaining that his countrymen had been driven out of Ireland, was employing himself in attempts to drive the poor Chinese out of the country which had sheltered him, when one day the " New York Tribune " said : — AMONG THE AMERICANS. 149 Kearney, in the sand-lots of San Francisco, threatens revolution and riot, as he did ten days ago. " I now appeal to you," he cried, " to get ready, for, by the eternal God, the men we have elected inust be seated, and by physical force, if necessary. I, for one, will kiss my wife and children, bid them good-bye', buckle on my armor, and come into the street, prepared to seat the men I voted for. I have weighed my words, and claim that it is the noblest cause that sword was drawn for. I appeal to all good, faithful citizens to do what I tell you. I have told you for two years that when the ballot failed I would resort to bullets, and we will do what we said. All that is left for you now is the dagger and the bullet. If you do not show the cour- age I expect of you, you will be enslaved for ever. I feel it in my bones that it is my duty and yours to seat those men. Prepare for the worst. Arm yourselves with bullets, hatchets, pistols. No man must go to work on that day. I know that a thousand or two of us will get killed, but all the thieves will get killed. When the melee is over, you bet there won't be a Chinaman left in Chinatown.' If language like this was used in England, agitated people in every part of the country would be clamoring to the government to call out troops and pass coercion bills, before assassination began. When the agitator proceeds to act, a Republican Government is a dangerous thing to deal with, but it does not, like a monarchy, shriek out at tall talk. Its calmness and dignity was shown at the time in the following passage from the New York " Tribune:" The patience of the people is the furthest thing in the world from timidity. It tolerates bluster because it has no fear of it. It permits Mr. Denis Kearney to foam at the mouth and breathe out threaten- ings and slaughter simply because it takes intelligent measure of him, and rates him as contemptible rather than dangerous. It trusts " the common sense of most" to hold this person and his followers in reasonable check; and unless he infringes law or does some overt act of violence, it lets him rant. Kearney is a sort of steam escape — 150 AMONG THE AMERICANS. noisy, but not dangerous, though rasping and disagreeable. There could be no better proof of the absolute confidence we have in popu- lar government, and of our belief that under it there is no injury without a remedy, nor injustices without redress, than the indiffer- ence with which we view the efforts of fanatics of one kind and another to array classes against each other, and disturb the public peace. Mr. John Ehmann has published a lecture he delivered in Cincinnati to the Socialist Labor party. He commences by saying: "The Editor of a daily paper is a prejudiced and a totally ignorant man, because he thinks he knows all about it " (that is, about Socialism). He quotes the conceited saying of Lassalle to some one Avho had questioned some- thing he had said : " I can forgive the ignorance of the man because he is an Editor." Ehmann, who is himself an able thinker, declares that Socialism does not intend to abolish private property; on the contrary, its main principle is to establish private property. Mr. Ehmann adopts Proudhon's epigram that " Profit is Robbery;" but he explains that it does not mean that private property is in itself robbery, but that private property so used as to obtain from others their property, without giving an equivalent to that received, is robbery. State Socialism has some advocates who are worth contending with. The chief thing against them is that they are understood to seek to impose their opinions upon society by violence; and what is reasonable in their views will never be fairly considered by any who believe that violence is their chosen mode of persuasion. They are certainly intolerant, suspicious, and denunciatory, of all who do not at once and entirely agree with them. The AMONG THE AMERICANS. 151 main error they hold to is the Lassalle doctrine of the hope- lessness of individual effort, which co-operation alone con- futes. It has done so since Lassalle's days. But the success of co-operation is English. Neither in Germany nor America has the same success been witnessed. When co- operation takes to propagandism in America the most instructive field of its debates will be in the midst of State Socialists. It, however, is some defence of working-class State Socialists that they do not stand alone in their theory. The political class in America, even its chief statesmen, hold and defend theories of Protection, which is open State Socialism in its worse form, being the daily confiscation of the in- comes of the great body of the people for the benefit of a small class of manufacturers and producers. The most instructive little works I met with in America, were the " Causes of Communism, by an Average Citizen;" and a project of " A Continental Colony," published by the National Socialists of Cincinnati, and an elaborate pamphlet by Dr. Van Buren Denslow, of Chicago, a very able book, in which the political and communistic theories prevalent in America are discussed. Another was the small pamphlet already mentioned, entitled Ferdinand Lassalle's " Open Letter," never seen in England, but which has been trans- lated into English by the Germans. It is the gospel of the Socialist Labor Party, and is to be found in the hands of workmen wherever that party prevails. A reply to this ' Open Letter," written with the brevity and ability whic h Lassalle displays, would be of very great value. Lassalle had heard of Rochdale, and cites the early efforts of the 152 AMONG THE AMERICANS. Pioneers as proofs of the inability of the working classes to raise themselves. Lassalle was shot before their success confuted his argument. While there exists in any country the intolerable specta- cle of thousands of persons able to live without work, and thousands more not able to live with it, there will always he wild theories of State Socialism. The co-operative so- lution of the problem is to enable the people to acquire profit, and to teach them how to keep it when they have acquired it. This process is slow, but agitation is slow, and fighting is slow. Half the weary, conspiring years and per- petual sacrifices necessary to secure success by fighting, would suffice to accomplish the ends by wise and persistent co-operation. CHAPTER XII. CO-OPERATIVE EMIGRATION — AMERICAN AND CANADIAN. Desirous of trustworthy guidance, not only for co-opera- tive but general emigration, I sought opportunity of speak- ing upon the subject to statesmen in the two countries in which I travelled. The " New York Tribune " of October 21, 1879, stated, under the head of " News of the Capital," — " Mr. Holyoake makes a suggestion. He calls on Secre- tary Evarts to show how immigration can be helped. Mr. Holyoake has brought to the attention of Mr. Evarts the idea of issuing an official book, giving information about the public lands of the United States, which can be circulated in England among working-men. Mr. Evarts takes much interest in the matter." A telegram to the " Tribune " of the same date, dated Washington, October 20, stated — " Last Thursday, Mr. Holyoake, accompanied by Colonel R. G. Ingersoll, had an extended interview with the Secre- tary of State. He explained to Mr. Evarts the advantage it would be to the English people both of the mercantile and farming classes, if what he terms a blue book were issued, giving, in the name of the Government, all the in- formation of value to intending immigrants, with regard to 154 AMONG THE AMERICANS. the public lands, and their quality, price, and convenience of access. Mr. Holyoake represented that State agents, and the agents of private emigration schemes, are now supply- ing much information of this character, but they are not known to be trustworthy. The English people, he said, know the American Government, and would place confi- dence in any information which it might furnish." When I had the opportunity of an interview with Presi- dent Hayes, Mrs. Hayes, and General Sherman, at the White House, they readily entered upon the consideration of the uses of the suggested book, and the President espec- ially expressed valuable practical opinions thereupon. It was, I knew, a matter for the departments. My object was to explain it to the President, so that when he was con- sulted upon the subject it might not be new to him. To find that the heads of the State gave attentions to the pro- posals of " a stranger," and listened to what he had to say with a graceful deliberateness, as though they had nothing else on earth to attend to, seemed more than royal courtesy in a republic. Being naturally much interested in Canada, I had previ- ously thought it right to bring the matter before the Cana- dian Government. The "Globe" of Toronto, in a tele- gram from Ottawa, dated October 25th, stated that I had "held an interview with Sir John Macdonald, the Premier, and the Hon. J. H. Pope, Minister of Agriculture, and pressed upon them the desirableness of the Government sending proper information to Great Britain respecting Canada — such information as will be of practical interest to the farming and artisan classes; and that I desired the pub- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 55 lication, by the Canadian Government, of a Blue Book, similar to that issued by Lord Clarendon, some years ago, in England. Besides the usual information, the volume should mention the localities in which special industries exist, so that an artisan of any particular occupation may know precisely where he will be likely to obtain work, and not enter the country perfectly ignorant of the character of its industries and their location, as is now the case. The book should also state the character and nationality of the labor with which he will have to compete, the state of the labor market, and the rates of wages, with, above all, their purchasing value." The Toronto " Globe " added, " Mr. Holyoake claims that the most convincing arguments to the prospective emigrant, is to show him he can purchase more of the necessaries of life in Canada for five dollars, than in England with its equivalent, a sovereign. It was under- stood the Canadian Government would give the subject their consideration." The Premier, wishing me to see the Minister of Agri- culture, gave me the following introduction to him, dated, " Department of the Interior, Canada, Ottawa, 6th October, 1879," addressed to the Hon. J. H. Pope: Let me introduce to you Mr, Charlton, of Chicago, formerly of Hamilton — an old friend of mine — and Mr. Holyoake, a member of the public press in England. Mr. Holyoake is making inquiries as to Canada's capabilities for emigrants from England, and as to the sub- iect of colonization generally. I have asked him to see you, and I am sure you will give him every information, with all pamphlets and maps which may be of use to him. My stay at Ottawa did not permit me to visit the Marquis of Lome, who, I have no doubt, would not less have given 156 AMONG THE AMERICANS. attention to the subject. It occurred alike to Mr. Evarts and Sir John Macdonald that the Federal Government at Washington had no power to require any State to furnish in- formation necessary for the national emigrant book I asked, and that the Governor of the Dominion of Canada was equally without power to command information from the Canadian Provinces. My answer in both cases was, that while I was aware of those facts, the probability was that if the heads of the Canadian and American Governments should give notice that such information would be used in the national volume, if it was accorded, it would not be to the interest of any State or Province to be left out, and the compliance would no doubt be general. It was admitted that it probably would be so. Thinking it was incumbent upon me to inform the British Embassy what I had been proposing to the American Government, I went, when in Washington one day, down to the British Legation for that purpose. I explained the whole matter to the representa- tive of the British Minister. At the Embassy I thought I found some misgiving as to whether the Home Govern- ment might not disapprove of emigration. Probably there was a doubt , whether the Embassy should do anything which might be construed into advising it. This led me to address his excellency, Sir Edward Thornton, the following letter, he being absent when I called : It will be in jour excellency's recollection that Lord Clarendon, towards the close of his life, issued three Blue Books on the " Condi- tion of the Laboring Classes Abroad," consisting of reports from Her Majesty's secretaries of embassies and legations. Mr. Secretary Evarts would like to see them. It might be of great service to the AMONG THE AMERICANS. 157 people of Great Britain if you could show to him the books I have named. Either with these books, or separately, there may be at your embassy copies of instructions which, at Lord Clarendon's request, I drew up. These I have told Mr. Evarts I would ask you to show him if possible. In an interview I had the honor to have with the President (Mr. Haye0, I promised to prefer a request to you to show him the said books and instructions. Her Majesty's Government have never put obstacles in the way 01 British subjects emigrating to America. It is well known to Her- Majesty's Government that the English people continually do so, and do it upon doubtful, insufficient, and often misleading information. I have asked the American Government to do the English people the service of aftbrding them complete, detailed, and trustworthy infor- mation of the conditions and prospects of settlements in all the States of the American Union, which, being given on the authority of the American Government, would be regarded with confidence and re- spect. If you, sir, should be able to concur in this view, and make known your opinion to the American Government, it would be an advantage both to the operative and the farming classes of Great Britain. The same representations which I have been permitted to make to the American Government I thought it my duty to make to Sir John Macdonald, the Premier of Canada, who was pleased to say that he should like to see the analogous Blue Books I ha ve named which were issued by Lord Clarendon. I promised to request the English Foreign Office to forward copies to him, and to inquire first of you whether you could forward copies to him, or use your influence at home to procure them to be sent to Sir John. It is desirable that the English people should have equal opportuni- ties of judging between the advantages of emigrant settlements offered by the Dominion and America. I pray you to permit this consideration to be my excuse for thus troubling you. 158 AMONG THE AMERICANS. In due course Sir Edward Thornton wrote me as follows, from the British Legation, Washington, on November 10, 1879: In replj to your letter of the 8th instant, I regret to say that I can only find at this legation a single copy of the two last of the reports on the condition of the industrial classes in foreign countries. I should, of course, be glad to lend these to Mr. Evarts, for his perusal, should he wish to see them, but I cannot part with them altogether, as they belong to the archives of this legation and are single copies. Neither can I send them to Sir John Macdonald, who, however, would find no difficulty in obtaining copies of them through the Colonial Office. It is impossible not to notice the difference between this answer from Sir Edward Thornton to a British subject, seeking to promote an object of English interest, and those which I had received, as a stranger, from the American and Canadian Governments. Sir Edward plainly is not disposed to take any trouble in the matter — I merely look at the fact and do not complain of it — he probably disapproved of the proposal conveyed to him, and, if so, it could not be expected that he would take trouble to forward it. Unless Mr. Evarts told him that " he wished to see " the books, it does not appear that they would be shown to him. If Sir John Macdonald wants them he must apply for them through the Colonial Office. Any ambassador of a British Government knows very well that not more than one minister in a cen- tury arises in England who will take trouble to find himself new work. It is a great thing if he will give attention to it when it is brought to his hands, and its importance made apparent. Mr. Evarts was quite willing to consider the AMONG THE AMERICANS. I59 proposal in question, but I could not expect him to take the initiative in collecting from a foreign country the materials for the opinion asked of him; nor was it likely that Sir John Macdonald would take the trouble of writing to the Colonial Office in England for these reports for his own perusal; he had a right to expect that I would cause them to reach him myself. Sir Edward Thornton is also entirely silent vipon the remark I made in my letter, namely, that should he be able to concur in the views I had expressed as to the desirability of the emigrant book being issued, and would make known that opinion to the American Govern- ment, he would confer a great advantage on our operative and farming classes, since Mr. Evarts, seeing that the British minister was interested in it, it would be a motive for proceeding with it. As Sir Edward was entirely silent as to whether he did concur in the project, I presume he did not; and, therefore, I could not expect him to do what I had hoped he would — namely, procure himself from the Col- onial Office the Blue Books in question, and send them over to the State House to Mr. Evarts, and forward them from Washington to Sir John Macdonald, when his (Sir John's) attention and interest would be further enlisted. On my return to England I went down to the Foreign Office, when Lord Barrington kindly permitted me to ex- plain to him the grounds upon which I requested two sets (six volumes in all) of the aforesaid English Blue Books. A few days afterwards the Marquis of Salisbury very obligingly sent them to my chambers. As these volumes did not contain the personal instructions to Consuls, it became necessary to write to Earl Granville, who had by CHATER XIII. WAYSIDE INCIDENTS. UNTIL I went to America I had no proper idea what my personal appearance was. The "Kansas City Times" thought me " to be about sixty years of age, of medium height, blue grey eyes, with side whiskers (which I never had), and hair which has been touched by the finger of time," which was true. The "Index" described me as a " venerable" author. The "Boston Post" regarded me as " being between fifty-five and sixty years of age, of medium height, and well proportioned, hair, moustache and impe- rial almost white, firm set mouth, small, grey, and very piercing eyes." The "Boston Herald" found I had "snow white hair, a chin-beard, and in looks and manners much resembling ex-Governor Rice." When I afterwards met the ex-Governor at the Christian Union, I was perplexed, not knowing which was which. The "Boston Daily Adver- tiser regarded me as " of medium height, well formed, and of good weight." Weight, I observed, is somewhat an element of rhetoric in the American mind. The "Cincin- nati Daily Gazette" described me as looking older than I was, but, however, having the appearance of robust age, with calm demeanor, and quiet voice. The "Philadelphia 164 AMONG THE AMERICANS. Times" began its report of my address in St. George's Hall thus: — '-Bearing, though not bending, under the weight of seventy years. Notwithstanding his age, he seems as fresh, physically, as a well-preserved man of fifty or fifty-five years." One reporter thought me, " when excited, a litt'le inclined to stammer." A Florence writer said he thought, as a speaker, I was "ofF-hand, but refined in the choice of words." I cease the citation of these de- scriptions, which will be less interesting to the reader than to the writer, and because the amusement arose from the contrast with other qualities assigned to me which it is not my place to quote. No doubt my speaking at times was pretty much like stammering, since I always think it re- spectful to an audience to cast about to find the proper word, instead of throwing at their heads the first that comes to hand, although it may be an unfitting one ; it being in my opinion a less waste of time to an audience to hear nothing than to hear the wrong thing. As Lord Chancellor Camp- bell used to say, " It is better to go to a house where they give you bad wine than where you have to listen to a bad dialect." In America I had to speak, like Mark Antony, "right on," but not with his success, because I did not expect to speak at all, and except at a few times when I did not think of the audience or the place, and thought only of the subject, I do not believe I did deserve the credit that was given to me by hospitable critics. It is not possible to any, except orators by nature, to speak always as they would wish, but it is possible to anyone to say exactly what he ought to say if he has the courage, which the late Earl AMONG THE AMERICANS. 165 Russell had, of trusting to the audience to tolerate defects of manner in consideration of the fair intention of the matter. Americans I found perplex English -visitors by bearing with wondrous patience things which would make us all indignant and probably mad. The reason is that in Eng- land we can seldom get redress save by explosions; while in America the people know that whenever an evil becomes very tiresome, and they have time to attend to it, it has " got to go," and it does go then. A man will live and die in the precincts of London Bridge and never go into the Tower, which stands hard by. Since 'he can go into it when he pleases, he never goes into it at all. But if the doors were closed, and the public excluded, he would make a violent speech at a public meeting convened to get the Tower open. So it seems to be with Americans; they put up with great evils because they can alter them — evils which would soon cause a revolution if they were unchange- able. One day I paid a visit, with two friends, to New Rochelle, to explore the lands voted by Congress, in the last century, to a famous Englishman — Thomas Paine, whose political writings had so signally promoted the Independence of the United States. No other Englishman ever achieved like distinction. In his own country Paine ranked with Junius and Burke as a foremost political w^riter dealing with prin- ciples of Government. In America his pen accomplished almost as much as the sword of Washington. In Paris he was the wisest counsellor of the Revolution. In England his liberty was in jeopardy; in America his life was im- perilled; in France he was condemned to death. I found l66 AMONG THE AMERICANS. his beautiful estate entire and unchanged, I walked on the terrace where he meditated, and sat in the room in which he died, where objects of interest remain upon which he last looked. No Englishman ever rendered services so splendid to three nations, or was so ill requited in all. Like others, I had heard it said that Americans in Europe gave observers the idea of a decaying race. That must be because many being invalids come to Europe for change of climate; others because they have lost fibre in attaining fortune to enable them to travel. Instead of being all attenuated I found men and women of vigor and solidity of frame very general. I asked Dr. Oliver, of Boston, whom I found to be a philosophic physician, what, in his opinion were the physical pi'ospects of the race. He thought that three generations, or a hundred years, were needful to acclimatize a European family to the new country, that is, supposing they do not conform to rational conditions of life there. An English traveller will to the end of time be astonished at the simplicity, precision, and security of the express sys- tem by which luggage in America is transmitted. In Eng- land the care of luggage is a very serious operation for the traveller. You are required to see yourself that it is put into the van, and it does not at all follow then that it will remain there. At the first junction you may see it on the platform again, or the van itself may be detached and sent to another part of the country, and you are told you should have looked after it. In America a civil, quiet person appears, who asks you where you will have your luggage sent to, and he gives you a metal ticket with the name of that place, and you AMONG THE AMERICANS. 167 leave the station and proceed unencumbered on your journey. Days, or even weeks after, probably 3,000 miles from the place you last lost sight of your portmanteaus and their pre- cious contents, the train stops at a prairie station when there issues from an official ranch in a wood, or some unnoticed depot in the rocks, a baggage master, who has upon his arm the corresponding check to that which you have in your purse, and your luggage is there exactly as when you last saw it. Another thing surprising to me, was the artistic facility with which letters were produced on placards and signs. Shopkeepers had a black-board at their door upon which they wrote with chalk the particulars of their commodities. Near the " Tribune " buildings, New York, a man would come out of the shop and write up the quality and price of his oysters. The words were written with such graphic beauty, freedom, and rapidity, that the board was worth buying and framing, and hanging up among your pictures. On the railroads in Massachusetts the tickets were ex- changed in the carriages for a card containing the names of all the stations on that line, and the distance from the town from which you set out, and the reverse list showed the dis- tance from every town to which you were going. All this was gratuitous courtesy to the passengers. No railway in England ever does it. Of conveniences to trav- ellers, prompted by competition, we have, like other coun- tries, many ; but except the Midland, no railway is commonly believed ever to have introduced a single convenience from pure consideration for the pleasure or comfort of the passen- gers. The railways will not sell tickets until within a few l68 AMONG THE AMERICANS. minutes of the starting of the train, and then you have to peep through a little hole, and whistle through it any ques- tion you have to put, without being able to see with whom you are dealing, or what change he is giving you, until it is thrust outside the aperture. Railways assume that every passenger is a thief who meditates robbery with violence, and the railway clerk must transact his business in self- protection through a loophole. If a tradesman sold tickets he would never think of keeping his shop shut up the greater part of the day. The post- master-general might as well require every applicant for a stamp to make a declaration that he has written his letter before he sold him one, to put upon it, as the railway com- pany compel you to declare that you intend to travel by the next train before they sell you a ticket. Their assumption is that the public are fools, and will jump into every train that comes up, and go everywhere unless they are pre- vented. In America everybody is self-acting. This, no doubt, tends to increase crimes of violence there among the uncivilized emigrants, since a man who has got to act for himself will act wrongly if he has not found out how to act rightly ; and if he has a taste for wrong acting he will plead the necessity of self-acting as an excuse for it. But this does not last long, for other self-acting persons put him down. At Narrowsburgh I found the hotel dinners better than those at the Station Hotel at Syracuse, which had a good repute. I told the proprietor at Narrowsburgh so, which gratified him. I always made it a point when I found an hotel-keeper had done well by his guests, to say so to him. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 169 The acknowledgment was due to him, and always gave pleasure. He is a churl who is well used and never owns it. Besides, I thought it might make things^ better for the next passengers who arrived out there. In England I have spoken to four waiters in a fashionable hotel, none being en- gaged. Each refused to attend to me, as it was not his duty to await at that table. Nor could anyone receive or convey the order to the proper one. I must wait until he came, however long it might be, and when he appeared, as I did not know him, I had still to wait until he condescended to address me, as it would give renewed offence to address him if he was not the proper person. In America I never addressed a colored waiter, who, if he did not belong to my table, would civilly communicate with the one who did. Indeed, not merely civilly do it, he would show a pleasant willingness, as though he thought the object of being a waiter was to make things agreeable to the visitor. Nor did they show that they wanted an}-- thing from me. The colored attendant, who made my bed in the car and brushed my boots every morning, let me leave without giving me any impression that I had not paid him the quarter dollar due to him by custom, of which I was not aware. Chautauqua Lake is a famous place for the congregation of prophets. It is a general campaigning quarter for prop- agandists of the other world and of tliis. The shore is covered with tents of speculation and of practice. The ard- ent take their wives and families there and spend their annual vacation time between the pleasures of the lake and the progress of principles. The bright lake is eighteen lyo AMONG THE AMERICANS. miles long, and requires a steamer to cross it, so that there is ample space for airing the most advanced ideas. It lies in a corner of New York State, some 500 miles or more from the city. Those who go to convention there have in view to put forth their ideas of things in general, and generally do it. For myself I could listen to all subjects, but did not want to listen to them all at once. There were, however, a good many persons there who seemed able to do it. I was surprised to find the Liberal Convention I attended a great " pow-pow," with no definite plan of procedure such as would be observed in England, As I arrived early at the Lake I drew up the following resolutions, as the report- ers had nothing to report: We, the undersigned, having arrived at Chautauqua Lake a day before everybody else, do resolve ourselves into a Primary Convention, setting forth the following objects: 1. That the President of the Convention be requested to define its objects, and state them as briefly as possible. 2. That as many of the speakers be requested to speak as possible to those points. 3. That each speaker be allowed reasonable time for de- nouncing everybody and everything, and afterwards it is hoped that everyone will proceed to business. 4. That if more imputation be desired by any speakers the proprietor of the hotel shall be requested to set apart a Howling Room, to which all such persons shall retire, attended by as many reporters as can be induced to accom- pany them. 5. That it is not intended here to disparage imputations or irrelevancies, which are always entertaining if well done AMONG THE AMERICANS. I'Jl but to prevent the time of the Convention being consumed upon persons instead of principles. 6. That clear notice be given to speakers that this is not a convention for the discussion of every subject under the sun, but of those only proposed from the chair. These resolutions were signed by G. J. Holyoake, L. Masquerier, H. J. Thomas, H. L. Green. Of course they were directed against those whom Col. Ingersoll happily calls " the Fool Friends of Progress," who hang about cler- ical as well as lay associations, who create enemies by wanton imputations, and render good principles ridiculous by eccentricity of advocacy. Mr. Green, whose name appears above, was the Liberal secretary — one of those wise, prompt, able inen who know how to be earn est without unwise zeal, and who seek to conduct a movement so that it shall command the respect of adversaries. Elder F. W. Evans, the pinncipal of the Shakers at Mount Lebanon — a pleasant speaking, genial person, agreed with the resolutions, but fenced about them more than an Elder should, and could not be induced to sign them ; not that he had any de- nunciations to make, for he was a model of pleasant-mind- edness, but he was bent upon irrelevancy himself. The resolutions were printed in the " Bradford Era," the chief paper in those parts, and were considered to have been use- ful to the convention, which, unlike American conventions in general, had nothing in common save the unity of mis- cellaneousness, with the right of imputation to be used with or without discretion. The President could not state a defi- nite plan of procedure or questions of debate, for he had never thought of them, and he could not invent any, for he 173 AMONG THE AMERICANS. had the inaugural address in his pocket, not only written hut printed, and hound up in hook form ; and, to do justice to the versatility of his knowledge, the address related to most things which have ever been mooted in this world. The reader must not suppose that there were not wise men and wise women at the Chautaqua convention because mpji- tion has been made here mainly of the other sort. At the town of Bolton, in England, I saw lately an announcement at a good-looking chapel that a sermon would be preached by the " Shaggy Prophet." I saw no " Shaggy Prophet " at the Chautaqua convention. When leaving the great Propagandist Lake I was told to go by way of Dunkirk, then I should " strike " Buffalo. The phrase being new to me it at first suggested an assault. On disclaiming any intention of " striking " Buffalo myself, as it had done nothing to me, I found it was a mere pictur- esque term of travel, meaning to impinge. The " blocks " of New York at first caused me trouble. On asking my way in the streets I was told that the place I wanted was one, or three blocks off, as the case might be. Not in the least knowing what was meant, I asked what is a "block?" He whom I asked was not at all prepared with a definition. Pearing he would think me wantonly ignorant, I said " I come from England, where we have plenty of blockheads, but no blocks." Then he kindly said a block was a corner. That helped me but little, since some blocks have no corner and some blocks are all corners. It was some time before I discovered that a block meant part of a street intersected by other streets, and meant the whole block of buildings standing between two streets. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 73 It was when travelling alone on the Erie Railway that I was first invited to enter into business. I was looking over " Frank Leslie " on the day when the engraving appeared in which I was taken in the act of being interviewed, when a bright-looking newsboy came up and asked, " Will you tra'de, sir?" The question confused me, being quite unpre- pared for the proposal. At first I said, " I have nothing to sell." Next, that " I was not in business," adding some years ago I was a bookseller in the city of London, but since that time I had not been in " trade." " I am not for buying," he answered. " Then what is the matter with you ?" I asked. " What do you mean by " ' trading ?' " He said, " you bought a ' Frank Leslie ' from me ; now I am asked for one, and I have not one left. I have only a 'Har- per ■ (a similarly illustrated paper.) " You have read ' Les- lie,' and I will give you a ' Harper ' for it. You will then have had two papers, paying only for one, and I shall sell two papers instead of one." The lad had a manifest turn for business. The most advantageous opening I saw in America for an enterprising stranger, was that of polishing shoes. I found that 10 cents, or 5d. in English money, was the least sum expected for that operation. The entire capital necessary tor the business, including brushes, blacking, a mat, a stand, and a chair, would not exceed five dollars {£1). From this moderate outlay a clever operator might look for a return of iC2,ooo a year. I made the calculation when in the hands of one of these happy artists one night on the Fall River boat. A swift-handed mechanic can polish two pairs of shoes in five minutes, and that is allowing him double the 1^4 AMONG THE AMERICANS. time a business man in New York requires to eat his din- ner. This would give twenty-four operations in an hour, which, at 5d. each, would produce los., and twelve hours industry per day would produce £6. Mechanics told me that they worked twelve and fourteen hours per day in the mills (much longer than they worked in England) so that twelve hours would be an average day for this business, and 365 times £6 would exceed i£2,ooo per year. Supposing bright times, when the supply of dull-looking boots would be low, and the artist would work only half time, still the gain of iCi,ooo per year from Xi of capital is not so bad. As most persons I saw, abroad or in hotels, seemed engaged in having their boots blacked, I judged this to be one of the most hopeful pursuits open to strangers in the States. An American lady told me that " I might as well ai'gue that be- cause a clever dentist gets a guinea for drawing a tooth, and can draw two a minute, that he could therefore earn 120 guineas an hour, and acquire a considerable fortune in a year. But the patients are not always at hand in sufficient numbers, and have not always a guinea in their pockets." There is some truth in this. Nevertheless, since we can black boots in London, and polish them w^ell at a penny per pair, blacking them at fivepence per pair (with less labor owing to the greater brightness of the American climate) must be a good off-hand business, as times ago. Ice water (which is everywhere to be had, is pleasant and refreshing beyond all other obtainable drinks in the hot sea- sons) and lager beer seem to be superseding the spirituous drinks which produced so much danger formerly. The brightness of the climate and the freshness of the prairie air AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 75 are a species of wine in themselves. Tiie celerity with whicli all things move in America — the ceaseless busyness of the people — make temperance a necessity of daily life to Americans; without observing it, they die like Indians, being merely a little longer about it. There is speculation all over the United States. In some cities men will risk nine-tenths of their fortune. In others they will risk every cent they ha.ye. There needs no physician to discover that there cannot be good digestion in such cases, and if spirit drinking be added there is no need to invoke the climate to account for fluctuations in longevity. During the months I spent in America I fell in with only two persons who struck me as being drunk. One was a well-dressed ruffian, whom I thought intended to rob me. We met in a street car the first time I entered one. We were alone. He wanted to know where I was going to. I answered the question, my destination being to me quite an unknown place. To my surprise he knew the person and the place, and named them " straight away." He was not a man to take the refusal of an answer, and I did not want to lie the first thing on arriving in a new country. When he left me it was with my full consent. The other was a person of unusually grotesque movements — nothing more. One evening I was sitting in the entrance hall of the hotel where I resided, watching mankind about, and smoking, when the smallest man I met in the country, came and sat in the seat next to me. He was dressed in a neat suit of black; he was quite dapper, silent, motionless, and I thought melancholy. The man was almost as small as a snufF-box, and slender as a cane. His face was sallow, his 176 AMONG THE AMERICANS. eyes were small ; his most conspicuous feature, which cer- tainly was conspicuous, was a well-formed nose, large enough to work problems in Euclid on the sides. After some time he opened his mouth, when I saw the largest aperture I had ever beheld in a human head; and he deliberately put into it a quid of tobacco, which seemed to me as large as a child's foot. As it was the first and only time I witnessed that operation, perhaps it impressed me more than it should. When he was recomposed into the the state of quiesence in which I first had seen him, I thought I would speak to him to learn whether he was human. Near at hand were two theatres, one of them I knew from a circumstance of personal and historic interest to me, but was ignorant which it was, and I asked my silent friend in black if he could tell me, when I found he could be offensive. He treated my inquiry as though I could not be ignorant of the place which, indeed, was the next door. He probably did not observe that I was a stranger, and might be ignorant of what was notorious to everyone else, and thought I was jesting with him. He moved himself close to me — he put his knees upon me. I thought he was going to climb up me. His weight was not serious, as I thought that I could blow him away, but he acted like a human musquito, and it was not easy to get free from him. I con- cluded he had been drinking, as he began to question me with incoherent volubility. I fell back upon my old rule that there must be two persons to a quarrel, and I elected not to be one, since even a madman cannot continue to be excited when there is nothing to irritate him. Silence is a source of confusion to the impetuous, as nobody can keep AMONG THE AMERICANS. I77 up a conversation with a tree. I took out a new cigar, and went to the buffet to get a light, and took care not to return to the tarantula in the black coat, who, prior to the last glass but one, was I doubt not, a bright and civil gentleman. My intention was to visit North Alabama; but Memphis lay close there, where the yellow fever was active, and as I did not feel I wanted the yellow fever, I never went nearer Memphis than St. Louis. Several persons who knew the district well, and who had resided there spoke to me favor- ably of it. I learned, on British official authority, that there are large districts of Alabama where labor is scarce com- pared with other parts of America. The State of Alabama contains but one million of population, though there is land enough to support ten millions. The colored people have not learned to live under independent industrial conditions. Like the English laborer, when feudalism was abolished, the habit of being kept still clings to them; and being in debt is not the same trouble to many colored men as it is to white men as a rule — though it must be owned that there are white men in many countries who are not much trou- bled about it either. It is also objected that the colored men cannot be depended upon to remain in their situations, and will leave the plantation when most needed, which occurs at times among workmen not coloi'ed, A rising mining town named Birmingham exists in North Alabama. For many years past a great many miners have settled there from England and Wales, and are doing well and develop- ing the richest of the coal lands. With prudence anyone can keep himself in Alabama, but without prudence it cannot be done. The prudence consists in avoiding undue exposure 17S AMONG THE AMERICANS. after dark. The Germans have learned to do it. They have founded a colony in this neighborhood. The Germans get along well in this State, and there are large numbers of them in every town. The hill country of Alabama bears the name of the " Land of Rest." Consul Cridland reports that " the climate of this district or colony is said to be very healthy, and to this fact is attributed much of its rapid growth and success. Good water abounds, and the site is 702 feet above the level of the sea. Epidemics are unknown and fevers rare. The summers are not oppressive, nights cool, the winter short and mild. Snow seldom falls, and when it does, quickly disappears. New settlers, mostly German, continue to arrive daily, and the population is steadily increasing, also in j^rosperity. The officials of the South and North Alabama Railroad are warm friends of the colony, and do all in their power to encourage immigra- tion." They make things plain in America. The " New York Herald " published a page containing a series of broad black lines, showing the comparative length of 6S of the states and territories of America and the principal countries of Europe, omitting Russia and Alaska. The longest line of all was that of Texas, containing 34,000 more square miles than the Austrian empire. A glance at this page of the " Herald " shows the relative size of the 68 countries at once. The Canadian maps given me by the Hon. Mr. Pope are remarkable for their picturesque distinctness. A quarto pamphlet of Manitoba and northwest territories is filled with copious wood-cut illustrations, singularly clear, convey- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1^9 ing the sense of coolness and clearness of the air : while the American wood-cuts, in many instances, reproduce the effect of heat and sunlight, so that when I look ujDon the engi-av- ings of places which I saw, the atmospheric associations under which I saw them return again to the mind. A w^riter describing Winnipeg, says " it possesses an excellent daily newspaper, the " Manitoba Free Press." A club- house is regarded as a luxury in the Far West, and a news- paper is held to be a luxury of life." Thus intelligence is the first thought of these new settlements. Mr. Jas. Samuel- son, an English barrister (brother of the English M. P. for Banbury), whom I met in Boston, has since published a small book of useful information for intending emigrants, both precise and informing. In Canada considerable practical thought is given to forms of co-operation unknown in England. One was a plan by Mr. F. P. McKelcan, of the nature of an indus- trial federation of towns and villages, w^ith a view to obtain, at a central office, a continuous record of persons of all pro- fessions in any town wanting employment, or w^ho are themselves wanted or not wanted in it, so that emigrants arriving can learn at once where to go, or what places to avoid. A person advertised in the " Montreal Witness " for a musical teacher for his family, and for a housemaid. The answers received showed that there were 2,000 music teach- ers in Canada more than were at that time wanted, while there was not a single housemaid to be had. Mr. McKelcan's plan is of the nature of a Co-operative Labor Exchange. I had opportunity of conversing with Mr. McKelcan, and found him a man of good practical judgment. iSo AMONG THE AMERICANS. Whether Canada derives the inspiration of equality from its adjacency to tlie United States, or wliether its spirit of civil liberty is indigenous, I was unable, during my pleasant ac- quaintance with that country, to determine. That there were gracious ways in the land I could see; for instance, when the Canadian Hankn — a brilliant oarsman — ^beat Elliott on the Tyne, the Marquis of Lome telegraphed to Hanlan his congratulations. This was a very handsome thing to do. I have know^n no instance in which any per- son in England of eminent position has done a similar thing to an Englishman who has won a victory in a foreign coun- try. No mayor in any English town ever sent a telegram of congratulation to any Englishman who had distinguished himself abroad. When Green, the Australian oarsman, rowed with Robert Chambers on the Thames — the greatest oarsman England has produced — I went myself to Sir Hugh Childers, then our First Lord of the Admiralty, and sug- guested to him that, as he had held an official position in Australia, it would be a graceful thing to send some message of recognition of Green, which would be encouragement to him. Sir Hugh did so, but otherwise it would not have been done. Chambers, of the Tyne, was the bravest oars- man I ever knew. In a mile race Green went more swiftly through the water than any man who had before appeared on our rivers. In Green's four-mile race with Chambers on the Thames, Chambers beat him absolutely; and I knew Chambers would be better pleased that his opponent should have every encouragement to put forth his highest power, for Chambers preferred a stout contest. The incident I have related made me more appreciate the voluntary act of AMONG THE AMERICANS. l8l the Marquis of Lome in sending a message from Canada to Hanlan. As an Englishman, I was interested in what re- lated to the Mai-quis of Lome in Canada. Before he went out he published a volume of poems, superior to anything Lord Byron published at his age. The English are a mysterious people in the eyes of Americans. We treat the aristocracy in politics with a deference Americans contemn; while in litei-ature we treat them with a severity that Americans would not display. If the Marquis of Lome was a pitman, or a weaver, he would be ranked higher as a poet than he is, being a peer. One afternoon in Ottawa I had the honor to receive, at the Russell House, a deputation from the Ottawa Progress- ive Society. It was the first formal deputation I had received. I am afraid I did not acquit myself with the dignity a visit of that kind demanded, but the interview was to me a very pleasant one. The same is true in both particulars of a deputation which I met at the Union Depot, Toronto. Among them was Mr. Belford, of the great publishing house of that city, and Mr. A. L. Jury, representing the Toronto Co-operative Association, and also representatives from the Toronto Philosophical Society. The time at my disposal did not enable me to visit the city. I had been in it in the early morning a few days before, when I insisted upon walking into the streets that I might have palpable assurance of treading on the soil of Toronto. Canada is a much more pleasant and habitable country than Englishmen imagine at home. The cold is definite in its nature, limited in its period of operation, and is to be combatted by exercise, and the contest conduces to health. l82 AMONG THE AMERICANS. There is great warmth in the summer season and almost perpetual brightness in the cold time. I was assured that the clear and brilliant days to be spent among the snow afford an exhilaration unknown in England. I found many emigrants from the old country who thought they would not like to live in England or Scotland after their experience there. It was professed to me that the fogs of New Bruns- wick are superior to ours since they give no colds. But of the superiority of their fogs I can give no opinion as I did not try them. When Mr. George lies, of the Windsor Hotel, Montreal, afterwards visited me in London, at the Christmas of 1879, I often heard him say that in the winter weeks he spent in London, he experienced more discomfort from cold than he ever did in Canada. It was a new thing for me to find in Ottawa that the Liberals were in favor of what we understand as " personal government," while the Conservative party were opposed to it. On that question I was a Conservative in Ottawa. Thus Canada was a coun- try in which I could change my party without changing my principles. Lord DufFerin, when Governor-General of Canada, said, at a dinner given to him at Toronto, " For many years past I have been a strong advocate for emigra- tion in the interest of the British population. I believe that emigration is a benefit both to those who go and to those that remoin; at the same time that it is the most effectual and legitimate iveapoiz tvith ■which labor can contend with capi- tal." These are the wisest words (save as I think those which co-operation has to utter) that any inan of eminence has said upon the policy of labor. CHAPTER XIV. MANNERS AND OPINION IN AMERICA. Children in America are regarded as apt to act upon their own will rather than upon the will of their parents. It did not appear to be so in any of the families which I had op- portunities of observing ; on the contrary, there were mani- fest affectionate and intelligent obedience. At the same time it was apparent that young people were more self-act- ing than they are in England, where we have a somewhat unwise domestic paternalism, which encourages a costly de- pendence. The result is that many parents have to keep their children at a period of life when children should be prepared to keep their parents, if need be. The American habit of training their children to independence, which they interpret as meaning self-dependence, has much to be said in its favor. We have the Scriptural maxim, " Train up a child in the way it should go." Young people in England among the middle class have quite reversed this. Their reading of the text is, " Train up the parents iii the way they should go that when they are old they shall not depart from it." Hence it is that w^e have so many young men whose politics are Conservative conceit, who despise the principles under which their fathers were enabled to achieve 184 AMONG THE AMERICANS. prosperity, and who think their mission in this world is to live upon the earnings of their relatives, making no honest exertions on their own behalf. Thp equality of classes in America has many pleasant features. Policemen are dressed without the apoplectic rigor common with us. In riding with Mr. Quincy, in one of the public carriages, or with the mayor of the city, I ob- served that they spoke to the driver as an acquaintance. When Mr. Wendell Phillips took me to see Cambridge he consulted the driver as to the best route to see the university and other places of interest. Sometimes the driver stopped and suggested another route that he thought would be better, with as much ease and confidence as though he were one of the party. In nations where there is social inequality, intercourse between superior and inferior classes is marked by ceremonies of submission on the part of the lower to the higher. There are also observances of pure courtesy, which pass under the pleasant name of " deference." Deference is just when it is voluntary; when offered as an acknowledg- ment of discerned worth it is politeness; when it is yielded because it is exacted it is servility. When all classes become socially equal, as in America, there is among the unthink- ing an unceremoniousness of behavior, which they sup- pose to be a sign of equality as showing that one man is as good as another. It is overlooked that among gentlemen who are on a perfect equality, there is deference of manner towards each other. Without it, equality becomes mere familiarity. In a democratic nation every person is a gentle- man or a lady in social rights, and perpetual deference to each other is a mark of educated equality. What reticence AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1S5 is in Speech, deference is in manners. Those who do not know when to be silent are not more offensive than they who do not know when to be still. The babbler is one with the familiar. Deference is the acknowledgment of in- dividual superiority where it exists. Rudeness is a coarse assumption of the right to disregard the feelings and con- venience of others. It is nof equality, it is insolence. Emigrants who have left Great Britain because affairs were hopeless about them, naturally conclude that the country will not last long which could not find a livelihood for them ; and they diffuse about them an impression that " the old country is about to burst up." I met with a droll instance of this in Ottawa. Rumors of the distress of the working class in England had spread over the United States and Canada, and a deputation of farmers were known to have over-run both countries, seeking sites for settlements. A porter at the Russell House, Ottawa, a square-looking youth, with readiness of speech, of Irish extraction I judged, though " raised " in England, told me, with great confi- dence in the accuracy of his own knowledge, that " the people in England were fighting to get into the poorhouse, and that the Queen was so struck and agitated by the dis- tress and ruin of England, that she had sent her wisest men to America to find out the cause, and that they had been to Ottawa making inquiries." The process, as he described it, of going so far from home to find out what was the matter there, certainly looked a little odd and roundabout. Never- theless, one cause of the condition of the farmer in England is doubtless to be found in America. My amusing infor- mant added, " England was not cowed like Ireland, and l86 AMONG THE AMERICANS. would rise and put down the Government if the ruin went on." His idea evidently was that the Government could prevent any evil if it chose. The unrest which is a feature of American life, is a na- tural growth of the settler's condition in a new country. The early settlers were broken up by the Indians. When the settlers increased they broke up the Indians to make more room for themselves. Afterwards adventurers from Europe kept up a general alertness of mind. Men being free, as men were never free before in this world, the first effects are unrest. The resources of American life being apparently boundless, and land plentiful and fruitful being easily acquired, the appetite for adventure arises and grows by what it feeds upon. Having so many chances, Ameri- cans have less need of security than Englishmen, since, if one chance fails the American, there are many others open to him. Opportunity is up early in the morning, and may be met about all day. The chances of even splendor of life incite the new settler to incur risks to obtain it which Englishmen seldom think of undertaking. Restlessness is not the disease of Republicanism. It is the malady of am- bition — of indigence and hopelessness — suddenly confronted with great opportunities. Disorder itself marches at the heels of success. Vastness of half-occupied country begets lawlessness, and lawlessness begets the fighting power, and the fighting power begets the fighting habit. Wealth easily gained begets luxury, and luxury begets desperate efforts to maintain itself Where great results are possible, ambition, never ignited in Europe is set on fire there. Splendid houses are possessed by men once poor and abject. In ter- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 187 ritories so vast there are wild parts where the country is a camp, and the rule which for a time prevails is the rule of the knife. But every increase of numbers helps to bring in the rule of law. Some travellers have reported disparagingly of Ameri- can inquisitiveness. A stranger being besieged with ques- tions of a very personal nature, seemed to me a very natural thing in a country of widely-dispersed settlers. So many are far away from centres of news that they have a craving for it others never know. The stranger is to them a peri- patetic newspaper. His object in coming there, his destina- tion, the place whence he first set out, the place which he has left, all imply new information. He knows something which is unknown to the inquirers, and they w^ant to know what it is ; it is partly curiosity and partly necessity. There is something stirring elsewhere, or he would not be stirring there. The craving for news is a passion of the settler's condition, and the habit of acquiring it clings to him when he is in a position to obtain information otherwise. The saturated English traveller from populous cities, where news is heard from a thousand tongues, is too apt to forget that the isolated have parched minds and thirst for details. The splendid school system of the country causes a much higher average of intelligence than w^e have in England. I frequently heard young ladies of fifteen or eighteen years of age speak familiarly and intelligently of public questions, cite the names, recall the record, describe the capacity of public men with an accuracy of judgment which would be thought unusual in ladies in England of mature age. Where l8S AMONG THE AMERICANS. general intelligence reaches so high a level, persons of tlis- tinguished attainments are less conspicuous than they are in a nation where the majority are ignorant. Where the many know little, a person whose knowledge reaches only the standard of mediocrity has a chance of being conspicu- ous, and a person of ordinary attainments is eminent. But it implies a higher state of progress where the majority are well informed, than where only a few are so. In America there are a million villas to a single mansion. This implies a far higher average of comfort than where there are a thousand great houses, and a million hovels. Publicists in the United States know perfectly well the intellectual requirements of the population. Nothing has been spoken upon such a subject in England showing more practical wisdom than the following passage by Professor J. C. Zachos, teacher of oratory, English language, and literature, at the Cooper Union, New York, before named : It is generally assumed that brutality and ignorance, idleness and dissipation, criminality and pauperism, are confined for the most part among the poor and uneducated class of the community. This is a great mistake. When a man or woman does not support himself or herself by fullfilling some useful and necessary function In society, either in administration or work, what is this but pauperism without beggary.' When a man or woman disregards sentiments of honor outrages feelings of humanity, tramples upon the weak and wrongs the innocent, robs and steals by professional devices and "tricks of the trade," what is he or she but a criminal in the sight of God and all honest hearts, though far beyond the reach of the law.' When a man or woman, " with the best intentions," does not know how to preserve his or her health, or the children's, in the ordinary conditions of life; "knows much of books, but little of men," much about literature and history, but little of nature ; is conversant with " letters AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1S9 and language," but knows not the alphabet of science nor the ele- ments of natural history — is not all this very miserable ignorance of things essential to human happiness and progress? Ignorance does not signify the absence of knowledge on every and all subjects, but of those the most essential to our position, opportunities, and obvious duties. Is not this kind of ignorance very common among what are called the intelligent, and even the " learned " classes? This passage contains a volume upon the morality of daily life. Eccentricity in piety in America is imputed to the want of that delicacy and taste supposed to be conspicu- ous in Democratic institutions; yet in England Moody and Sankey exhibitions were promoted by noblemen. Thurlow Weed, a politician always spoken of now as a " venerable and great authority," has lately given the following descrip- tion of American Christianity: Clergymen do not, as formerly, dwell and linger upon the dark feature of theology. Nothing is now heard of the fate of " infants not a span long." The ministry of our day is a ministry of peace, charity, and good will. This generation learns to love and serve rather than to dread and distrust our Creator and Saviour. This is said in answer to a great American heretic, CoL R. G. Ingersoll. But the answer itself is heresy in Eng- land. The intolerance complained of in American religious life did not strike me as being at all so serious as it is some- times represented. Intolerance in any degree is thought more of in America than elsewhere, because the general liberty of opinion is so great there. There is, however, I observed, some neat unadulterated intolerance in many church quarters in the States; but the bluest pattern is im- ported, and, as a rule, does not keep its color in America. It is objected that a stranger settling anywhere in the 190 AMONG THE AMERICANS. country is asked by his neiglibor what church he purposes to attend, and that there is an exacting expectation that he sliould go to some place. The question, however, is often put merely to test the stranger's tastes. If no place on hand suits him, things are sometimes made unpleasant to him. But this objection to nonconformity is a very different thing from what it is in England. In America there are fifty re- ligions to one in England, and a man is fairly thought to be fastidious and "• stuck up " who, amid the great variety pre- sented to him for selection, cannot find one to his mind. They oifer him so many specimens that they think it a re- flection upon their ingenuity if not one will suit the new comer. If, however, the stranger who is thus difficult to please, chooses to set up a new religion for himself, there is nothing more said. He is quite at liberty to do it, and if he ■" strikes ile " in unexpected quarters he becomes popular, as having increased the theological resources of the community- American Christians are brav er-minded than English. They believe in spite of irreverent humor. They can laugh at droll aspects of the thing they like. We think ridicule kills piety. The religion of the nation does not stand upon the connection of the Church, with the State, but upon convic- tion, which is braver. Americans have such prodigal ma- terial resources that they expect a great deal of everything. Whether it be theology or politics, they like large quantities of it. As w^ith us, those who promise most are most popu- lar. It is only the few who see that a little truth makes you wealthier than ten times the amount of error. But w^ith the bulk of mankind, as they are, making great' promises is a good trade alike in politics or piety. It does AMONG THE AMERICANS. I9I not much matter that nothing comes true. Many genera- tions of men will live on expectations, as the history of great creeds shows. Those who believe in many things are much better regarded by the public than those who believe in few. Simplicity and truth seem shabbiness by the side of the profuseness of error and the opulence of delusion. Besides the thinking class (never very numerous in any country), who look for evidence of new truth or for verifi- cations of supposed truth, there are two other classes — those who have each a set of first principles for himself, and those — the most numerous of all — who have ho principles whatever, and do not want any. The reason why spiritualism answers better in America than elsewhere is because anybody may put what interpre- tation he pleases upon any proposition advanced; and in districts where there is no standard of common sense or test of science established, the believer has it all his own way. Then people who aim at nothing almost always hit it and nobody disputes their success. The American manner of speech is more picturesque than in England. People look at things in a more uncon- ventional way. I had excused myself to my host, Mr. Hill, at Florence for smoking, by saying I did it to avoid pretence of perfection. " Yes," he said, " You don't want to be an angel at starting out." One thing which struck me in meeting American ladies was seeing how large a number were teeth-talkers. They used their teeth like a piano, and the pretty accents seemed to run along the rows. English women usually talk with their lips, which is entic- 193 AMONG THE AMERICANS. ing, but the American method has very winning ways with it. The Irish, whose charm is perplexingness, do not suffer that quality to deteriorate in America. Tliey submit to tlie Churcli, but rebel against secular government. They sub- mit to ecclesiastical authority abjectly, and resist the nobler authority of reason foolishly. Having been so long op- pressed and deceived, they suspect nobody so much as those who try to serve them. Among Americans I found descendants of the old Tory party still of opinion that the United States would be the better for a king. I conversed with manj^ who longed for an aristocracy. There are always persons who, having acquired or inherited riches without capacity, or disposition to distinguish themselves in the public service, would wel- come any system which accorded them distinction without dessert. Besides there are in every state numerous persons who think they could manage public affairs much more sat- isfactorily, at least, to themselves, without the troublesome control of the democracy. There are people who deer}' and give dismal accounts of popular government. Then there are those who having lost the opportunity of exercis- ing paternal government over the colored people, would be glad to extend it to the whites. Others I found, as we find them in England, making quite a reputation by denouncing the supposed tyranny of others, with a view to putting a real one of their own in its place. Amid ingenious and varying disguises of patriotic speech, it was not difficult to discern the irrigating current of personal purpose, running beneath their fertile ardor. You know the Democratic- AMONG THE AMERICANS. I93 Republican, who professes exclusively to represent the in- terests of the people, by the same sign that you know the Tory-Chartist in England. In London, he professes neither to believe in Whigs or Tories. If he owns to a preference it is that he would rather see the Tories in power than the Whigs; and what he says, and what he supports, all tend to that end. In America the Democratic-Republican de- nounces Republicans and Democrats alike. His impartial soul soars to a nobler ideal, but it is the Democratic thing he will be found aiding nevertheless. Whoever cares only for his own personal interest, whether as an individual or as a member of a class, teaches public men, so far as his ex- ample goes, to act upon the same principle, and one day the property and freedom of himself and those whom he rep- resents may be swept away by those whom he has instructed to use power for their own purposes. So many aspects of American and Canadian life strike a stranger, that the space I have prescribed for myself will not contain them all. Many persons have been omitted whom I ought to name and also many incidents which I should like to relate. No doubt as many have been de- scribed as will suffice to satisfy the reader that the people and the country have inexhaustible interest. It is a land where each man believes that he can move the State him- self, and sometimes one man does it. America is a land where no oppression can long exist, except that which the people choose to inflict upon themselves. Daniel Webster once said to an aspiring, but modest young lawyer, who had expressed his fear that the profession was overcrowded, " My young friend, there is always plenty of room at the 194 AMONG THE AMERICANS, top." Meaning that excellence where most needed is never in excess, and that on the path leading to it, requiring courage and perseverance to travel, there is seldom seen many passengers. In no country is there much competition at the top, but the road to it is more open in America than elsewhere, while paths to honorable prosperity are innu- merable, and some of them three thousand miles long. Note.— The nature of these paths, and the co-operative way of travelling therein, is the subject of the next and final chapter, which, additional to those announced, will conclude this series. For reasons given in it, it will be devoted to an entirely neglected subject, " Emi- grant Education." CHAPTER XV. EMIGRANT EDUCATION. " The German and Irish millions, like the negro, have a great deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down pre- maturely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie." Let us hope this is a history of the past only. A more melancholy outlook for emigrants than these words of Emerson's is scarcely conceivable. Yet the same may be said of the fate of the majority of pioneers of all nations hitherto, who have gone out to found their fortunes in new countries. Yet co-operative arrangements are possible w^hich would diminish " guano " in the destiny of adven- ture, and delay the appearance of the "spot of green" on the prairie until it suited the emigrant that it should appear. One condition of organized emigration is a book of the kind described in Chapter XII. The need of a Govern- ment guide book to all the States, may be seen Iff the following letters, which were sent to me while there. The first writer, Mr. S. J. Athern, does not think much of Texas, and he speaks as an emigrant of thirty -three years' experience. He says : 196 AMONG THE AMERICANS. " You saw when here [New York] the chagrin and terrible disap- pointment of a party of English farmers who settled (or, rather purchased land, for they could not "settle") in that terribly trying and arid State of Texas. In Texas the land, or much of it, is arid, the climate is trj'ing, and the civilization of that vast territory is not inviting; in short, it takes a nation of Texans to reside In Texas to battle with the^pitsol and the bowie-knife, which have sway in that State. Thirty-three years ago I was an emigrant myself, so that you see I have a fellow-feeling for those who follow in my wake." The next writer bears excellent testimony in favor of Texas. He has had forty-two years' experience of the State. Mr. George W. Grant, of Huntsville, Walter County, Texas, wrote to me saying that — " He had been a citizen of that State since 1837, over forty-two years; had been much over the State, and knew it well, and was im- pressed with the belief that the climate, soil, and seasons are as welL if not better, adapted for emigrant enterprise than any other place. Land is cheap; that some counties hold over 1,700 acres granted from the State for school purposes. University and other public institutions own much rich prairie country, with wood and rock, for every purpose — grazing and farming land — which can be bought from $1 to $3 per acre, on ten years' time, at 8 per cent interest." The next writer is clear as to the fertility of the country, but less so as to the intellectual fertility of some of the people. Mr. William M'llwrath, of Chillicothe, (Mo.) with whom I do not agree — writes as follows : " A great many come here and think because the country is fertile, the people untrammelled by any of the Old Country ideas or associations, that here, and here alone, is to be found true Republican government — true representative government. There is, perhaps, no country to-day for which a combination of circumstances has done so much, and for which the people thereof have themselves AMONG THE AMERICANS. 197- # done so little. About fifty millions of people are here ruled, in one sense, as completely by an oligarchy of moneyed men as ever was a petty duchy of Europe ruled by its duke. Our people are not any more ignorant than the mass of people of other countries; but there is this peculiar feature about the ignorance of many — they thirik they know everything, and convey that thought with them into their everyday action. The ignorant person in other countries is, as a general thing, conscious of his ignorance; but here he is not. The most complex, most abstruse questions in the science of govern- ment can be fully explained to you by an ignoramus." The want of the next writer is manifestly some book which he can depend upon for guidance. Mr. H. Smith, Greeley, Colorado, writes as follows : " I have been in this country some years, have a wife and three children, have been farming and laboring, and, by close economy and hard work, have got together a few hundred dollars cash. Wish to get me a farm and home for self and family, and not having means enough to rvin around the country and find out whether what I read is true of lands, and having no friends to help me, I do not see how to make a good and safe investment, or how much confidence to put in what I read about the country, so that I can act with safety. I have seen enough of going off alone on the prairie, or in the woods, with no schools or advantages of any kind." Canada, no less than the United States, affords the same sort of eloquent, because unconcerted, testimony as to the need of trustworthy information. Last year — 1880 — there sailed from the river Mersey, Liverpool, i8o,ocx5 emigrants — 75,000 were English, about 2,000 Scotch, 29,000 Irish, and 74,000 foreigners. What an advantage to all these persons it would have been to have a book they could trust, telling them what to expect wherever they might go. 198 AMONG THE AMERICANS. As these chapters may be read abroad, I conclude them with some passages from the report I made to the London Co operative Guild at Exeter Hall early in 1880, shortly after my return from America. As application came for as many as 4,000 copies of that statement for the use of work- ingmen in one district, after the sale of the Co-operative News, which alone contained it was exhausted, it will clearly serve many readers if the chief statements are included here. Mr. Walter Morrison presided on the occasion. The Guild, whicli owes its existence to the genius and de- votion of Mr. Hodgson Pratt, is the most generous depart- ment of co-operation, because its object is to extend the knowledge of that new principle of industry which intro- duces equity into all relations of labor, gives to workmen certainty of moderate competence, and affords capital ad- vantages of which it need not be ashamed. What I repre- sented on that occasion was that it is by no act or inspiration of ours that our countrymen do emigrate. When emigra- tion is a choice of those who have means it is creditable to the enterprise of the nation ; when it is a necessity of the poor it is a disgrace to a community which does not know how to take care of its own people. To the needy, the friendless, and the ignorant, emigration is a terror; it is a forlorn adventure on untried existence. Few can conceive the misery of the long isolated journey from homeland. With little means and less knowledge, the poor wanderer is often stripped of his slender store on the way, and never reaches his destination. Then he becomes an unwelcome addition to the workmen of large cities, who resent his intrusion, as by his desperate competition for employment AMONG THE AMERICANS. I99 he brings down wages and helps to create the very same condition of things from whicli he has fled. Tossed about the unknown eddies of thronged labor markets, he soon sinks. Unless local, reluctant charity — reluctant because already overburdened — picks him up, his end is more de- plorable than it would have been had he remained at home. This cry comes back to us from every great city. I heard it myself in New York, in Philadelphia, in Fall River, in Cincinnati, and Chicago. The great centres of industry are as candles, which lure the helpless, light-pursed moths of labor to perish in their flames. Then how fares it with those whose means do hold out, and who do reach the prairies ? I speak still of the poor emigrant. What knows the tailor, the shoemaker, the mechanic, the weaver, the jeweler, the clerk from the desk, or the assistant from behind the counter, of the agricultural life they have adventured upon? They know nothing of the soil, nor seasons, nor currents, nor climate. They do not know the crops when they see them, nor know how to cook the unfamiliar produce when they have raised it. They do not foresee the malaria which may leap from the newly- turned soil, nor the ague that hides in the evening air. Far away it may be from human habitation, the wan- dering quack is the only physician of the solitary settler — the wandering Indian his only and often dubious visitor. His road to the nearest market is through pathless woods and unfathomed creeks. Over that trackless way he must drag his produce, if he has any to sell; or carry his provis- ions, if he has money to buy any. He begins life anew, as though he were the first man turned out of Eden to seek 200 AMONG THE AMERICANS. subsistence in an untrodden land. He encounters isolation, dreariness, privation, and often despair, under which many sink, while those who hardily succeed generally become animalized in the determined struggle. The ordinary emi- grant from England passes from the brightness, convenience and abounding society of cities to the silence of the forest and the companionship of unknown creatures, who beset or crawl in his path. His new destiny is to fight the sullen and fruitful wilderness, which accords him plenty if he con- quers it, or gives hiin but a grave if he fails. It is of the nature of a merciful thing to mitigate the bitterness of this expei-ience. Co-operation can smooth the path of this form of enterprise. It can collect families to go out together. It can procure them right information. It can provide a con- ductor on their passage out, and convey them to colony land, where houses are erected and provisions provided until crops can be raised; and it can supply a practical director until the settlers learn to take care of themselves. Co-operation can take the peril and uncertainty out of friendless adven- ture, and lend the charm of comfort and security to manly and industrial enterprise. So great are the unforeseen opportunities of free countries and cheap lands, that even isolated emigrants — able to incur hardships with spirit and strength — continually succeed and attain to absolute opu- lence ; but even they own that struggles which were avoid- able, had organized emigration been available to them, have left savage or selfish marks upon their character, which it is the interest of society to prevent, if it be possible, in the future. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 20I Articles published by General Mussey in the " Sovereign Bulletin " of Washington on " Organized Colonization " are wise and comprehensive. The plan devised in New York by the Co-operative Colony Aid Association has for its object — To purchase land in a salubrious spot adjacent to a city ; to arrange a park in the centre of the colony, erect a school-house for the education of the children, and a co-ope- rative store to supply the provisions of the settlers; put up tenements for them to enter upon, and apportion farm hold- ings necessary for their subsistence ; and so soon as the pro- duce of an emigrant's labor has repaid all outlay on his account, to convey to him absolute possession of his allotted estate. In the meantime a travelling agent may conduct groups of emigrants from the land where they embark to the colony, where a resident director will advise them in their employment until each colonist becomes the owner of his apportioned estate. The organizers of the colony intend to keep their aid clear alike from charity or profit. A return of a moderate interest upon the capital used, until it is re- paid, is all they seek. The object of co-operation is to. encourage self-help, and to assist it without patronage. Whether aims so sensible, so moderate, and so free from Utopianism as these can be carried out, remains to be seen. It soon appeared to me that there was a Babel of land agents, and no authoritative voice amongst them. No emigrant setting out here, no emigrant arriving there, could tell to whom to listen, or where to settle. Many agents were entirely honest, but few persons ordinarily accessible knew which was which. Choice of land was as much a lot. tery in New York as London. There was no standard by 202 AMONG THE AMERICANS. which to compare any man's statements, and no one knew all the thirty-seven States and Territories of the United States, or what Province to choose in the Dominion of Can- ada. No person, unless he was a very old man, could pru- dently advise an emigrant to go anywhere, since only such an adviser might hope to be dead before the emigrant wrote home to say that he had been sent to quite the wrong place. It seemed to me that a State book was wanted, setting forth the estimated quantities of land open to enterprise in every State to be had by purchase or gift, conditions of tenure, process of acquisition, arable quality, climate, sanitary pecu- liarities of the State, conditions of health as tg exposure, diet, and clothing, markets for labor, and commodities near, facilities of transport of produce, and the purchasing power of money — this information would enable an emigrant to go out with his eyes open. Land agents may honestly be ignorant of many things; a Government can be informed on all. Besides, a Government can be trusted. It will, as a rule, neither lie nor exaggerate, and its summary of the facts of all States with which it is connected will enable anyone to test generally the representations made by inter- ested individuals. When I had resolved to ask this of the Government of Washington, I thought it becoming in me, as an English subject, first to ask it^ of our Government at Ottawa. The steps taken to that end, and the interviews accorded me thereupon, have already been narrated. America is to civilization what France is to Europe — the seed land of progress and equality. It is the empire where ideas reign. Thought grows there like their forests. En- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 203 terprise is in the air. Equity in labor may extend there as well as equity in trade. Think what that means in com- merce ! In America few things are what they seem. No one imagines that prepared provisions are pure. Any man will admit that " honesty is the best policy," but many seem afraid to try it. Honest quality, honest weight, honest price — that means morality in daily life. Co-operation not only makes it possible, but makes it profitable. It was see- ing this that induced ministers of religion to volunteer their high names to further this movement. Did not the Marquis of Ripon tell us at Manchester of his regret that the co- operative principle of according to labor a participation in profit had made small progress in England, during the thirty years that he had known the movement ? Americans would die of this dilatoriness. It would be alike a mercy to labor and capital to take this idea to that more discerning land. One day I may ask the Government of Australia for an emigrant book, like that asked for in Washington and Ottawa. To us it is a matter of indifference to what coun- try emigrants may go. Our object is to see that they go from England intelligently, and not ignorantly, and that the advantages co-operation may offer shall be available to them. From the State departments of the Canadian and American Governments I. have received valuable maps, and sufficient volumes to form a library for the Guild. From Washington I received 475 valuable maps of sev- enteen of the chief States of America; these, with other documents given me by the Canadian Government, together with numerous letters and schemes from correspondents, I have transferred to the Guild for the use of co-operative. 204 AMONG THE AMERICANS. secular, and working men's societies and clubs. Mr. Alsager Hay Hill, editor of the "Labor News," 15 Russell street, Covent Garden, London, has knowledge and means of advising emigrants. His disinterested service of working people is widely known. Many letters which I have received'from land agents are marked by candor and circum- stance of statement, are full of interest and valuable infor- mation, and confidence may manifestly be placed in the writers. Any colony aid committee need not seek to super- sede nor conflict with already well-organized arrangements which individual agencies may have established. Many States in Australia, as also in Canada or America, have authorized agents, official and responsible, for the sale of State lands. All an English committee require to do is to devise a plan of co-operative emigration, and carry it out as an example and model to others. By communication with individuals and official agents they might be induced to add co-operative features, facilities, and securities to their plans. It is no object, nor necessity of an English society, to con- duct the business of the world themselves, but to induce and by example encourage all concerned in trade, commerce, and emigration, to conduct it, as far as possible, upon co- operative lines. Thus a knowledge of associate principles may be carried, as it were, upon the wings of the vsrind to the four corners of the world, and made enduring in men's minds by the sense of timely, profitable, and disinterested service. I care for emigration exactly as I care for co-operation — as the cause of the poor, not of the rich. I am not for that emigration which takes away the well-paid workman from AMONG THE AMERICANS. 205 a good employer. But I am for the emigration of all those who cannot find a well-spread table for their families here. And it is the interest of all of us that emigration should be in the future co-operative, as it will diminish the competi- tion which will arise otherwise among isolated settlers, and it will develop social life where it is most needed. English- men and English ideas are welcome in the United States and Canada and it is to the interest of this country that freedom, civilization, and social life should be strengthened . by the solidity of English thought. Besides, it must be obvious to all who are familiar with public affairs that the world has changed. Industrial society has reached a new stage. New forces, new conditions, and new opportunities now exist. Europe is crowded. Crowns,''feudalism, privi- lege, partial laws, and devouring armaments, deprive the common people of subsistence or condemn them to perpet- ual precariousness. Here in England we have surplus workers ; abroad there are unoccupied acres, where a hun- dred millions of families may dwell in opulence and owner- ship. Here the Government offers to workmen only the lot of the soldier or the fate of the pauper. The sole deliver- ance is that of wedding the people to the prairies. The new cry of progress is — dispersion. If workmen are wise they will train no more children for mine or mill. Mechan- ics only minister to luxury they can, as a rule, never taste. Children should be trained for the field. Their eyes should be taught to look abroad. They should be familiarized with the literature of adventure, and fed with the inspira- tion of distant enterprise. No education is of any value to them which does not include that of the farm, and soil, and 3o6 AMONG THE AMERICANS. crops, and climates. The steamship will carry them to lands of independence in ten days. I for one say to mechanics, Beg no more for employment, higgle and supplicate no more for hopeless increase of wages — go away. The farmer does not want you, the manufacturer does not want you, the tradesman does not want you, the poor-law guar- dians do not want you — go away. You have nothing to gain by violence — you ought not to seek anything from pity. Learn from the negro of the South if you cannot learn from your own pride — go away. Wait not around the shopkeeper's till for the dole of workhouse rates. Hang no more round the doors of the Poor-law Union — go away. Be no recruits in the hateful wars of empire. Shed not your blood in carrying desolation and death among nations as honest and more unfortunate than yourselves. No terror or toil of the wilderness can equal the peril and shame of this — go away. Let those who will ' rectify frontiers' — your duty is to ' rectify the frontier ' of poverty and depen- dence. Let those who have just employers honor them and continue in their service. Let all who can command adequate subsistence here remain and increase the honest renown and prosperity of their native land. But let the poor save a little capital at co-operative stores, and join the great fortunes of those nations where freedom and equality dwell; and where wealth awaits all who have fortitude, common sense, courage, and industry. To all who by gen- erous care of others endow emigrants with co-operative knowledge and create for them co-operative facilities — to them will belong the praise of advancing progress without conflict, of saving labor and capital from the ultimate strife AMONG THE AMERICANS. 207 of blood, and of insuring the prosperity of every honest interest, beyond the dreams of statesmanship. Since these words were spoken I have seen Lord Duffer- in's just and wise admission made at Toronto, that emigra- tion benefits alike the country which is left and the coun- try which is adopted. Since then the question of the land bids fair to swallow up all others. Workmen are begin- ning now to listen to the cry of Ebenezer Elliott raised fifty years ago — O, pallid "Want! O, Labor stark! Behold, behold, the Second Ark ! The Land! the Land! It was the same far-seeing, but then neglected, Anti-Corn Law Rhymer — the last of the poets who put politics into his verses — ^who wrote — He ties up hands Who locks up lands : The lands which can't be sold and bought Bring men and States to worse than nought: The lands which can be freely sold Are worth a world of barren gold. It has taken fifty years to make English statesmen and the English people Understand this. * A STRANGER IN AMERICA. NO person could be more completely a stranger than I was in America. After being interested in Ameri- can history and public affairs from my youth, I saw the country for the first time in August last. Being born in Midland England, I had more English insularity of thought than most of my countrymen; and having a certain wilful- ness of opinion, which few shared at home, and probably fewer abroad, I had little to recommend me in the United States. Years ago I knew some publicists there of mark and character, but that was before the great war in which many of them perished. My friend Horace Greeley was dead, Lloyd Garrison was gone, with both of whom I had spent well-remembered days. Theodore Parker, the 'Ju- piter of the pulpit,' as Wendell Phillips calls him, paid me a visit in England before he went to Florence to die. To me, therefore, it was contentment enough to walk unknown through some of Ainerica's marvellous cities, and into the not less wondrous space which lies beyond them. For one who has seen but half a great continent, and that but for a short period, to write a book about the country would be certainly absurd. At the same time, to have * From the " Nineteenth Century." 2IO AMONG THE AMERICANS. been in a new world for three months and be unable to give any account whatever of it, would be still more absurd. To pretend to know much is presumption — to profess to know nothing is idiocy. A voyager who had seen a strange creature in the Atlantic Ocean as he passed it, might be able to give only a poor account of it ; but if he had seen it every day for three months, and even been upon its back, he would be a very stupid person if he could give no idea whatever of it. I saw the United States and Canada from the Atlantic seaboard and from Montreal to Kansas City for that length of time, travelling on its lakes and land, and may give some notion, at least to those who never were there, of what I observed — not of its trades or manufactures, or sta- tistics, or politics, or churches, but of the ways, manners, and spirit of the people. After all I had read or heard, it seemed to me that there were great features of social life there unregarded or misre- garded. New York itself is a miracle which a large book would not be sufficient to explain. When I stepped ashore there, I thought I was in a larger Rotterdam ; when I found my way to the Broadway, it seemed to me as though I was in Paris, and that Paris had taken to business. There were quaintness, grace and gaiety, brightness, and grimness, all about. The Broadway I thought a Longway, for my first invitation in it was to No. 1455. My first days in the city were spent at No. i Broadway, in the Washington Hotel, allured thither by its English military and diplomatic asso- ciations, going back to the days when an Indian war-whoop was possible in the Broadway. At that end, you are dazed by a forest of tall telegraphic poles, and a clatter by night AMONG THE AMERICANS. 211 and day that no pathway of Pandemonium could rival. Car-bells, omnibus-bells, drayhorse-bells, railway-bells and locomotives in the air, were resounding night and day. An engineer turns off his steam at your bedroom window. When I got up to see what was the matter, I found engine No. 99 almost within reach of my arm, and the other ninety-eight had been there that morning before I awoke. When one day at a railway junction I heard nine train-bells being rung by machinery, it sounded as though Disestab- lishment had occurred, and all the parish churches of Eng- land were being imported. Of all the cities of America, Washington is the most superb in its brilliant flashes of space. The drowsy Poto- mac flows in sight of splendid buildings. Washington is the only city I have ever seen which no wanton architect or builder can spoil. Erect what they will, they cannot obliterate its glory of space. If a man makes a bad speech, the audience can retreat; if he buys a dull book, he need not I'ead it — while if a dreary house be erected, three genera- tions living near it may spend their melancholy lives in sight of it. If an architect in each city could be hanged now and then, with discrimination, what a mercy it would be to mankind ! Washington at least is safe. One Sunday morning I went to the church, which is attended by the President and Mrs. Hayes, to hear the kind of sermon preached in their presence. But the walk through the city was itself a sermon. I never knew all the glory of sunlight in this world until then. The clear, calm sky seemed hundreds of miles high. Over dome and mansion, river and park, streets and squares, the sunlight shed what appeared 212 AMONG THE AMERICANS. to my European eyes an unearthly beauty. I lingered in it until I was late at church. The platform occupied by preachers in America more resembles an altar than our pul- pit, and the freedom of action and grace in speaking I thought greater than among us. The sermon before the President was addressed to young men, and was remarkably wise, practical, definite, and inspiring; but the transition of tone was, at times, more abrupt and less artistic than in other eminent American preachers whom I had the pleasure to hear. Niagara Falls I saw by sunlight, electric light, and by moonlight, without thinking much of them — until walking on the American side I came upon the Niagara River, which I had never heard of. Of course water must come from somewhere to feed the Falls — I knew that; but I had never learned from guide-books that its coming was any- thing remarkable. When, however, I saw a mighty moun- tain of turbulent water as wide as the eye could reach, a thousand torrents rushing as it were from the clouds, splash- ing and roaring down to the great Falls, I though the idea of the Deluge must have begun there. No aspect of nature ever gave me such a sense of power and terror. I feared to remain where I stood. The frightful waters seemed alive. When I went back to the Canadian side I thought as much of Niagara as anyone — had I seen the Duke of Argyll's recent published ' Impressions ' of them (he also discovered the Niagara Rapids) before I went there, I should have approached Niagara Falls with feelings very different from those with which I first saw them. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 213 In the Guildhall, London I have seen city orators point their merchant audience to the statues of great men there, and appeal to the historic glories of the country. Such an audience would respond as though they had some interest in the appeal — feeling, however, that these things more con- cerned the ' great families ' who held the country, whom they make rich by their industry, who looked down upon them as buttermen or tallow-chandlers. No orator address- ing the common people employs these historic appeals to them. The working class who are enlisted in the army, flogged and sent out to be shot, that their fathers may find their way to the poorhouse, under their hereditary rulers, are not so sensible of the glory of the country. The work- ing men, as & rule, have no substantial interest in the nation- al glory : I mean those of them whose lot it is to suppli- cate for work, and who have to establish trades' unions to obtain adequate payment for it. Yet I well know that England has things to be proud of which America cannot rival.* At the same time we have, as Lord Beaconsfield discerned, ' Two Nations ' living side by side in this land. What is wanted is that they shall be one in equity of means, knowledge, and pride. Nothing surprised me more than to see the parks of New York, abutting Broadway, without a fence around the greensward. A million unresting feet passed by them, and none trampled on the delicate grass — while, in England, Board Schools put up a prison wall * Americans are not lacking in generous admissions herein', as any one may see in William Winter's Trt^ to England. The reader must go far to find more graceful pages of appreciation of the historic, civic and scenic beauties of this country. 214 AMONG THE AMERICANS. around them, so that poor children cannot see a flower girl go by in the streets ; and the back windows of the houses of mechanics in Lambeth remain blocked up, whereby no in- mate can look on a green tree in the Palace grounds. In Florence, in Northampton, where the Holyoke mountain* looks on the ever-winding Connecticut River, as elsewhere, there are thousands of mansions to be seen without a rail around their lawns. Acres of plantations lie unenclosed between the beautiful houses, where a crowd of wanderers might rest unchallenged, and watch mountain, river, and sky. In England if an indigent wanderer sat down on house-ground or wayside, the probability is a policeman would come and look at him — the farmer would come and demand what he wanted, and the relieving officer would suggest to him that he had better pass on to his own parish. In England the whole duty of man, as set down in the workman's catechism, is to find out upon how little he can live. In America, the workman sets himself to find out how much he ought to have to live upon, equitably com- pared with what falls to other classes. He does not see exactly how to get it when he has found out the amount. Co-operative equity alone can show him that. No doubt workmen are better oif in any civilized country than work- * In an historic churchyard at the bottom of the mountain is the grave of Mary Pynchon, the wife of Elizur Holyoke, the early Eng- lish settler, whose name the mountain bears. Among thecoramonly feeble epitaphs of churchyards hers is remarkable for its grace and vigor. It says : She who lies here was, while she stood, A very glory of womanhood. AMONG THE AMERICANS, 215 men were one hundred or two hundred years ago. So are the rich. The workmen whom I addressed in America I counselled not to trouble about comparisons as to their con- dition, but to remember that there is but one rule for rich and poor, workmen and employer — namely, that each should be free to get all he honestly can. A wholesome distinction of America is that industry alone is universally honorable there, and has good chances. There are no common peo- ple there, in the English sense. When speaking in the Cooper Institute, New York, I was reminded that the audience would resent being so addressed.* Every man in America feels as though he owns the country, because the charm of recognized equality and the golden chances of ownership have entered his mind. He is proud of the statues and the public buildings. The great rivers, the trackless prairies, the regal mountains, all seem his. Even the steep curb-stones of New York and Boston, which brought me daily distress, I was asked to admire — for some reason yet unknown to me. In England nobody says to the visitor or foreigner when he first meets him, What do you think of England? The people do not feel that they own the country, or have re- sponsible control over it. The country is managed by somebody else. Not even Members of Parliament know when base treaties are made in the nation's name, and dis- honoring wars are entered into, which the lives and earn- * The Rev. R. Heber Newton said to me, " Remember, Mr. Hol- yoake, we have no 'common people' in America. We may have a few uncommon ones." 2X6 AMONG THE AMEBICANS, ings of their constituents may be confiscated to sustain. All that our representatives can tell us is that that is an affair of the Crown. In America there is no Crown, and the people are kings and they know it. I had not landed on the American shores an hour, before I became aware that I was in a new nation, animated by a new life which I had never seen. I was thi-ee days in the train going from Ottawa to Chicago. It was my custom to spend a part of every day in the cosy smoking saloon of the car, with its red velvet seats, and bright spacious-mouthed braziers for receiving lights or ashes. My object was to study in detail the strange passengei's who joined us. Being on the railway there practically but one class and one fare, the gentleman and the workman, the lady and the mechanic's wife, sit together without hesitation or diffidence. A sturdy, unspeaking man, who seemed to be a mechanic, was generally in the smoking saloon. He never spoke, except to say, ' Would I take his seat?' when he thought I was incommoded by a particularly fat passenger by my side. ' It will suit me quite as well to smoke outside the car,' he would civilly say, if I objected to putting him to inconvenience. On the morning of the third day, he and I only were sitting together. Wishing to find out whether he could or w^ould talk, I asked him, 'How far are w^e from Chicago?' He looked at me with sudden amazement. Black stubbly hair covered his face (which had been unshaven for days, an unusual thing with Americans) At my question every stubble seemed to start up as he laid his hand on my knee, and said, ' Have you never been to Chicago?' 'How could I?' I replied; ' I am an English- man travelling from London in order to see it.' All at once AMONG THE AMERICANS. 21 7 looking at me with pity and commiseration, liis little deep blacli eyes glistening like glow-worms in the night of his dark face, he exclaimed, laying his hand now on my shoul- der, that his words might be more expressive, ' Sir, Chicago is the boss city of the Universe,' evidently thinking that I might make some futile attempt to compare it with some city of this world. Afterwards I learned that this electric admirer of Chicago was a brakesman on the train. Yet this man, who had probably driven into the fiery city a thousand times, had as much delight in it, and as much pride in it, as though he were the owner of it. I soon found that it would not be a wise thing for a stranger to be of a different opinion. As I rode into Chicago three hours later, I thought I had never seen such a lumbering, dingy ramshackle, crowded, tumultuous, boisterous outside of a city before. When asked my opinion again, amid the roar of cars and hurricane of every kind of wagons and vehicles, I framed one from which I never departed, namely, that con- sidering the short time in which Chicago had been built and rebuilt, it was the most miraculous city I had ever seen. This opinion was silent on many details, and the acumen of an American questioner is not easily foiled, but as I admit- ted something ' miraculous' about the place my opinion was tolerated, as fulfilling essential conditions. And when I came to see Chicago's wondrous streets of business, its hotels in which populations of twenty ordinary English parishes would be lost, its splendid avenues, its fine, noble, far-spreading parks, and Lake Michigan stretching out like a sea on the city borders — it did seem to me a ' miraculous city,' quite apart from the happy days I spent there, as the 2l8 AMONG THE AMERICANS. guest of Mr. Charlton, of the Chicago and Alton railway, who travelled w^ith me through Canada and half the United States, that I might see, without cost or care, the civic and natural marvels of the two countries. The first hour I was in New York, one, in friendly care for my reputation as a stranger, said to me, ' Mind, if you get run over, do not complain — if you can articulate — as it will go against you on the inquest. In America w^e run over anybody in the way, and if you are knocked down it will be considered your fault.' In America self-help (honest and sometimes dishonest) is a characteristic. In Germany apprentices were required to travel to acquire different modes of working. If young Englishmen could be sent a couple of years to take part in American business, they would come back much improved. An eminent English professor, whom I lately asked whether it would not do this country good if we could get our peers to emigrate, an- swered, ' No doubt, if you could smarten some of them up a bit first.' Everywhere in America you hear the injunction, ' Hold on !' In every vessel and car there are means pro- vided for doing it : for unless a man falls upon his feet — if he does fall — he finds people too busy to stop and pick him up. The nation is in commotion. Life in America is a battle and a march. Freedom has set the race on fire — freedom, with the prospect of property. Americans are a nation of men who have their own way, and do very well with it. It is the only country where men are men in this sense, and the unusualness of the liberty bewilders many, who do wrong things in order to be sure they are free to do something. This error is mostly made by new-comers, to AMONG THE AMERICANS. 219 whom freedom is a novelty ; and it is only by trying eccen- tricity that they can test the unwonted sense of their power of self-disposal. But as liberty grows into a habit, one by one the experimenters become conscious of the duty of not betraying the precious possession, by making it repulsive. Perhaps self-assertion seems a little in excess of international requirements. Many ' citizens ' give a stranger the impres- sion that they think themselves equal to their superiors, and superior to their equals ; yet all of them are manlier than they would be through the ambition of each to be equals of anybody else. The effect of American inspiration on Englishmen was strikingly evident. I met workmen in many cities whom I had known in former years in England. They were no longer the same men. Here their employers seldom or never spoke to them,* and the workmen were rather glad, as they feared the communication would relate to a reduc- tion of wages. They thought it hardly prudent to look a foreman or overseer in the face. Masters are more genial as a rule, in these days; but in the days when last I visited these workmen at their homes in Lancashire, it never en- tered into their heads to introduce me to their employers. But when I met them in America they instantly proposed to introduce me to the mayor of the city. This surprised ♦Long years ago, when I first knew Rochdale, workmen at Mr. Bright's mills used to tell me with pride, that he was not like other employers. He not only inquired about them, but of them ; and to this day they will stop him in the mill yard and ask his advice in per- sonal difficulties, when they are sure of willing and friendly counsel from him. 230 AMONG THE AMERICANS. me very much; for when they were in England they could not have introduced me to the relieving- officer of their parish, with any advantage to me, had I needed to know him. These men were still w^orkmen, and they did intro- duce me to the mayor as ' a friend of theirs ;' and in an easy, confident manner, as one gentleman would speak to another, they said, ' they should be obliged if he would show me the civic features of the city.' The mayor would do so, order his carnage, and with the most pleasant courtesy take me to every place of interest. To this hour I do not know whom I wondered at most — the men or the mayor. In some cases the mayor was himself a manufacturer, and it was a pleasure to see that the men were as proud of the mayor as they were of the city. One day a letter came, inviting me to Chautauqua Lake, saying that if I would allow it to be said that I would come to a Convention of Liberals there, many other pei'sons would go there to meet me, and then I should see everybody at once. I answered that it was exactly what I wanted — ' to see everybody at once.' In England we think a good deal of having to go ten miles into the country to hold a public meeting; but knowing Americans were more enterprising, I expected I should have to go seventeen miles there. When the day arrived and I asked for a ticket for Chatauqua Lake, the clerk, looking at the money I put down, said, ' Do you know you are seven hundred miles from that place ?' Hav- ing engaged to speak in the ' Parker Memorial Hall' to the Twenty-eighth Congregational Church of Boston the next Sunday, there was no escape from a journey of fourteen hundred miles in the meantime, and I made it. At Chau- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 221 tauqua was a sight I had never seen. A hall, looking out on to the great lake, as full of amateur philosophers and philoso- pheresses — all with their heads full of schemes. There were at least a hundred persons, each with an armful or reticule- full of first principles, ready written out, for the government of mankind in general. It was clear to me that the Gov- ernment at Washington will never be in the difficulty we were when Lord Hampton had only ten minutes in which to draw up for us a new Constitution — our Cabinet not having one on hand. If President Hayes is ever in want of a policy, he will find a good choice at Chautauqua Lake. My ancient friend Louis Masquerier had the most syste- matic scheme there of all of them. I knew it well, for the volume explaining it was dedicated to me. He had mapped out the whole globe into small Homestead parallelograms. An ingenious friend (Dr. Hollick) had kindly completed the scheme for him one day when it was breaking down. He pointed out to Masquerier that there was a little hitch at the poles — where the meridian lines converge, which rendered perfect squares difficult to arrange there. This was quite unforeseen by the Homestead artificer. The system could not give way, that was clear; and nature was obstinate at the poles. So it was suggested that Masquerier should set apart the spaces at the poles to be planted with myrtle* sweet-briar, roses, and other aromatic plants, which might serve to diffuse a sweet scent over the Homesteads other- wise covering the globe. The inventor adopted the com- promise, and thus the difficulty was, as Paley says, 'gotten over;' and if Arctic explorers in the future should be sur- prised at finding a fragrant garden at the North Pole, they 222 AMONG TliE AMERICANS, will know how it came there. In Great Britain, where a few gentlemen consider it their pi-ovince to make religion^ politics, and morality for the people, it is counted ridiculous presumption that common persons should attempt to form opinions upon these subjects for themselves. I know the danger to progress brought about by those whom Colonel Ingersoll happily calls its '• Fool Friends.' Nevertheless, to me this humble and venturous activity of thought at Chau- tauqua was a welcome sight. Eccentricity is better than the deadness of mind. Out of the crude form of an idea the perfect idea comes in time. From a boy I have been my- self of Butler's opinion that — Reforming schemes are none of mine, To mend the world's a great design, Like he who toils in little boat To tug to him the ship afloat. Nevertheless, since I am in the ship as much as others, and have to swim or sink with it, I am at least concerned to know on what principles, and to what port, it is being steered ; and those are mere ballast who do not try to find as much out. Dr. Erasmus Darwin's definition of a fool was 'one who never tried an experiment.' In this sense "there is hardly a fool in America — while the same sort of persons block up the streets in England — newspapers of note are published to encourage them to persevere in their im- becility, and they have the largest representation in Parlia- ment of any class in the kingdom. Everybody knows that no worse misfortune can happen to a man here than to have a new idea; while in America a man is not thought much of if he has not one on hand. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 223 Yet a visitor soon sees that everything is not perfect in America, and its tRinkers and statesmen know it as well as we do. But they cannot improve everything ' right away.' We do not do that in England. In America I heard men praised as ' level-headed,' without any regard to their being moral-headed. I heard men called ' smart ' who were sim- ply rascals. Then I remembered that we had judges who gave a few months' imprisonment to a bank director who had plundered a thousand families, and five years' penal servitude to a man who had merely struck a lord. In Chicago you can get a cup of good coffee without chicory at Race's served on a marble table, with cup and saucer not chipped, and a clean serviette, for five cents. Yet you have to pay anywhere for having your shoes blacked 400 per cent, more than in London. The Government there will give you 160 acres of land, with trees upon it enough to build a small navy ; and they charged me three shillings in Chicago for a light walking-stick which could be had in Lon- don for sixpence. All sorts of things cheap in England are indescribably dear in America. Protection must be a good thing for somebody ; if the people like it, it is no business of ours. We have, I remembered, something very much like it at home. We are a nation of shopkeepers, and the shop- keepers' interest is to have customers; yet until lately we taxed every purchaser who came into a town. If he walked in, which meant that he was poor and not likely to buy anything, the turnpike was free to him ; but, if he came on horseback, which implied that he had money in his pocket, we taxed his horse; and if he came in a carriage, which im- plied possession of still larger purchasing power, we taxed 224 AMONG THE AMERICANS. every wheel of his carriage to encourage him to keep away. One day I said, that to this hour, our Chancellor of the Exchequer taxes every person who travels by railway, every workman going to offer his labor, every employer seek- ing hands, every merchant who travels to buy or sell : in an industrial country we tax every man who moves about in our trains. Englishmen, who had been out of this country twenty years, could not believe this. When they found th^t I was the Chairman of a Committee v^^ho had yet to agitate for free trade in locomotion in England, they were humiliated and ashamed that England had still to put up with the incredible impost. Many things I had heard spoken of as absurd among Uncle Sam's people, seemed to me less so when I saw the conditions which have begotten their unusualness. Here we regard America as the eccen- tric seed-land of Spiritism; but when I met the Prairie Schooners,* travelling into the lone plains of Kansas, I could understand that a solitary settler there would be very glad to have a spirit or two in his lone log-house. Where no doctors can be had, the itinerant medicine-vendor is a welcome visitor, and, providing his drugs are harmless, im- agination effects a cure — imagination is the angel of the mind there. We are apt to think that youtlis and maidens are too self-sufficient in their manners in those parts. The^' could not exist at all in those parts, save for those qualities. We regard railways as being recklessly constructed — but ■ a railroad of any kind is a mercy if it puts remote settlers in * A long, rickety wagon drawn generally by one horse, carrying the emigrant, his family and furniture, in search of a new settlement. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 225 communication with a city somewhere. If a bridge gives way, like tliat on the Tay lately among us, fewer lives are lost there than would be worn out by walking and dragging produce over unbridged distances, and often going without needful things for the household, because they could not be got. In the United States there are newspapers of as great in- tegrity, judges as pure, and members of Parliament as clean- handed as in England; but the public indignation at finding it otherwise is nothing like so great there as here. John Stuart Mill said that the working classes of all countries lied — it being the vice of the slave caste — but English working men alone were ashamed of lying, and I was proud to find that my countrymen of this class have not lost this latent attribute of manliness; and I would rather they were known for the quality of speaking the truth, though the devil was looking them square in the face, than see them possess any repute for riches, or smartness, without it. Far be it from me to suggest that Americans, as a rule, do not possess the capacity of truth, but in trade they do not strike you as exercising the talent with the same success that they show in many other ways. However, there is a certain kind of candor continually manifested, which has at least a nega- tive merit. If a ' smart ' American does a crooked thing, he does not pretend that it is straight. When I asked what was understood to be the difference between a republican and a democrat, I was answered by one of those persons, too wise and too pure to be of any use in this woi-ld, who profess to be of no party — none being good enough for them ; he said, ' republicans and democrats profess different 22t) AMONG THE AMERICAXS. things, but they both do the same.' ' Your answer,' I re- plied, ' comes very near the margin of giving me informa- tion. What are the different things,' I asked, ' wliich they do profess?' The answer was, ' Tlie republicans profess to be honest, but the democrats do not even profess that.' My sympathies, I intimated, lay therefore with the republicans, since they who admit they know what they ought to be, probably incline to it. However impetuous Americans may be, they have one great grace of patience : they listen like gentlemen. An American audience, anywhere gathered together, make the most courteous listeners in the world. If a speaker has only the gift of making a fool of himself, nowhere has he so complete an opportunity of doing it. If he has the good fortune to be but moderately interesting, and obviously tries in some humble way, natural to him, to add to their information, they come to him afterwards and congratulate him with Parisian courtesy. At Washington, where I spoke at the request of General Mussey and Major Ford, and in Cornell University at Ithaca, where, at the request of the Acting President, Professor W, C. Russell, I addressed the students upon the ' Moral effects of Co-opera- tion upon Industrial and Commercial Society.' There were gentlemen and ladies present who knew more of everything than I did about anything; yet they conveyed to me their impression that I had in some way added to their informa- tion. Some political colleagues of mine have gone to Amer- ica. In this countiy they had a bad time of it. In the opinion of most official persons of their day, they ought to have been in prison; and some narrowly escaped it. In America they ultimately obtained State employment, which AMONG THE AMERICANS. 22^ here they never would have obtained to their latest day. Yet their letters home were so disparaging of America, as to encourage all defamers of its people and institutions. This incited me to look for every feature of discontent. What I saw to the contrary I did not look for — but could not over- look when it came upon me. John Stuart Mill I knew was at one time ruined by re- pudiators in America, but that did not lead him to condemn that system of freedom which must lead to public honor coming into permanent ascendency. For myself, I am sufficiently a Comtist to think that humanity is greater and sounder than any special men; and believe that great con- ditions of freedom and self-action can alone render possible general progress. Great evils in American public life, from which we are free in England, have been so dwelt upon here, that the majority of working men will be as much surprised as I was, to find that American life has in it ele- ments of progress which we in England lack. Still I saw there were spots in the great sun. The certainty of an earthquake every four years in England would not more distress us or divert the current of business, than the Ameri- can system of having ioo,ooS office-holders, liable to dis- placement every Presidential election. Each placeman has, I ' calculate,' at least nine friends who watch and work to keep him where he is. Then there are 100,000 more per- sons, candidates for the offices to be vacated by those already in place. Each of these aspirants has on the average as many personal friends who devote themselves to getting him installed. So there are two millions of the most active politicians in the country always battling for places — not 228 AMONG THE AMERICANS. perhaps regardless altogether of principle : but subordinating the assertion of principle to the command of places. The "wonder is that the progress made in America occurs at all_ Colonel Robert Ingersoll, during the enchanted days when I was his guest in Washington, explained it all to me, and gave reasons for it with the humor and wit for which he is unrivalled among public speakers among us : nevertheless I remain of the same opinion still. This system, although a feature of republican administration, is quite distinct from republican principle, and has to be changed, though the duration of the practice renders it as difficult to alter as it would be to change the diet of a nation. It would take too long now to recount half the droll in- stances in which our cousins of the new world rise above and fall below ourselves. Their habit of interviewing strangei's is the most amusing and useful institution conceivable. I have personal knowledge, and others more than myself, of visitors to England of whom the public never hear. Many would be glad to call upon them and show them civility or give them thanks for services they have rendered to public progress, elsewhere, in one form or other. But the general public never know of their presence. These sojourners among us possess curious, often valuable knowledge, and no journalists ask them any questions, or announce, or de- cribe them, or inform the town where they are to be found. Every newspaper reader in the land might be the richer in ideas for their visit, but they pass away with their unknown wealth of experience, of which he might have partaken. There is no appointment on the press to be more coveted than that of being an interviewer to a great journal. The AMONG THE AMERICANS. 229 Art of Intel-viewing is not yet developed and systematized as it might be. Were I asked 'What is the beginning of wisdom?' I should answer — 'It is the art of asking ques- tions.' The world has had but one master of the art, and Socrates has had no successor. With foolish questioning most persons are familiar — wise questioning is a neglected study. The first interviewer who did me the honor to call upon me at the Hoffman House in New York, represented a democratic paper of acknowledged position : being a stran- ger to the operation of interviewing, I first interviewed the interviewer, and put to him more questions than he put to me. When I came to read his report all my part in the proceedings recounted was left out. He no doubt knew best what would interest the readers of the journal he rep- resented. I told him that an English gentleman of political repute was interested in an Ajnerican enterprise, and had asked me to go to North Alabama with a view to judge of its fitness for certain emigrants. I put the question to him whether in the South generally it mattered what an emi- grant's political views were, if he was personally an addition to the industrial force and property of the place, observing incidentally that I saw somebody had just shot a doctor through the back, who had decided views about something. His answer has never passed from my memory. It was this: — 'Well, if a man will make his opinions prominent, what can he expect ?' I answered, that might be rather hard on nie, since though I might not make my opinions 'prominent,' they might be thought noticeable, and a censor 230 AMONG THE AMERICANS. with a Derringer might not discriminate in my favor.* This, however, did not deter me from going South. The yellow fever lay in my way at Memphis, and I did not feel as though I wanted the yellow fever, I was content with going near enough to it to fall in with people who had it, and who were fleeing from the infected city. No doubt the rapidity of my chatter upon strange topics did confuse some interviewers. Now and then I read a report of an interview, and did not know that it related to me until I read the title of it. One day I met a wandering English gentleman, who had just read an interview with me, when he exclaimed, ' My dear Holyoake! how could you say that.!" when I an- swered, ' My dear Verdantson ! how could you suppose I ever did say it ?' When in remote cities I fell in with inter- viewers who were quite unfamiliar with my ways of thought and speech, I tried the experiment of saying exactly the opposite of what I meant. To my delight next day I found it had got turned upside down in the writer's mind, and came out exactly right. But I had to be careful with whom I did this, for most interviewers were very shrewd and skilful, and put me under great obligations for their render- ing of what I said.f If English press writers interviewed *We are not without experience somewhat of this kind in England. At Bolton, when Sir Charles Dilke, M. P., was lecturing there on the 'Cost of the Crown,' a very harmless subject, one of the royalists of the town hurled a brick through the window of the hall, intended for the speaker, which killed one of the audience. Sir Charles was 'merely making his opinions prominent. ■j-The Kansas City "Times" published an ' Interview with Gen. George Holyoake.' This was discerning courtesy. Down there AMONG THE AMERICANS. 23I visitors from a country unfamiliar to them, they would make as many misconceptions as are ever met with in America. I have never known but two men, not Englishmen — Mazzini and Mr. G. W. Smalley, the London correspondent of the ' New York Tribune' — who understood public affairs in Engla'nd as w^e understand them ourselves. Even Louis Blanc is hardly their equal, though a rival in that rare art. When leaving England I was asked by the Co-operative Guild of London to ascertain in my travels in America what were the conditions and opportunities of organizing Co- operative Emigration. As this was one of the applications of the co-operative principle meditated by the Co-operators of 1830, and which has slept out of sight of this generation, I received the request with glad surprise, and undertook the commission. Pricked by poverty and despair, great numbers of emi- grant ■ families go out alone. With slender means and slenderer knowledge, they are the prey, at every stage, of speculators, agents, and harpies. Many become penniless by the way, and never reach their intended place. They hang about the large cities, and increase the competition among workmen already too many there. Unwelcome, and unable to obtain work, they become a new burden on re- 'difBcuIties' had often occurred, and a 'general' being supposed to have pistoUic acquirements, I was at once put upon a level with any emergency. It was in Kansas City, where a Judge trying a murder case said to those present — 'Gentlemen, the court wishes you would let somebody die a natural death down here, if only to show strangers what an excellent climate we have.' 232 AMONG THE AMERICANS. luctant and overburdened local charity, and their lot is as deplorable as that from which they have fled. Those who hold out until they reach the land, ignorant of all local facts of soil, climate, or malaria, commence 'to fight the wilder- ness' — a mighty, tongueless, obdurate, mysterious adversary, who gives you opulence if you conquer him — ^but a grave if he conquers you. What silence and solitude, what friend- lessness and desolation, the first years bring! What distance from aid in sickness, what hardship if their stores are scant — what toil through pathless woods and swollen creeks to carry stock to market and bring back household goods! Loss of civilized intercourse, familiarity with danger, the determined persistence, the iron will, the animal struggle of the settler's life, half animalizes him also. No wonder we find the victor rich and rugged. The wonder is that refine- ment is as common in America as it is. Stout-hearted emi- grants do succeed by themselves, and achieve marvellous prosperity. Nor would I discourage any from making the attempt. To mitigate the difficulties by devices of co-opera- tive foresight is a work of mercy and morality. It is not the object of the London Guild to incite emigration, nor de- termine its destination ; but to enable any who want to emi- grate to form an intelligent decision, and to aid them to carry it out with the greatest chances of personal and moral advantage. In New York I found there had lately been formed a ' Co-operative Colony Aid Association' (represented by the 'Worker,' published by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, and edited by the Rev. R. Heber Newton), of which Mr. E. E. Barnum, Dr. Felix Adler, Mr. E. V. Smalley, the Rev. Dr. AMONG THE AMERICANS. 233 Rylance, the Rev. Dr. Charles F. Deems, Mr. Courtland Palmer, Joseph Seligman, the Hon. John Wheeler, and others were promoters. From inquiries in the city (which I, a stranger, thought it right to make) I found that these were persons whose nam es gave the society prestige. Mrs. Thompson was regarded in the States, as the Baroness Burdett Coutts is in England, for her many discerning acts of munificence. To them I was indebted for the opportunity of addressing a i-emarkable audience in the Cooper Institute, New York — an audience which included journalists, authors and thinkers on social questions. State Socialists, and Com- munists — an audience which only could be assembled in New York. The Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer presided. The object of the Colony Aid Association is to select and pur- chase land, devise the general arrangements of park, co- operative store, and school-house; erect simple dwellings, and provide food for the colonists until crops accrue ; arrange for the conveyance of emigrants, from whatever land they come, to their intended settlement — pi'oviding them with escort and personal direction until they have mastered the conditions of their new life. The promotei's-take only a moderate interest upon the capital employed, affording these facilities of colonial life at cost price ; acting themselves on the entirely wholesome rule of keeping their proceedings clear alike of profit and charity. There is no reason why emigration should not be as pleasant as an excursion, and competence rendered secure to all emigrants of industry, honesty, and common sense. It soon appeared to me that land-selling was a staple trade in America and Canada — that no person knew the whole of either country. From 234 AMONG THE AMERICANS. visits and letters I received from land-holders and agents, I doubted not that there were many honest among them. But unless you had much spare time for inquiry, and were fortunate in being near those who knew them, it would be difficult to make out which the honest were. Evidently, what was wanted was complete and trustworthy informa- tion, which everybody must know to be such. There was but one source whence this information could issue, and it seemed a duty to solicit it there. If information of general utility was to be obtained, it was obviously becoming in me, as an Englishman, first to ask it of the Canadian Gov- ernment, and for this reason I went over to Canada. Canaan was nothing to Canada. Milk and honey are very well, but Canada has cream and peaches, grapes and wine. I went gathering grapes in Hamilton by moonlight — their flavor was excellent, and bunches abundant beyond imagination. The mayor of Hamilton did me the honor of showing me the fruits of Canada, on exhibition in a great fair then being held. Fruit-painters in water-colors should go to Canada. Hues so new, various, and brilliant have never been seen in an English exhibition of painters in water-colors. Nor was their beauty deceptive, for I was permitted to taste the fruit, when I found that its delicate hue was but an ' outward sign of its inward ' richness of flavor. It was unexpected to find the interior of the County Court House in Hamilton imposing with grace of design, rich with the wood-carver's art, relieved by opulence of space and convenience of arrangement far exceeding any- thing observed in the Parliament Houses of Ottawa or of Washington. The Parliamentary buildings of Canada, like AMONG THE AMERICANS. 235 those of the capitol at Washington, are worthy of the great countries in which they stand ; but were I a subject of the Dominion, or a citizen of the United States, I would go without one dinner a year in order to subscribe to a fund for paying wood-carvers to impart to the debating chambers a majestic sense of national durability associated with splendor of art. The State House of Washington and the Library of the Parliament of Ottawa, have I'ooms possessing qual- ities which are not exceeded in London by any devoted to similar purposes. The dining-room of the Hotel Brunswick in Madison Square, New York, has a reflected beauty derived from its bright and verdant surroundings; with which its interior is coherent. But the Windsor Hotel of Montreal impressed me more than any other I saw. The entrance-hall, with its vast and graceful dome, gave a sense of space and dignity which the hotels of Chicago and Sara- toga, enormous as they are, lacked. The stormy Lake of Ontario, and the River St. Lawrence, miles in length, its thousand islands, and its furious rapids, with the United States and Canadian shores on either hand, gave me an idea of the scenic glory of Canada, utterly at variance with the insipid rigor and frost-bound gloom which I had associated with the country. A visitor from the United States does not travel thirty miles into Canada without feeling that the shadow of the Crown is there. Though there was mani- festly less social liberty among the people, the civic and political independence of the Canadian cities seemed to me to equal that of the United States. The abounding cour- tesy of the press, and the cultivated charm of expression by the « Spectator " of Hamilton and the " Globe " of Toronto, 236 AMONG THE AMERICANS. "wei-e equal to anything I observed anywhere. And not jess were the instances of private and official courtesy of the country. At Ottawa I had the honor of an interview with the Premier, Sir John Macdonald, at his private residence. The Premier of Canada had the repute, I knew, of bearing a striking likeness to the late Premier of England; but I was not prepared to find the resemblance so remarkable. Excepting that Sir John is less in stature than Lord Beaconsfield, persons who saw them apart might mistake one for the other. On presenting a letter from Mr. Witton (of Hamilton, a former member of the Canadian Parliament), myself and Mr. Charlton, were admitted to an audience with Sir John, whom I found a gentleman of frank and courtly manners, who permitted me to believe that he would take into consideration the proposal I made to him that the Government of Canada should issue a blue-book upon the emigrant conditions of the entire Dominion, similar to those formerly given to us in England by Lord Clarendon ' On the Condition of the Laboring Classes abroad', furnishing details of the prospects of employment, settlement, educa- tion, tenure of land, climatic conditions, and the purchasing power of money. Sir John kindly undertook to receive from me, as soon as I should be able to draw it up, a scheme of particulars, similar to that which I prepared some years ago, at the request of Lord Clarendon. A speech of Lord Beaconsfield's was at that time much discussed by the American and Canadian press, as Sir John Macdonald had recently been on a visit to Lord Beaconsfield. Sir John explained to me in conversation that in the London reports AMONG THE AMERICANS. 237 of Lord Beaconsfield's speech, there appeared the mistake of converting ' wages of sixteen dollars per month ' into ' wages of sixteen shillings per day,' and of describing emi- gration ' west of the State ' as emigration from the ' West- ern States.' This enabled me to point out to Sir John that if these misapprehensions could arise in the mind of one so acute as Lord Beaconsfield, as to information given by an authority so eminent and exact as Sir John himself, it showed how great was the need which the English public must feel of accurate and official information upon facts, with which they were necessarily unfamiliar. Afterwards I had the pleasure of dining with the Minister of Agricul- ture, the Hon. John Henry Pope. Both myself and my friend Mr. Charlton, who was also a guest, were struck with the Cobbett-like vigor of statement which character- ized Mr. Pope. He explained the Canadian theory of protection as dispassionately as Cobden would that of Free Trade. Mr. Pope had himself, I found, caused to appear very valuable publications of great service to emigrants. He admitted, however, that there might be advantage in com- bining all the information in one book which would be uni- versally accessible, and known to be responsible. I was struck by one remark of this minister worth repeating: — ' In Canada,' he said, ' we have but one enemy — cold, and he is a steady, but manageable adversary, for whose advent we can prepare and whose time of departure we know. While in America, malaria, ague, fluctuation of temperature are intermittent. Science and sanitary provision will, in time, exterminate some dangers, while watchfulness will always be needed in regard to others.' Z^S AMONG THE AMERICANS. Subsequently I thought it my duty to make a similiar proposal to the Government of Washington. Colonel Robert Ingersoll introduced me to Mr. Evarts, the Secre- tary of State, who with the courtesy I had heard ascribed to him, gave immediate attention to the subject. Looking At me with his wise penetrating eyes, he said, ' You know Mr. Holyoake, the difficulty the Federal Government would have in obtaining the collective information you wish.' Then he stated the difficulties with precision, showing that he instantly comprehended the scope of the proposed red- book; without at all suggesting that the difficulties were obstacles. So far as I could observe, an American states- man, of any quality, does not believe in ' obstacles ' to any measure of public utility. I was aware that the Federal Government had no power to obtain from the different ■States reports of the kind required, but Mr. Evarts admitted that if he were to ask the Governor of each State to fur- nish him with the information necessary for emigrant use, ■with a view to include it in an official account of the emi- grant features of all the States, he would no doubt receive it. I undertook, on my return to England, to forward to him, after consulting with the Co-operative Guild, a scheme of the kind of red-book required. Mr. Evarts permitted me to observe that many persons, as he must well knov/, come to America and profess themselves dissatisfied. They find many things better than they could have hoped to find them, but since they were not what they expected, they were never reconciled. The remedy was to provide real information of the main things they would find. Then they AMONG THE AMERICANS. 239 would come intelligently if they came at all, and stay con- tented. General Mussey did me the favor of taking me to the White House, and introducing me to the President and Mrs. Hayes, where I had the opportunity also of meeting- General Sherman, who readily conversed upon the subject of my visit, and made many observations very instructive to me. Mrs. Hayes is a very interesting lady, of engaging ways and remarkable animation of expression, quite free from excitement. She had been in Kansas with the Presi- dent a few days before, and kindly remarked as something I should be glad to hear, that she found on the day they left that every colored person who had arrived there from the South was in some place of employment. The President had a bright, fi-ank manner; and he listened with such a grace of patience, to the nature and reason of the request I had made to Mr. Evarts, and which I asked him to sanction, if he approved of it, that I began to think that my pleasure at seeing him would end with my telling my story. He had, however, only taken time to hear entirely to what it amounted, when he explained his view of it with a sagacity and completeness and a width of illustration which surprised me. He described to me the different qualities of the vari- ous nationalities of emigrants in the States, expressing — what I had never heard anyone do before — a very high opinion of the Welsh, whose good sense and success as colonists had come under his observation. Favorable opinions were expressed by leading journals in America upon the suggestion above described. To some it seemed of such obvious utility that wonder was felt that it had never been 240 AMONG THE AMERICANS. made before. If its public usefulness continues apparent after due consideration, no doubt a book of the nature in question will be issued. There is no law in America which permits co-operation to be commenced in the humble, unaided way in which it has arisen in England. When I pointed this out to the gen- tlemen of the Colony Aid Association, the remark w^as made, ' Then we will get a law for the purpose.' In England, working men requiring an improvement in the law have thought themselves fortunate in living till the day when a Member of Parliament could be induced to put a question on the subject; and the passing of a Bill has been an expectation inherited by their children, and not always realized in their time. Emerson has related that when it was found that the pensions awarded to soldiers disabled in the war, or to the families of those who were killed, fell into the hands of unscrupulous ' claim agents,' a private policeman in New York conceived the plan of a new law which would enable every person entitled to the money to surely receive it. Obtaining leave of absence he went to Washington, and obtained, on his own rej^resentation, the passing of two acts which effected this reform. I found the policeman to be an old friend of mine, Mr. George S. Mc- Watters, w^hom I found now to be an officer of Customs in New York. An instance of this kind is unknown in ' this country. Emerson remarks that, ' having freedom in America, this accessibility to legislators, and promptitude of redressing wrong, are the means by which it is sustained and extended.' AMONG THE AMERICANS. 24I Befone leaving Washington, I thought it my duty to call at the British Embassy, and communicate to His Excellency Sir Edward Thornton, particulars of the request I had made to the Governments of Canada and of the United States; since, if His Excellency should be able to approve of the object thereof, it w^ould be an important recommendation of it. I pointed out to Sir Edward that ' though public docu- ments were issued by the departments of both Govern- ments, the classes most needing them knew neither how to collect or collate them, and reports of interested agents could not be wholly trusted ; while a Government will not lie, nor exaggerate, nor, but rarely, conceal the truth. Since the British Government do not discourage emigration, and cannot prevent it, it is better that our poor fellow-country- men should be put in possession of information which will enable them to go out with their eyes open, instead of going out, as hitherto, with their eyes mostly shut.' I ought to add here that the Canadian Minister of Agriculture had sent me several valuable works issued in the Dominion, and that the American Government have presented me with many works of a like nature, and upwards of five hundred large maps of considerable value, all of which I have placed at the disposal of the Guild of Co-operation in London, for dispersion amid centres of workingmen, with whom the founder of the Guild, Mr. Hodgson Pratt, is in communication. Because I admired many things in America, I did not learn to undervalue my own country, but came back think- ing more highly of it on many accounts than I did before. Not a word escaped me which disparaged it. In Canada, 343 AMONG THE AMERICANS. as well as in America, I heard expressed the oddest ideas imaginable of the decadence of England. I always answer- ed that John Bull was as sure-footed, if not quite so nimble, as Brother Jonathan; that England would always hold up its wilful head ; and should the worse come to be very bad, Uucle Sam would superannuate England, and apportion it an annuity to enable it to live comfortably; doing this out of regard to the services John Bull did to, his ancestors long ago, and for the goodwill the English people have shown Uncle Sam in their lucid intervals. As yet, I added, Eng- land has inexhaustible energies of its own. But lately it had Cobden with his passion for international prosperity; and John Stuart Mill with his passion for truth ; it has still Bright with his passion for justice; Gladstone with his passion for conscience; and Lord Beaconsfield with his pas- sion for — himself; and even that is generating in the people a new passion for democratic independence. The two worlds with one language will know how to move with equal greatness side by side. Besides the inexhaustible individuality and energy of Americans proper, the country is enriched by all the unrest and genius of Europe. I was not astonished that America was ' big ' — I knew that before. What I was astonished at was the inhabitants. Nature made the country ; it is freedom which has made the people. I went there without prejudice, belonging to that class which cannot afford to have prejudices. I went there not to see something which I expected to see, but to see what there was to be seen, what manner of people bestrode those mighty territories, and how they did it, and what they did it for; in what spirit, in what hope, and with what pros- AMONG THE AMERICANS. 243 pects. I never saw the human mhid at large before acting on its own account — unhampered by prelate or king. Every error and every virtue strive there for mastery, but human- ity has the best of the conflict, and progress is ujDpermost. Co- operation, which substitutes evolution for revolution in securing competence to labor, may have a great career in the New World. In America the Germans have intelli- gence; the French brightness; the Welsh persistence; the Scotch that success which comes to all men who know how to lie in wait to serve. The Irish attract all sympathy to them by their humor of imagination and boundless capacity of discontent. The English maintain their steady purpose, and look with meditative, bovine eyes upon the novelties of life around them, wearing out the map of a new path with looking at it, befofe making up their mind to take it; but the fertile and adventurous American, when he condescends to give co-operation attention, will devise new applications of the principle unforeseen here. In America I received deputations from real State Socialists, but did not expect to find that some of them were Englishmen. But I knew them as belonging to that class of politicians at home who were always expecting something to be done for them, and who had not acquired the wholesome American instinct of doing something for themselves. Were State workshops established in that country, they would not have a single occupant in three months. New prospects open so rapidly in America, and so many people go in pursuit of them, that I met with men who had been in so many places that they seemed to have forgotten where they were born. If the bit of Paternal Government could be got into the mouth of 244 AMONG THE AMERICANS. an American, it would drop out in a day — he opens his mouth so often to give his opinion on things in general. The point which seemed to be of most interest to American thinkers, was that feature of co-operation w^hich enables working men to acquire capital without having any, to save without diminishing any comfort, to grow rich by the accumulation of savings which they had never put by, thi'ough intercepting profits by economy in distribution. Meditating self-employment by associative gains, English co-operators do not complain of employers who they think treat them unfairly, nor enter into defiant negotiations, nor make abject supplications for increase of wages, they take steps to supersede unpleasant employers. With steam transit ready for every man's service, with the boundless and fruitful fields of Australia, America and Canada open to them, the policy of self-protection is to withdraw from those employers and places with whom or where no profit- able business can be done. To dispute with capital which carries a sword is a needless and disastrous warfare, even if victory should attend the murderous struggle. Even the negro of the South has learned the wisdom of withdrawing hiinself. He has learned to fight without striking a blow ; he leaves the masters who menace him. If he turned upon them- he would be cut down without hesitation or mercy. By leaving them, their estates become worthless, and he causes his value to be perceived without the loss of a single life. I learned in America two things never before apparent to me, and to which I never heard a reference at home: First, that the dispersion of unrequited workmen in Europe AMONG THE AMERICANS. 245 should be a primary principle of popular amelioration, which would compel greater changes in the quality of freedom and industrial equity than all the speculations of philosophers, or the measures of contending politicians. Secondly, that the child of every poor man should be edu- cated for an emigrant, and trained and imbued with a knowledge of unknown countries, and inspired with the spirit of adventure therein ; and that all education is half worthless — is mere mockery of the poor child's fortune — which does not train him in physical strength, in the art of ' fighting the wilderness,' and such mechanical knowledge as shall conduce to success therein. I am for workmen being given whatever education gentlemen have, and in- cluding in it such instruction as shall make a youth so much of a carpenter and a farmer that he shall know how to clear ground, put up a log-house, and understand land, crops, and the management of live stock. Without this knowledge, a mechanic, or clerk, or even an M. A., of Oxford, is more helpless than a common farm-laborer, who cannot spell the name of the poor-house which sent him out. We have in Europe surplus population. Elsewhere lie rich and surplus acres. The new need of progress is to transfer overcrowd- ing workmen to the unoccupied prairies. Parents shrink from the idea of their sons having to leave their own coun- try ; but they have to do this when they become soldiers — the hateful agents of empire — lately" carrying desolation and death among people as honest as themselves, but more unfortunate. Half the courage which leads young men to perish at Isandula, or on the rocks of Afghanistan, would turn into a Paradise the wildest wilderness in the world of 346 AMONG THE AMERICANS, which they would become the proprietors. While honest men are doomed to linger anywhere in poverty and precar- iousness, this world is not fit for a gentleman to live in. Dives may have his purple and fine linen, and fare sump- tuously every day. I, for one, pray that the race of Dives may increase; but what I wish also is, that never more shall a Lazarus be found at his gates. Gborgk Jacob Holyoake. \ \ ^\\\\\ I